Patriarchy

This is a word I use a lot, so I thought it best to record somewhere what I mean when I refer to "patriarchy" My favourite definition of patriarchy comes from Adrienne Rich, a fantastic radical lesbian feminist and American poet:

"Patriarchy is the power of the fathers: a familial-social, ideological, political system in which men-by force, direct pressure, or through ritual, tradition, law, and language, customs, etiquette, education, and the division of labor, determine what part women shall or shall not play, and in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male."

Within patriarchy wimmin are constantly judged in relation to men, and defined on male terms. Examples of this include but are not limited to:

• Physical strength is recognised as the most importat human quality, and wimmin are seen as lacking or inferior because they can't lift things men can, or can't batter men, in a physical fight a man can hold a womun down, therefore he is "stronger". The ability to push children of 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 pounds through our vagina's and endure hours and hours of uterine contractions is not recognised as a sign of physical strenght or superiority.
• Being professional involves behaving like men; dressing in suits (note that business women wear wimmin stuits, that complement men's), not breastfeeding at work etc.
• Wimmun have been denied many things because of their ability to menstruate, one example is frontline military comabt (while I am against anyone engaging in war it is important to remember that war is an important and central part of our society, and men have been rewarded and admired for their militaristic work, there is also the line of thinking that one is not truly a citizen of his nation until he has militarily served it).

And

• Wimmin's sexuality is defined by men: heterosexuality. Wimmin are expected to be sexually attracted to men, to engage in regular coitus (penis in vagina sex), to please the penis, despite the fact that vaginal orgasms are rare and the clitorous is the woman's primary sexual body part.

This world is a patriarchal world, which is evidenced by facts such as: wimmin own 1% of the world's land, 80% of the world's 27 million refugees are wimmin, 2/3 of 300 million children who have no access to education are girls, over 200,000 wimmin die annually from backyard abortions*, wimmin do 2/3s of the worlds work for 1/3 of the pay, over 70% of all violence against wimmin occurs in their own homes, the list goes on...


*These stats are from Jan Jindy Pettman "Gender Issues" John Baylis and Steven Smith Globalization of World Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p.676. The statistics provided after these come from lecture notes from my BA.