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 Women responsible for society's ills

 Author:  Topic:  Posted:
Aug 22, 2001
 Comments:
Men and patriarchy are continuously maligned nowadays as prime factors behind the ills of the societies that mankind has built for thousands of years. Economic class hierarchies and grossly uneven distribution of goods; violence, from schoolyard fights to global wars and potential nuclear obliteration of life on planet Earth; subjugation and abuse of whole classes of people ("inferior races", women, homosexuals); the drive to dominate nature and its destructive ecological results; greed and the accumulation of unneeded goods; and so on. The ills that, rightly or wrongly, have been attributed to patriarchy, are countless.
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How did patriarchy come about? Thanks to the work of anthropologists like Marija Gimbutas, we have very good theories about this.

The broad outlines of the story are as follows. Back in the Paleolithic, personkind worshipped fat, round, and above all, female, Earth/Fertility Goddess figures, as exemplified by the famous Venus of Willendorf. Hunter-gatherer societies are known to be quite equitative, and there is no reason to expect Paleolithic bands to have been any different in this regard.

So we have small bands of hunter-gatherers with no real class structure; the only identifiable division of labor is a fairly natural one, based on sex and age, where the females and elderly gather plants and seeds and tend for the young, while the males in prime age hunt. And these productive activities were not equal in yield; gathering provided at least 75% of the caloric intake, meaning that women were the primary economic producers.

The brutality of Paleolithic life meant that all labor was directed at subsistence-- even the crafting of statuettes of the female deities, or the painting of representations of game animals must be understood as subsistence labor, even if it had no real effect. Since there was not a surplus of production, these societies simply could not sustain a class that lived off the work of others. And, indeed, this was the case.

But then comes along the Neolithic with the agricultural revolution. Land becomes a valuable commodity. As agriculture spreads, land becomes scarce. Out of this arises a new social order based around property. And of course, since property can only be based on force, this leads to a series of easily observable changes in the societies, which still plague us to this day:

  • Male warrior gods suddenly appear in the archeological record, and displace (or rather subjugate) the older earth goddesses.
  • Class divisions appear. Agriculture allows production of a surplus, which allows a class of warriors and/or priests not only to live off the work of others, but to command a higher share of the output than that received by the producers. The economic distinction between the classes becomes culturally encoded in caste systems.
  • Warfare develops at a breathtaking rate, with advances in metallurgy leading to ever stronger metals to fashion weapons with.
  • Political units begin centralizing more and more power by means of military might. Once peaceful villages turn against their neighbors and subjugate them, making the people who once were their friends into an enslaved inferior caste.
And so on; patriarchy has arrived, imposing its values over those whose luck turns out for the worse. Paleolithic life, while certainly not easy, lacked the massive social strife that patriarchy brought on afterwards; there was strife, but the strife was the strife of the struggle against nature, and the Neolithic didn't eliminate that. It only modified its form, and this while introducing a completely new form of strife.

This is a standard feminist story (which could be told in far more detail) so far, which, although being very controversial, is quite plausible. However, to get to the point of this article: the story leaves a crucial fact out. Who discovered agriculture? Given the division of labor in Paleolithic society, it is an inescapable conclusion that the discovery of agriculture, the seed (no pun intended) which germinated into this forest of social strife, must have been the product of women. We are thus, in presence of what must be the greatest irony of human history-- patriarchy came into being because of the actions of women!

Thus, patriarchy and all of the accompanying social ills that plague our communities today can be traced to the actions of women who, out of their curiosity and inclination towards laziness, transformed the production relationships and technology of their societies in such a way so as to alleviate their work load as gatherers. However, in hindsight, this turns out to have been very misinformed.

There is a lesson to be drawn from this. Quite simply, women should know their place in society, and execute the tasks that tradition has set out for them. Anthropology, through the present example, shows that when women attempt to change their status within society, evil ensues.


Its true (5.00 / 1) (#4)
by Husaria on Wed Aug 22nd, 2001 at 10:54:05 AM PST
its true, its all true,
women DO have power. its called sex.
They control the means of pleasure, which in turn, is all what human nature tries to achieve at a constant.
You work for money, so you can have a car, so you can impress yourself. It can be placed in alot of suitations.
When books say, women had no power in history, thats pish posh.
Sig sigger

 
What a load of hog wash! (none / 0) (#6)
by Anonymous Reader on Thu Aug 23rd, 2001 at 12:24:33 PM PST
While the article may be correct in the facts and theories that it presents, the conclusions that are drawn are just a bunch of crap!

Thus, patriarchy and all of the accompanying social ills that plague our communities today can be traced to the actions of women who, out of their curiosity and inclination towards laziness, transformed the production relationships and technology of their societies in such a way so as to alleviate their work load as gatherers.

The former does not necessarily stem from the latter, and no causal connection has been shown. It is just as logical for me to state that it was the lazyness of the men, and their total lack of skill in hunting that forced the women to develope agriculture. If men had been able to provide 75% of the food required for subsistance from hunting there would have been no need for agriculture and thus patriarchy would have never arisen. Thus I conclude that patriarchy and all of the ills of our current society came about because men where to lazy and stupid to hunt down enough game to feed their family. (By the way I am a man, and I am not a feminist. I am just not dumb enough to buy into this tripe!)

The logic is exactly the same, and again clearly there is no demonstrable causal connection.

There is a lesson to be drawn from this. Quite simply, women should know their place in society, and execute the tasks that tradition has set out for them. Anthropology, through the present example, shows that when women attempt to change their status within society, evil ensues.

Going back to my counter conclusion, I would say that there is a leason to learned from this. Quite simply, men should know there place in society, and should work harder to fufil the demands placed on them. I have clearly shown that when men do not work hard enough to satisfy the needs of others, evil ensues.

As women developed agriculture, men where freed from hunting almost all together, and so had WAY to much free time on their hands. Being superemly lazy and obnoxious they decided that it would be really neat to elevate themselves to a higher class of people, and thus not have to work at all. Having no duties to hunt also meant that they had no outlet for their violent feelings, and so started waring on each other! Thus while women where working their butts off to improve the lives of all people, men where spending all their free time finding ways to screw everybody else over. Clearly this shows that all of the evils of society are caused by men not women.

Get real!


Hear hear! (none / 0) (#7)
by Vanetiahime on Wed Jan 16th, 2002 at 09:41:13 PM PST
Well said. I agree with you, anon.

The reason for war isn't because women learned a way to get a constant supply of food so they could better care for the family rather it's the whole male "piss on a tree" syndrome.

Men feel the need to mark their territory and they go around trying to get more trees to pee on. Meanwhile the women shake their heads at the strange behavior and allow their nurturing instinct to keep the rest of the tribe in tact dispite the males running off to kill or be killed


 

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