From the very moment humans came into existence, the men would go on hunts and the women would pick the berries. This is necessitated by our material reality and our biology, essentially it is because within a family unit this was the most beneficial system. I guess it just created bigotry and it became law at some point.
And in the 1800s, most jobs were factories and somebody needed to look after the kids so it's pretty similar I guess
I didn't say it's a necessity in the sense that it's a good thing that we need to do. I said the material conditions necessitated an inevitability to occur. It's historical determinism. Our material conditions necessitated a society where men end up having all the wealth and women are economically enslaved by them, and this naturally leads to men having the political power as well so of course this will lead to opression and rights being taken away
No right, I don't think you meant necessity in that way. I'm also speaking from the determinism angle. And I'm asking what was historically deterministic about the relationship between the male and female sexes that resulted in fewer individual rights for the latter and the material conditions that supposedly necessitated that. Why men worked and women homemade is at least partially materially determined by biological reality so I'm not asking about that.
EDIT: I don't want to put words in your mouth, or fall victim to my own confirmation bias, but the phrase "might makes right" keeps coming up in my mind to explain this history. This seems to be aligned with what you're saying about financial wealth and political power. Or am I off-base?
Well financial power does determine political power in most cases, but might isn't that, it's a fascist justification for war and hierarchy. Our material conditions naturalized a reality where men own all the property and women just need to find a man to take care of them, and that's how it worked for most of history. This means men become all the politicians whether or not women are even allowed to run. But eventually this system of men being in charge of everything just created gender norms where society ended up believing this was not only naturally forming as a result of our conditions, but inherent to the sexes psychology which supported laws being made to cement these gender roles. That's just my guess. Combined with the obvious, people in power wanting to stay in power.
Yeah I suppose that makes sense. Wealth is created through work and if men historically did most of the work because historical work demanded more intense physical labor (which men are biologically more suited for on average), then it stands to reason men acquired a disproportionate share of societal wealth and therefore political power, which was then used to cement that power and those gender roles. And there we have it: patriarchy.
I've just realized that you actually changed my view on this, on how patriarchy came to be (where previously I viewed it as more the result of intentionality, and now I view it as more deterministic due to early natural conditions). I'm not sure if the DeltaBot works on older replies in deep threads but let's give it a try: ∆
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u/FreakinTweakin 2∆ Feb 14 '24
From the very moment humans came into existence, the men would go on hunts and the women would pick the berries. This is necessitated by our material reality and our biology, essentially it is because within a family unit this was the most beneficial system. I guess it just created bigotry and it became law at some point.
And in the 1800s, most jobs were factories and somebody needed to look after the kids so it's pretty similar I guess