The matriarchy
This is sort of an offshoot from a previous thread I did on incels.
It's the year 2045, the world is for the most part matriarchal.
Women earn more, have higher education profiles, social standing and political clout. More access to education, engage more in business, medicine and law/the judiciary system, call the shots and misogyny has diminished to a rare and highly unpopular view, or at least one rarely expressed.
Men being no longer the bread winners, often assume the role of stay at home dad - raising the family.
Perhaps, men become the more pursued sex, rather than the pursuer. Women make the moves, ask men out on dates, do the proposing. Maybe men are more often objectified, their looks and demeanor becoming more important than their career prospects, finances or social status. Men are cat-called on the streets, harassed, groped inappropriately in the club, expected to be highly sexualised and submissive. The feminine becoming ever more dominant and brazen towards men.
Firstly, would this dynamic likely lead naturally from a change in education/earnings and political impact? Can the tables truly turn to such a degree? Or is there something about the attitude/ innate instincts of men and their physical strength that would disallow such a turntable to occur?
Can we at most expect equality but never matriarchy?
How would men feel about such a state of affairs? Would it be readily accepted or resented?
What other animals in the animal kingdom display such female lead social dynamics? I can think of elephants as one such case. The matriarch elephant leads the group, holds the wisdom and authority of the group. Maybe also spiders - in which the male is sacrificed (eaten) by the female to ensure adequate resources for reproduction. Could we expect such matriarchy from humans?
Personally, I don't see much of an issue with this set of affairs apart from the sexual harassment/groping. I think this is wrong regardless of what sex commits such offences. However, I think the physical strength of men vs women has always been the kernel that propagated patriarchy in the past - physical threat or the intimidation that grows from it, at least the acknowledgement of both sexes that it is always a possibility that men have to intimidate/oppress women.
I'm not saying that's right, at all, one should never use the potential for physical abuse as a mode to gain authority, but I wonder would men ever surrender that biological fact in favour of self restraint and allowing matriarchy to prevail.
Would society be better off as a matriarchy? If so, why? Or simply, would it be better off if both sexes were in balance, leading as a cooperative.
It's the year 2045, the world is for the most part matriarchal.
Women earn more, have higher education profiles, social standing and political clout. More access to education, engage more in business, medicine and law/the judiciary system, call the shots and misogyny has diminished to a rare and highly unpopular view, or at least one rarely expressed.
Men being no longer the bread winners, often assume the role of stay at home dad - raising the family.
Perhaps, men become the more pursued sex, rather than the pursuer. Women make the moves, ask men out on dates, do the proposing. Maybe men are more often objectified, their looks and demeanor becoming more important than their career prospects, finances or social status. Men are cat-called on the streets, harassed, groped inappropriately in the club, expected to be highly sexualised and submissive. The feminine becoming ever more dominant and brazen towards men.
Firstly, would this dynamic likely lead naturally from a change in education/earnings and political impact? Can the tables truly turn to such a degree? Or is there something about the attitude/ innate instincts of men and their physical strength that would disallow such a turntable to occur?
Can we at most expect equality but never matriarchy?
How would men feel about such a state of affairs? Would it be readily accepted or resented?
What other animals in the animal kingdom display such female lead social dynamics? I can think of elephants as one such case. The matriarch elephant leads the group, holds the wisdom and authority of the group. Maybe also spiders - in which the male is sacrificed (eaten) by the female to ensure adequate resources for reproduction. Could we expect such matriarchy from humans?
Personally, I don't see much of an issue with this set of affairs apart from the sexual harassment/groping. I think this is wrong regardless of what sex commits such offences. However, I think the physical strength of men vs women has always been the kernel that propagated patriarchy in the past - physical threat or the intimidation that grows from it, at least the acknowledgement of both sexes that it is always a possibility that men have to intimidate/oppress women.
I'm not saying that's right, at all, one should never use the potential for physical abuse as a mode to gain authority, but I wonder would men ever surrender that biological fact in favour of self restraint and allowing matriarchy to prevail.
Would society be better off as a matriarchy? If so, why? Or simply, would it be better off if both sexes were in balance, leading as a cooperative.
Comments (46)
I very much favour the latter, as practiced by Native Americans.
Efficient and harmonious use of people-potential.
Me too Vera. Absolutely. I think both sexes have incredible traits, ones that work best when in cooperation. I wish modern societies were run by co-op presidencies between one male and one female president or prime ministers.
In a way this sort of reflects a king and queen. But unlike kings and queens, I think the two rulers should be elected democratically from the entire of society.
I think the balance afforded by such a dynamic would be more beneficial than one sex having total control.
The woman embodies female values, the man embodies male values. And they both work synergistically to foster an equal society. It would be a sort of "parental framework" of governance.
Values, I'm not sure are so different. Some human traits are statistically more often and/or strongly expressed by one sex, but all human traits are present in all humans to some degree. Co-operation also tends to foster inclusion and avoid the socially abrasive resentment caused by some people feeling redundant or rejected. It seem to me, the most important thing is that every member of the society is invested in every facet of the society's endeavours: if you feel that you own a piece of it, you take better care of it.
It's obviously good for the children's physical and emotional development to see and participate in all kinds of role and activity - it gives them a wider choice of identity, mentors and occupations, and thus the opportunity to employ their talents to the advantage of their society.
Perhaps neither is neccesary. Maybe we can have one president or prime minister that is either or - male or female. But I don't see why 2 minds are not better than one. That's just personal opinion to be honest. And definitely not absolute.
At the end of the day, whatever works. But I am a proponent of trying new formats until we establish on that works best.
Well, it's certainly true that we can't ensure that a member of every group - sex/gender, race, class, religion, profession etc. etc. can be in the role of supremo, even if a committee is appointed/elected to take that role. We can't even ensure that every group has proportionate representation in the body of representatives - parliament, council or whatever.
It's essential that everyone learns to take sympathetic account of everyone. I realize that's a big ask and requires consistent educational effort. The good news is that any progress towards that goal is good news.
I just read a historical novel about Cleopatra and her relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. In those days, men & women had little contact with each other outside the home. And both of those Roman generals, although married, were portrayed as casual womanizers.
Yet, when confronted with a woman of high intelligence, social position, and education --- daughters of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt were educated in Alexandria along with sons --- both of those manly men were inclined to "cooperate" with her --- at least in private. Even to the point of reluctantly accepting wise military strategy. But their own Roman leaders and military compatriots kept urging them to get rid of that "gypo" witch, who had beguiled them.
Nowadays, in some societies, women have gained some economic & educational equality with men. But for the population at large they still seem to be judged by ancient standards of hierarchy. And the resurrected appeal of Fascism, seems inclined to return women to lower levels of the social hierarchy, along with dark skinned people, and other Others. :smile:
When We were Gods, by Colin Falconer
2045? maybe 2145 or 2245. Given a severe social upheaval (do not under any circumstances hope for one) men and women could, perhaps, rearrange roles. Perhaps. Maybe. Possibly. ???
For a good time, read The Dispossessed. The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia is a 1974 anarchist utopian science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. It is one of a small number of books to win all three Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. (So, that's a strong recommendation!)
It's the "archy" as much as the "patri" or "matri". Actual egalitarian democratic socialism, with a diminution of stultifying sex roles would be pretty radical, if you want to establish a wild-eyed revolutionary goal.
Flipping from the alleged patriarchy to an imagined matriarchy would probably yield far fewer grand results than feminists expect, everything else being equal. Supposing that women are super social workers who know how to fix everything (men and women included) in a few years is a female chauvinist day dream. Female chauvinism is lame coming from women. As @T Clark put it, "from men it's pathetic."
Nothing else is ever equal. Whatever happens, happens in a historical context; includes and is formed by all that's happened before. I haven't known any feminists who envisioned a future matriarchy - the ones I knew were only fighting for fair wages and the legal right to live their own lives.
A scarcity-driven society? No. A post-scarcity society? N/A
This is not Matriarchy. This is just Patriarchy ruled by females.
In the future you mention there is not much change of the world, you just put the women in place of men and the system remains more or less the same.
Matriarchy and Patriarchy are created out of feminine and masculine qualities, not gender (although obviously there is correlation there.)
Matriarchy means organized on the principles of, and ruled by, motherhood.
How do we see motherhood and fatherhood operate in a traditional family? The father protects, provides and disciplines. The mother tends, nurtures and advises. In modern families, there is considerably more sharing and overlapping of roles - and I think that's beneficial to the children and makes the family more cohesive than it was with separate spheres of influence.
A society needs both kinds of agencies to function well.
I've never thought of it that way before. You're right.
They do. And sharing such responsibility, allowing them to overlap, requires breaking down prejudice and stereotyping regarding what it is/means to be a man, and likewise what it is/means to be a woman. What roles either ought to play.
So long as society perpetuates clear distinctions (roles) they pigeon hole both parties into assigned behaviours that they shouldn't deviate from.
In reality, neccesity is the mother (or father) of all dissolution of strict and pretty much arbitrary roles. Life is not a play with stringent character profiles assigned to players. The players ought to be free to act in a manner they deem fit to bring about benefit, regardless of whether people assume it is "un-lady-like" or "not manly enough".
Our greatest feat as humans is our adaptability.
I see what you mean. However we must not ignore single mothers and single father's raising entire families alone. To assume that a mothers role in the early years of raising a child is the most influential not only negates the place of single father's and upholds the "nuclear family model" as the prudent one, but also doesn't reflect that the children of such single parent families are also just as well adjusted and capable of being decent citizens as their nuclear double-parent family counterparts.
For me, as long as a single father can adapt to provide the feminine qualities and impart those values to their children, and so long as a single mother can likewise adapt to provide masculine ones to their children, the outcome ought to be much the same as children raised by a couple.
And that I believe is proof that the feminine and masculine "roles" are more of an artificial construct than anything innate.
In healthy societies, the child and mother are not isolated: there is extended family; grandparents are an important influence very early in life, as are older siblings and cousins. In tribal cultures, the mother carries a suckling babe wherever she goes, so that it's naturally socialized, and once the child is weaned and walking, the whole community becomes involved in its development. Even in a modern, urban setting, it is greatly beneficial for babies and toddlers to have close contact with a other adults, especially the father
Single-parent families may work out all right, but they face a lot of obstacles. The most difficult is usually money, but even if the parent can earn enough, the shortage of time is an ever ever-present problem. One person can only do so much in one day.
Women in such societies even share the responsibility of breastfeeding. With a rotary system of feeding. I think this is great from a biological point of view because each babe accrues antibodies to an even larger set of diseases due to the shared collective immunity of all participant mothers in the breastfeeding process.
Secondly, though we may not have the same degree of communal upbringing that tribal societies have, the school system operates as a stand-in for "communal child raising" where the child has exposure to other teachings, nurturing and systematic education outside of the family unit.
Sure it may not be as fluid and diverse as communal parentage but it is better than nothing.
And the reason is that fatherhood is uncertain ( short of the very modern DNA test) unless the man has control over the woman. There is very rarely any question of who a child's mother is, and for this reason, a matriarchal society is by no means an inversion of patriarchy; the need to control sexuality simply does not arise.
The logic is very straightforward: IF men inherit property, name, and status from their father, THEN the father must be confident that his son is his; and therefore that his woman is exclusively his. Therefore marriage, therefore virginity, therefore monogamy, therefore patriarchy, therefore rape culture.
Matrilineal inheritance means that a woman's daughters inherit property, name, and status from their mother, then biological fatherhood loses its importance former and women alike. A man's allegiance is as much to his sister's children as to his wife's, and maybe more so. Thinking through the implications is difficult, and needs great care because the patriarchal model is the default, and almost none of its needs regarding sexual politics are needed in matrilineal matriarchy.
In a way, yes. And it can be a very good one. But it begins relatively late in the child's life, doesn't permit close relationships with other adults and can be - often is - repressive and oppressive. (I'm also not crazy about the artificial cohort stacking and subject dividing. But that's another topic.)
Quoting unenlightened
In a given circumstance: the society be centered on the economics of property and money and the question of ownership be inextricable from DNA. Neither condition is necessary to the functioning a society.
That is an... interesting series of logical steps. I followed your train of thought up until the last sentence.
The idea that lines of inheritance plays a factor in the establishment of sexual standards is an interesting one. However, I fail to see how a system influenced at least in part by a need to prove father ship in a society without the benefit of genetics, leads to "rape culture".
Could you elaborate on what connect the two ideas together?
Sure.
How does patriarchal society control the sexual behaviour of women? It takes some fairly strong measures, because sexual activity is a natural and enjoyable pastime. Since we live in a patriarchal society, one has only to look at what those features are that restrict women in the relevant ways.
Religion is a big factor, obviously, and property laws and employment restrictions used to maintain the dependence of women on men. These have all receded in recent times because of some movement towards equality. There was a further liberation of women with the invention of the contraceptive pill, and if one were to add economic independence and generous child support and childcare facilities, and of course available abortion, we could have come close to equality an equality of the sexes. But fear of rape has increased.
Rape is a serious crime, but it is not seriously dealt with by enforcement agencies or the justice system. On the contrary, reporting a rape is discouraged by making the investigation process as unpleasant and humiliating as possible, and the very rare prosecution even more so. The blaming of the victim that occurs in rape cases is unparalleled in any other criminal case. The woman that drinks, or flirts, or dresses appropriately for a night out, or has a history of having sex, or flirting or dressing appropriately, or wears too much make up or, stays out after the coach has turned back into a pumpkin, is asking for it. Not merely consenting, asking for it.
https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/about-sexual-violence/what-is-rape-culture/
Plenty of detail and statistics there too, and the connection to patriarchy is also made. All I have done is make the connection explicit. The tendency is to identify social structure with explicit rules, but unwritten practices are what reveal the actual state of society, not the pious wishes of politicians and the like.
I agree. Lack of freedom of opportunity such as the ones you listed were evidence of the oppression of women up until the suffrage movement and the strides in equality since then. In fact I would argue that thing like pay rates aside, women enjoy the same opportunities that men do and in few cases now enjoy more opportunities then men.
However, I still don't see the correlation with rape.
Those who do commit the crime of rape have in the past used the reasoning that "they were asking for it" as defense for their crimes. As if by the woman's action, they removed the freedom of choice from the man. This is of course laughable as the freedom of choice is immutable regardless of the actions of others.
It is also true that sexual violence is on the rise, but here I propose a question. Is it on the rise, or has the definition of rape changed? For instance, have we included the act of touching another person's intimate body parts without their consent, generally known as criminal groping, as rape?
I would also dispute the idea that rape is normalized, down played, or laughed off. Excluding cases where wealth and privilege are factors, I don't think the middle class or lower class culture can fairly be charged with down playing or laughing off rape.
An example is the scenario of two adults who have intercourse after a night of heavy drinking. The woman wakes up and knows that she has slept with someone. The man may or may not be there. She may decide that she did not give her consent and accuse the man of rape. Both will agree that the act took place but one would argue it was non consensual and the other would argue that it was. Depending on the outcome of the case, a potential crime was played down, i.e. the man gets off lightly, or an innocent person is wrongfully imprisoned, i.e. the man goes to prison for a crime he did not commit.
Rather than work on removing a culture that among the average individual does not exist, it would be better to work on creating clear laws and procedures surrounding investigation of rape that protects both parties involved until a clear motive can be established.
It is not the case that rape is condoned, any more than it is the case that robbery is condoned by purveyors of security alarm systems. Nevertheless rape functions, just as robbery functions to instil fear and thereby sell alarms. No conspiracy or even approval is required.
I am not sure I understand the comparison. Could you explain it a different way?
This just how things work, a kind of game theory, not a moral theory.
In the same way, one can look at the effect the rapist has as their function, and that is to instil fear in women, that 'encourages' them towards monogamy and domesticity. And the effect on men? "Nothing to do with me mate. They ought to be locked up, end of."
In other words, the rapist functions to support and maintain patriarchy. I don't think I can make it much clearer without becoming boringly repetitive. And it's bed time for old men.
Caesar was quite randy, it seems. He was called "every woman's man and every man's woman."
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It's interesting that women in ancient Rome could do much more than women in ancient Greece could, and in that sense may be said to have been "more free." For example, Roman women could buy property, run businesses, make wills and inherit wealth, get divorced and obtain a paying job. The women of ancient Greece couldn't do any of those things.
The relationship between Caesar and Cleopatra was perceived differently by the Romans than that between Anthony and Cleopatra. Caesar's relations with Cleopatra took place after Pompey had been defeated and killed. Caesar had many enemies in Rome, but there was no civil war taking place. There may have been fears of Cleopatra having too much influence over him, and concerns regarding whether their child would take on the powers granted his father as dictator, but Cleopatra was actually well received by the rich and powerful of Rome when she stayed there in Caesar's villa, and was visited there even by Cicero. Egypt was considered an ally of Rome.
After Caesar's assassination, Rome was occupied with civil war again. Anthony was allied with Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, while the assassins were disposed of, and then formed an alliance with him and Lepidus and more or less agreed to each of them having authority over certain portions of Rome's dominions. Anthony's relations with Cleopatra began at this time, Octavian and Anthony then fell out and a new civil war began, in which Anthony's association with Cleopatra despite his marriage to Octavian's sister, and his alliance with her in the war, was thought to represent a choice of a foreigner and a foreign kingdom in opposition to Rome. I think it was the fact she represented a foreign power in alliance with Anthony that made her an object and fear and contempt in Rome more than the fact that she was a woman although it seems clear that Octavian's propaganda portrayed her as having seduced Anthony to do her bidding.
The Romans seems to have respected Cleopatra, in a sense, after her fleet and that of Anthony was defeated at the battle of Actium. Horace wrote of her in one of his odes on how she refused to surrender to Octavian and be displayed in his triumph:
[i]But she, intending to perish more nobly,
showed no sign of womanish fear at the sword,
nor did she even attempt to win
with her speedy ships to some hidden shore.
And she dared to gaze at her fallen kingdom
with a calm face, and touch the poisonous asps
with courage, so that she might drink down
their dark venom, to the depths of her heart,
growing fiercer still, and resolving to die:
scorning to be taken by hostile galleys,
and, no ordinary woman, yet queen
no longer, be led along in proud triumph.[/i]
Rape is punished by heavy jail sentences. No sane person would defend an act of rape. Convicted or even suspected rapists may wear that mark for the rest of their lives, even after their jail sentence is done. When the justice system fails, it's not uncommon for people or communities to take matters into their own hands.
I'm not sure what more you would expect from a society.
At the end of the line, a justice system is also limited by the degree to which it protects the accused. Putting people behind bars for a long time requires conclusive evidence, and rape tends to be difficult to prove.
The assumption here is that punishing rapists is easy. The truth is, punishing any crime in modern society is exceedingly difficult, which is why a lot of crime goes unpunished across the board. Western societies have chosen to err on the side of the accused - innocent until proven guilty. That has upsides and downsides.
Attributing these things to some sort of unspoken deal by men to oppress women frankly sounds insane to me.
As with many criticisms of 'patriarchy' which I've seen espoused here, it assumes these unfortunate circumstances are there for no other reason than men wishing to oppress women.
Yet, what we find is that when things are changed according to the anti-patriarchy crowd's wishes, these circumstances don't change. Which then again is taken as proof of patriarchy.
The reality is, they are just as powerless to change the state of affairs as the people whom they so readily criticize. That's not the effect of patriarchy. That's reality being stubborn.
Normally, I wouldn't think anything wrong of criticism, even if ill-conceived. However, this criticism of 'patriarchy' is particularly insidious, because it is a veiled attack on all men, as are many modern feminist critiques. It is man-hating at its core.
And yet one in four women has been sexually assaulted or raped in the UK. That's a great deal of insanity, wouldn't you say?
Quoting Tzeentch
And that's even more insanity. One is indoctrinated into one's society from birth, and perhaps begins to question it in adolescence. One refers to this in polite society as "the social contract", not "some sort of unspoken deal". One learns what a man is and what a woman is and what insanity is. And that is what this thread is supposed to be questioning, that requires folk to become aware of, and question, their own social conditioning rather than trying to impose it uncritically on the topic.
Clearly, what I am saying is controversial on this site. And clearly it would not be remotely controversial on the Rape Crisis site I linked to above. So perhaps, unless you all want to say that all feminists are insane, you could be a tad more circumspect in your language. And perhaps a look at that site might make some of what I have been saying a bit more intelligible to people here.
https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/about-sexual-violence/what-is-rape-culture/
We are supposed to be discussing what a matriarchy would be, and how it would differ from current society. This is difficult because it is far removed from the history and traditions, most particularly the philosophical traditions of the West, as witnessed by the notoriously sexist reputation of philosophy departments. It requires a mind that has already been shaken out of its default assumptions. So I should not be as surprised as I am at the attitudes here. I'm going to leave this thread here, but no doubt the topic will come up again.
If you like utopian/distopian science fiction, you might like to read Seven Days in New Crete by Robert Graves.
Exactly. Just swapping bodies is not what this is about.
Edit: Just noticed this is a month old comment but the point is still being missed on several related threads...
Because matriarchy does not need to control sex. The difference that makes the difference is that man is born of woman so the woman knows her lineage with complete certainty, whereas for the male to have the same confidence requires that he control the woman's sex life. and hence all the related threads and their contortions of attempted justification of the status quo. In a matriarchy there is no sexual politics, in the sense that it does not ever matter who fucks who.
The question of "what would happen if women became fully equal to men" isn't answered as your OP proposes. It is actually opposite as you predicted:
"The answer: the more egalitarian and wealthier the country, the larger the differences between men and women in temperament and in interest. And the relationship is not small. The most recent study, published in Science (by researchers at Berkeley, hardly a hotbed of conservatism and patriarchy) showed a relationship between a wealth/egalitarian composite measure and sex differences that was larger than that reported in 99% of published social science studies. These are not small-scale studies. Tens of thousands of people have participated in them. And many different groups of scientists have come to the same conclusions, and published those results in very good journals.
Given that differences in temperament and interest help determine occupational choice, and that differences in occupational choice drives variability in such things as income, this indicates that political doctrines that promote equality of opportunity also drive inequality of outcome."
This is to say, in Scandinavian countries where women have the most equality and can choose to do however they want, they choose female stereotyped occupations, leaving a reasonable explanation that when you eliminate social pressures and create freer choice, the biological pressures become more evident and revealed. That is, genetics heavily drive feminine and masculine behaviors, so your OP assumed outcome would not occur.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-the-gender-scandal-in-scandinavia-and-canada
Don't you think that's a bit naive? Women can be just as possessive of their partners as men.
That is not politics. Women can be just as anything you like as men, except just as unsure who their children are. That makes the big difference between matriarchy and patriarchy, not that people of either sex cannot be possessive or monogamous, but that it has no economic dynastic implications whether they are or not. The pressure is off .
I'm talking about matriarchy, not equality.
Does equal inheritance not include patrilineal inheritance? I'm talking about history, and the legacy of history. I'm talking about royalty and nobility and nationality and people with names that inherit. I'm talking about incels and philosophy departments.
After the French revolution, equal inheritance became law. before that the firstborn male was usually the heir to the estate. The result of this after many generations was that land was so divided into tiny parcels, that was terribly inefficient, and measures had to be taken to consolidate ownership into usable holdings.
There has obviously been some movement in the last century towards equality of the sexes. It has obviously not been complete. But equality in the matter of inheritance still requires the social control of female sexual behaviour, for the reason stated. This is a simple matter of fact that I do not understand why you have difficulty accepting.
How many normal couples you know have a DNA test done to confirm the father? Very few, I imagine. I know none. So perhaps it's not as fundamental as you believe.
Also, why is it an 'idiotic question' to ask whether you believe we currently live in a patriarchy? I think that is a pretty key question since it determines whether we're limited to judging your theory in a historical context or in a contemporary one, and I think there's very little substance when judging it by a contemporary one.
Un has been stating his belief that we currently live in a patriarchy across at least three different threads over the past month or so. Why is there little substance to his theory? He's taken a clear biological human distinction and drawn cultural and ideological conclusions from it. Where does he go wrong? Do social values of modern consumerist societies not seem broadly more masculine to you? Is corporate and political power not still predominantly in the hands of men? Refuse to call it a patriarchy if you like but then give your theory as to why this has been and continues to be the case.
No. it is a fundamental driver of the organisation of patriarchy. It is not a driver of the organisation of matriarchy.
Quoting Tzeentch
It is idiotic because we have been living in a patriarchal society for at least 2,500 years, and a brief glance at the makeup of any government you care to consider will confirm that we still are. As could be expected after a mere century or so of agitation for women's rights, and zero consideration of the obvious impossibility of equality for the reason already explained in tedious detail and repetition. An equal society with property inheritance is not possible, and property inheritance has not been abolished.
Now to your ridiculous argument that parents do not test their children's DNA, as if modern men do not care about their fatherhood! On the contrary, it is the result of the patriarchal society that we live in, whereby society is so structured as to control women's sexual behaviour sufficiently well that men are fairly confident, not always justifiably, of their fatherhood.
No, they don't.
They seem neither masculine nor feminine to me. Confused and ungrounded are some of the milder terms I would use to describe modern society.
Quoting Baden
Men used to be in charge because physical security was much more of an uncertain factor historically, and warfare a much more physical activity.
So ultimately the structure of society (especially large societies) is a result of power dynamics (security dilemma, prisoner's dilemma, etc.), much in the same way political realism views geopolitics.
Ironically, in the past there used to be some counterbalance through moral systems, usually in the form of religion (but also, for example, chivalric codes). In the modern day of moral relativism and moral confusion, all that's left are the dynamics of power, which is why nothing has truly changed.
Quoting unenlightened
If your argument is that the uncertainty of fatherhood is the fundamental driver of human society for the past 2,500 years, then access to DNA testing should have to be revolutionary. But it turns out it's really not.
This isn't ridiculous - it's a strong indicator of whether your argument holds any merit.
It is used in matrimonial disputes such as divorce where it has immediate financial consequences (property, that is). In normal relationships it would currently be a very damaging, insulting expression of distrust, because of the social expectation of sexual exclusivity that patriarchy depends on. Perhaps it will become a normal feature in time, it is still very new. It has been suggested that DNA screening become automatic at birth, but there are implications for insurance to be dealt with, and also privacy issues. If such were to happen, it might prove to be an equalising intervention, that would make possible an equal society, but I'm not holding my breath. It would certainly be a very complicated society in terms of family units, if it led to women being as openly unfaithful to their partners as men are.
Perhaps you could just think through the implications of things a bit before you start your revolution?
Ah, but then you have put the cart before the horse, haven't you?
Your claim was that the fundamental driver was uncertainty of fatherhood. But apparently social bonds of mutual trust and fidelity are more important. So important in fact that to put said uncertainty above trust would be essentially unthinkable in a healthy relationship.
To loop that back to patriarchy is, as I said, putting the cart before the horse.
*Sigh*. Ask yourself why it is so important to prove me wrong? Because your criticisms are getting desperate and feeble.
DNA analysis is a rather recent option. Society is not therefore built around it. On the contrary, it is built around the state of affairs previously prevailing, which is (sorry to bore you) that men could not be certain of their offspring unless they could control women's sexual behaviour. Therefore, a patriarchal society can be expected to promote ideals of either monogamy or polygamy but almost certainly not polyandry.And this is what we find around the world, that polyandry is very very rare.
The promotion, or at least the enforcement of these ideals can be expected to be applied more rigorously to women than to men, and stories about men's needs, and their inability to control them completely will abound, and this is the beginning of the induction of rape culture, that sows fear in the minds of women, and downplays the responsibility of men.
But we are supposed to be discussing Matriarchy.
Imagine therefore, a society where no importance at all is placed on fatherhood.It is not even a thing to be named and talked about. A child's important male role models will be his maternal uncles, who will be part of the matriarchal family in a way that unrelated males who share the maternal bed from time to time are not.
Familial relations are not based on sex at all, in contrast to the patriarchal nuclear family which is founded and maintained entirely by the sexual relationship of mother and father. This makes for a much more stable and extended matrilineal family unit with a matriarch at it's head, with her adult children of both sexes, and the children of her daughters (her sons do not have children of their own, but are co-responsible for their sisters' children).
Sex, whether consensual or non-consensual, loses its importance socially. Rape as a weapon of war is completely disarmed and just looks silly.
The main point of going through all this is to emphasise that matriarchy is not at all a mirror image of patriarchy. We can argue about whether it might be better or worse in all sorts of ways from different points of view, but the main difficulty for people is to understand the necessities of the patriarchy that prevails at present, and take seriously the possibility of other ways of organising society.
No need for posturing. You're posting your views for others to engage with, and you can stop engaging with mine any time you like.
Quoting unenlightened
In what sort of timeframe can we expect men to wisen up to the fact that the answer to their thousands-year-old struggle has finally arrived?
Quoting unenlightened
It's in fact not rare at all among history's female rulers.
It turns out that people who have power will use it to collect the objects of their desire.
Quoting unenlightened
The idea of 'rape culture' is nonsensical for reasons I have already explained. The sentences and social repercussions are harsh. Even being suspected and/or acquitted of rape can ruin one's life or encourage people to take the law into their own hands.
It's one of the few crimes for which "innocent until proven guilty" does not seem to apply. It all implies the exact opposite of what you're arguing.
Quoting unenlightened
I think the nuclear family is maintained by a shared responsibility for the well-being of the offspring.
It's difficult to imagine how one arrives at this pitch-black image of modern male-female relationships you espouse, but it does start to paint a picture.
Quoting unenlightened
Matriarchy, like patriarchy, is about heirarchy. Heirarchy is about domination, and domination is about power, and therefore subject to the dynamics of power (which I will argue are the actual drivers behind human society).
We can imagine all sorts of ways to organize society, but societies tend to organize in ways that are dictated by necessity. When societies forego necessity for idealism that's called decadence (which historically preceded collapse).
Physical security has been the necessity that has dictated the structure of society for the past millennia.
During the era of industrialisation and mass warfare, physical security started to encompass the entirety of society, which also started to include women on a large scale. This is the mechanism through which we have arrived at today's situation of equality.
A matriarchy will only happen when the balance flips the other way, and women become more important to physical security than men.