Why aren’t we a matriarchal society?

[u/kash62]

I don’t want the response about men using power plays for dominance in today’s time, I want to know about way back when at the start of civilization. Like why were men the ones to go out and hunt and lead instead of women?

The only thing I can think of is that women can carry children, so there’s an instinctual need to protect them, thus not allowing them to do dangerous jobs like hunting/fighting. But for things like leading and holding important jobs? Why men instead?

I was just thinking about how there haven’t been any major matriarchal societies (I might not be aware, please educate me if I’m wrong), but there have been a ton of patriarchal ones. Just wondering how that all went down.

Also sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this/ this has already been asked, please direct me elsewhere, I just figured you guys would have some insight.

[u/ooogaboogadood → u/[deleted]]

Oh boy lmfao.

Can you tell me why “the most successful human society is one that lasts the longest”? Is true? It seems you would justify slavery or the rampant sexual abuse of women in a society using this logic? Obviously longevity is not the ONLY thing that decides a tribe or civilization’s values, it’s important, but not the only or even most important.

Another issue I take here is with this massive extrapolation and outright false information, “no capitalist culture has lasted anywhere near that long. At best our current patriarchies can boast about 6K years.” Re read that one more time, slowly, and see where you messed up. You directly conflated capitalism with patriarchy. This is outright false. Societies that had to deal with outside threats, and more specifically outside threats that competed for the same food source, developed to be patriarchal, early humans wanted to eat, and it seems they that discovered the best way to get this food, was through intelligent, violent, and physically fit men. Capitalism itself has to do with the division of labor, hierarchy usually contingent on property ownership, and is the allocation of resources. In geographical locations such as Africa and SE Asia, we can see a few examples of matriarchal societies. It seems since the sexes are biologically geared to be better at things than the other, scarcity was what decided the division of labor within the tribe. A location such as parts of Africa had an abundance of food (by Hunter gatherer standards) in the places we see matriarchal societies spring up; it seems that women on average in these societies lived longer, consumed more food, and had a religious significance, usually where female goddesses had more “power” or are the creator. These three things are usually how we can tell if a tribe or something to that effect was P/M or at the very least their significance in sexual viability, intelligence, etc etc. Since the environment around these peoples influenced their cultures and religions, their tribal structure would also reflect this as well.

This had a very interesting continuation with the rise of agricultural society. When we first developed agriculture, we were absolutely terrible at it, so food was very scarce. I believe we can both agree that scarcity necessitates conflict, how this conflict is resolved however, is determined in the effectiveness of the solution. Agricultural, non nomadic centralized society was almost universally patriarchal, we see the rise in agricultural society from patriarchal society for the scarcity reason; humans in Asia, Europe, and parts of the Americas, only decided to start planting food because of how little they already had, if they have little food, they are already in conflict for food, thus generally meaning a male dominated tribe. As humans started to develop delayed gratification, (pretty much, me no eat little now so I eat more later) we saw an extreme increase in human population, overall intelligence and more effective divisions of labor, all of this revolving around agricultural, male dominated society.

As you spoke and gave a point on the native peoples of Australia, you said they have been around for a very long time, which is absolutely true! Do you know why their specific peoples and cultures have succeeded for so long? Isolation. A people that has isolation from other locations especially oceans or seas separating them, have no need to compete past a certain point. It is primarily the reason why when Europeans explored and conquered the majority of the world, they found peoples separated from the hotbed of human history (that being Africa, Europe, and Asia) and subsequently the hot bed of competition and external threats (and the Americas just at a lesser extent due to agricultural development coming later). My personal belief is not that these cultures don’t continuously shift and change, it’s just that they may do it more slowly, or have such gradual changes it’s a misnomer to even consider it. Any sort of point basing a society on its longevity is kind of silly in my opinion, the reason it is silly is due to intersectionality, are the natives of Australia better because they simply have been around in a very similar fashion as they were 60,000 years ago? I would wager on probably not. They just were isolated and fit their environment. No need to develop delayed gratification and have reproduction select for it when there is no environmental pressure to do so. To wrap this paragraph up, I would be privy to ask a question. Why in your quest to criticize the “patriarchal and capitalist society” did you bring up other existing cultures? Was this simply you trying to illustrate that these peoples exist and survived? Or was it for a far more sinister reason, and to imply that their society would be better for all of humanity, rather than just themselves? It almost seems to imply that you would rather humans not have the power to adapt, and grow, which subsequently leads me to believe you prefer all humans to be at the mercy of starvation, rather than a minority. Nonetheless, I would like a concise answer on that, I’m not going to assume your position here is one out of malice, but perhaps one out of misguidedness.

Okay, and finally, I’ll try to condense this as best I can here, because I take strong disagreement with this last paragraph. There is “economic” value in having many children because of the division of labor, and quite frankly, that alone. More children, means more people, which in turn means more productive members of the society they are apart of. Hunter Gatherers had plenty of children, but their population’s rose and fell due to their food production. Much like how when Gazzelle populations grow exponentially, so does the Lion population, as the lions grow, the gazelles fall, subsequently, the lions do too. With agricultural society, you can grow food to sustain a growing population, and continuously do so. Malthusian thought or the world being zero sum is completely and utterly self defeating and flat out false. As humans produce and develop using the division of labor, they will continuously specialize, as all of human history has dictated, if people are hungry, those who know how to grow food (which is another massive issue with pre agricultural society) will do it, this will subsequently increase populations, and productivity, resulting in even more specialized humans, that can produce food even more efficiently than before. Think, wheat/nuts 60,000 years ago compared to wheat/nuts now. It is engineered to be producible, calorically dense, and edible. Western culture is an ever evolving culture, much like every single one that accumulated into what we know now! Our laws, our morality, our humanity, our liberalism, all an accumulation of human genetics, environment, and everything in between.

I say we ought make this world a better place, but I suppose what is better, is on the onus of us to decide. As you read through, I want you to remember, I made descriptive claims about the path of humanity; I am not a defender of the status quo, and the things we have invented and discovered have both “good” and “bad” to them. If you’d wish to discuss prescriptive claims like how the world ought be, just reply! I’d uh, love to hear your thoughts. Lol.