7000 Years ...of patriarchy. Until the radical era

129 Pages·2.547 MB·English

by  Ioana Petra

7 0 0 0 Y E A R S
....of patriarchy. Until the radical era
by Ioana Petra
Dedication: To all radical feminists since the beginning of the movement
until now
PREFACE
I started the  blog 7000 years (“7000 ani” in original) in order to promote
an ambitious project: a radical feminist novel, probably the first one in the
Romanian literature, a novel that will explore, in an original way, aspects
related to morality, sexuality, feelings — in short, about humanity — but
also about the Western society and culture, which is dominant today. It was
conceived as a  critical view of this culture, a culture with good and bad
parts. For this, the parallel with other cultures, traditional ones, eventually
cultures with strong matriarchal influence, would have been presented.
This project was going to push radical feminism further, not only by
bringing new critics to patriarchy, also seen from other angles, but also
new radical feminist claims. And last but not least, it wants to start the
foundation of a new feminist culture, focused on women, on their desires, as
free as possible from patriarchal contamination. Women who must discover
themselves, the world, and for this reason they benefit from the freshness of
the first steps. This project aimed to create a new side of women, a new side
of feminism, a much stronger one, more optimistic, focused on women —
not equality, meaning on men, indissolubly linked to patriarchy as an
image, at least in the Western culture. One of the purposes of this novel is
that the reader (woman or man) to wish to be a woman at the end, but in a
world built by women for women. By discovering new sides of women's
tragedy in patriarchy, the novel will end in a bright atmosphere, but also a
hard militant one, full of hope and full of new perspectives. The message
sent will be: the world can and must be different, the solutions exist, they
are possible. Women have the right to real happiness for them, the way they
see it and feel it, not only to survival.
But most of the times, the road is more interesting than the end of the
journey. The same here, the approach was more interesting than the final
result. The documentation — both factual (interviews with people,
especially with women from other cultures) and theoretical (a lot of books
of feminist philosophy, but also sociobiology, politics, history etc) — led to
the new ideas that changed the original concept, sometimes radically.
Knowledge is the biggest adventure when it's free and you have an affective
connection to it. This proved to be true in the process of writing this novel,
unfinished yet, but very well outlined.
With this blog (7000 years), I tried to address everyday feminist issues,
feminist events, and some debates, by writing short articles, as simple as
possible, and more full of emotions. I don't know how much I succeeded
this, but after the controversies they created, the emotional reactions, not
only among men —most of them misogynists, but also women, even some
(self)declared feminists,  I think they reached their purpose. The discovery
of the extremely though and generalized misogyny was one of my
discoveries during this process.
I recently found an opportunity to publish a book based on these articles, a
quite common phenomenon which started with the new revolution in the
editorial world, catalyzed by the new printing technologies, the explosion of
the internet etc. This is excellent for my purpose: to promote some new
feminist ideas without any rebate from the quality and the boldness of the
ideas, in a way as simple as possible for the readers.
In order to preserve the continuity with the title of the novel "7000 years.
The beautiful face of the West", the possible title of this book would be
"7000 years....Until radical feminism", but the final variant is "7000
years....Until the radical era". This sounds optimistic. Fortunately, it seems
there were less than 7000 years of patriarchy, about 6000, not that this
wasn't enough that women's life and history to be destroyed and they are
not easy to be recovered.
"7000 years" comes from a replica from the novel that refers more to the
practice of agriculture and the colonization of Europe.
"7000 years...of patriarchy. Until radical feminism" is a selection of radical
feminism analyzes, most of them original, written as accessible as possible,
with as few bibliographic references as possible. The simplicity of the
exposure — a challenge for the author who comes from the scientific
academic world — shouldn't  have anything to do with the simplicity of the
ideas and the conclusions reached by the analyzes stemming  from original
biological ideas.
I wanted to make this book an exercise of creativity, free thinking, courage.
I hope things will also be the same for the readers.
PATRIARCHY-HISTORY
AND PRESENT
What is patriarchy and why does it exist?
I t's a question they are looking for answers for a long time. With this
blog, I tried to find an answer as close to reality as possible. And I'm still
working at this. I don't think I will ever stop. But at this moment I want
to cry "Evrika" again, actually, I want to cry louder than another time.
And of course, when you start to better understand the phenomena, you feel
you are closer to finding solutions. A new feminist revolution might start
soon. Why does patriarchy exist? Does it exist in animals? No. Patriarchy
doesn't exist in animals. This would be something absolutely impossible. In
animals, the society belongs to females, it forms around the animal family,
wich consists in one female and/or more females related one to each other,
and their offspring. In the monogamous animals, the long-time partner of
the female is also included in the family and their offspring live a period of
time around this dominant family and they take care of their younger
siblings without reproducing themselves (in some Canidae , for example).
But patriarchy has its germs in the animal world. Its germs are found in the
relationships we see every day when two dogs meet. There is a
confrontation and then a hierarchy is established. Because there is
aggression, there is fear. Patriarchy is based on the relationships of
dominance and obedience present in animals. Most of the times, this kind of
relationships are established separately for each sex. But sometimes they
are also established between different sexes. In most species, most of the
time, females are sexually unreceptive. Any sexual approach is treated as
aggression and the male is abused. When she is in heat, the female adopts
what they call submissive postures in order not to scare the males anymore.
Submission postures are adopted to reduce aggression. They are adopted by
lower-status animals, but also by the higher status animals who want to
make friends.
They say that apes have in common the fact that males dominate females.
This is true. But why is this happening and under which conditions? Most
of the primate societies (but not only them) are based on a female core. The
animal society is female, starting from insects (from bees and ants to
primates). In baboons, for example, who are social animals studied as a
model for the primitive hominid societies, the females (cousins, sisters)
bring a male into the group (family) who they chase away when they no
longer like him. We see male polygamy, but actually it' about a male who is
accepted by more females. It's what they afford considering the
environmental conditions.  Like lionesses. In humans, it's a known fact that
polygynous families appear because of a lack of resources. Maybe the
females would bring more males if they could afford this “financially”.
Males consume their food, maybe females don't want their access to
resources to be affected. Let's see for example the lions, where the females
hunt and the male is actually fed by the females. Why do they bring them?
Probably in order to defend their family from other males, who would eat
their offspring, so the females get in heat again.
But in the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ) and bonobo (Pan
paniscus ), the females are strangers in the group. Until recently it wasn't
known why males bring female chimpanzees into the group. Very likely
they do this to improve their social position, I proposed. No matter how a
female's social status is, it grows when she is in heat and a friendship
between a male and a female with a lower status offers him protection.
Probably the signs of fecundity have disappeared for this reason (for
example in humans). But who makes primatology studies and puts females
first? In social animals, females want a higher status and they would have
benefits if they look in heat all the time. Another cause would be the low
energy (probably in humans but also in solitary species, like the orangutan).
The signs of fecundity are energophagous.
The fact is that male chimpanzees are protected by their mothers, this is
why female mobility between groups is preferred as Frans de Waal suggests
in “Bonobo and the Atheist”. Moving male chimpanzees to other zoos