patriarchy

Patriarchy is a social system in which the father or eldest male is head of the household, having authority over women and children. Patriarchy also refers to a system of government by males, and to the dominance of men in social or cultural systems. It may also include title being traced through the male line.^[1]

Etymology and related terms

The term patriarch means the father or chief of a clan. It is also used in Christianity as an official title, and derives from the Greek ‘patriarches;’ and from the Latin ‘patriarcha.’ ^[2]

"Names of Christian dignitaries were in early days taken sometimes from civil life (episkopos, diakonos), sometimes borrowed from the Jews (presbyteros). The name patriarch is one of the latter class. Bishops of special dignity were called patriarchs just as deacons were called levites, because their place corresponded by analogy to those in the Old Law. All such titles became official titles, only gradually. At first they were used loosely as names of honour without any strict connotation; but in all such cases the reality existed before any special name was used."^[2]

A patriarch is one of the scriptural fathers of the Hebrew people, a man who is father or founder, or a man who is head of a patriarchy. The official title of Patriarch refers to any of the ancient or Eastern Orthodox Sees of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, or of the ancient and Western Sees of Rome with authority over other bishops. It also refers to the head of any of various eastern churches or a Roman Catholic bishop. Finally, it could refer to a Mormon of the Melchizedek priesthood.^[3]

A patriarchate is the jurisdiction of a patriarch.^[4]

Within feminist theory, patriarchy refers to the structure of modern cultural and political systems, which are ruled by men. Such systems are said to be detrimental to the rights of women. However, it has been noted that patriarchal systems of government do not benefit all men of all classes.^[5]

History

In the 3rd Century BCE, Aristotle (384-322) taught that the city-state developed out of the patriarchal family, although he thought the two were different in kind as well as in scale.^[6] In this matter, he followed in the tradition of Socrates (470-399) who thought being born a woman was divine punishment, since a woman is halfway between a man and an animal.^[7] Socrates also denied that citizens had the basic virtue necessary to nurture a good society and equated virtue with knowledge unattainable by ordinary people. During Athens’ struggle with undemocratic Sparta, Socrates favored Sparta.^[8]

Plato never mentioned Socrates’ sedition against Athens, but the cosmology of the Timaeus includes the idea that a man who lives well will live a happy and congenial life on his consort star. Failing this, his second birth will be as a woman.^[9]

In the Politics, Aristotle attempts to illustrate the nature of the hierarchies that exist in the political community and its subordinate communities. He argues for an origin of male rule. In Chapter Thirteen he states that men and women have different kinds of virtue, ‘just as those who are natural subjects differ (from those who rule by nature.')^[10]

Other ancient societies contemporary with Aristotle, as well as many Athenians, did not share these views of women, family organization, or political and economic structure.^[11] Egypt left no philosophical record, but Herodotus left a record of his shock at the contrast between the roles of Egyptian women and the women of Athens. He observed that they attended market and were employed in trade. In ancient Egypt a middle-class woman might sit on a local tribunal, engage in real estate transactions, and inherit or bequeath property. Women also secured loans, and witnessed legal documents. Greek influence spread, however, with the conquests of Alexander the Great, who was educated by Aristotle.^[12] Eventually, when Alexander wanted to unite his two empires in equality, Aristotle was adamant that all non-Greeks should be enslaved.^[13]

About 200 B.C. the Jewish Philosopher Aristobulus of Paneas claimed that Jewish revelation and Aristotelian philosophy were identical. Before another 200 years had passed it was said that Aristotle derived his doctrine directly from Judaism. In the 12th Century, Aristotlianism was harmonized with Judaism by the Tallmudist, philosopher and astronomer, Maimonides.^[14] Subsequent rabbinical thought includes such pronouncements as "Eve was not created simultaneously with Adam because God foreknew that later she would be a source of complaint. (Gen. R. xvii), and "Nine curses together with death befell Eve in consequence of her disobedience" (Pirke R. El. Xiv.; Ab. R. N. ii. 42).^[14] While Maimonides dared to contradict Aristotle's ideas in matters of faith, it wasn't long before the Islamic philosopher Averroes, endorsed them without reserve.^[14]

For the last 1800 years Christian leaders have placed great emphasis on the creation of Eve, believing that the story was historical fact, rather than androcentric myth. Combined with the account of the Fall in Genesis, Chapter 3, it has been used as evidence of insurmountable character defects, not just for Eve but for all women. In the 2nd Century Tertullian, the son of a centurion, and a pagan until middle life, told women believers, "Do you not know that you are Eve?...Because of the death which you brought upon us, even the Son of God had to die" (De cultu feminarum, libri duo I, 1).

In the 4th Century, the basic attitude was one of puzzlement over the seemingly incongruous fact of woman's existence. Augustine of Hippo said he could not see how a woman could be any help for a man if the work of childbearing is excluded. However, it was only with Thomas Acquinas in the 13th Century that Aristotle's teachings emerged in the official teachings of Roman Catholicism. Aristotle's assertion that women are misbegotten males can be found in the Summa Theologica, I, 92 I ad 1. The influence of combining Aristotle's theory with biblical interpretations can't be overestimated.^[15]

In about 1404 Christine de Pizan wrote "Le livre de la cite des dames", a systematic feminist treatise arguing against the misogyny in classical works and the Christian Canon. After the advent of printing the discourse became known as "the querelle des femmes" and continued for the next 400 years.^[16]

From the time of Martin Luther, Protestantism regularly used the commandment in Exodus 20:12 to justify the duties owed to all superiors. ‘Honor thy father,’ became a euphemism for the duty to obey the king. But it was primarily as a secular doctrine that Aristotle’s appeal took on political meaning. Although many 16th and 17th Century theorists agreed with Aristotle’s views concerning the place of women in society, none of them tried to prove political obligation on the basis of the patriarchal family until sometime after 1680. The patriarchal political theory is associated primarily with Sir Robert Filmer. Sometime before 1653, Filmer completed a work entitled Patriarcha. However, it was not published until after his death. In it, he defended the divine right of kings as having title inherited from Adam, the first man of the human race, according to Judeo-Christian tradition.^[17]

In 1688 John Locke, called Filmer’s all-powerful prince “…this strange kind of domineering phantom called the ‘fatherhood’ which, whoever could catch, presently got empire and unlimited, absolute power.” Locke asserted that if ‘honor thy father’, places everyone in subjection to political authority, then it couldn’t mean the duty owed to natural fathers, since they are subjects. By Filmer’s doctrine, fathers have no power since power belongs solely to the prince. Locke also observed that those who propose political rights based on this commandment invariably omit the word ‘mother’. (His editor, however, made a note of Locke’s inconsistency in attributing natural law to the governance of relations between a father and his children, while stating that the law governing relations between a man and his wife is based on legality, or on Eve’s punishment after the Fall).^[6]

Aristotle’s view, by Locke’s time elevated to an anthropological doctrine, was not weakened by this argument, and subsequent writers continued to give credence to Filmer’s views.^[17]

In the 19th Century, Sarah Grimke dared to question the divine origin of the scriptures. Later, Elizabeth Cady Stanton used Grimke’s criticism of biblical sources to establish a basis for feminist thought. She published The Woman's Bible, which proposed a feminist reading of the Old and New Testament. This tendency was enlarged by Feminist theory, which denounced the patriarchal Judeo-Christian tradition.^[18]

In Europe, from about 1770, the rationalist Enlightenment and the desire for mystery had brought about a resurgence of a synthesis of Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism and Cabbalistic theosophy.(see, Hermetic Qabalah) This particular version arose first in the utilitarian and industrial countries of America and England, with the theosophy of Madame Helena Blavatsky. This had a profound impact in Germany where it fit into the Libensreform movement. It is likely that Adolf Hitler was influenced by Blavatsky through the writings of Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels.^[19]

List sought a chauvinist mystique for the defense of Germandom against the liberal, socialist and Jewish political forces in the late Wilhelmian Era. His blueprint involved ruthless subjection of non-Aryans in a hierarchical state; qualification of candidates for education or positions in public service, as well as in professions and commerce, based on racial purity. All non-Aryans were to be slaves. His political principles included racial and marital laws, and a patriarchal society where only male heads had full majority and where only Ario-Germans had freedom and citizenship. Each family was to have a genealogical record, proving Aryan lineage. He proposed a new feudalism where only the first-born inherits. These ideas were published as early as 1911 and were similar to the Nuremberg laws of 1935.^[19]

Darwinist writers, who wrote of blond, blue-eyed Aryans, were influential in the writings of von Liebenfels. Von Liebenfels had illiberal, pan-German and monarchical sentiments. He believed the lower classes were inferior races and must be exterminated along with the weak. Socialism, democracy and feminism were his most important targets. Women were a special problem, in his view because they were more prone to bestial lust. He advocated brood mothers in eugenic convents, sterilization and other practices that later influenced the Third Reich, apparent in Himmler’s anticipation of polygamy for his Schutzstaffel (SS), care of unmarried mothers in SS homes, and musings on the education and marriage of chosen women.^[19]

By 1673, François Poullain de la Barre, "On the Equality of the Two Sexes", had turned feminism into a systematic Enlightenment philosophy (as opposed to the previous Renaissance feminism).^[16] However, in 1861, Johann Jakob Bachofen, a German romantic and writer of the counter-Enlightenment said that matriarchy preceded patriarchy, and is superior to patriarchy on moral grounds. Bachofen influenced Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Marxist analysis has been a basis for subsequent feminist thought.^[20] From the beginning, socialist feminists in France, for example, were challenged by the republic, which "oppressed them as workers and women; by Marxism, which ignores gender; and by the misogyny of their socialist brothers. This struggle continues within all parties of the left."^[16]

Biology v. social construct debate

Charles Darwin wrote of the “difference in the mental powers of the two sexes”, making an analogy to the “lower animals”, and concluding that woman’s “greater tenderness and less selfishness…her powers of intuition…and rapid perception…” were facilities characteristic of the lower races, “and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization”.^[21] Stephen R. L. Clark observes, "Not only is the mental and physical superiority of male to female assured, but even the characters in which women surpass men are suddenly symptomatic of an earlier and lower state of civilization...Comment seems superfluous.".^[22]

Starting from a foundation in the theories of biological evolution developed by Darwin, many 19th-century scholars formulated a linear theory of cultural evolution.^[23] One hypothesis suggested that human social organization "evolved" through a series of stages: animalistic sexual promiscuity was followed by matriarchy, which was in turn followed by patriarchy. This description was later refuted by most experts studying the subject.^[23]

However the biological justification for patriarchy did not begin with Charles Darwin, and work is currently being done on biological theories of human behavior. Today these theories have proponents in the field of sociobiology. Sociobiology regards the genetic structure as the prime motivator of social behavior. It follows that natural selection favors individuals who maximize their genetic fitness.^[24]

A key factor in maximizing genetic fitness is the parental investment in the offspring. Since females have a greater investment than males they behave differently than males. Also, this investment in offspring leads to mutual exploitation between men and women. Conflict arises when both partners try to persuade the other to invest more time.^[25] According to R. A. Sydie, a professor of sociology, sociobiologists believe that these theories explain female coyness and male philandering and aggressiveness. David P. Barash thought they illustrated the biological necessity of women being relegated to the nursery and men deriving satisfaction from their jobs.^[24]

The most fundamental critique of sociobiology has to do with its tendency to continue the partiality that plagued the discipline of sociology at its inception, when only the male viewpoint was represented. Biology was used to explain women's social roles by Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.^[25]

Originally, it was the feminists who called attention to this partiality. Sydie argued that as long as female reproductive capacity is seen as an essential difference, affected very little by social relations, then even Marx's theoretical equality of 'true love' is mythical. (Marx and Engels thought that when private property was abolished, patriarchy would be abolished also. But monogamy would not necessarily disappear; it would be transformed into "true sex love".) Speaking of sociobiology in particular, Sydie said that its theories challenge the subject matter of sociology, because they propose a biological determination of behavior, the source of which is individual genotypes. In its claim that anatomy is destiny sociobiology is also seen as a challenge to feminist theory.^[25]

Most sociologists reject predominantly biological explanations of patriarchy and contend that social and cultural conditioning is primarily responsible for establishing male and female gender roles.^[26][27] According to standard sociological theory, patriarchy is the result of sociological constructions that are passed down from generation to generation.^[26] These constructions are most pronounced in societies with traditional cultures and less economic development.^[28] Even in modern developed societies, however, gender messages conveyed by family, mass media, and other institutions largely favor males having a dominant status.^[27]

Patriarchy in anthropology, archaeology and mythology

One danger in presenting anthropological or archaeological data about human societies is the tendency to make generalizations about “the whole development of society.” The idea that a model of human development can be found that will be true for all people, like Bachofen’s theory of matriarchy and Sir Henry Maine’s theory of patriarchy, is based on theories of biological evolution. Such theories when applied to social relations have been discredited.^[29] But the tendency persists to use any data for purposes of the debate, either to prove that patriarchy is universal and therefore it must be good, or to prove that it is not. Probably the best that can be hoped for in presenting evidence is to challenge old assumptions about the study of human culture. One of these assumptions, evolutionary theory, has already been mentioned. Also, many theorists fall into the habit of reasoning from modern social conditions and projecting conclusions onto primitive or pre-historical societies, ^[30] and a certain amount of personal bias will always be present.

First we will look at recent anthropological evidence. The evidence does not support the idea that patriarchy is a natural evolutionary response. In simple societies, which match evolutionary conditions, women are not occupied solely with caring for children and they contribute about 44% of the food. One third of the societies studied were egalitarian. The men were not warlike or controlling of women and many other adaptive behaviors evolutionary psychologists would expect were not present.^[31]

In the case of mate selection, a core area of evolutionary psychology, it has been shown that choices can be influenced by the observed choices of others. In fact, it is thought that in some cases, cultural evolution may change “the extent to which biological evolutionary accounts work at all.” ^[32]

A third study suggests that egalitarianism is a matter of degree. Susan Kent found that egalitarianism “is a continuum, not an absolute entity; societies are only more or less egalitarian.” Recent studies show that divisions of work, wealth and political power produce “inegalitarian” social structures. ^[33]

Clearly, the evidence doesn’t fit one of the basic assumptions about patriarchal systems. It is generally thought that the patriarchs of an ancient semi-nomadic society in Palestine ruled their women and children with an iron fist and that their social relations have been perpetuated in the West through the patriarchal Judeo-Christian tradition. In the 1970s, mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote in “The Power of Myth”, that the Hebrews were part of an invading force consisting of Indo-Europeans and Semites who drove out the goddess sacred to the Canaanite people. Campbell said these goddess-worshipping people were agricultural, whereas the Semites and Indo-Europeans were herding/hunting peoples and natural killers. He lauded the Greeks for the fact that Zeus was married to a goddess, giving them credit for the tradition of the virgin birth. (see, virgin birth (mythology) and condemning the Hebrews for having no comparable mythology. He clinched his argument by reporting that the Hebrews referred to the Canaanite goddess as the abomination.^[34]

However, archaeological evidence has shown that when the Hebrews began to settle in Palestine, there was already extreme economic stratification under an Egyptian administration. It is likely the Hebrews belonged to marginal units consisting of permanent peoples and nomads with distinct values and principles. “One of the cultural traits of the rulers of Palestine in the Middle Urban age is their custom of burying the dead with their horses and donkeys. The best examples in Palestine of the custom were found by Sir Flinders Petrie at Tell el-Ajjul, “the tell of the chariots,” near Gaza.” This represents Hyksos and not Hebrew influence, as the Hebrews did not bury humans with animals.

When the Hyksos rule ended in Phoenicia about 1600 BC, it brought no changes to the social and political structure of Palestine. Canaanite divinities were “ruthless, atrocious and fearful”. There was human sacrifice, sacred prostitution, and serpent worship. Totalitarianism virtually enslaved the majority of the population, and so the nobility lived in fortified cities. Archaeologist Emmanuel Anati found a lack of creativity and individuality in the art and material culture in this period and attributed this to the hardships of the feudal system and the brutal religion.^[35]

Many of the Hebrew tribes were not able to continue their nomadic lifestyle in Canaan because there were too many other tribes already occupying the land, so they lived in close proximity to the Phoenician cities. Taking up agriculture was not always viewed as an advance for nomadic people. Aryans value agriculture but the Semites do not. Even after settling down, the Hebrews retained their nomadic sensibilities. Evidence for this is the Hebrew belief that Cain sinned by forcing the ground. Cain, a red and hairy man, was part of a solar myth. City-building and agriculture are the domain of solar figures. Solar figures are typically male.

The Phoenician culture was more advanced than the Hebrew culture. For this reason it is not convincing that the Phoenicians would lose their beliefs and accept the simple mythology of marauding nomad bands. In fact, the opposite occurred. It can’t be disputed that the Hebrew prophets waged a long battle against aspects of the Canaanite religion, nor that in spite of their efforts Baal, “the devourer,” devoured the Hebrew people. The story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac belongs to this period and is part of the Hebrew polemic against human sacrifice. “Originally, Abraham was ‘Abh Ram’ the lofty father. He kills his son, Yischak, the ‘laugher.’ The nightly heaven and the son, sun or sunset, the child of the night, fell into a strife in the evening, the result of which is that the lofty father kills his child; the day must give way to the night."^[36]

One glaring piece of evidence in Campbell’s favor is the Hebrew claim that they slaughtered the inhabitants of Canaan. Bible scholar Jacob Rabinowitz sees these claims as embellishments added long after the actual event. “There was of course no “conquest” of Canaan, but rather a gradual synthesis of the Hebrew migrants with the indigenous population…it is very important at a certain stage in a nation’s growth to imagine that they were once great bullies.” ^[37]

The fact remains that patriarchal institutions and attitudes are highly influential in Western civilization. The evidence suggests that social stratification and large differences in wealth go hand-in-hand with patriarchy.

Alleged benefits of patriarchy

Arguments for the biological and social utility of patriarchy have been made since ancient times. These include elements of Greek Stoic Philosophy and the Roman social structure based on the pater familias,^[38]

See also

Look up patriarchy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Anti-feminism
• Chinese patriarchy
• Domitius
• Gender role
• Homemaker
• Masculinity
• Matriarchy
• Nature versus nurture
• Patriarch magazines
• Patriarchs (Bible)
• Sociology of fatherhood

Notes and references

Additional reading

• Adeline, Helen B. Fascinating Womanhood. New York: Random House, 2007.
• Baron-Cohen, Simon. The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain. New York: Perseus Books Group, 2003.
• Beauvoir, Simone de. Le Deuxième Sexe. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1949. (original French edition)
• Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. London: Jonathan Cape, 1953. (first UK edition, in translation)
• Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953. (first USA edition, in translation)
• Bornemann, Ernest. Das Patriarchat - Ursprung und Zukunft unseres Gesellschaftssystems, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1991 (Original German edition 1975), ISBN 3-596-23416-6
• Bourdieu, Pierre. Masculine Domination. Translated by Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.
• Brizendine, Louann. The Female Brain. New York: Morgan Road Books, 2006.
• Brown, Donald E. Human Universals. New York: McGraw Hill, 1991.
• de Santillana, Giorgio & Hertha von Dechend. Hamlet's Mill: an essay investigating the origins of human knowledge and its transmission through myth. David R. Godine, publisher, Jaffrey, New Hampshire, 1977. The effects of evolutionary theory on the study of culture, pp. 68-72.
• Eisler, Riane. ' 'The Chalice and the Blade' '. Harper Collins, 1987. "The most important book since Darwin's ' 'Origin of Species' '--Ashley Montagu
• Gimbutas, Marija. The civilization of the goddess: the world of Old Europe. Harper Collins, San Francisco, 1991.
• Jay, Jennifer W. 'Imagining Matriarchy: "Kingdoms of Women" in Tang China'. Journal of the American Oriental Society 116 (1996): 220-229.
• Konner, Melvin. The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit. 2nd edition, revised and updated. (Owl Books, 2003). 560p. ISBN 0805072799 [first published 1982, Endnotes
• Lepowsky, Maria. Fruit of the Motherland: Gender in an Egalitarian Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
• Mead, Margaret. 'Do We Undervalue Full-Time Wives'. Redbook 122 (1963).
• Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour. Palgrave MacMillan, 1999.
• Moir, Anne and David Jessel. Brain Sex: The Real Difference Between Men and Women.
• Ortner, Sherry Beth. 'Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?'. In MZ Rosaldo and L Lamphere (eds). Woman, Culture and Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974, pp. 67-87.
• Ortner, Sherry Beth. 'So, Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?'. In S Ortner. Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, pp. 173-180.
• Pilcher, Jane and Imelda Wheelan. 50 Key Concepts in Gender Studies. London: Sage Publications, 2004.
• Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate: A Modern Denial of Human Nature. London: Penguin Books, 2002.
• Wood, Wendy and Alice H. Eagly. A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: Implications for the origins of sex differences. Psychological Bulletin. 128(5) (Sep. 2002):699-727.

External links

• "Cattle ownership makes it a man's world". New Scientist (2003).
• Women’s Status and War in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Reconsideration
• Mary Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Boston: Peter Edes for Thomas and Andrews, 1792.
• Pannekoek, Anton. Arguments based on natural science, when applied to social questions, must almost always lead to wrong conclusions..Marxism and Darwinism, 1912.
• Simone de Beauvoir. The Second Sex. Translated by HM Parshley. London: Penguin, 1972.
• "Equality". In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 2001.