"Spiritual but not religious" is a common phrase, which basically means the same thing. But as a historian, I prefer the term "deist" because it refers to a specific time period in history: the Age of Enlightenment (1649-1848). My favorite deist writers are Edward Gibbon, Thomas Paine, and Voltaire (David Hume and Thomas Hobbes were technically atheists, but there's a lot of overlap with deism). Lesser-known deists are Lord Herbert, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Charles Blount, Thomas Chubbs, and Anthony Collins.
Yeah, I thought I was the only deist in the 21st century. Happy to be wrong, haha!
> Patriarchal societies are the most common throughout human history
Probably this doesn't hold for human prehistory. As paternity certainty drifts towards zero, men stop investing in their ladyfriend's children and start investing in their sister's children. You *know* you're related to your maternal nephew, but when it comes to your partner's kids?
There's also the grandparents to consider. Unless your sons have greater ability to convert inheritance into reproductive success than your daughters, you may as well invest in your daughters, since (again) your grandchildren through your daughters will definitely be yours.
> As a result, the most intelligent and/or physically capable members were given status within prehistoric clans.
Well... My lived experience as a person of colorlessness holds that the most cantankerous and aggressive members are given status, and forget about capability, whether intellectual, physical, or otherwise. It's the same with cats; whoever is the meanest is most dominant because nobody else wants to fight all the time.
> I, on the other hand, am a Deist.
Oh, good for you! Deism is fun.
> how patriarchies are not intrinsic to human nature but rather are the result of societal competition and the search for survival.
Yep. Modern society isn't patrilineal or matrilineal but bilineal and neolocal: You're related to relatives on both sides, and nuclear families bud off to live independently. Most foraging societies were like this, too. Patriliny worked with agrarian and pastoralist societies - and under those subsistence systems, physical labor was critical, making men more valuable than women anyway. But in modern societies physical prowess is largely unimportant, and the conditions between the sexes are, overall, more equal than they've been before.
Basically, I guess what I'm saying is you should browse through this article, if you haven't seen it already, and then no point in my saying anything else, because I don't know anything else:
I would love to know what prehistoric families were really like. Unfortunately, there are only theories and wacky cave drawings of aliens. (We do some families know they took care of the disabled, which is nice.)
Seriously so would I. There *is* more out there than just material evidence - we've got the ethnographic record which tells us what modern foragers, horticulturalists, and pastoralists living with limited toolkits are like. Those scattered survivals are useful clues to a lost world.
Respectfully I think you inadvertently undervalue motherhood in a massive way. I have no easy way of getting back to your piece for quotes so forgive me for not being exact, but when you speak of women being sold off into marriage (this is bad) you also speak of them being forced into motherhood when they are barely out of their teens. This is absolutely the best time for women to have babies. Having babies in your late teens and early twenties is the safest time for the mother to be pregnant and give birth with the fewest complications. You have more energy in your twenties than your thirties which absolutely matters when it comes to pregnancy and being a good engaged parent. Having kids in your early teens and twenties means having multiple generations around for longer which means you can share the burden of childcare with grandparents and great grandparents. It also means that by the time your parents need caring for you won’t have young kids in the house. When my daughter grows up I will give her the advice that I wish someone would have given me. Have babies in your early twenties, professional dreams can wait and still be achieved after you have babies, babies can’t wait, that clock is ticking.
You say later in your letter than some might want to be “more” than mothers. There is nothing more than being a mother. You might be a mother and something else on top of, but it’s not more, it’s certainly not more important or more worthwhile. Plus there’s the unfortunate fact that trying to be a mother and... often leads to being less of a mother unless that and takes up very little time and energy.
I also think your understanding of how women see and value themselves in a patriarchy is inaccurate. Your value isn’t just in who you are married to and how many children you bear but also on what you bring to your husband, what that brings those associated with you and the caliber of children you raise. There’s nothing glamorous or romantic about being in an arranged marriage with an older man. But it means you bring something to the table in order for him to be willing to enter into the arrangement. Maybe that’s a political connection, or land, it’s certainly some amount of the preferred character of the time as most men were unlikely to marry women they expected to publicly shame them. At the same time a daughter getting married typically also brought something beneficial to her family, either a bride price, political connections, access to more resources etc. So a young woman wasn’t just valued because she was married to a man of means but because through her the entire family was enriched. Quality was absolutely more important than quantity when it came to bearing children. A single son was typically more highly valued than a multitude of daughters. The character and ability of the children as they grew also mattered, especially in honor cultures where one child’s screw up could condemn the entire family. It didn’t matter if you had ten sons if none of them were capable to leave the family lands and business to. Having a bunch of unchaste daughters would have been considered worse than being barren.
We use different measures today but the quality of man we marry and how our kids turn out still has a lot to do with how women value themselves. Few women who marry absolute dirtbags feel good about themselves. Most women take pride in the accomplishments of their children but also feel shame in their failures. As a woman these things seem very intrinsic to me.
I also think you fail to appreciate the amount of soft power intelligent women of all stations can wield over the men in their lives.
So...children should have children? That's what you're saying when you state young women (i.e., teens and early 20's) should have babies. Young women are hardly women, they're still learning and are often very childish, and much less mature than they will be when they're older. I don't care if you're female, you're still dehumanizing women and relegating them to nothing but a being whose value comes from having offspring.
I think the good Dr I has some very valid points. Also a woman in her twenties is not a child, she is a young woman. Elizabeth 1 was 25 when she became Queen- definitely not a child. Joan of Arc 17. Boudicca wasn’t old either. Yes, woman can be leaders (rarely) but it’s not a feminine trait. The current dystopian world is full of women in power and feminised men. These types of men are the warmongers that are always as far from the fighting as they can get
Did you read the article? I stated leadership is a collection of masculine and feminine traits. A collection.
The current world is run by faux leaders of both sexes. These leaders do not embrace the traits of true leaders and are a problem, regardless of their sex.
And to point out, Joan of Arc never had children. Additionally, 25 is mid-twenties, not early twenties. The difference between 25 and 17 is nearly 10 years and extreme amounts of growth can happen during that time. However, the difference between 17 and 20, is only 3 years. Yes, these are young women, but some young women are much closer to their childhood than others.
I think that for many people it is getting married, having children, and taking on actual responsibility that leads to maturity and adulthood. I think this is one reason why young men especially “incels” struggle so much, it’s also why we have women in congress in their thirties and older who behave like they are thirteen. If you want people to behave with maturity and selflessness then you give them a responsibility to grow into. I don’t care how old they were when they had kids or how together they were any honest parent will tell you that parenthood made them less selfish and more mature.
I am not saying that child bearing is the only thing that defines a woman’s value, I am saying you completely devalue it which is a mistake. It turns out most women find more fulfillment in having and raising babies than they do in leadership or working outside the home which is probably why when women have never had it easier they are less satisfied with their lives and a quarter of American women are on psychiatric medications. This shouldn’t come as a shock since women are built (wether you believe it’s by design or evolution) to bear children and it has really only been in the west and the last eighty or so years that this has been challenged. Biology doesn’t change that quickly. Women are hardwired to have babies and to find satisfaction and fulfillment in raising said babies, it’s what perpetuates the species. This is true whether it comes from God’s design or evolution. The idea that a couple of generations of egalitarianism in the west is going to impact that is silly. I am saying the Spartans had it right when they celebrated a woman who died in childbirth with the same honor they celebrated a warrior who died in battle.
I think the problem with the article is you are approaching the context with a viewpoint that is modern and westernized with a lack of understanding of history or biology. If you told someone in Nigeria today or America 100 years ago that an 18 or 19 year old woman is a child they would laugh at you. You seem to very much view women as victims of a one time but no longer necessary patriarchy. I also think your view that there was ever some kind of us vs them of men vs women is completely ahistorical and a result of the current obsession with claiming everything ever was about power dynamics.
If men are the us and women are the them then men wouldn’t fight wars killing other men, often doing so in order to protect women. By and large the actions that were taken that controlled women were taken to protect them. This is why the vast majority of women in any Muslim culture who are veiled actually support wearing the veil and push their daughters to do so. Wearing the veil is seen as a way to protect women from lustful men, the idea is that men won’t lust after what they don’t see. Now I think this idea is intrinsically flawed because now men just have a mystery to lust over but that’s the idea behind it. It’s not that most men want to exert power over their wives and daughters, it’s that they think they need to protect them, they exert power for them.
Most of this boils down to the fact that women physically need defense and that men need someway to ensure their efforts defending said women aren’t wasted on the children of the guy who cucked them. Our power structures didn’t develop from a drive for power, particularly power over women, they evolved in response to biological reality and in order to perpetuate the species.
If you are going to make claims about intrinsic human nature you should spend less time looking at social power based control theory and much more time looking at evolutionary biology which does a much better job of explaining how our social structures came to be as a result of biologic realities than claiming men just othered women and wanted power over the other.
" If you want people to behave with maturity and selflessness then you give them a responsibility to grow into. "
This is a fallacy. Many people have children in their late teens/early twenties, and yet are just as immature as if they hadn't had children. Having a baby doesn't automatically equal growth and maturity. Growth & maturity are accomplished by one's own self and while it can be inspired by having children are almost completely independent of doing so.
"I am saying you completely devalue it which is a mistake."
I never devalued childbirth. I'm just saying it's not the be-all-end-all of life. I suppose I'm in the minority of women, but I have a calling that requires me to be something other than a mother. Work is what satisfies me because my work is my passion. While children can be lovely, it doesn't mean that raising them is what I want my life to revolve around. In fact, the idea of pregnancy repulses me, despite my body being designed for such.
I'm not saying people can't have children. That's fine if they want to raise children. But not all women find satisfaction in such. If this were the case, then we wouldn't hear about neglectful or abusive mothers.
And meritocracy is not egalitarianism.
"I think the problem with the article is you are approaching the context with a viewpoint that is modern and westernized with a lack of understanding of history or biology. "
Bold of you to assume I don't understand history and biology. Have you ever considered our interpretations are just different?
"f you told someone in Nigeria today or America 100 years ago that an 18 or 19 year old woman is a child they would laugh at you."
Nigeria is a poor example, as they still believe in child marriage.
"I also think your view that there was ever some kind of us vs them of men vs women is completely ahistorical and a result of the current obsession with claiming everything ever was about power dynamics."
Ingroups vs. outgroups is a psychological concept that does, in fact, exist. This is how sexism works, by seeing your sex as an ingroup and hating the outgroup (the opposite sex). This is also has racism and other forms of tribalism work.
"If men are the us and women are the them then men wouldn’t fight wars killing other men, often doing so in order to protect women. "
Men go to war to protect their territory, what they love, and their way of life, at the end of the day. At one point, women were looked at as beloved territory.
" This is why the vast majority of women in any Muslim culture who are veiled actually support wearing the veil and push their daughters to do so. Wearing the veil is seen as a way to protect women from lustful men, the idea is that men won’t lust after what they don’t see. "
Muslim culture (specifically in the Middle East in Africa) has a severe rape problem, in which men, women, boys, and girls, are frequently raped. These full body veils, specifically, are demeaning to both men and women. They tell women they are inherently shameful and need to be covered, and that men cannot possibly even control their urges.
"Our power structures didn’t develop from a drive for power, particularly power over women, they evolved in response to biological reality and in order to perpetuate the species. "
Did you even read the article? I literally said they evolved out of a struggle for survival but DEVOLVED into a means for power.
I see you have fallen for the trap. I hope you see the light and climb out of it before it’s too late. You are seeking and intelligent albeit brainwashed so there is hope. The problem with finding your worth and value in your work is that sooner or later you can’t work, and most of us live well past that point. Old age gets rather lonely without familial support.
For what it’s worth I’ve had four pregnancies and two babies and I still find pregnancy repulsive.
Yes some people are terrible parents. But there is no evidence to suggest that people who were terrible parents in their twenties would have been better parents had they waited until their thirties which is my point.
Wow, what a great conversation going on here! Thanks to Dr Slatton for giving us a preview of the next issue I mean to address! She brings a fantastically personal yet detailed and historically accurate perspective to the 'motherhood' aspect of patriarchy!
You've touched upon motherhood in patriarchies before. I imagine you're going to go more in-depth on the matter and how mothers are perceived in various historical societies?
I completely forgot to add that in the definition! Perhaps I overlooked it because I'm not a parent.
If there is one book that I think covers patriarchies well, especially from the standpoint of the Church is "WEIRDest People in the World", the book I cited in this article. A chunk of the book talks about how patriarchies were influenced by Church doctrine, including marital law and the influence of families on children. (I find an excuse to recommend this book to everyone. You happen to be the newest unlucky soul.)
Well, I certainly hope you will write a response! That is kind of what a letter exchange is all about.
But I think you missed my point. We are talking about the inevitablity of patriarchy. Patriarchy promotes children. Having lots of children. Having lots of successful children. Societies which, over time, produce fewer children than their competitors, all other things being equal, tend to do less well than those competitors. Societies which produce fewer children that needed to replace themselves... die.
Those are some of the things I will be addressing.
So you meant patriarchy from a child-rearing and parenting standpoint. I see. Yeah, I definitely tackled this from a leadership standpoint, focusing more on the "ruler" bit than the "fathering" aspect. Now this raises questions of parenting and the Malthusian Trap.
This is a great essay. Meritocracy should be the goal, not the arbitrary rule of either sex. Also, it's great to finally meet a fellow deist!!!
"I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition" (Voltaire).
"Religion is regarded as true by the common people, false by the philosopher, and useful by the politician" (Edward Gibbon)
Thank you so much! I'm actually working on the next letter, which further expands upon meritocracy.
It's wonderful meeting another deist. I was starting to wonder if I was the only one left!
"Spiritual but not religious" is a common phrase, which basically means the same thing. But as a historian, I prefer the term "deist" because it refers to a specific time period in history: the Age of Enlightenment (1649-1848). My favorite deist writers are Edward Gibbon, Thomas Paine, and Voltaire (David Hume and Thomas Hobbes were technically atheists, but there's a lot of overlap with deism). Lesser-known deists are Lord Herbert, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Charles Blount, Thomas Chubbs, and Anthony Collins.
Yeah, I thought I was the only deist in the 21st century. Happy to be wrong, haha!
> Patriarchal societies are the most common throughout human history
Probably this doesn't hold for human prehistory. As paternity certainty drifts towards zero, men stop investing in their ladyfriend's children and start investing in their sister's children. You *know* you're related to your maternal nephew, but when it comes to your partner's kids?
There's also the grandparents to consider. Unless your sons have greater ability to convert inheritance into reproductive success than your daughters, you may as well invest in your daughters, since (again) your grandchildren through your daughters will definitely be yours.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513802001228
> As a result, the most intelligent and/or physically capable members were given status within prehistoric clans.
Well... My lived experience as a person of colorlessness holds that the most cantankerous and aggressive members are given status, and forget about capability, whether intellectual, physical, or otherwise. It's the same with cats; whoever is the meanest is most dominant because nobody else wants to fight all the time.
> I, on the other hand, am a Deist.
Oh, good for you! Deism is fun.
> how patriarchies are not intrinsic to human nature but rather are the result of societal competition and the search for survival.
Yep. Modern society isn't patrilineal or matrilineal but bilineal and neolocal: You're related to relatives on both sides, and nuclear families bud off to live independently. Most foraging societies were like this, too. Patriliny worked with agrarian and pastoralist societies - and under those subsistence systems, physical labor was critical, making men more valuable than women anyway. But in modern societies physical prowess is largely unimportant, and the conditions between the sexes are, overall, more equal than they've been before.
Basically, I guess what I'm saying is you should browse through this article, if you haven't seen it already, and then no point in my saying anything else, because I don't know anything else:
https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/human-societies-across-the-world
Ahahaha! Sources for my response to Von >:)
I would love to know what prehistoric families were really like. Unfortunately, there are only theories and wacky cave drawings of aliens. (We do some families know they took care of the disabled, which is nice.)
Seriously so would I. There *is* more out there than just material evidence - we've got the ethnographic record which tells us what modern foragers, horticulturalists, and pastoralists living with limited toolkits are like. Those scattered survivals are useful clues to a lost world.
Still, they're only clues. I've complained elsewhere that I think those people who never advanced are weird: https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/pronatalism-is-inherently-groupish/comment/44888084 Any normal neolithic human would have learned to use a cellphone if you put it into his hands.
My reply to this should be up Thursday morning.
Respectfully I think you inadvertently undervalue motherhood in a massive way. I have no easy way of getting back to your piece for quotes so forgive me for not being exact, but when you speak of women being sold off into marriage (this is bad) you also speak of them being forced into motherhood when they are barely out of their teens. This is absolutely the best time for women to have babies. Having babies in your late teens and early twenties is the safest time for the mother to be pregnant and give birth with the fewest complications. You have more energy in your twenties than your thirties which absolutely matters when it comes to pregnancy and being a good engaged parent. Having kids in your early teens and twenties means having multiple generations around for longer which means you can share the burden of childcare with grandparents and great grandparents. It also means that by the time your parents need caring for you won’t have young kids in the house. When my daughter grows up I will give her the advice that I wish someone would have given me. Have babies in your early twenties, professional dreams can wait and still be achieved after you have babies, babies can’t wait, that clock is ticking.
You say later in your letter than some might want to be “more” than mothers. There is nothing more than being a mother. You might be a mother and something else on top of, but it’s not more, it’s certainly not more important or more worthwhile. Plus there’s the unfortunate fact that trying to be a mother and... often leads to being less of a mother unless that and takes up very little time and energy.
I also think your understanding of how women see and value themselves in a patriarchy is inaccurate. Your value isn’t just in who you are married to and how many children you bear but also on what you bring to your husband, what that brings those associated with you and the caliber of children you raise. There’s nothing glamorous or romantic about being in an arranged marriage with an older man. But it means you bring something to the table in order for him to be willing to enter into the arrangement. Maybe that’s a political connection, or land, it’s certainly some amount of the preferred character of the time as most men were unlikely to marry women they expected to publicly shame them. At the same time a daughter getting married typically also brought something beneficial to her family, either a bride price, political connections, access to more resources etc. So a young woman wasn’t just valued because she was married to a man of means but because through her the entire family was enriched. Quality was absolutely more important than quantity when it came to bearing children. A single son was typically more highly valued than a multitude of daughters. The character and ability of the children as they grew also mattered, especially in honor cultures where one child’s screw up could condemn the entire family. It didn’t matter if you had ten sons if none of them were capable to leave the family lands and business to. Having a bunch of unchaste daughters would have been considered worse than being barren.
We use different measures today but the quality of man we marry and how our kids turn out still has a lot to do with how women value themselves. Few women who marry absolute dirtbags feel good about themselves. Most women take pride in the accomplishments of their children but also feel shame in their failures. As a woman these things seem very intrinsic to me.
I also think you fail to appreciate the amount of soft power intelligent women of all stations can wield over the men in their lives.
So...children should have children? That's what you're saying when you state young women (i.e., teens and early 20's) should have babies. Young women are hardly women, they're still learning and are often very childish, and much less mature than they will be when they're older. I don't care if you're female, you're still dehumanizing women and relegating them to nothing but a being whose value comes from having offspring.
I think you missed the point of the article.
I think the good Dr I has some very valid points. Also a woman in her twenties is not a child, she is a young woman. Elizabeth 1 was 25 when she became Queen- definitely not a child. Joan of Arc 17. Boudicca wasn’t old either. Yes, woman can be leaders (rarely) but it’s not a feminine trait. The current dystopian world is full of women in power and feminised men. These types of men are the warmongers that are always as far from the fighting as they can get
Did you read the article? I stated leadership is a collection of masculine and feminine traits. A collection.
The current world is run by faux leaders of both sexes. These leaders do not embrace the traits of true leaders and are a problem, regardless of their sex.
And to point out, Joan of Arc never had children. Additionally, 25 is mid-twenties, not early twenties. The difference between 25 and 17 is nearly 10 years and extreme amounts of growth can happen during that time. However, the difference between 17 and 20, is only 3 years. Yes, these are young women, but some young women are much closer to their childhood than others.
> Did you read the article? I stated leadership is a collection of masculine and feminine traits. A collection.
Poor Kasimir! Welcome to substack
I think that for many people it is getting married, having children, and taking on actual responsibility that leads to maturity and adulthood. I think this is one reason why young men especially “incels” struggle so much, it’s also why we have women in congress in their thirties and older who behave like they are thirteen. If you want people to behave with maturity and selflessness then you give them a responsibility to grow into. I don’t care how old they were when they had kids or how together they were any honest parent will tell you that parenthood made them less selfish and more mature.
I am not saying that child bearing is the only thing that defines a woman’s value, I am saying you completely devalue it which is a mistake. It turns out most women find more fulfillment in having and raising babies than they do in leadership or working outside the home which is probably why when women have never had it easier they are less satisfied with their lives and a quarter of American women are on psychiatric medications. This shouldn’t come as a shock since women are built (wether you believe it’s by design or evolution) to bear children and it has really only been in the west and the last eighty or so years that this has been challenged. Biology doesn’t change that quickly. Women are hardwired to have babies and to find satisfaction and fulfillment in raising said babies, it’s what perpetuates the species. This is true whether it comes from God’s design or evolution. The idea that a couple of generations of egalitarianism in the west is going to impact that is silly. I am saying the Spartans had it right when they celebrated a woman who died in childbirth with the same honor they celebrated a warrior who died in battle.
I think the problem with the article is you are approaching the context with a viewpoint that is modern and westernized with a lack of understanding of history or biology. If you told someone in Nigeria today or America 100 years ago that an 18 or 19 year old woman is a child they would laugh at you. You seem to very much view women as victims of a one time but no longer necessary patriarchy. I also think your view that there was ever some kind of us vs them of men vs women is completely ahistorical and a result of the current obsession with claiming everything ever was about power dynamics.
If men are the us and women are the them then men wouldn’t fight wars killing other men, often doing so in order to protect women. By and large the actions that were taken that controlled women were taken to protect them. This is why the vast majority of women in any Muslim culture who are veiled actually support wearing the veil and push their daughters to do so. Wearing the veil is seen as a way to protect women from lustful men, the idea is that men won’t lust after what they don’t see. Now I think this idea is intrinsically flawed because now men just have a mystery to lust over but that’s the idea behind it. It’s not that most men want to exert power over their wives and daughters, it’s that they think they need to protect them, they exert power for them.
Most of this boils down to the fact that women physically need defense and that men need someway to ensure their efforts defending said women aren’t wasted on the children of the guy who cucked them. Our power structures didn’t develop from a drive for power, particularly power over women, they evolved in response to biological reality and in order to perpetuate the species.
If you are going to make claims about intrinsic human nature you should spend less time looking at social power based control theory and much more time looking at evolutionary biology which does a much better job of explaining how our social structures came to be as a result of biologic realities than claiming men just othered women and wanted power over the other.
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
" If you want people to behave with maturity and selflessness then you give them a responsibility to grow into. "
This is a fallacy. Many people have children in their late teens/early twenties, and yet are just as immature as if they hadn't had children. Having a baby doesn't automatically equal growth and maturity. Growth & maturity are accomplished by one's own self and while it can be inspired by having children are almost completely independent of doing so.
"I am saying you completely devalue it which is a mistake."
I never devalued childbirth. I'm just saying it's not the be-all-end-all of life. I suppose I'm in the minority of women, but I have a calling that requires me to be something other than a mother. Work is what satisfies me because my work is my passion. While children can be lovely, it doesn't mean that raising them is what I want my life to revolve around. In fact, the idea of pregnancy repulses me, despite my body being designed for such.
I'm not saying people can't have children. That's fine if they want to raise children. But not all women find satisfaction in such. If this were the case, then we wouldn't hear about neglectful or abusive mothers.
And meritocracy is not egalitarianism.
"I think the problem with the article is you are approaching the context with a viewpoint that is modern and westernized with a lack of understanding of history or biology. "
Bold of you to assume I don't understand history and biology. Have you ever considered our interpretations are just different?
"f you told someone in Nigeria today or America 100 years ago that an 18 or 19 year old woman is a child they would laugh at you."
Nigeria is a poor example, as they still believe in child marriage.
"I also think your view that there was ever some kind of us vs them of men vs women is completely ahistorical and a result of the current obsession with claiming everything ever was about power dynamics."
Ingroups vs. outgroups is a psychological concept that does, in fact, exist. This is how sexism works, by seeing your sex as an ingroup and hating the outgroup (the opposite sex). This is also has racism and other forms of tribalism work.
"If men are the us and women are the them then men wouldn’t fight wars killing other men, often doing so in order to protect women. "
Men go to war to protect their territory, what they love, and their way of life, at the end of the day. At one point, women were looked at as beloved territory.
" This is why the vast majority of women in any Muslim culture who are veiled actually support wearing the veil and push their daughters to do so. Wearing the veil is seen as a way to protect women from lustful men, the idea is that men won’t lust after what they don’t see. "
Muslim culture (specifically in the Middle East in Africa) has a severe rape problem, in which men, women, boys, and girls, are frequently raped. These full body veils, specifically, are demeaning to both men and women. They tell women they are inherently shameful and need to be covered, and that men cannot possibly even control their urges.
"Our power structures didn’t develop from a drive for power, particularly power over women, they evolved in response to biological reality and in order to perpetuate the species. "
Did you even read the article? I literally said they evolved out of a struggle for survival but DEVOLVED into a means for power.
I see you have fallen for the trap. I hope you see the light and climb out of it before it’s too late. You are seeking and intelligent albeit brainwashed so there is hope. The problem with finding your worth and value in your work is that sooner or later you can’t work, and most of us live well past that point. Old age gets rather lonely without familial support.
For what it’s worth I’ve had four pregnancies and two babies and I still find pregnancy repulsive.
Also my disagreement is that they never devolved but have simply continued evolving. Your entire theory of devolution is flawed.
Yes some people are terrible parents. But there is no evidence to suggest that people who were terrible parents in their twenties would have been better parents had they waited until their thirties which is my point.
Wow, what a great conversation going on here! Thanks to Dr Slatton for giving us a preview of the next issue I mean to address! She brings a fantastically personal yet detailed and historically accurate perspective to the 'motherhood' aspect of patriarchy!
You've touched upon motherhood in patriarchies before. I imagine you're going to go more in-depth on the matter and how mothers are perceived in various historical societies?
Yup. The post is entitled 'Blessings of the breasts and the womb' and is scheduled for Thursday.
And not just 'how mothers are percieved', but the issues of demography in successful societies.
Oh, so you'll tackle the declining birthrates?
In any case, I may write a response if I feel inclined.
I'm going to reply here as the thread is getting a bit deep :)
>>So you meant patriarchy from a child-rearing and parenting standpoint.
Child raising is a very important part of the definition I am using.
I said that the budding patriarch must:
1) Have lots of legitimate children
2) Have power over them
3) Have that power over them carry on down through the generations.
Those are crucial to my definition of patriarchy.
I completely forgot to add that in the definition! Perhaps I overlooked it because I'm not a parent.
If there is one book that I think covers patriarchies well, especially from the standpoint of the Church is "WEIRDest People in the World", the book I cited in this article. A chunk of the book talks about how patriarchies were influenced by Church doctrine, including marital law and the influence of families on children. (I find an excuse to recommend this book to everyone. You happen to be the newest unlucky soul.)
Well, I certainly hope you will write a response! That is kind of what a letter exchange is all about.
But I think you missed my point. We are talking about the inevitablity of patriarchy. Patriarchy promotes children. Having lots of children. Having lots of successful children. Societies which, over time, produce fewer children than their competitors, all other things being equal, tend to do less well than those competitors. Societies which produce fewer children that needed to replace themselves... die.
Those are some of the things I will be addressing.
So you meant patriarchy from a child-rearing and parenting standpoint. I see. Yeah, I definitely tackled this from a leadership standpoint, focusing more on the "ruler" bit than the "fathering" aspect. Now this raises questions of parenting and the Malthusian Trap.