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... or so says the GOP.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/20...less-than-men-so-they-can-find-good-husbands/
This is a perfect example of why Conservatism as an ideology is so dysfunctional and outdated.
Conservatism is, by its definition, a regressive ideology. It means to preserve the old ways. The old ways, of course, being Patriarchal society. This article exemplifies Patriarchal thinking in that it suggests that women should be paid less - aka kept below the glass ceiling - so they can find husbands.
Let's take a look at that, shall we?
First, let's go back to the time before Patriarchy existed. Before Patriarchal societies rose to power, men were completely expendable. Most of the time children didn't even know who their fathers were, which is why Judaism passes its heritage on through the women: your Jewish'ness is decided by who your mother is. (http://www.jewfaq.org/whoisjew.htm) This is because no one could be sure back then who the father was. But everyone knew who their mother was, and every woman knew her kid was hers: she gave birth to them, after all. This was paternity fraud in its purest form, institutionalized and absolutely normalized.
Let's go ahead in time to the modern age, to one of the surviving matriarchal societies of today. (http://metro.co.uk/2013/03/05/where...al-communities-from-albania-to-china-3525234/) The Musuo who live around Lugu Lake, China, have no word for 'father' or 'husband'. Property is handed down through women. The lack of a concept of a father used to be commonplace among pre-Patriarchal societies.
What happened to these pre-Patriarchal societies? Well, I should actually call them pre-monogamic societies, because Patriarchy kind of closely followed that. The men in these pre-monogamic societies felt no sense of belonging. Seen as expendable assets, they wandered in and out and left their families as they pleased. These societies were chronically, tragically unstable, as a result. Look at all the trouble that fatherless children face today; now take away the welfare system (which I support, mind you) and imagine what happens. Starvation, crime, listlessness, on a scale unimaginable by today's standards.
Then monogamy came along, requiring that one man mate with one woman, and vice-versa. These societies partially discouraged male disposability and encouraged them to settle down. The stability of the family led to a more stable society, these societies advanced, and they outcompeted pre-monogamic societies.
But still, men were much more expendable than they are now. Men who couldn't make the alpha male cut, were still losing out and being left on the margins by women, much moreso than today. A great deal of instability still plagued these civilizations. Women were equal to or better off than men in those societies, and they did not like men who were on their level. This is happening again, today.
Cites:
http://time.com/4012826/why-the-dating-game-is-rigged-against-women/
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebat...ege-educated-there-is-a-man-deficit-in-the-us
http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/blogs/...n-shortage-the-real-reason-you-re-single.html
Basically, women do not like dating men below their socioeconomic level. They prefer men who are better off than they are, or at least as well off. This was even more acutely true in the pre-monogamic and early monogamic societies.
Enter, Patriarchy. To be exact, Patriarchy is the autocratic rule of a tribe or society by the men at the top, and the legal exclusion of women from suffrage or leadership roles. These Patriarchal societies discovered that if you keep women below men on the socioeconomic scale - the Glass Ceiling, as it's called - women will need men to support them and will look to men as mates.
No, really, this is what they discovered back when. As hilariously silly as it sounds to any modern-thinking person, this system forged strong societies (like the Paterfamilia-based Roman Empire) that, strangely enough, overran and outcompeted non-monogamic societies. The evidence is pretty irrefutable - all the nuclear armed superpowers today originate from Patriarchal societies (even if they are not Patriarchal now). And women helped build this system of Patriarchy - it was that or see even more generations of poverty or barbarian raiders or needless diseases and death.
Under the world of autocratic rule by the men at the top, a woman was the property of her father, and then the property of her husband. This was to keep women in line and prevent them from doing what's going on today - paterity fraud, cheating, bleeding a husband dry of all his assets in divorce, rejecting men and dying childless and single because they're not rich enough, etc. What did this also do? It made men feel like they had a stake in society. Keeping women down like that, encouraged men to feel they belonged, and gave the masses a reason to uphold the society that was led by their alpha males. Civilizations collapsed less often (except due to conquest), and thus they thrived. Non-Patriarchal societies rarely survived in their path. That Musuo culture in China? They're almost below third-world status.
Then came feminism, and we know what happened as a result: women are on the level of men now, and they find men less attractive as a result. Divorces are up (the vast majority initiated by women), paternity fraud is making a big comeback, and poor men are being left on the wayside in ways that would be considered a horrible tragedy if it happened to women. (Men do not mind dating unemployed women - and the ignorance that is modern feminism cannot seem to find an explanation as to why.)
So now that you've gotten this far you're probably thinking this article is going to say next that we need to put women back in line so that things can go back to running smoothly, no?
Nope. This is where I explain why the Republicans like Phyllis Schlafly just don't understand reality.
The reality is that nature does not favor perfect solutions. Nature favors the first thing that fixes an existing problem. Monogamy was that first solution. Patriarchy was the next one. It has worked for thousands of years - namely, in the arena of natural selection, it has bulldozed over all other competitors. Name one high-tech, nuclear-armed nation that didn't have roots in Patriarchy? There you go. BUT... that, once again, was natural selection favoring the first solution that came along: Patriarchy. Natural selection does not hold out for perfection, that's not how natural selection works.
Patriarchy is not the best solution for hypergamy and male expendability. In fact, even the most cursory analysis shows that it is full of huge, fatal shortcomings. Here's a short list of them.
Patriarchy's most obvious shortcoming is a moral one: specifically, that it is based on holding women back so as to make men more attractive as mates. Male disposability is nature's oppression of men, much as feminists hate to admit it; and to recognize this is to automatically realize that it is also wrong to oppress women to make up for that. Two wrongs do not make one right.
The next biggest shortcoming is its failure in the arena of natural selection. The Patriarchy has been decapitated by feminism. The right to vote was the proverbial guillotine. Male expendability in its purest form failed the test of natural selection among humans when men simply walked away and repeatedly doomed those civilizations to collapse and disintegration. Likewise, we are seeing the slow motion collapse of Patriarchal societies in Asia and the Middle East as China and India suffer a woman shortage (which will give rise to a powerful wave of feminism as women leverage their emerging political clout via sexual manipulation and the politics of sexual deprivation) and the Middle Eastern nations start seeing an exodus of women (and they will encounter this). The feminist countries of Europe are vastly outstripping these Patriarchal societies, although the feminist nations also face the threat of collapse due to the lack of male participation. Basically, women no longer consent to live in a Patriarchy, and when the women withdraw their consent, the only hope you have is to kill them all - and such foolishness brings extinction. And since nobody except maybe Boko Haram wants to kill them all, the women are going to overturn the system by sheer weight of numbers. Lysistrata, if you will, with a billion women in revolt. No system can survive that. And frankly speaking, if women do not feel free, they should rebel - that is human nature. To do anything less is simply subhuman.
Another moral failure of Patriarchy is the most fascinating, because this failure is also logical in nature. Patriarchy, basically, seeks to fight the male disposability and the natural hypergamic nature of women BY FEEDING IT. By putting the man above the woman it artificially satisfies her desire to be with a man who has power. See what's wrong here? Patriarchy does not try to end hypergamy, it doesn't try to stop male disposability, it tries to roll with it, it tries to negotiate with it. It doesn't try to abolish it.
Thus, Phyllis Schlafly is basically trying to bring back a pragmatically dead system that women no longer consent to being a part of, and a system which failed to address the original problem in the first place. In a word: outdated. But that is what Conservatism thrives on - sticking to old things, even if they are outdated.
Conservatives who read this, of course, throw up their hands and say "But without Patriarchy, men go back to really, seriously being expendable! What can we do without Patriarchy?" (Ironically, feminists ask the same question: "How will modern society survive without feminism?")
This is where natural selection has failed us. It has failed to move humans forward.
By 'forward', I mean to egalitarianism.
To truly eliminate male disposability in a system which women will not also rebel, egalitarianism must become civilization's final form. Under egalitarianism, men are not disposable, women are not property, there is no spiked floor for men or a glass ceiling for women. Compassion is doled out equally for lonely/poor/homeless men as it is for women. Paternity fraud would be abolished by mandatory paternity tests at birth, and civil judgement awards for putative fathers of older children who discover that they're not the actual father. Domestic abuse and rape would not be tolerated from men or women alike, and an egalitarian society would shame anyone who makes fun of abuse or rape victims. Perhaps the most alien things one would see in an egalitarian society is a woman taking a physical thrashing from other women for hitting a guy for no reason in public: something that has no hope of ever happening in today's society. And in an egalitarian society, there is no room for the gender political stances espoused by Conservatism. An egalitarian society has no need to "put women in their place".
Unfortunately, the way things stand, the only way we're going to see an egalitarian society is if a race of alien women show up. Humans are proving to be remarkably, alarmingly resistant to the concept. But that doesn't justify giving Conservatives and their regressive views on women anything more than a middle finger. It justifies pushing awareness of egalitarian ideals hard, fast, loud, and often: just like feminism did.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/20...less-than-men-so-they-can-find-good-husbands/
REALITY CHECK!!!
This is a perfect example of why Conservatism as an ideology is so dysfunctional and outdated.
Conservatism is, by its definition, a regressive ideology. It means to preserve the old ways. The old ways, of course, being Patriarchal society. This article exemplifies Patriarchal thinking in that it suggests that women should be paid less - aka kept below the glass ceiling - so they can find husbands.
Let's take a look at that, shall we?
First, let's go back to the time before Patriarchy existed. Before Patriarchal societies rose to power, men were completely expendable. Most of the time children didn't even know who their fathers were, which is why Judaism passes its heritage on through the women: your Jewish'ness is decided by who your mother is. (http://www.jewfaq.org/whoisjew.htm) This is because no one could be sure back then who the father was. But everyone knew who their mother was, and every woman knew her kid was hers: she gave birth to them, after all. This was paternity fraud in its purest form, institutionalized and absolutely normalized.
Let's go ahead in time to the modern age, to one of the surviving matriarchal societies of today. (http://metro.co.uk/2013/03/05/where...al-communities-from-albania-to-china-3525234/) The Musuo who live around Lugu Lake, China, have no word for 'father' or 'husband'. Property is handed down through women. The lack of a concept of a father used to be commonplace among pre-Patriarchal societies.
What happened to these pre-Patriarchal societies? Well, I should actually call them pre-monogamic societies, because Patriarchy kind of closely followed that. The men in these pre-monogamic societies felt no sense of belonging. Seen as expendable assets, they wandered in and out and left their families as they pleased. These societies were chronically, tragically unstable, as a result. Look at all the trouble that fatherless children face today; now take away the welfare system (which I support, mind you) and imagine what happens. Starvation, crime, listlessness, on a scale unimaginable by today's standards.
Then monogamy came along, requiring that one man mate with one woman, and vice-versa. These societies partially discouraged male disposability and encouraged them to settle down. The stability of the family led to a more stable society, these societies advanced, and they outcompeted pre-monogamic societies.
But still, men were much more expendable than they are now. Men who couldn't make the alpha male cut, were still losing out and being left on the margins by women, much moreso than today. A great deal of instability still plagued these civilizations. Women were equal to or better off than men in those societies, and they did not like men who were on their level. This is happening again, today.
Cites:
http://time.com/4012826/why-the-dating-game-is-rigged-against-women/
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebat...ege-educated-there-is-a-man-deficit-in-the-us
http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/blogs/...n-shortage-the-real-reason-you-re-single.html
Basically, women do not like dating men below their socioeconomic level. They prefer men who are better off than they are, or at least as well off. This was even more acutely true in the pre-monogamic and early monogamic societies.
Enter, Patriarchy. To be exact, Patriarchy is the autocratic rule of a tribe or society by the men at the top, and the legal exclusion of women from suffrage or leadership roles. These Patriarchal societies discovered that if you keep women below men on the socioeconomic scale - the Glass Ceiling, as it's called - women will need men to support them and will look to men as mates.
No, really, this is what they discovered back when. As hilariously silly as it sounds to any modern-thinking person, this system forged strong societies (like the Paterfamilia-based Roman Empire) that, strangely enough, overran and outcompeted non-monogamic societies. The evidence is pretty irrefutable - all the nuclear armed superpowers today originate from Patriarchal societies (even if they are not Patriarchal now). And women helped build this system of Patriarchy - it was that or see even more generations of poverty or barbarian raiders or needless diseases and death.
Under the world of autocratic rule by the men at the top, a woman was the property of her father, and then the property of her husband. This was to keep women in line and prevent them from doing what's going on today - paterity fraud, cheating, bleeding a husband dry of all his assets in divorce, rejecting men and dying childless and single because they're not rich enough, etc. What did this also do? It made men feel like they had a stake in society. Keeping women down like that, encouraged men to feel they belonged, and gave the masses a reason to uphold the society that was led by their alpha males. Civilizations collapsed less often (except due to conquest), and thus they thrived. Non-Patriarchal societies rarely survived in their path. That Musuo culture in China? They're almost below third-world status.
Then came feminism, and we know what happened as a result: women are on the level of men now, and they find men less attractive as a result. Divorces are up (the vast majority initiated by women), paternity fraud is making a big comeback, and poor men are being left on the wayside in ways that would be considered a horrible tragedy if it happened to women. (Men do not mind dating unemployed women - and the ignorance that is modern feminism cannot seem to find an explanation as to why.)
So now that you've gotten this far you're probably thinking this article is going to say next that we need to put women back in line so that things can go back to running smoothly, no?
Nope. This is where I explain why the Republicans like Phyllis Schlafly just don't understand reality.
The reality is that nature does not favor perfect solutions. Nature favors the first thing that fixes an existing problem. Monogamy was that first solution. Patriarchy was the next one. It has worked for thousands of years - namely, in the arena of natural selection, it has bulldozed over all other competitors. Name one high-tech, nuclear-armed nation that didn't have roots in Patriarchy? There you go. BUT... that, once again, was natural selection favoring the first solution that came along: Patriarchy. Natural selection does not hold out for perfection, that's not how natural selection works.
Patriarchy is not the best solution for hypergamy and male expendability. In fact, even the most cursory analysis shows that it is full of huge, fatal shortcomings. Here's a short list of them.
Patriarchy's most obvious shortcoming is a moral one: specifically, that it is based on holding women back so as to make men more attractive as mates. Male disposability is nature's oppression of men, much as feminists hate to admit it; and to recognize this is to automatically realize that it is also wrong to oppress women to make up for that. Two wrongs do not make one right.
The next biggest shortcoming is its failure in the arena of natural selection. The Patriarchy has been decapitated by feminism. The right to vote was the proverbial guillotine. Male expendability in its purest form failed the test of natural selection among humans when men simply walked away and repeatedly doomed those civilizations to collapse and disintegration. Likewise, we are seeing the slow motion collapse of Patriarchal societies in Asia and the Middle East as China and India suffer a woman shortage (which will give rise to a powerful wave of feminism as women leverage their emerging political clout via sexual manipulation and the politics of sexual deprivation) and the Middle Eastern nations start seeing an exodus of women (and they will encounter this). The feminist countries of Europe are vastly outstripping these Patriarchal societies, although the feminist nations also face the threat of collapse due to the lack of male participation. Basically, women no longer consent to live in a Patriarchy, and when the women withdraw their consent, the only hope you have is to kill them all - and such foolishness brings extinction. And since nobody except maybe Boko Haram wants to kill them all, the women are going to overturn the system by sheer weight of numbers. Lysistrata, if you will, with a billion women in revolt. No system can survive that. And frankly speaking, if women do not feel free, they should rebel - that is human nature. To do anything less is simply subhuman.
Another moral failure of Patriarchy is the most fascinating, because this failure is also logical in nature. Patriarchy, basically, seeks to fight the male disposability and the natural hypergamic nature of women BY FEEDING IT. By putting the man above the woman it artificially satisfies her desire to be with a man who has power. See what's wrong here? Patriarchy does not try to end hypergamy, it doesn't try to stop male disposability, it tries to roll with it, it tries to negotiate with it. It doesn't try to abolish it.
Thus, Phyllis Schlafly is basically trying to bring back a pragmatically dead system that women no longer consent to being a part of, and a system which failed to address the original problem in the first place. In a word: outdated. But that is what Conservatism thrives on - sticking to old things, even if they are outdated.
Conservatives who read this, of course, throw up their hands and say "But without Patriarchy, men go back to really, seriously being expendable! What can we do without Patriarchy?" (Ironically, feminists ask the same question: "How will modern society survive without feminism?")
This is where natural selection has failed us. It has failed to move humans forward.
By 'forward', I mean to egalitarianism.
To truly eliminate male disposability in a system which women will not also rebel, egalitarianism must become civilization's final form. Under egalitarianism, men are not disposable, women are not property, there is no spiked floor for men or a glass ceiling for women. Compassion is doled out equally for lonely/poor/homeless men as it is for women. Paternity fraud would be abolished by mandatory paternity tests at birth, and civil judgement awards for putative fathers of older children who discover that they're not the actual father. Domestic abuse and rape would not be tolerated from men or women alike, and an egalitarian society would shame anyone who makes fun of abuse or rape victims. Perhaps the most alien things one would see in an egalitarian society is a woman taking a physical thrashing from other women for hitting a guy for no reason in public: something that has no hope of ever happening in today's society. And in an egalitarian society, there is no room for the gender political stances espoused by Conservatism. An egalitarian society has no need to "put women in their place".
Unfortunately, the way things stand, the only way we're going to see an egalitarian society is if a race of alien women show up. Humans are proving to be remarkably, alarmingly resistant to the concept. But that doesn't justify giving Conservatives and their regressive views on women anything more than a middle finger. It justifies pushing awareness of egalitarian ideals hard, fast, loud, and often: just like feminism did.
