There has never been a reasonable moral argument for Patriarchy. From the beginning it exploited women as breeders of cannon fodder to prey on more stable egalitarian societies or weaker paternalistic and feudal societies. Pragmatically it was one solution to maintain population in spite of inherently high human maternal and infant mortality rates. It was successful in spite of or maybe because of the resulting excess of poor young adult males.
The industrial revolution further enabled patriarchy by removing the father from the home leaving mom holding the lunch bag, the wash bag, the shopping bag and all of the other bags associated with running a household. The flip side of that was that the man was socially required to provide for his family. Unskilled jobs were paid enough to support a household minimally even at the entry level. The pay envelope went to mom who was expected to manage with what was in it. Women who did not wish to play the paternalism game were relegated to "women's work" nursing, teaching, and pseudo-housework where the pay was not expected to support a family and sex was not an option.
In the West Prior to WWII infant and maternal mortality, lack of household appliances, and wrong information on natural birth control propagated by churches, insured that women's economic contribution to the society was homemaking. Supporting a man in the workplace by providing meals, clean clothes, and relieving him of all child care responsibilities for his (presumably) genetic line, and networking for him at church and business functions was a respectable and necessary career for a married woman with several children.
A good Mrs. was a valuable degree. The men did all the work and the women ran the society. When women were trapped by biology and custom to Kinder, Küche, Kirche, finding a skilled, hardworking, husband and pushing him to success and a nice house through the "right Church network" was the Western woman's dream. She had plenty of credit, it was in her husband's name but she did the banking. It wasn't until women got control of their fertility that other options opened for them. Even today a Mrs. from a top university is a reasonable choice for a woman that can't hack the academic and social pressure of independent living. A strong Mrs. from anywhere is still a reasonable choice for many women who choose not to be independent. Contraception under her control gives her considerable leverage over the paternalistic provider.
Women may choose to partner with a man for companionship or sex or possibly a business deal, but few men can get past their patriarchal channeling and assume that providing any income to the partnership or paying their partner anything in a business deal gives them their patriarchal rights to sexual abuse as part of the deal. In all too many professions, the assumed inferiority of women gives the patriarchy considerable leverage in providing opportunities in exchange for abuse. In some instances "The casting couch" was part of the vernacular long before anyone thought it was anything but a perk of the patriarchy.
The real problem with the transition, which we are still in, to full gender equality is that the supply of candidates for the Mrs. status is dwindling rapidly while the demand for the services provided by the Mrs. has remained constant. In addition the social pressure to treat women with the polite respect necessary to attract the attention of the Miss to become a Mrs. has for a number of reasons become negligible. Compounding the issue is the fact that many women have separated the functions of the Mrs. and rejected the dependence on the income of the male as a condition for any of them making the traditional Patriarchal mating dance useless for the swain, who has no training in treating people, especially women as human and he reverts to the
traditional male power games for all.
....to be continued....
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