Is Patriarchy the Way of the World?

Commentary by Salim Muwakkil, host of the "Salim Muwakkil Show" on WVON 1690 AM, journalist, and community activist.

I recently came across a post asking the question if one could be a foe of patriarchy and still be a Christian. It's a good question, examining the religious implications of our current cultural tumult. However, it may be more historically appropriate to credit production mode for our religious views on gender hierarchy, more than anything else. Here's why:

For most of humanity's evolutionary history, we operated as nomadic hunter-gatherers. The resulting social orders we adopted were designed to accommodate our foraging, or pillaging, mode of production and shaped our species' initial communal behavior. For example, mostly males had the upper body strength necessary for successful production as hunters, so it privileged patriarchy -- or male domination. But female ‘gatherers’ were just as crucial to the resource production mode and their manual dexterity translated to enhanced social and cultural roles in some iterations of hunter-gatherer societies.

As humanity evolved into other production modes (i.e., maritime, pastoral, riparian, horticultural, agrarian, industrial and informational), our social arrangements shifted to accommodate those evolutions. There were periods of pastoralism and horticultural modes that produced social orders embracing "heresies" like matrilineal succession, matriarchal leadership, goddess worship and even polyandrous marriages. For much of human history, however, upper-body strength remained an essential element of production; perhaps even more so during the superseding agrarian age. Because of this, patriarchy retained its high currency.

In fact, most of our deeply patriarchal religions were born during the axial age (800-200 BCE) -- a time of burgeoning agrarianism. Like other 'superstructural' expressions, those religions were the products of an agrarian production mode and encoded strictly observed patriarchal notions into their theological dogma. In general, these religious formations denounced homosexual behavior and observed strictly prescribed gender roles. The Deity invariably was masculinized.

In retrospect, it's easy to see how they simply conferred divine sanction on cultural biases that already were deeply embedded. Gender-based divisions of labor were essential for communal survival in these patriarchal systems, so there's no surprise they were characterized by rigid gender roles.

But there have been evolutions in humanity's modes of production that axial-age religions have yet to accommodate. Proficiency in the use of plows, shovels, picks, harrows, sickles, scythes or grinding-stones is no longer necessary. Meaning, upper body strength is not essential for contemporary modes of production. In fact, this once vital attribute is slowly losing its evolutionary necessity and becoming a vestigial quality; as is the patriarchal ethic that's been its historical consequence.

What's more, in a world much less dependent on labor-intensive production, there'll be much sparser population requirements --thus, less pressure to regard marriage strictly as a strategy for procreation. Because of this, the cultural repertoire of gender roles has to widens to include roles formerly excluded and to tolerate other deviances from the historical norm, including homosexual behavior. That's because the threat of overpopulation is magnified when there's less work to do.

Accordingly, as the poll cited below reveals -- acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality appears strongest in late industrial and post-industrial societies that have minimized gender aparthied in economic production (i.e., the necessity for upper body strength and the concommitant primacy of male agency). There are some outliers, like Japan, China and Korea, which still resist acceptance of lifestyles averse to traditional notions of masculinity and heterosexual mores.

Many attribute that resistance to the authoritarian (Confucian and Shinto ethics) base of their common religious heritage. But the social pressures imposed by contemporary means of production will force religions in such societies to accommodate changing cultural attitudes. Despite inevitable resistance, economic necessity will craft new moral models.

Patriarchy may one day recall a bygone era.