Patriarchy is a social system that came into being about 10 thousand years ago along with the advent of agriculture. It was a time when small bands of hunter-gatherers that had previously roamed together following food sources began settling down in one place to farm instead. When there is owned land and more private possessions than ever before in human history, being able to pass these down to your heirs becomes important.
Patriarchy allowed for stratification not only between men and women but in the larger society as well. For the first time, you’ve got social castes and elites. Rather than sharing nearly everything for the good of the tribe, individual families are able to accumulate wealth, land, status, and power that belong solely to them. Having become a society of control and separation, you might as well see how much you can get for yourself out of it. If you don’t have power, what can you get out of being proximate to or aligned with a man who does? The men who are the most aggressive get the most power, but also have the responsibility for protecting the rest.
These are the rules and properties of the patriarchy:
Might makes right and those who are strong control those who are weaker.
Men hold the bulk of both political and economic power as well as moral authority in society.
Traits that are considered masculine like control, competitiveness, and stoicism are more desirable for everyone than traits that are considered feminine like empathy, nurturance, and cooperation.
Little boys must be tough and action-oriented; little girls must be pretty and docile.
Boys and men must never embody anything remotely feminine because anything feminine is deemed as less-than.
“The core cultural ideas about what is good, desirable, preferable or normal are associated with how we think about men and masculinity.”
In a pyramid-shaped hierarchy, you must constantly dominate or risk being dominated. If you don’t win, you lose.
The rules are enforced through creating fear, the threat of pain, coercion and the ostracization of those who will not comply.
“Patriarchy is generally not an explicit ongoing effort by men to dominate women. It is a long-standing system that we are born into and participate in, mostly unconsciously.”
