There are people, especially males, who claim the concept of human rights is enough in order to protect women’s rights. If we apply these rights, women will be OK. Beating, rapping discriminating at the workplace, street harassment is against human rights. Yes, it’s true. But we should take into account that all the public institutions are creating for men by men, ignoring women’s need for millennia. Moreover, during the last two or three centuries, the male power was getting stronger, and the so-called democratic revolutions, partly initiated and largely supported by women, deprived them of political power even more than before.
At the core of this system is the patriarchal family. If you ever participated in a wedding or civil marriage, you saw why feminism is still needed. Family, marriage is the base of society. every institution is built around family: church, school, state. And family means husband and wife (this is the order people are asked about their will of getting married), not wife and husband. It is a male arrangement, not a female one. It is about a man’s need and sexuality, not a woman’s.
When at the core of society will be a feminist cell, based upon female needs and sexuality, we’ll speak about human rights. An alternative solution will be enough. Gay/lesbian marriage is not an alternative, they are the same pattern with changed names.
Taxes, privileges, social support, education has the family as the starting point. Families are supported, not mothers, not mothers with children or matrifocal family groups. In such conditions, women will be forced to get married, the dependence on their husbands will persist. They will be raised in order to be desirable wives. They will ignore their real sexual needs and choices. They will subordinate their dreams of social and professional fulfillment to their goals of being married. Or they will pay huge prices like given up personal, affective happiness. But this is a luxury price. Most of the time, their lives, body integrity will be jeopardized because of their dependence on their male partners.
In such conditions, equality means being equal in a system conceived around men for them. It’s like talking about equality for African people in a system that keeps Apartheid or about equity for Jews in a fascist system. Patriarchy is like fascism and Apartheid because patriarchy enforces gender and gender roles. Men and women have distinct jobs, distinct goals in lives, distinct fates. The same rules like in fascism and Apartheid.
The patriarchal family and sexuality are imposed on women, it’s not natural, it’s a burden and a duty for them. It’s slavery. Prostitution is a by-product of this system. The family itself is a form of prostitution. There is no real sexual freedom for women in patriarchy. They sell their sexuality for survival.
We can speak about real equality after will condemn patriarchy like we condemn fascism and Apartheid after will recognize the immense evil it inflicts on women. And we will juridically condemn any patriarchal manifestation. When we will have laws against any patriarchal gesture, the way we have against fascism and Apartheid.
After will encourage institutions based on female sexuality and needs, we’ll speak about equality. But now women have to explore their sexuality to find out what they really like. As I already mentioned, the classical heterosexual family is toxic to women and they prefer something else, I think various models of family. A recent study suggests most women are bisexual and lesbians, but never what we call “straight”.
We can talk about equality after a lot of new institutions will be built around the female-based familiar groups, like female school, church (spirituality), science, and even state. And patriarchy will be recognized as a crime against humanity. Now the most important religions are patriarchal and support women’s domination. Now science is sexist, patriarchal, it reinforces gender roles and proclaims it biological like religion. Sociobiology is now more powerful than religion in some media, and I think, more toxic.
In conclusion, equality is a bad joke, not a myth, it’s an offense against female intelligence. Human rights are not enough, because “human rights”‘ means men’s rights. And we need feminism just in order to speak about equality. In the future.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/beatrix-campbell/why-doesn%E2%80%99t-patriarchy-die
