Patriarchy literally means the rule of fathers.  In more ways than we imagine, we live in a patriarchal society despite the trappings of what we call democracy.  One way this is evident, for instance, is in the desire of so many people around us to be “patriotic.”  That is, people who are patriotic declare their support in the most literal sense for the fatherland.

There are so many directions to go with this discussion, but let me start here on one path.  Patriarchy, I hope it should be obvious, is – like all forms of rule – illegitimate.  Nothing inherent in being a father logically entails the conclusion, “Therefore, you are right to rule over others.”  The thought of trying to prove the conclusion from the premise is laughable.  I provided sperm; sperm is a creative force from which you would not exist; therefore, your existence would not be if not for me.  Those who provide a service are owed a debt, and therefore you owe a debt to your fathers to serve them. 

You’ll note the additional premise connecting service with debt, which is a premise concocted out of thin air.  Yet, it is a premise on which the practical applications of patriarchy surely rest.  I provided the start up money for this company, and therefore I own and have a lien on your production forever.  I created this idea, and therefore my copyright or patent is inviolable.  I planted this land first, and therefore it is mine forever.  The seed of patriarchy that roots from nothing more than a single cell is used in tandem with an invented premise to assert a right of rule over everything that came into existence because of that seed.  We normally do not call this seed sperm; no one would be dignified to think that all of patriarchy arises from the messy, smelly scent of semen.  Instead, we talk of labor, capital investments, improving property, and all the rights and privileges that supposedly come from that.

Obviously, we miss the obvious fact in patriarchy that it takes two to tango.  Women and their eggs have often been left entirely out of the equation – the egg seen as a passive receiver, the earth as that which is there for the labor of man, the worker being the mere tool of the entrepreneur.  In recent years, there is an attempt to correct that and to provide women equal rights.  Something is missed, though.  The logic of domination is still essentially patriarchal.  Rather than resist the fallacy of the concept of rule, we simply choose to make patriarchs out of women, too.  Or, we cleverly try to use terms like matriarchs or democrats or some new way to hide up the fact that we are still living with what are essentially patriarchal premises.  That is, there is a creative force which brings a thing into existence, a debt is owed, and rule arises from the debt that needs repaying.

It is not hard to see, then, how property rights are tools of patriarchy.  The property owner is he who plants his seed through the sweat of his brow (the metaphorical semen) and creates wealth for which he is owed payment.  The property is his.  It is his to defend and even expand upon if someone leaves his land barren and childless.  Wars quickly arise among the fathers and their fatherlands.  Peace activists stupidly say often that “peace is patriotic.”  That’s nonsense.  There is nothing more patriarchal and therefore patriotic than war.  The line of reasoning should be obvious.

We also see patriarchy clearly in the way we conceive of our relationships.  Men have been conceived of as better than women, of course.  However, humans have been better than non-humans.  Some would say that whites have been better than non-whites, though they would eventually be smacked down for not understanding the right arbitrary lines for patriarchy’s slippery slope.  Being a father is to be a ruler of families.  Yet, outside of the obvious hierarchy within the family itself, we begin to see each unit of society as a fiefdom of itself.  Rather than see our fellow beings in our world as a community, they are competitors for what is rightly ours.  We live in fenced off little lands earning our wage and not feeling any sense of responsibility for our neighbors.  We live a life of tyranny driven by jealousy – our sex lives, our intellectual lives, our emotional lives are monopolized by our insular family units.  If we break out of them, we are often considered to be doing something wrong.  So, there’s a whole underground world of adultery, for instance.  People feel constrained by their captive lives, and many inevitably reach out for something beyond their ball and chains.  Yet, such things often become simply about sex.  It’s convenient that the larger constraints of patriarchy are not exposed because many acts of desperate fleeing from the cages of life strike us as cliché and otherwise morally bankrupt.

That may sound extreme.  People surely forge all kinds of friendships outside the home and all kinds of relationships within the larger community.  Of course they do!  The question, though, are the boundaries of those interactions.  I cannot go off to a different country and simply expect to be a welcome member of the community.  I am owned in my case by the United States of America.  I can visit, carry on trade, or perhaps be involved with military or business escapades in the country.  I cannot very easily fall in love and leave without going through a harrowing amount of red tape.  This is as true in the interpersonal level, where we’ve created in many cases all kinds of boundaries that tie us so resolutely to our various fatherlands.  Tell me how many of your children would be allowed to meet another child and then live with them on their own choice for months at a time.  How many of your significant others could venture off the reservation for more than an hour or two – particularly with a close friend (dare we say of the opposite sex) – without seedy things being wondered at, things that violate the private property contracts that really govern our relationships whether most of us are willing to admit it.

I am not arguing that we do not have responsibilities with regard to each other.  That is misconstruing and debasing my argument.  What I am arguing is that our current relationships are rooted in a patriarchal fallacy about rule.  Since that rule is fully illegitimate, we need a revolutionary approach to re-conceiving these things.  Nevertheless, it would be ridiculous to think that we should therefore just go run off, have an affair, or drop out of society, move to Alaska, and die in a magic bus.  Why?  The negation of a falsehood does not necessarily produce a truth.  If I were to say that 2 + 3 does not equal 6, it does not mean I should go out and assert that 7 is the truth because it is not 6.  We have to be careful how we go about unshackling ourselves that we do not replace someone’s illegitimate patriarchy with someone else’s illegitimate matriarchy.  Ultimately, you can guess from this essay – if you have never read anything else about me – that I am urging anarchy.  Yet, what is anarchy in practice?  Does that not depend upon a careful study of our nature?  Are we really prepared to take on that study?

Thus, I’d urge that to undo patriarchy at the macro and micro levels, we need to have real conversations about our nature, and about the nature of reality itself.  Such an act is in some sense defiance against patriarchy, as it puts the onus on us rather than someone else to figure out answers for us.  And, rather than urge more specific answers, I’d call on people to engage the question honestly and seek to root out patriarchy from our lives and own up how it infects each of us (certainly in the case of men like me, but in all humans).  I know I have so very far to go, which is no doubt a large part of what motivates me to write this.

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Comment by KellyAngelPdx on June 24, 2012 at 5:21pm

 Capitalism & Patriarchy share value sets.  Margaret Thatcher is an example of a Patriarchal leader not a Matriarchal one. 

Comment by Mark E. Smith on June 24, 2012 at 6:23pm

Yes, but in that matriarchal Mexican village, they aren't anti-capitalist, Kelly. They do own property, use money, and do business.

Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton are examples of patriarchal leaders, but they are female. In a matriarchal society, social roles are designated and assigned on the basis of sex, not on the basis of individual characteristics and potential. Some people, male, female, or intersex, are just naturally more selfish and self-centered than others, so people like that should not have leadership roles.

I forgot to mention that there are many cases where intersex people have suffered horribly, because their parents often agree to let doctors perform mutilating surgery on their genitals when they are babies, so that they can be assigned one gender role or the other. If they are born with physical characteristics of both sexes, one will be removed so that they can be classified as male or female and raised in accordance with the gender role assigned to that sex. Sometimes people can adjust to that, but there are cases where they can't, particularly if the genital mutilation removed their ability to have sex or bear children.

Many scientists who believe that there are basic biological differences between males and females, also believe that males are more aggressive. Despite patriarchal training in competitiveness and aggression, the military has found that aggression doesn't come naturally to males and that in order to get them to be aggressive, their personalities have to be broken down in boot camp and rebuilt to military specifications. The study of techniques for doing this is called Kill-ology. Despite patriarchy and military training, we have an extremely high rate of suicide in the military and many males who become anti-war activists. Yet there have been female warriors like Joan of Arc who were more suited to combat than to domesticity.

Yes, in a senior center it is possible to have somebody whose appearance is androgynous so that their sex cannot be determined by their appearance, and they might also have a unisex name like Pat (Patricia or Patrick) or Chris (Christine or Christopher), so in order to categorize them by sex, you'd have to ask which pronouns they preferred. wouldn't it be nice if we had unisex, inclusive pronouns so that people who wished to could retain their genital privacy and freedom from social pressure to conform to a gender role? I mean, if your private parts aren't private, what is? Isn't it a bit intrusive to ask somebody who is 80 or 90 years old if they prefer the pronouns used to indicate male or female genital status? To me that's as intrusive as TSA scanning or groping them before letting them on a plane. If people wish to indicate a gender role preference, all it takes is adding a simple indicator, like a ribbon or a frill to the patriarchal default. If there's no indicator, it means that the person probably doesn't think gender roles are important.

Comment by KellyAngelPdx on June 25, 2012 at 12:36am

It appears to me that all the comments to date may well have been made by males.

When it comes to advocating for inclusivity of any kind the first question asked should be who is at the table?  who is not?  and why?   Can you have a conversation about patriarchy with out women & not even note that?

Where are the feminists, or any gender?

Patriarchy is at it's root, a system of domination, that domination is based on Sex, but also quickly to many other factors, race, strength etc. It is all about hierarchy.  It has a specific value set & I invite us to name that, and describe the values of anarchy, matriarchy or other proposed alternatives.  

What is it's opposite?  What is in opposition to patriarchy and what duplicates the dynamics?

I will not detail & discuss & define that exclusively from my POV, as I don't seek to be the token female.  I'm interested in a collective creation of understanding.

Comment by Mark E. Smith on June 25, 2012 at 1:12am

Okay, so you're claiming to be female. I'm sure everyone will respect your wishes and treat you as a female, Kelly, but this is an online forum, so we have no way to check your claim. You could be male for all we know.

In the NVC discussion, you agreed that it could be important to discuss issues rather than analyzing individuals. Could it also be important to discuss issues rather than identifying each individual's sex?

Do we need to identify the sex of each person so that we can evaluate their comments in terms of their sex rather than on the basis of whether or not their comments make sense?

If matriarchy didn't want to replicate and invert the dynamics of patriarchy, it wouldn't call itself matriarchy.

Feminist Professor Gerda Lerner pointed out that you can't discriminate against a group on the basis of their membership in a group, unless you have a way to distinguish members of that group from everyone else. In real life that can sometimes be easy, as when there is discrimination against people with dark skin, or it can be difficult, as when the discrimination has to be applied to anyone descended from someone with dark skin, even if the individual in question has light skin.

I thought this was a forum for discussing Occupy ideas, not a dating site where people have to state if they're male or female and if they're looking for a male or a female.

I see nothing wrong with separatist groups, as long as they're not negating the humanity of other groups, but in real life it is possible to verify that individuals qualify to belong to a separatist group, whereas online it is not.

Comment by KellyAngelPdx on June 25, 2012 at 2:46am

Reading your response I'm interpreting you as being very defensive....here are my quick responses:

1) What you don't understand about Matriarchy is a lot.  I suggest you learn more before claiming to say what she wants!  No really.  if you don't understand that Matriarchy is a totally different paradigm and value set & not a mirroring of patririachy then you are clueless in this area.  I'm not going to assert this point further. Someone else will have to take on schooling you as I smell/suspect some willful ignorance of feminist principles.

2) If you are really going to suggest that a lack of women's voices in this discussion and in social discourse generally is not part and parcel to patriarchy then we better stop a moment & break this down to the very basics. Again, you seem like a smart guy and I'm wondering how it it is that you and all these other smart and caring guys even think you can have a gender blind conversation about dismantling patriarchy and not notice you forgot to include women.  That is nothing new, it is same-old-same-old.

3) Genrally speaking I support self-identification & choose to take people at their word.  If you say you are a woman or man or non-gender identified I will seek to engage on that premise, particularly over the internet, but in the flesh as well, in most circumstances.  I don't have the time or interest in being suspicious or telling other people who they are.

Comment by Mark E. Smith on June 25, 2012 at 4:35am

Kelly you can interpret my responses as being defensive and judge me on the basis of my sex, but you can't claim that doing so isn't addressing me rather than addressing the topic under discussion.

What you fail to understand is that simply mirroring patriarchy by favoring females instead of males is not a new paradigm. You're starting a Women's Council. How does that differ from patriarchy's traditional male councils? A council is not a General Assembly. It is a separatist group that seeks power within a larger group, the same way that all political parties seek power within a given political system. Anyone who bases their identity on their sex and judges others by their sex, is sexist.

The founders and stewards of Occupy Cafe happen to be two white males. I have never seen either of them discriminate against females. Nobody stopped you or any other person claiming to be female from joining this discussion. It is a public discussion, so it wasn't a secret council of males excluding females.

You insist on interacting on the basis of sex. Although you're willing to support self-identification and take people at their word as to whether or not they are male, female, or intersex, you are not willing to examine statements without regard to the sex of the people making those statements. If a self-identified male posted a topic stating that matriarchy is a new paradigm rather than a reversal of patriarchy, and other self-identified males agreed, but no females joined the discussion, you'd say that the discussion was part and parcel of patriarchy because it hadn't included females by commanding or demanding that females join the discussion.

I've had analogous experiences. When I first moved to San Diego I attended meetings of various groups to see if I would feel comfortable with them. Many times I'd walk into a room where everyone was white, or there would be one or two token persons of color, and I'd be shocked and horrified. Had I walked into a KKK meeting? Was this a safe place to be? What kind of people wouldn't notice that they were all white? When I eventually found anarchists I felt comfortable with, they were diverse in every possible way. And they tend to judge statements on the basis of the merits of the statement itself, rather than on the physical characteristics of the person making the statement.

Yes, I am defensive. I have experienced thirty years of Democratic Party political operatives trying to get out the vote for a patriarchal capitalist imperialist state, usually by appealing to people's identity groups and their self-interest, and because I urge people not to vote for a patriarchal capitalist imperialist state, political operatives will use every possible tactic to try to isolate, smear, and silence me. Tag teams of them will attack me using every personal attribute they can find or assume, such as my sex, my race, my age, my weight, my possession or lack of academic credentials, my social status, my tone, my style, etc. And all I can do is try to keep things on topic and ask them to please stop focusing on me and discuss the issue instead.

So I'm asking you, Kelly, could you please refrain from commenting on my sex, my alleged ignorance, or my smell, and discuss the topic, which happens to be patriarchy in this instance, without attacking me? It might be difficult for you, but I'd appreciate even the slightest attempt to keep the discussion civil. Thank you.

Comment by KellyAngelPdx on June 25, 2012 at 7:33am

We disagree on a great deal here.  I'd rather demonstrate a better way than argue with you.

I will say, gender and sex do matter in out current context, whether you say so or not.

And...

the personal is political.

More at another time....

Comment by Mark E. Smith on June 25, 2012 at 8:51am

Although it wasn't intended that way, Carol Hanish's 1969 formulation that "the personal is political," certainly holds true for political operatives who try to make everything personal. Since political operatives are trying to persuade people to continue to work within a failed system, to settle for hopes of reform and change rather than actual reform or change, and to gamble on possibilities of hope and change coming from that failed political system, rather than creating new and better systems that aren't designed to fail in the way that capitalist imperialism is (it is designed so that only a few can succeed while the many must fail in order for that to happen), they have no logical arguments and can only resort to personal attacks.

Are you aware that there are serious problems of domestic violence within the lesbian community? That all participants being the same sex, female, doesn't seem to make a difference in that context? http://www.musc.edu/vawprevention/lesbianrx/factsheet.shtml

Occupy Cafe is "an open space for global conversations." The Occupy Cafe mission statement refers to "people" without regard to sex. Gender and sex matter within the context of porn sites, dating sites, and gender- or sex-based sites, but they are not relevant within the context of Occupy Cafe. This is a website, but Occupy Cafe also includes hosted phone discussions about specific topics, and hosted face-to-face gatherings to discuss specific topics. There is no physical violence in these contexts and people are encouraged to join without regard to sex. Nobody is compelled to join. There is no coercion.

There are many contexts where gender and sex matter. Creating safe and supportive spaces for females is one such context. All-male "Stop Rape" groups is another, and many feminists approve of those groups even though they are all-male and do use the word "rape," because their purpose is to stop rape. I think that all-male groups called "Abolish Patriarchy" would be also be considered to be constructive by many feminists. But in the context of this specific topic about patriarchy, which was started by a male, sex and gender do not matter as anyone is free to participate and comments can be evaluated in terms of whether they make sense, are constructive, are civil, and further the discussion, without needing to consider the genital status of the person making a statement.

In abolishing patriarchy it is necessary for both males and females to recognize how patriarchy harms them. In the context of abolishing patriarchy, sex and gender don't matter as much as whether or not the individual understands that patriarchy is harmful and wishes to abolish it.

The major fallacy in this context is thinking that the only way to abolish patriarchy is to establish matriarchy and that there are only two options. Just as there are not only two sexes, there are more than two options. It doesn't have to be either patriarchy or matriarchy, it can be equality, also known as anarchy. Matriarchy may be more beneficial and benevolent than patriarchy but it is not equality. It is a sex-based system where sex and gender matter, whereas in an egalitarian system individual aptitudes and contributions would be the only things that mattered. If the new anarchist feminist definition of matriarchy was beneficial for everyone without regard to sex, then sex wouldn't matter and it wouldn't be called matriarchy. For there to be a new paradigm, it would have to be a system that is human-based rather than sex-based. If it is sex-based so that sex and gender matter, it isn't a new paradigm, it is just mirroring the old paradigm. Matriarchy may be more beneficial than patriarchy, but if it is a sex-based system where biological sex and acted-out gender roles matter, it is not a new paradigm. A new paradigm would be honoring all people as individuals so that discriminatory factors like sex, ethnicity, age, weight, skin color, etc., would not automatically confer or deny privileges. Everyone would be equally privileged.

Comment by KellyAngelPdx on June 25, 2012 at 11:33am

are you calling me an operative?  what the heck?

Comment by KellyAngelPdx on June 25, 2012 at 11:36am

the vast majority of violence is perpetrated by males.  this is a statistical fact.  bringing up lesbian domestic violence is a paper tiger.

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