Luiseach

Then there are other dimensions in the woman's choice of mate to take into consideration...choosing what she sees as the 'best' (most successful, strongest, healthiest, etc.) male in order to ensure the health, success and survival of her offspring.

contracycle

Attacking Wicca here is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. But while the Wiccan interpretation of 'aeargh mother' statuettes may be debateable, the stauettes exist and require explanation.

I think asserting matriARCHAL societies is difficult to support. MatriLINEAR, not so hard. But ths status business requires special attention.

Male elephants compete for status and hence access to femeales in a matriarchal group. The males generally live away from the groups - hence: intra-male status competition has little or no significance to the troop . It's just a game males play amongst themselves.

It seems to me profoundly dangerous to assume that this intra-male competition is easily or naturally translated into the whole-society system of dominance that is Patriarchy. One wonders why so many societies developed patriarchal that contain ritual and repeated denigration of female-ness; it makes more sense to see these forms as an overt form of social control.

God Fearing Atheist

Absolutely. But although the status and resources of potential mates is only one dimention of female sexual selectivity, it is, I think, the only one relevant to the issue of patriarchy.

-GFA

Luiseach

Agreed.

I also think, however, that female sexual selectivity (i.e. choosing the strongest, healthiest, anything-est male available to her) can have as one of its detrimental by-products the circumstances which have allowed for the development of patriarchy.

Perhaps choosing a higher-status male involved a pragmatic trade-off, one that has caused benefits as well as terrible problems for the female of the species...after all, evolutionary forces are not necessarily pro-feminist, unfortunately.

However, I would also agree that the development of patriarchy is not just a function of female sexual selectivity, but also attributable to characteristics of male sexuality.

God Fearing Atheist

To the extent that the drive for status and resources has to do with a man having sexual partners (or, would have in our evolutionary past), I think thats clear enough.

Is there some other aspect of male sexuality you think is relevant?

-GFA

Luiseach

Relevant to the development and perpetuation of patriarchy (or, to put it another way, relevant to the non-existence and preclusion of a matriarchy)?

Definitely.

Certain definitions of masculinity (which encompasses certain definitions of male sexual identity) are directly relevant to the development and perpetuation of patriarchy, and vice versa.

As for how the maintenance of patriarchy is related to the social construction of masculinity, the following excerpts from two scholars in the field might be of interest in the discussion.

In Masculinities (1995), R.W. Connell defines what he calls 'hegemonic masculinity' as a 'configuration of gender practice...which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women.'

---excerpt taken from R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995): 77.

More specifically, Berthold Schoene-Harwood, the author of Writing Men: Literary Masculinities from Frankenstein to the New Man (2000), argues that 'patriarchal masculinity' is

'...characterised by an inscription of hierarchical binarisms that continue to impair present-day humanity's communal desire for authentic self-fulfilment. Traditionally thriving on an endless proliferation of oppressive violence, it consolidates its hegemony both discursively and by actual physical force in a systemic display of omnipotent power. Engaged in continuous battles for authoritative predominance, patriarchally organised societies perpetrate an irrevocable split of the dominant self from its subordinate others, a split that manifests itself in institutionalised sexism, classism and racism at one end of the spectrum and rape, torture, even full-scale, worldwide war at the other.'

---excerpt taken from Berthold Schoene-Harwood, Introduction, Writing Men: Literary Masculinities from Frankenstein to the New Man (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000): xii.

In other words, and as Schoene-Harwood indicates, there appears to be a connection between patriarchal ideology and the social construction of a specific kind of masculinity (which includes a specific kind of male sexual identification). The relationship between ideology and gender construction seems to be both dynamic and symbiotic.

Perhaps Schoene-Harwood's ideas in particular may help to explain why there seems to be no conclusive evidence for the existence of a matriarchy?

Priapus

LOL! This thread is a complete joke.

I submit that the whole of western society is Matriarchal!

Of course, here I am using the following formula: social equality + sexual selection pressures exerted by females upon males = matriarchy. Now if you are looking for the inverse of a feudalistic patriarchal society then of course you won't find it, would you really expect women to be that organized and overt in their power grabbing?

There are also _hundreds_ (using my formula) of tribal matriarchal societies in exsistence today. Do a google on the Mosuo of China, Kerala India, or shit even the Tua'reg are somewhat female-dominant and they are in Morocco. If you start looking for biological (or just logical) female-dominance instead of some piss-poor socio-ill-ology defined "matriarchy" then you don't have to look far until you find it. Its rather funny because Goldberg must recognize this but never addresses it, he screams until blue in the face on his site that there are no Matriarchies but then pisses and moans about how female-dominant western culture has become. He is a fairly clever misogynist but he's got nothing on Kierkgaard.

God Fearing Atheist

Maybe you should try reading the thread. "Patrichary" is here defined as men holding the vast majority of high-status positions within hierarchies, or the highest-status positions without low-status hierarchies.

Its funny that you mention three cultures that, to my knowledge, have never been upheld as examples of matriarchal societies. Those that have:

Alorese, Balonda, Bamenda, Bantoc, Batek, Berber, Bribri, Catal Huyuk, Fore, Hopi, Iban, Iroquois, Jivaro, Kenuzi, !Kung, Manus, etc..

Have all turned out to be either 1) matrilineal, 2) lacking the hierarchies necessary, or 3) simply misunderstood or improperly related in secondary sources. I will see what I can turn up, but I doubt its going to be anything different than the three points above.

Where does he "piss and moan about how female-dominant western culture has become"?

-GFA

lpetrich

I think that Mr. Goldberg believes that one of the sexes must always be dominant -- and that that sex ought to be the male sex.

Which must make him especially embarrassed by the Demonic Males thesis -- that male dominance is essentially the victory of the biggest bully.

Also, there is a continuum of how much domination men have over women; women have had (and still have!) much more freedom and opportunity in some societies than in others.

And in our society, at least, there are many women who are not dominated by the men of their social station, like their brothers or husbands or professional colleagues or whatever.

So any comprehensive theory of gender relations ought to explain why such variation occurs.

God Fearing Atheist

That is absolutely not what Dr. Goldberg believes, if his work is any indication.

-GFA