Re: Patriarchy and the Age of Information

Dan Fabulich (dfab@cinenet.net)
Thu, 07 Aug 1997 21:42:06 -0700


At 05:01 PM 8/7/97 CST, Rick Knight wrote:
> A matriarchal structure is a more natural social organization simply
> because women are the ones who (could ostensibly) control access to
> conception. The babies they give birth to are dependent upon them for
> life (not considering at this time, the baby formula vs. mother's milk
> for sustenance caveat).

Advances like transsexuality, exowombs, and consciousness uploading could
easily make this "natural social organization" obsolete... In the next
hundred years YOU might be able to give birth.

> When you look at history in Western civilization, males have made it a
> priority to keep women disorganized, first by the creation of the
> family which they themselves were appointed to lead.

Speaking as a male, I can state empirically that I have no interest
whatever in keeping either gender organized. I suspect that I am not in
the minority.

> Also, setting up
> the preoccupation of physical beauty [...].
> They've had to create and perpetrate this man-creator myth [...].

I wouldn't give males as much credit as you do. I think that the misogyny
bred a decentralized *disorganized* erosion of feminine self-esteem, and
that swarm behavior, traditionalism and closed-mindedness have conspired in
a far less coordinated manner to keep women suppressed in Western society.
The behavior is emergent. But, then, I have no evidence for MY
sociological POV, either.

> In patriarchy, you have these elaborate myths about the great "sky
> father", Yahweh, whoever, "creating life". Of course, what else could
> compete with the simple truth that life comes from the womb with a
> brief assisting moment from a male? The social constructs that have
> been put in place don't hold much water when set against the simple
> natural sequence of events that results in the ongoing of the species,
> all made possible in the predominant sense by the female. Not that
> males aren't necessary, not that it wasn't significant for them to be
> a major brute force dominance during the survival eons. But once
> civilization set in, they didn't ease off the throttle any...until
> this century. It seems that women have more than paid them back for
> their necessitated thuggery during the dawn of civilization.

Well, I suppose your unsubstantiated reading of history is as good as mine...

> Since survival issues aren't paramount in these much more
> technologically advanced times, it seems only logical that women will
> reclaim their role as the natural life givers, care givers and that
> may likely give way to decision makers and leaders. Yet still, there
> are the last fervent attempts, the primitive chest beating if you
> will, where men use their trump card, their strength and propensity
> for violence, to delay the inevitable. Of course, a great many of us
> (males) would be content with equality..conceptually anyway.

Technology, like everything else, plays both ways. What is the essential
difference man and woman when by this time next year you could be either?
(Externally, of course... The conception organs will come with time.)

-WHEN YOUR ONLY TOOL IS A HAMMER-
-EVERY PROBLEM STARTS TO LOOK LIKE A NAIL-