How did patriarchy start ?

SweelFor- · 2023-07-01T15:09:15+00:00

If you want a serious answer to your question then I recommend that you ask anthropologists and sociologists, not reddit users. This is an extremely complex question with no certain answer.

The more someone will attempt to answer it with certainty, the more you will know they don't know what they're talking about.

mammajess · 2023-07-01T14:36:43+00:00

There's lots of arguing about this because we don't have records from this time that say "we have now created patriarchy" or whatever.

But seems to have sprung up around the time humans developed animal agriculture. I personally think that men worked out how half of reproduction works (man puts seed in woman) through close observation and intentional breeding of animals. They then got all self important and thought that men were God-like creatures and woman are innert vessels for making sons. (There are lots of ancient records describing how people thought reproduction works.)

We only proved women have eggs 200 years ago, and I think that peice of information is profound and only just starting to properly effect culture. After all people still say weird things like "when I was a sperm".

There even recently people who lived remotely in south America (I forget where) who never developed agriculture, just hunting and gathering in the forest. And they didn't seem to develop patriarchy. They had an idea that men contributed something to forming the baby but they thought several men could be the father. So the woman might choose several men whose qualities she liked and make all of them the fathers. In their culture men and women dress similarly and both sexes are kind and caring to children.

Humans are very interesting creatures and the various ways we live impacts our attitudes and behaviours a huge amount.

There are interesting theories about an ancient matriarchy that peak my interest but that time is very ancient and I think most of the evidence is in folklore of various cultures, and some traditions in various tribal peoples. Its even harder to talk about that in any factual way.

emfanthrowaway12 · 2023-07-01T14:21:10+00:00

Cant tell you, I know one thing though, we're no longer living in the era of force and strength, back then I get it, it was the way it went, the bigger the bear the more dominance it had, and it just happened we, a species that is pretty violent had evolved to be intelligent. Right now though? We're living in an era of technology and intelligence. Even the red pill guys acknowledge that "today alpha male is a nerd programist". We have nuclear weapons and huge alliances like NATO, so conventional wars are hardly possible anymore for developed countries, and its only gonna get more this way. We live in times when knowledge and intelligence is more valued than strength, and if a war happens, it doesnt matter man or woman, everyone dies. And every world leader is aware of that, even despite some wars happening even today.

So patriarchal traditional roles can be allowed to be shifted and maybe even disappear completely in a couple of generations. To me thats a good thing. If we became less violent and egotistical as species, and valued knowledge over strength like we're seeing it right now, perhaps we'd evolve enough to reach a type 1 or type 2 on the Kardashev scale and turn into proper multiplanetary species. One thing for certain, we are far from that, though I think we're moving in a better direction slowly at least.

I know that doesnt answear your question OP, had to go on a lil rant lol.

Mean_Mechanic9889 · 2023-07-01T16:56:22+00:00

It's actually an incredibly interesting question.

Genetic research is the best indicator of this imo.

Roughly 12000 years there was one of a few genetic bottle necks. Another was roughly 3000 years ago. Where men seemed to begin to kill eachother.

Men died off rapidly and there was around 6 women per one man (It's been a while since I was learning this stuff so take it as approximation).

It looks as though overly agressive males only became dominant then. Before then looking to our closest relatives, it was a reasonably even society. Going off of chimps and bonobos and our lack of sexual dimorphism.

Gorilas for e.g have a lot of sexual dimorphism, males being much larger, which is indicative of a patriarchal structure. Our species isn't patriarchal according to our build. It's a relatively new phenomenon of males trying to take power. And succeeding for a lot of recorded history.

Look to bonobos, they have the most similar level of sexual dimorphism to us and they keep peace with social cohesion and are female lead. Chimps are relatively even with alpha females who reproduce the most the same as you see with alpha males. There's also the occasional female lead chimp troop although they still are nearly always male lead.

Even in chimps, political and social cohesion wins out on physical strength. Leaders who got there from physical strengths fall from power very quickly compared to those who got to lead with social cohesion.

We're still a fairly primative species and our view of the world on this topic is stunted, being blunt. We're all very self bias and often forget we've been a part of a society of peers for well over 12 million years at minimum. and not running around alone relying on strength instead of friends, like idiots like to believe.

If we were, I promise you we'd of died out. We're not strong. We're a weak feeble species compared to nearly all others. We relied on gang culture and shared knowledge to get where we've gotten.

ShityistDisciple · 2023-07-01T17:26:54+00:00

No one knows. But one could argue it is natural. It's like saying when did male leadership start.

Appropriate-Set5599 · 2023-07-01T21:21:27+00:00

Go ask a silver back gorilla why he needs to dominate everyone else. Also ask a lion and his pride when did he start using female lions as hunters for him. It’s the natural order of things. Still nowdays there is war, men get drafted and force to fight. Women can leave and get refuge in other countries.

bluemagex2517 · 2023-07-01T19:40:25+00:00

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy

The Wikipedia article has a history section. Try starting there.

ShortLingonberry6148 · 2023-07-02T15:54:48+00:00

It's just the natural order of things.

RadioSphinx · 2023-07-03T03:11:14+00:00

I have three fundamental axioms when it comes to sex relations:

Only females are capable of childbirth
Only males are capable of peak human strength
Females and males overwhelmingly desire each other

Because only males are capable of peak human strength (and thus stand a reasonable chance of stopping you from achieving your goals), if you're a chief/king building a society, you want some way to placate them. Women-- who can't fight back as easily and who are the only way any man can pass on his genes-- are a perfect reward for obedience. So you see every religion put men over women, every society looks for ways to justify/excuse male abuse. It's not nice or even moral-- it's efficient.

I made a 40min video going into more detail on this perspective if this sounds interesting.

w1gw4m · 2023-07-02T08:10:26+00:00

The patriarchal system arose with the advent of human civilization. There is no single starting point, but you can begin by looking at labor division in prehistory.

Lady_Beatnik · 2023-07-02T15:58:09+00:00

This is a really complex question that has many competing theories.

Traditionally, it's been thought that it is because in the ancient past, physical strength was needed to accomplish all the most important tasks, which logically placed a large degree of importance on men.

However, feminists themselves have often disputed this theory: Women were often responsible for many other, equally crucial survival tasks in ancient times (and still are in many tribal cultures), so it's not obvious why ancient people would place more importance on hunting instead of say, gathering, childbearing, or healing (and indeed, many cultures have placed a large degree of authority in women for these tasks). Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that women participated in hunting and warfare in ancient times more often than we thought.

Leftist feminists often blame capitalism, though I think this is rather naïve, as many cultures before or outside of capitalism have had just as brutal if not more so patriarchies as us. Certainly one could argue that capitalism has exacerbated and cemented certain kinds of patriarchy, but to act like we were all these happy little hippie egalitarian or complementarian tribes before big bad capitalism came along just doesn't line up with a basic understanding of history.

Some men's rights activists have proposed the "expendability-power" theory. Basically, that because giving birth is more difficult and takes longer than impregnating someone, women become the more valuable type of person to the tribe and thus need to be protected more, whereas a tribe can afford to lose more men because a single man can theoretically impregnate many women. Thus, because women couldn't fully participate in brutal ancient society due to needing to be protected as a resource, men gained by power by default. Men exchanged safety for power, and women exchanged power for safety.

This also has numerous holes and flaws. For one, it is not true that women were always protected and better taken care of than men throughout history, and the assumption that they were is usually linked to this misogynistic view of women as "pampered princesses" under patriarchy instead of basically slaves. Women routinely received worse nutrition, are more likely than men to be brutalized and murdered in daily living, received worse medical care (especially during childbirth), and other injustices that don't line up with them being the "safer" and more well-taken care of sex.

Furthermore, it has the same problem as the previously mentioned hunter society theory, in that there is no clear reason why men's roles would be the ones automatically given importance and power: One could argue that if men really were the more "expendable" sex, then it would make more sense for women to have the power in society because they're the ones that can offer stable, long-term, socially experienced leadership for the tribe whereas a men die too often and too young to be reliable leaders. Societies just don't operate on this kind of "you got this so I get that, it's only fairsies" kindergarten mentality that MRAs seem to think they do.

The world is so big and the various cultures so different that there might not be a singular, clear answer. I would argue though that ultimately, "where patriarchy comes from?" is not as important a question as "why should patriarchy continue?" While it can be important to informing the present and not repeating the same mistakes, ultimately, we don't have to and should not repeat the past simply because it was done in the past. If it's wrong it's wrong, and it doesn't matter why we initially started doing something wrong, it's still wrong and we should stop doing it.

Soft-Neat8117 · 2023-07-03T13:48:47+00:00

Caveman: Me big and strong: you small and weak. Me in charge, you serve.

Shannbott · 2023-07-13T03:13:25+00:00

Who? Not one person. Why? Fear.

Shannbott · 2023-07-13T03:22:00+00:00

I have a theory from reading about how men view women from very far back in history. Men’s minds (not all) are dominated by libido and a craving for sex. Men can only see women as sex objects at some points. Men start to believe that women are purposely being sex objects because they find them to be so sexually attractive. Some women notice this and enhance their sexuality to attract partners for security and protection in a time where that was not guaranteed for unpaired women. This increases men’s suspicion that women are solely sexual objects. Meanwhile if men were to visit the mind of a woman they might be so surprised to find that it’s filled with many many MANY other things, other than men or sex. Women had to develop brains since they weren’t blessed with the braun (not all). So basically it would seem that men make women smaller than they are in a man’s mind because they literally can’t even fathom what/who a woman really is. Most women I know won’t even speak up about this, about what’s on their mind. Not to say they don’t talk, just that they keep the subjects honed in on what they think is ok to speak about in front of men. It’s been pretty wild to witness this over the course of time, and while I’ve unlearned my own misogyny. Men can’t help but put women into boxes because their own minds are their limitations. So therefore, with the braun they’ve been blessed with (not all) they’ve forced women to shrink via the patriarchy. I think on an individual basis, men can see this and I think once it’s widespread enough and we can break down this toxic structure, every one of us will benefit.

Appropriate_File_971 · 2023-07-14T16:21:43+00:00

Post-marrital patrilocal residency: https://youtu.be/sgOo-bS7OJI

Title	How did patriarchy start ?
Author	Darkorigins7323
Upvotes	10
Comments	62
Date	July 1, 2023 2:00 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/ExRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/exredpill/comments/14nvuo8/how_did_patriarchy_start/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/ExRedPill/how-did-patriarchy-start.1223700 https://theredarchive.com/post/1223700

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