Date: Tue, 01 Aug 1995 17:27:58 -0600
From: Lisa Rogers <EQDOMAIN.EQWQ.LROGERS-AT-EMAIL.STATE.UT.US>
Subject:  "Patriarchy" (Verbal History) -Reply




    Lisa writes, "straightforward meaning of the word from the Latin
roots,
"father-rule," i.e. male domination per se."

Carrol said:    Tsk Tsk. Are you claiming that a father does not rule
his sons or his slaves or his other dependents?

Lisa replies: of course not.

And Zeus of course is father of *men* and *gods*, not just of *women*
and *goddesses*.

Lisa: Good grief, Carrol, don't turn vicious on me, this is so
obvious that it is insulting to imply that I didn't already know
that.  My anthropological view of patriarchy doesn't contain all the
stuff that you attach to it, but I am sure it is more thoughtful and
less naive than you make it out to be.  Your following paragraph I
find thoroughly baffling.  After that, well, maybe I could make sense
of it, or at least discern its relevance if I already had all your
training in your own point of view.  

Cox: More tentatively, one might suggest that Odysseus' relationship
of domination over Penelope is "patriarchal" only *because* his
relationship to the swineherd is patriarchal.

Again, see the accounts of colonial households in Coontz, Social
Origins of Private Life: the "master" lived in the same house, even
slept in the same room, as his various dependents (including slaves,
bondservants, apprentices, etc).

Lisa: How many rooms did the household have?  

Cox:  And while his wife was subordinate to him (very much so, he
having the right of physical chastizement), 

Lisa: Why don't you just call it beating?  That's what it is.

Cox: In such a social order male domination is simply built into the
very fabric of human society and requires no justification (no
pseudo-scientific concepts of smaller female brains, etc). 

Lisa: This implies that there was no resistance, and I'm sure that is
not true.  There has always been resistance.  And there is plenty of
justificatory mythology in hundreds of non-capitalist societies which
does not refer at all to anything like science.  
I do not consider only recent euro-american history, there's a
difference between us. Anthropology takes a wider view.  I'm
interested in patterns of male supremacy, why and how it takes the
various forms and degrees that it does.  
What I don't have is your certainty that it is just obviously a
totally different thing in modern capitalism, nor do I know what you
think it is.  Different how, and why? If you don't want to explain
it, I can live with that, but it's going to be a long time before I
can read Coontz and such.  
Maybe I've just read more about many other cultures over the years
than you have, and that gives me a different perspective.

Cox: When that patriarchal relationship is dissolved by modern
capitalism, and the "primordial" basis of male domination is gone,...

Lisa: What is the "primordial" basis of male domination???  What does
"primordial" mean?

very puzzled,
Lisa



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