Saturday, May 04, 2013

Patriarchy and cuckold


Mother is a fact; father is a belief.
The way I see it (and, as has been seen by many others who are more perceptive than I [1, 2]), patriarchy, a system of control, is the consequence of the above asymmetry in parenthood. It is the institutional response to avoid being cuckolded.
The above is not to justify patriarchy; rather, to understand why it persists. Of course, the fact that there have been matriarchal societies makes it difficult to take the above as a universal explanation. Yet, it is better to take this stuttering step to investigate why patriarchy than merely state it as a fact and blame it for all the ills of society without having a clue to make the situation better.
Raghuram Ekambaram
References


2 comments:

Tomichan Matheikal said...

In many matriarchal societies the men died premature deaths! I've seen it!

mandakolathur said...

Then Matheikal, reading between the lines you say that matriarchy is as good/bad as patriarchy! You would get no dissent from me on this!

RE