Women's Liberation & Law of the Jungle

Women's liberation depends upon equality between Men and Women. However some very important things are not symmetrical.

A woman always knows who her children are. A man never does and relies upon the word of the woman.

When a woman falls pregnant she always knows who the mother is.

In reverse this is not true. When a woman falls pregnant a man can never know who the father is. He must rely upon the word of the woman.

This is why women being chaste and trustworthy is so important in relationship. These things don't however matter for a man. This is nothing to do with patriarchy or oppression. They are just facts about the asymmetrical nature of child birth. They are Law of the Jungle.

This is a classic example in fact of Occam's Razor not being applied. There is a much simpler explanation for some of the inequalities between men and women than the creation of a Theory of Patriarchy (TOP).

The reason for this blog entry (which I have written about before)  is that I just realised another side of this inequality.

A recently pregnant woman can chose who her partner is and simply lie about who the father is. The old system of forcing marriage once a woman discovers she is pregnant doesn't actually disadvantage the woman. She can always chose her partner and rely upon men not really knowing who the father is to fool them.

Conversely in the traditional system once a woman claims that a man is the father of her child he is bound to marry her even against his will. So in the old system it was men who had their freedoms seriously restricted and it was women who had all the freedom and choice.

Somehow these simple facts have gotten forgotten in the Women's Liberation movement. Movements like this which are based upon unnecessary theories like the "Theory of Patriarchy" will not survive the test of time. There will presumably be a revision some time where a better and simpler theory gets established like in this blog.

"Theory of Patriarchy" (TOP) is the theory that at some point in history men did a social takeover and assigned women to an inferior social status where they were oppressed. (One problem with this theory of course is that it presupposed a superior power to men to enable them to do this. If men and women began from some primordial equality then why didn't women take the same opportunity and consign men the inferior status? Something is wrong in this theory already.)

The most obvious apparent evidence for the TOP is the status of women as property of men in many societies. This may be a misunderstanding. The above suggests that the control of women by men is simply the practical requirement of restricting female sexual freedom so that men can be sure who their children are. In the extreme if a man locks a woman in a room for 9 months then they know that any children born thereafter must be theirs. As women become more trusted then men are inclined to give them more freedom. Monastic orders for instance would not ordain women for 9 months to ensure they were not pregnant.

Scheherazade in the 1001 Nights tale from Arabia starts by making this point very clearly. The King finds his queen having sex with a slave. He is so angered at her infidelity that he decides the only way to ensure female faithfulness is to sleep with virgins and then kill them immediately afterwards thus ensuring they only sleep with him. Scheherazade is smarter than the rest and tells the King such a great story that he agrees that if she can tell him a story every night for 1001 nights then she will be spared the fate of the other girls. But why is the King so intent upon faithfulness in women? The TOP says patriarchy. But for a King isn't ensuring a true lineage his most central concern. Look at Henry 8 in the UK. And given his main anxiety is a true heir then faithfulness of his Queen is absolutely paramount. And so obviously faced with an unfaithful queen, and it seems a loss in faith of ever finding a woman who he can trust to produce his heir the whole continuation of his kingdom seems in doubt. This seems a much simpler and more truthful account of a Kings anxieties than just a blanket unexplained oppression of women by men.

There is a saying "women that do don't, and those that don't do" meaning that women that sleep around don't get marriage proposals. The obvious reason given above is that no man will want to marry a woman who sleeps around as they will never be sure whose children they have. Thus female chastity (playing hard to get) is an act that women learn to play in order to attract marriage proposal from men they like. Women do not play hard to get with men they just want to sleep with - except in so far as to fool them into thinking they are serious about them.

Loose women, sluts, or whores have low status amongst men cos they will never make reliable partners. You will never know whose child they are having. However this strategy does work because men will want children with sluts who are easy, require no maintenance, and the children themselves will behave like sluts thus passing on their genes.

Women have another option which is attracting a wealthy man who can support a large family and then sleeping around. They just need to trick the man into thinking they are faithful. The man doesn't need to play these games cos even if he is unfaithful the children he leaves are in other households and the wife doesn't need to look after them. However the husband is in a very different situation. If his wife is unfaithful she brings other people's children into his household which is of no benefit to him. As a result he is much more concerned about faithfulness than the woman. This is not patriarchy it is just practical Law of the Jungle.

Some women say men should not care who the father is. But if it doesn't matter who the father is then why have a father at all. Let women do all the childrearing by themselves. Indeed women with this attitude end up doing all the childcare anyway as no male would ever stay with them. DNA tests do enable paternity to be proven these days so all these games end and a male doesn't need to support a child that is not theirs.

Another reason women will want to sleep around is that their children are more likely to sleep around and this spreads that gene far and wide. So for men there are two strategies. The Don Giovani who gives women complete freedom and sleeps with any woman who is seducible. And the Home Maker who puts his energies into bringing up children, but who in return demands faithfulness from the wife so that the children he invests so much time and effort in are his own.

This blog is just to outline simple practical natural inequalities between men and women that look like they lead to Patriarchy but on closer inspection are a quite logical Law of the Jungle that no amount of Women's Liberation politics can avoid or change.