Talk:Patriarchy (anthropology)

Two articles?

There seems to be no source that justifies having two separate articles on the same concept.--SummerWithMorons 18:25, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Combining Tables

The two tables list the same groups and should be combined, futher the second table is a quotefarm and should be labeled as such. Neitherday 12:57, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Since this discussion involves both of the two articles that use these tables, it should be centralized to Template talk:Patriarchy (ethnographies) Neitherday 13:07, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Major problems with this article

I've removed Vanatinai and Maria Lepowsky's work from the list of "alleged matriarchies." Vanatinai is an egalitarian society, as Professor Lepowsky has shown in her book "Fruit of the Motherland: Gender in an Egalitarian Society" (1993, Columbia UP). This article cites her dissertation to support its claim that patriarchy is universal, but it does so without adequate context. Her dissertation and book are among a handful that actually disprove that claim, as has been widely recognized among anthropologists. I will add her book to the references section as well. I also intend to remove Vanatinai from the list section, as soon as I can figure out how to do so.

Professor Lepowsky's work has elsewhere been attacked from an ideologically anti-feminist angle. I fear that such an ideology is the well-disguised sub-text of this article. In any event, the article misrepresents the "consensus" in anthropology, and it distorts at least one of its sources. I.e., red flags. I will work on getting together a more complete rebuttal so that we can fix this mess, but in the meantime I strongly feel that this article should be tagged for its lack of neutrality. Ntheriault 06:37, 14 November 2007 (UTC)ntheriault

Lepowsky's published work clearly reports male dominance in Vanatinai society.

I am adding further references, both from Lepowsky and from others.

If you remove sourced text again, without a strong sourced counter-claim, I will have to revert you.

You are welcome to your feelings, and your opinions.

You are not welcome to presume my motives.

I did not write this article. It contains inaccuracies and bias I haven't had time to remove.

I did write the patriarchy article, and I've defended it against both anti-feminist and feminist bias.

My experience is that feminist bias is much more prevelant and aggressive, but that's just my experience.

Let me add that your comments wave red flags for me too. But I will presume you are reasonable.

Encyclopedia Britannica is the source for the consensus-in-anthropology claim, not the seat of my pants, and has also been indicated by editors other than myself, who are more educated in the field.

Lepowsky clearly notes the most influential members of Vanatinai society are sorcerers and that these are mainly male. Why did you remove the quote where she says this? It "feels" to me like censorship of inconvenient facts.

It is apparent, even from the relatively little I've read, that there are indeed people within anthropology arguing several positions: some still argue for prehistoric matriarchy, others for historical matriarchies, yet others for historical gender-egalitarian societies. Some are very clearly ideologically motivated, others are more level-headed and pursuasive. I personally think all are entitled to their opinions. However, just as a gender-egalitarian society would still be an exception that proved a rule, the "minority report" among anthropologists is exceptional, so say the Britannica researchers, and it would likely have stretched some friendships.

I'm open to hearing every case on its merits. Though if you stop and think about it, given the dozens of societies published as matriarchies that have not withstood even casual scrutiny, you could maybe understand why I'm dubious that the Vanatinai would prove to be any different. Alastair Haines 10:55, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

No one is claiming that Vanatinai is a matriarchy. According to Lepowsky, it is egalitarian. How can you possibly claim that her work reports male dominance when the phrase "egalitarian society" is in the title of her book? The problem here is that you are attempting to do original research. My opinion is that you and other contributors to this and its sister articles are also sexist, but there is no need to go there. Ntheriault 16:22, 14 November 2007 (UTC)ntheriault

A few points:

1. Google "vanatinai matriarchy", yes, people do claim the Vanatinai are matriarchal. (I know Lepowsky doesn't)
2. There are quite a few egalitarian societies, with clear male dominance, just no tribal or village chief. (Lepowsky knows that, I know that, most of her readers know that.)
3. I can't speak for other editors but personally, I think men and women are different in many inclinations and abilities. They are also all human beings, usually with two arms, legs, eyes etc. and a common desire for respect and understanding. To me, different does not mean inferior. To me, less ability to perform specific tasks, does not mean inferior; and what people really hate about me, is when they are better than me at things, I do not view them as superior! To me, accomodating to other people's different inclinations is part of the way I show respect. Unless, of course, their inclinations are in conflict with what I think is in the common good. Finally, I am frequently wrong. Alastair Haines 18:16, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I guess what I should have said was that, regardless of claims that Vanatinai is a matriarchy, Lepowsky has shown that it is egalitarian. Thus, including references to her work to argue that it is patriarchal rather than egalitarian is a misuse of her work, not to mention an act of original research. As for your other comments, to believe that sexual dimorphism leads to differences in "inclinations and abilities" has the tendency to naturalize inequality. I won't disagree that in every culture there is a sense that men and women are different, but it makes no sense to see any kind of direct correspondence with sexual dimorphism. My main beef with these articles is that they argue that patriarchy is universal and that it is biologically determined. Both are patently false statements. As for my POV, which you keep referring to but never defining, everyone has a point of view, including whoever wrote these articles. Having a point of view isn't the problem. But systematically biasing Wikipedia articles in line with an ideology is. That is what I perceived going on here and why I have tried to correct the most egregious errors in them, not just by deleting things as you charge but by adding what I see as fair claims backed up by CURRENT (i.e., not Margaret Mead or Beavoir), mainstream references. Ntheriault 21:17, 14 November 2007 (UTC)ntheriault

Introduction is a problem

The bias in this article is clear. The introduction redundantly claims that patriarchy is universal, and it dwells on an out-dated quote from Margaret Mead. The claim for the existence of matriarchies is not well accepted. But neither is the claim that patriarchy is universal. Again, this is original research on the part of the author of this article. Ntheriault 16:27, 14 November 2007 (UTC)ntheriault

I think this article should be deleted. It contains irrelevant feminist speculation and what content it does have is covered at the main entry. However, I have better things to do with my time than fix this article.

Although I disagree with your POV, I recommend you actually write something rather than delete things and note your disagreement on the talk page. I would personally be very interested to read an informed and sourced feminist perspective on patriarchy in anthropology. I like minority opinions, they often have a lot going for them, or they wouldn't survive.

I wrote the feminist section at patriarchy, because there are plenty of logical things feminists say that can be articulated neutrally, but so many people reproduce feminist opinions as though they are self-evident truths and moral imperatives. I hoped by presenting the best of feminism, and leaving out the rhetoric, it'd stop the anti-feminists vandalizing the article, and the feminists doing the same. Sadly, unless an article suggests the feminist view is the correct or dominant one, some people are not satisfied.

I'd be impressed to see you do a similar thing, and write up the best case you can make for patriarchy as a natural phenomenon, rather than a moral evil. Doing that would put you in a powerful position to make searching criticisms. Without it, any objections tend to sound hollow.

I presume you are aware that millions of people argue that patriarchy is good?

Just some thoughts. Alastair Haines 17:23, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the problem is that you are not examining your own ideology more carefully. I admit to a social constructivist point of view, and I do admit to being a feminist. How anyone couldn't advocate for gender equality in this age is beyond me. But then again there are still racists out there as well, so I shouldn't be surprised. BUT I am not suggesting that the article should portray the feminist view as dominant. I am saying that it shouldn't do so for the biological determinist view. Despite what you appear to think, there is no consensus, and there is cause to question people's motives on both sides of the debate. In the meantime, it is not for Wikipedia articles to choose sides, but rather to try to summarize and compare the arguments of both. Further, it is not "feminist" to claim that patriarchy is not universal unless feminist means representing the most up-to-date knowledge. On the other hand, claiming that patriarchy is universal despite that knowledge is anti-feminist. I would look harder at your own biases before dismissing other people's arguments as pure POV, vandalism, etc. Ntheriault 21:37, 14 November 2007 (UTC)ntheriault

I appreciate you declaring your position. I am happy to declare mine.

Regarding feminism, I am actually very sympathetic to certain aspects of it, especially certain specific reforms of the 70s. I don't view social issues as a zero sum game, i.e. win-loss, I view them as win-win if correctly understood and consistantly applied. As such, I'm theoretically committed to the idea that the best interests of both men and women are served by working out what is mutually beneficial, anything less is problematic.

Let me be even more specific. My mother (when I was a child) was widowed and couldn't get a bank loan, simply because she was a woman, and that was 1975! I think that is evidence of a system that did not serve the best interests of society. Note, I think it was not to men's benefit either (male children of widows for example). Frankly, although I can understand women's frustration with that kind of system, suggesting the issue is a matter of women's rights sounds selfish. In my opinion, I don't care whether there was an issue of justice or not, it was a matter of downright stupidity. Why tie women's hands when those hands can be used to help you? It was in men's interests to reform a range of social structures, which, by the way, is probably one of the reasons the reforms went through. Even if that wasn't the reason, women were making themselves sufficiently troublesome, that giving them what they wanted took the heat off men making the decisions. I'm sure there are many other factors.

Now there are other "reforms" of the time that I think actually dismantled important positive aspects of the social fabric of western society. The most significant of these are to do with "reproductive ethics". One example of a decision that has had profound impact (I think negatively) is the suit of legislations aimed at facilitating women leaving partners. (My mother married only once, I have never married, my sister is still happily married to her first husband, I have no personal involvement with this issue.) Studies pretty broadly show divorce to have negative consequences for society, children and those involved. That's no surprise, no-one aims for divorce. Who can know if obstructing those divorces would have led to a worse or better situation? There are good ideological reasons to be pro- or anti- "till death do us part". I don't think there is conclusive evidence, people now have the freedom to choose, we don't force people to divorce, where typically we used to make divorce almost impossible in practical terms.

Note here please that I think ideology, moral theory, social values, ethics, politics, or whatever you want to call it is essential, and often needs to be addressed at a theoretical level, i.e. hypothetical level, because we don't always have all the information.

With regard to feminism, I support any genuine idealism directed at improving society and the lives of women or men, all are symbiotic in my view. I also support taking educated guesses from what is known. In early feminism, I think there were plenty of unknowns and plenty of evidence that could be interpreted very negatively towards men. I don't think that describes where we are at now, however. (Nor do many writers who know vast amounts more than me.)

As I understand the current consensus, and there's enough literature around to demonstrate this, most people think equality of opportunity is an appropriate guiding principle in many places in life, and in gender relations in particular. Most people also believe men and women are sufficiently significantly different (but not from different planets) that this diversity is best accomodated for and capitalized upon.

There are two influential minority views. One is a lingering radical feminist view that patriarchy is still endemic to the system (I think they are right), and needs even more legislation to eliminate it.

There is also a vary large (possibly not even minority, just largely silenced) view that patriarchy is good (with no opinion that it is inevitable or biological, it's just a moral assumption they hold). In fact, it is precisely this group that the radical feminists want to re-educate. Again, I agree with the rad fem observation of the data, but I disagree with their conclusion.

First and foremost I belong to those who believe patriarchy is about men putting their lives on the line for the welfare of the old, the children and the women. This view is found universally, even on the island we are discussing, according to Maria herself (see quote at patriarchy). I fail to see how such an altruistic "construction" of masculinity is in any way bad for society. In fact, this basic idea is so powerfully pursuasive, rad fem writers either avoid discussing it, or deconstruct it by associating it with anti-social motivators like aggression and status seeking.

Now there's a lot of room for engagement in what I've said above. I hope you'll find things you agree and disagree with in it.

On the social determinism front. I should be more gentle, because there is a lot of information out there regarding medical research aimed at working out how to improve men's health and women's health and there are simply lots of differences and issues that are laboratory proven facts of life. From time to time journalists jump and beat up a story on nature v nurture -- new evidence shows men and women may have biological differences! It doesn't go very far because the woman-in-the-street thinks "my body tells me that every month", and the intellectual guy in his ivory tower thinks, "that's politically dangerous ideology, not news" and checks to make sure the reporter that covered the story is female.

If I was a radical feminist, I would drop the gender-is-social-not-biological line. It would be convenient if true, however, the main point is even if male dominance was 100% biological, that does not justify it! You can't prove an ought from an is. If patriarchy is promoted by society -- legislate against it. If patriarchy is also spread biologically -- vaccinate against it! AIDS is biological, should we just sit here and take it! The courageous and committed rad fem must stand up and say, if we can identify genes and hormones that promote dominance behaviour in men, and social methods cannot stop the behaviour, biological treatment is necessary.

I hope you see the point, so what if patriarchy is biological (and we don't know that it is yet). That would not disprove the feminist argument!

There used to be a section at the patriarchy article that I'd put together on this, but anti-feminists kept on complaining about it, and eventually I stopped defending it. Alastair Haines 04:40, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Egalitarian

Since the subject has come up, I just thought I'd drop a note that what constitutes an egalitarian society is not as simple a matter as one might think.

“ Strathern has demonstrated how this linkage between the notions of autonomy and equality is embedded in distinctively Western conceptions of personhood, agency and sociality (1987b; 1988). Similarly, I have argued elsewhere that the linkage stems from a particular Western post-Enlightenment understanding of equality as characterizing those social arrangements in which individuals (or groups) are able to achieve their 'natural' levels vis-a-vis one another (Helliwell 1994). The significance of autonomy for such an understanding arises from the way in which the absence of any social constraint over activities and desires (an absence which is normally denoted by the term 'autonomy') is often seen as providing the only conditions under which such natural levels can be attained. Autonomy, in other words, is believed to be a prerequisite for the achievement of what is generally referred to as 'equality of opportunity'. While this is a very different thing from equality of condition, equality of opportunity is, nevertheless, what Westerners frequently mean by the term 'equality'. Christine Helliwell, 'Autonomy as natural equality: inequality in 'egalitarian' societies', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1995). ”

Helliwell notes Hadza and !Kung as egalitarian, and questions Iban as egalitarian. Male dominance, and even patriarchy do not prevent a society from being egalitarian, if by egalitarian we mean the standard definition of equality of opportunity.

Hence, an interesting study could be to observe gender distribution of labour in the patriarchal, egalitarian !Kung society. Are gender roles observably and systematical different in a way that correlates with general societal levels of autonomy for individuals? In other words, does big government promote divergence in gender roles, and small government lead to more overlap? What quantitative metrics could be designed to investigate levels of social autonomy or of division of labour along gender lines?

I bet we could find answers to these questions in anthropological journals. :D Alastair Haines 18:39, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the definition of egalitarian is problematic, especially in reference to the question of male dominance and patriarchy. I think part of the problem is that the definition of patriarchy being used here is so broad as to include everything. All it seems to take is one quote from a book-length ethnography and--voila--patriarchy. Patriarchy is just as problematic a concept as is egalitarianism. As it is defined here, male dominance and patriarchy are conflated. The former can be situational without being structural (as in Vanatinai), while the later implies structure. The two should, thus, not be conflated. Ntheriault 21:25, 14 November 2007 (UTC)ntheriault

Wemale

ERROR The Wemale group are from Ceram Island Southeast Asia, Indonesia. Please change the PNG flag.

I don't know how.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.24.71.134 (talk) 14:43, 24 November 2007 (UTC) 

Added appropriate tags

I've added several appropriate tags, which reflect the unresolved disputes raised on this discussion page and at the one for the main article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Patriarchy Ntheriault (talk) 14:15, 27 November 2007 (UTC)ntheriault

Although merger makes the question of the other tags redundant, you need to provide a case for discussion. In a few days I'll remove the tags if you have nothing to discuss. Alastair Haines (talk) 23:05, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Merger

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result was no quorum. Since the discussion is stale and the article has changed since 2007, it would probably be best to start a new merger discussion. Kaldari (talk) 16:32, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

---

This article falls into three sections.

1. The lead -- a weasled version of material that could all be sourced from Goldberg, is inadequately cited but correct.
2. A couple of sections of minority opinions from a feminist biased slant.
3. A table copied from the main entry for patriarchy

Additionally, the page was opened as a POV fork, because another editor was insisting the feminist view point be dominant at the main page. The anthropological data and analysis is closer in line to historical and ordinary usage of the word patriarchy therefore it should have priority at the main entry. Alastair Haines (talk) 23:05, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

• Support There is nothing to justify two separate articles; they will either duplicate eachother, or otherwise will be incomplete and not give full consideration to the topic. The sooner this merge happens the better. Robotforaday (talk) 02:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

TfD nomination of Template:Patriarchy (ethnographies)

Template:Patriarchy (ethnographies) has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Neitherday (talk) 22:35, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

New merger discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of the discussion was consensus to merge. Kaldari (talk) 22:38, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

---

I would like to repropose merging this article into patriarchy. Kaldari (talk) 16:33, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support - As was mentioned in the previous merger discussion (which I decided to close since it was extremely stale) this article was originally created as a POV fork from patriarchy. At the time, there was much edit warring and POV-pushing at patriarchy so people started creating forks like patriarchy in feminism, universality of patriarchy, etc. The POV warring at patriarchy is over now (thanks to an RfA) and editors are working on rebuilding that article in a less hostile environment. As such, the POV-forks have been merged back into patriarchy. This is the only one remaining. I would like to propose merging in the useful material from the Definition and History sections and deleting the rest of it (as most of the remaining material is either redundant with material in patriarchy or too POV-laden). Kaldari (talk) 16:49, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support, these are the same topic. --Alynna (talk) 12:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support; no compelling reason for separation, poor quality fork.  Skomorokh  15:10, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support. I see no reason for the content fork, but note that Patriarchy is getting a bit long. The merger might be an opportunity for other clean-up, too. Cnilep (talk) 21:55, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.