Jan 07 2013
The patriarchy
The other day I was musing about how men aren’t thriving in our culture today, something no one disagrees with even if there is disagreement on why. And so my thought was that maybe we need a little patriarchy. I was thinking about how I am not terribly informed on what the patriarchy is and the problem is that finding out would involve reading some highly biased feminist tracts that interpret history through a modern, feminist lens. I was musing, as I periodically do, that we could use some thoughtful, non knee-jerk, non-feminist analysis on why we are where we are with regards to men failing; some analysis on the positive attributes of the patriarchy. (I would assume that even if you are a true-blue feminist, which I am trying not to be, you can see that there were some drawbacks to the feminist/sexual revolution.)
But this idea does not hold when we travel to places like India, where women are treated as chattel, or possessions, as this article explains. So obviously there are international variations on how the patriarchy works or does not work in different places.
If anyone has great reading sources on this general theme, feel free to send them along. I have about a hundred books on my to-read list, but I could always add a couple more.
4 Responses to “The patriarchy”
Some sort of economic analysis would say that capitalism first dissociated the village from the market and then the men and now we are seeing women so rendered. That is not to say that men or women are not getting rich in our society but that they are part of the market at the expense of being part of anything else or being anything else. Hereto they become only an agent of the economy and consequently maleness, femaleness, or patriarchy is irrelevant at least and an impediment often. A simple analysis might say men were removed, by economic ‘necessity’, from their identity, ontologically and socially, and thus over time have lost a sense of purpose. Women have been encouraged to adopt what the economic market has presented as successful, albeit how men were defined in that market, but I venture to say that that too will prove to be an unhealthy goal with similar results of estrangement and lack of purpose, initiative and success.
A comment that has something to do with what Paul was speaking about in saying; ‘do not become conformed to this world (or age)’.
Interesting thoughts, thanks David.
Have you read “The Abolition of Man”? It will be 70 years old next month but it really helped me see the road we went down.
The most recent book I’ve read was “Daring Greatly” and that has some femininity and masculinity in veiny culture stuff too.
That ought to have been “in modern culture”