BLOG POST JULY 2019

PATERNITY VS PATRIARCHY – The myth of male power in the 21^st century.

  a family gathering

PATERNITY VS PATRIARCHY – The myth of male power in the 21^st century.

Question: why do so many people (mostly women) hate Jordan Paterson, the Canadian psychology professor?

Answer: He is the modern warrior that is challenging the “neo-liberal and politically correct” minions.

He states:

“You know you can say, ‘Well isn’t it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine’ — well, it might be unfortunate, but it doesn’t matter because that is how it’s represented. It’s been represented like that forever. And there are reasons for it. You can’t change it. It’s not possible. This is underneath everything. If you change those basic categories, people wouldn’t be human anymore. They’d be something else. They’d be transhuman or something. We wouldn’t be able to talk to these new creatures.”

That is a provoking statement that sure is firing the energy of most PC devotees. However, they do not reflect on the fact that his book:  12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018) it sold over a million copies so far. Regarding academia he states:

“Peterson considers that the universities should be held as among the most responsible for the wave of political correctness which appeared in North America and Europe.According to Peterson, he watched the rise of political correctness on campuses since the early 1990's, and considers that the humanities have become corrupt, less reliant on science, and instead of "intelligent conversation, we are having an ideological conversation". From his own experience as a university professor, he states that the students who are coming to his classes are uneducated and unaware about the mass exterminations and crimes by Stalinism and Maoism, which were not given the same attention as fascism and Nazism. He also says that "instead of being ennobled or inculcated into the proper culture, the last vestiges of structure are stripped from [the students] by post-modernism and neo-Marxism, which defines everything in terms of relativism and power" (Interview)

Examining the vast literature on sexuality, gender and feminism, we can encounter a jungle of issues & theories that not only try to explain gender differences but also give some ideas about the origins of today’s so called ‘political correct’ debates and accusations of men as the source of much suffering. This persecution of male roles is developing and empty field in understanding masculinity that more and more young men and boys are experiencing a loss of self and the meaning of who I am.

Recently a publication indicates that testosterone counts are dropping. It argues that recent sociocultural transformations are probably making men less virile. And that is not all. Jordan’s exposed something that’s been festering for a long time,” says Justin Trottier, 35, the co-founder of the men’s rights organizations Canadian Association for Equality and Canadian Centre for Men and Families. “Jordan’s forced people to pay attention.”

Attention is needed from all who want to develop a clear understanding about gender equality. The new technology and social networks can convince anybody. No time is left for face to face discussion and only the “post truth” prevails today. Napoleonic premise to win a war was “divide and conquer”.

Thus, reflection is the tool of thinking. I am proposing a reflection about the origins of paternity and patriarchy:

A father is the male parent of a child. Besides the paternal bonds of a father to his children, the father may have a parental, legal, and social relationship with the child that carries with it certain rights and obligations. An adoptive father is a male who has become the child's parent through the legal process of adoption. A biological father is the male genetic contributor to the creation of the infant, through sexual intercourse or sperm donation. A biological father may have legal obligations to a child not raised by him, such as an obligation of monetary support. A putative father is a man whose biological relationship to a child is alleged but has not been established. A stepfather is a male who is the husband of a child's mother and they may form a family unit, but who generally does not have the legal rights and responsibilities of a parent in relation to the child.

The adjective "paternal" refers to a father and comparatively to "maternal" for a mother. The verb "to father" means to procreate or to sire a child from which also derives the noun "fathering". Biological fathers determine the sex of their child through a sperm cell which either contains an X chromosome (female), or Y chromosome (male). Related terms of endearment are dad (dada, daddy), papa, pappa, papasita, (pa, pap) and pop. A male role model that children can look up to is sometimes referred to as a father-figure. (Definition in Wikipedia)

Importance of father or father-figure

Involved fathers offer developmentally specific provisions to their children and are impacted themselves by doing so. Active father figures may play a role in reducing behaviour and psychological problems in young adults. An increased amount of father–child involvement may help increase a child's social stability, educational achievement, and their potential to have a solid marriage as an adult. Their children may also be more curious about the world around them and develop greater problem-solving skills. Children who were raised with fathers perceive themselves to be more cognitively and physically competent than their peers without a father. Mothers raising children together with a father reported less severe disputes with their child.

The father-figure is not always a child's biological father and some children will have a biological father as well as a step- or nurturing father. When a child is conceived through sperm donation, the donor will be the "biological father" of the child.

Fatherhood as legitimate identity can be dependent on domestic factors and behaviours. For example, a study of the relationship between fathers, their sons, and home computers found that the construction of fatherhood and masculinity required that fathers display computer expertise.

PATRIARCHY

Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property. Some patriarchal societies are also patrilineal, meaning that property and title are inherited by the male lineage.

Patriarchy is associated with a set of ideas, a patriarchal ideology that acts to explain and justify this dominance and attributes it to inherent natural differences between men and women. Sociologists tend to see patriarchy as a social product and not as an outcome of innate differences between the sexes and they focus attention on the way that gender roles in a society affect power differentials between men and women.

Historically, patriarchy has manifested itself in the social, legal, political, religious, and economic organization of a range of different cultures. Even if not explicitly defined to be by their own constitutions and laws, most contemporary societies are, in practice, patriarchal.

Anthropological, archaeological and evolutionary psychological evidence suggests that most prehistoric societies were relatively egalitarian, and that patriarchal social structures did not develop until many years after the end of the Pleistocene era, following social and technological developments such as agriculture and domestication. According to Robert M. Strozier, historical research has not yet found a specific "initiating event". Gerda Lerner asserts that there was no single event, and documents that patriarchy as a social system arose in different parts of the world at different times. Some scholars point to about six thousand years ago (4000 BCE), when the concept of fatherhood took root, as the beginning of the spread of patriarchy. (Wikipedia)

Domination by men of women is found in the Ancient Near East as far back as 3100 BCE, as are restrictions on a woman's reproductive capacity and exclusion from "the process of representing or the construction of history". According to some researchers, with the appearance of the Hebrews, there is also "the exclusion of woman from the God-humanity covenant".

The archaeologist Marija Gimbutas argues that waves of kurgan-building invaders from the Ukrainian steppes into the early agricultural cultures of Old Europe in the Aegean, the Balkans and southern Italy instituted male hierarchies that led to the rise of patriarchy in Western society. Steven Taylor argues that the rise of patriarchal domination was associated with the appearance of socially stratified hierarchical polities, institutionalised violence and the separated individuated ego associated with a period of climatic stress.

In China's Qing dynasty, laws governing morality, sexuality, and gender-relations continued to be based on Confucian teachings. Men and women were both subject to strict laws regarding sexual behaviour, however men were punished infrequently in comparison to women. Additionally, women's punishment often carried strong social stigma, "rendering [women] unmarriageable", a stigma which did not follow men.  Similarly, in the People's Republic of China, laws governing morality which were written as egalitarian were selectively enforced favouring men, permissively allowing female infanticide, while infanticide of any form was, by the letter of the law, prohibited. It is still so in India.

An early theory in evolutionary psychology offered an explanation for the origin of patriarchy which starts with the view that females almost always invest more energy into producing offspring than males, and therefore in most species females are a limiting factor over which males will compete. This is sometimes referred to as Bateman's principle. It suggests females place the most important preference on males who control more resources that can help her and her offspring, which in turn causes an evolutionary pressure on males to be competitive with each other in order to gain resources and power.

In the modern era, the concept of Patriarchy is asserted to manifest itself in institutionalized control, rather than simply being about an individual's sexism.

PATER FAMILIAS

Another interesting reflection is the origin of the word: “Father”

The pater familias, also written as paterfamilias  was the head of a Roman family. The pater familias was the oldest living male in a household, and exercised autocratic authority over his extended family. The term is Latin for "father of the family" or the "owner of the family estate". The form is archaic in Latin, preserving the old genitive ending in -ās (see Latin declension), whereas in classical Latin the normal genitive ending was -ae. The pater familias always had to be a Roman citizen.(Wikipedia).

THE MYTH OF MALE POWER

In 1993, Warren Farrell wrote The Myth of Male Power, in which he argued that the widespread perception of men having inordinate social and economic power is false, and that men are systematically disadvantaged in many ways.

The Myth of Male Power was ardently challenged by some academic feminists, whose critique is that men earn more money, and that money is power. Farrell concurs that men earn more money, and that money is one form of power. However, Farrell also adds that "men often feel obligated to earn money someone else spends while they die sooner—and feeling obligated is not power.” This perspective was to be more fully developed in Farrell's Why Men Earn More.

In the men's rights movement, The Myth of Male Power is sometimes referred to as "The Bible" and the "red pill", but critics of the book accused it of promoting misogyny.

 In Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap—and What Women Can Do About It, he documents 25 differences in men and women's work-life choices which, he argues, account for most or all of the pay gap more accurately than did claims of widespread discrimination against women. Common to each of men's choices was earning more money, while each of women's choices prioritized having a more-balanced life. These 25 differences allowed Farrell to offer women 25 ways to higher pay—and accompany each with their possible trade-offs.  The trade-offs include working more hours and for more years; taking technical or more hazardous jobs; relocating overseas or traveling overnight. This led to considerable praise for Why Men Earn More as a career book for women.

CONCLUSION

Well, this is not all that is debated today, but reflection on this blog post invites you to deliberate on your own and decide what is reality. Please make comments as you wish.

References and reading

·         Bly, Robert (1990). Iron John: A Book About Men. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-51720-0.

·         Clatterbaugh, Kenneth C. (1997). Contemporary perspectives on masculinity: men, women, and politics in modern society (2nd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-2701-3.

·         Connell, R.W., (1995), Masculinities, Cornwall; Allen & Unwin.

·         Kimmel, Michael (2012). Manhood in America: A Cultural History (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-978155-3.

·         Hooks, Bell., (2005), The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity and Love, New York; Washington Square Press.

·         Messner, Michael (1997). Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8039-5576-9.

·         Schwalbe, Michael (1996). Unlocking the iron cage: the men's movement, gender politics, and American culture. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-509229-5.

NOTE: Bateman's principle, in evolutionary biology, is that in most species, variability in reproductive success (or reproductive variance) is greater in males than in females. It was first proposed by Angus John Bateman (1919–1996), an English geneticist. Bateman suggested that, since males can produce millions of sperm cells with little effort, while females invest much higher levels of energy in order to nurture a relatively small number of eggs, the female plays a significantly larger role in their offspring's reproductive success. Bateman’s paradigm thus views females as the limiting factor of parental investment, over which males will compete in order to copulate successfully.

Although Bateman's principle served as a cornerstone for the study of sexual selection for many decades, it has recently been subject to criticism. Attempts to reproduce Bateman's experiments in 2012 and 2013 were unable to support his conclusions. Some scientists have criticized Bateman's experimental and statistical methods, or pointed out conflicting evidence, while others have defended the veracity of the principle and cited evidence in support of it.