Sorry, Bro, Patriarchy Didn’t Evolve Because It Worked Better
It actually harms most people, including most men
I write about the social system of patriarchy a lot. In the past year or so, I’ve done what amounts to a self-directed Master’s program on the subject. None-the-less, random men sometimes try to explain to me how patriarchy evolved because it’s really the best system, one that actually works better for everyone.
Nice try, Bro. I get that the thought of that makes you feel better about yourself as a man somehow, but no, that isn’t actually the case. First off, patriarchy isn’t about men — not really. It’s a social system that is a dominance-based hierarchy and it includes race, class, education level and other things as well as gender in its stratifications.
This social system is pyramid-shaped and the only people it works better for are those at the apex of the pyramid — primarily rich white men. For other men, even other white men, it’s also a pretty destructive system. Patriarchy brought about not just stratification between men and women, but rather, an entire class system that had not previously existed.
Some men gained wealth and power, but nearly always at the expense of others around them. The maintenance of this class system and social hierarchy is an ongoing thing — leading to most of the social ills in our society, such as racism, homophobia, sexism, classism, and bullying of all kinds.
The good news is, patriarchy is only about 10K years old — we’ve only had it for about 3% of human history. It’s a blip — for all the years before that we had relative peace and equality. Patriarchy didn’t come about because we evolved into a better system that benefited more people. It came about because certain groups started seeing what they could take from others to enrich themselves and those in their immediate care. It was a power grab that benefited only a few.
Anthropologist, Christopher Boehm, writes in his book, Hierarchy In The Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior
The three African great apes, with whom we share this rather recent Common Ancestor, are notably hierarchical. Reproductively fortunate are the high-ranking males or females, while those relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy fare less well. The same can be said of most human political societies in the world today, starting about five thousand years ago. At that time, people were beginning to increasingly live in chiefdoms, societies with highly privileged individuals who occupied hereditary positions of political leadership and social paramountcy. From certain well-developed chiefdoms came the six early civilizations, with their powerful and often despotic leaders. But before twelve-thousand years ago, humans basically were egalitarian (Knauft 1991). They lived in what might be called societies of equals, with minimal political centralization, and no social classes.
Shifting conditions, of both the sociological and the ecological kind, meant that a few men, and a few families, began to grab power and wealth for themselves at other people’s expense. In the short-term, this actually brought the development of civilization to a standstill, as attention turned away from culture, beauty, and the benefit of the whole tribe or village and began to focus for the first time on technologies of war and weapons of conquest.
But by the fifth millennium B.C.E., or about seven thousand years ago, we begin to find evidence of what (English archeologist, James) Mellaart calls a pattern of disruption of the old Neolithic cultures in the Near East. Archaeological remains indicate clear signs of stress by this time in many territories. There is evidence of invasions, natural catastrophes, and sometimes both, causing large-scale destruction and dislocation. In many areas the old painted pottery traditions disappear. Bit by devastating bit, a period of cultural regression and stagnation sets in. Finally, during this time of mounting chaos the development of civilization comes to a standstill. As Mellaart writes, it will be another two thousand years before the civilizations of Sumer and Egypt emerge.
It (Proto-Indo-European peoples) characterizes a long line of invasions from the Asiatic and European north by nomadic peoples. Ruled by powerful priests and warriors, they brought with them their male gods of war and mountains. And as Aryans in India, Hittites and Mittani in the Fertile Crescent, Luwians in Anatolia, Kurgans in eastern Europe, Achaeans and later Dorians in Greece, they gradually imposed their ideologies and ways of life on the lands and peoples they conquered.
Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade . HarperOne. Kindle Edition
There is a growing consensus among anthropologists that we evolved not as monogamous dyads but as cooperative breeders. The culturally strong image of the brave pre-historic hunter bringing home the bacon to his mate who is waiting to be provided for is really just a cultural myth. For most of human history, small bands of men and women raised young collectively, and almost certainly mated with multiple partners.
This is a lifestyle with a lot of evolutionary benefits. Multiple mating in primates establishes and continually reinforces social bonds so that there are low levels of conflict, and there is every reason to believe the same was true of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Enhanced cooperation meant all were more likely to look after one another and their young, thus improving each individual’s reproductive fitness (the odds that their offspring would go on to produce offspring).
As Saint Louis University associate professor of anthropology Katherine C. MacKinnon told me, “We had predators. And we didn’t have claws or long, sharp teeth. But we had each other. Social cooperation, including cooperative breeding, was a social and reproductive strategy that served us well.”
Martin, Wednesday. Untrue (p. 91). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle
Meat was a very small portion of the diet of Paleolithic peoples. As such, female gatherers were central to the survival and well-being of the tribe. They weren’t sitting at home, tending the fire and the children, waiting for their one mate to provide for them. That’s a very recent and geographically specific dynamic.
Far from being a universal and timeless societal dynamic, man as provider and head of a two-parent family is simply an extension of one recent and distinct type of culture made possible by certain conditions. How that incorrectly became codified as universal and scientifically enshrined is the topic of another story, but it’s basically because it makes sense from a patriarchal mindset. Charles Darwin was influenced by the social and sexual mores of the Victorian times that he lived in.
Patriarchy brought about not just stratification between men and women, but rather, an entire class system that had not previously existed. Some men gained wealth and power, but nearly always at the expense of others around them.
It is this Nordic invasion (rather than the invention of agriculture) that resulted in mankind becoming chained to a system that could build the Pyramids and many other monuments to central authority, far too numerous to count; but could not free the vast majority from lives of poverty and want.
So, let’s review: For most of human history, lineage went through the mother and men and women had fairly egalitarian relationships. They lived in relative peace and harmony, both within their communities and with their neighbors. This does not mean that early societies were Utopian, but warfare was not prevalent and the coercive control of women was not a part of the social fabric.
Class stratification also did not exist in any significant manner. Cultures kept evolving to have greater technologies, finer art, better tools, and refinements to their social systems. Patriarchy brought domination-based systems and a focus on technologies of war. It may have eventually led to palaces and great edifices as well as greater industry, but are we truly better off?
We live longer and have better medical care than in ancient times, but we also live more isolated lives, devoid of the kind of community and social connection that human beings are designed for. Loneliness in our culture is at an epidemic level and it’s killing people as surely as obesity and smoking.
It’s particularly killing men because having to always compete for a place in the hierarchy leads to social isolation. This affects women as well, but it’s much more pronounced for men. The masculine norms demanded by a patriarchal system mean that men must always be confident, in control, and trying to dominate those around them. It’s hard to be close to anyone under those conditions.
We have all types of stratification and the discord and violence that arise out of a system of social hierarchy. Dominance based hierarchies produce, but they also largely benefit those at the top of the hierarchy in ways that the rest of the society doesn’t benefit from in the same ways. Mussolini made the trains run on time, but that doesn’t mean that life under him was truly better for most Italians.
Some men get defensive because they think that speaking against patriarchy is saying that men are bad and that long ago they conceived an evil plot to hold women down. But that’s much too simplistic and one-dimensional and that’s not what I’m saying at all. Patriarchy is a social system with a lot of destructive elements — for most of the people in it, including most of the men.
It did result in the coercive control and disempowerment of women, but it wouldn’t have continued if women didn’t uphold this social system as well. And it resulted in the stratification of entire societies and the unfortunate creation of social classes, which has let to no end of problems and social ills. More centralized power brought some good things too, but it came at a pretty high price.
Patriarchy wasn’t better for everyone. It was better for some people, and as those people gained more power, it became easier for them to hold onto it. The maintenance of traditional power is one of the hallmarks of this social system. That’s what happened Bro — not because it was an evolution for the betterment of all.
Edit- Additional information:
“In a demographic simulation that Omkar Deshpande, Marcus Feldman and I conducted at Stanford University, California, we found that, rather than imparting advantages to the group, unequal access to resources is inherently destabilising and greatly raises the chance of group extinction in stable environments. This was true whether we modelled inequality as a multi-tiered class society, or as what economists call a Pareto wealth distribution (see “Inequality: The physics of our finances“) — in which, as with the 1 per cent, the rich get the lion’s share.
Counterintuitively, the fact that inequality was so destabilising caused these societies to spread by creating an incentive to migrate in search of further resources. The rules in our simulation did not allow for migration to already-occupied locations, but it was clear that this would have happened in the real world, leading to conquests of the more stable egalitarian societies — exactly what we see as we look back in history.
In other words, inequality did not spread from group to group because it is an inherently better system for survival, but because it creates demographic instability, which drives migration and conflict and leads to the cultural — or physical — extinction of egalitarian societies.” (emphasis mine)