A Natural World Order: Part IX
A new/old World Order: 1, 2 , 3, 3a, 3b, 4, 5, 6 , 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 15a, 16, 17, 17a, 18 & 19
New dialogue between men and women 4
Part IX of a series — Part VIII here and X here— on how pretending that men are equal to women leads us to all sorts of problems. See the rest of the subtitled series — 4, 7, 8, 12,15 -18 above — see all series’ recap here and wrap-up here.
The banner picture is attempted humor in this weighty subject: perhaps we all need a coffee break? But it also reflects on the asymmetry of men’s and women’s stature in society, because God didn’t reach out to Eve did he? You can see the original frescoe as banner picture to Part II this series here.
The previous two posts set wives submission in their proper context. The previous post refers to what I used to help men’s groups indetify particular oppressions that make it hard for us to get out of the multi-millenial rut described toward the end here.
Here are four oppressions that hit males — from Alissa Ehera Brown, Re-evaluation Counselling (see here)— acronym ICOK sounds like “I see OK”.
Isolation: men are taught to isolate, be competitive and dominate ( woman conversely congregate and suppprt each other thru their common experience of periods & child-birth & -rearing)
Cut-off discharge (cry, shake, sweat etc.): “real men don’t cry” & similar tropes because that makes men vulnerable and contradicts the above (conversely women do and are berated for it as being ‘fem’ & like tropes)
Over work: men are valued for their output, not their inherent worth, consequence of feudalictic, capitalistic and militaristic societies today (women are inherently valued for creating babies, as for about half of civilisation procreation was a mystery) this is what submissive women contradict
Kill-or-be-killed: men are canon-fodder, or are taught to fight and subjugate lest they die themselves (women on the other hand learned to produce and nurture, a lot harder than to destroy)
All this started with nomadic / warrior / pastoral civilisations dominated by men, which swept in 5,000 yrs ago from NE Asia and overran SW Asian settled / peaceful / cultivating societies dominated by women (look up Marija Gimbutas academic or Riane Eisler popularised social anthropology). It set up the subjugation of women by men for two reasons:
- procreation wasn’t understood around then (last 5,000 of 10,000 years of civilisation, ergo the half cited 3 paragraphs above, see table at bottom)
- for nomadic warriors, possession was sole means of control of goods & services incl. objectified women, as opposed to cooperation under agriculture and city states that integrated women as key to society
Note also that in militaristic regimes, there is no provision to help men heal the hurts created by conflictual lifestyles, either lack of knowledge or of intent as that sidelines men. Women however worked out support structures: at least to help them raise children, but more generally to organise everything at home / behind the scene / away from the front; and that extends from original battlefields to today’s workplace, again set-up as conflict / competition not cooperation / creation.
So original patriarchy, despite being a natural order of things where women were submissive in a codified environment, became twisted into subjugating women simply because men had no way to deal with their hurts: they were lead to abuse the system to meet needs that just cannot be met. One might argue that society keeps that imbalance… but that’s a whole other topic broached for activisists via rc.org (email me for a copy).
Here is the above tabulated if that’s your cup of tea:
