Despite having grown up in a decent black neighborhood, many of my peers lived in female-led households. That absence wasn’t born out of the woman’s choice to lead but a set of unfortunate circumstances that left them in that predicament. While doing research on housewives I was saddened but not shocked that only 8% of black women are stay-at-home moms (1) — there are almost twice as many black “stay-at-home moms” without working husbands (presumably not working because they can’t rather than choosing not to).
What matriarchy looks like
“Matriarchy” is not a promised fantasy but a sad reality for plenty of women as a result of poverty, drug addiction, crime state-sanctioned violence, unemployment, underemployment and a host of other factors that make it hard for men to lead.
The problem with the feminist argument that women have always been oppressed under the patriarchy throughout all of history is that they never assert why women would let this happen. People don’t get oppressed without reason, maybe one group has more soldiers, or more weapons, or better technology, but oppression isn’t happenstance. Feminists have never facilitated us with a reason. If one attempted to say that men have always oppressed women because they are physically stronger, well, what would stop that oppression from ever ending? They are still physically stronger. And besides that feminists often refuse to acknowledge or choose to ignore biological differences between men and women, so that would likely not be their reasoning. To them, patriarchy is a social structure, that oppresses women (and men), but why men and women would choose to create a system that oppresses them both, feminists couldn’t quite tell you.
Male leadership is natural
There is no reason to buy into the belief that society would create a social structure which oppresses them, besides it being illogical, there are good reasons to believe male leadership is natural. Men are naturally superior in their physical strength and thus, especially less technologically advanced societies, they would be best suited to lead in the public realm. That physicality may not be as important in modern leadership but men also naturally have other qualities that lead them to (public) leadership. Men are greater risk takers (as we spoke about here) they’re also more competitive. It’s far more believable that society decided to cultivate these inborn qualities than the feminist assertion that these gender roles are merely a result of socialization.
There’s a hadith that says, “Never will a nation succeed that makes a woman their ruler”. Shaykh Jamir Meah explains that, “…Women’s nature… is usually much more compassionate and merciful than men… (while these are positive qualities in themselves), are not always what is needed in matters of leadership and command.” This is not to say women cannot strive in several areas of leadership nor that they should be prevented from doing so nor that an individual woman may at times be more apt to lead than an individual man (Queen Makeda, Queen Nzinga, Pharaoh Hatshepsut, and other female leaders were possibly the best leaders in their time for their people). But it does mean that men and women are different, in general, and thrive in different areas of life. Men, for several reasons already listed, have qualities that allow them to better succeed in leadership positions.
Patriarchy =/= Oppression
I understand why it’s difficult for some to separate patriarchy from oppression. For one, I don’t really like the term patriarchy because it sounds like a system in which men receive preferential treatment over women. What’s more important than male vs female leadership is the cultivation of our natural talents, not the oppression of either gender nor the oppression of individuals. We have to be able to accept nuance, men being physically stronger than women does not mean that all men are stronger than all women. We can make some generalizations, for example, men competing with women in MMA is a bad idea, but we can’t use that general truth to make any specific assumption —an individual female MMA fighter may be able to fight a random untrained man.
But one of the problems of feminism is the hyper-focus on wanting what men have. If we look back at the past and at the present and view the lack of female leadership as a result of male oppression we are grossly underestimating the contributions of women. Women like Sawdah, may Allah be pleased with her, who was not a big scholar like ‘Aisha nor a businesswoman like Khadija but added joy to the prophet’s life, peace and blessings be upon him. An excerpt from my forthcoming work 40 Hadith of ‘Aisha:
“Her sense of humor often relieved him of stress. One such occasion is when she noticed the Prophet’s face filled with weariness and cheered him up with a joke, as recorded in Ṭabaqāt al-Kubrā:
“‘O Messenger of God! I prayed behind you yesterday and you prolonged the prostration for so long that I nearly had a nosebleed!’ Her husband, the beloved Messenger of God ﷺ, threw his head back and laughed so hard that his molar teeth were visible. The sorrow in his bearing disappeared and his smile lit up the heart of Sawda with joy.”
Viewing the lives of women through the lens of men also creates in women a sense of inadequacy. Women still love having and raising children but feminism/modernity/capitalism looks down on any woman that chooses that as their sole focus. Instead of women who claim to be fighting for women’s rights being hyper-focused on women taking on taking masculine roles why not focus on allowing women to strive in ways that are naturally appealing to them? Men and women are different, the sooner we accept that the sooner we can begin to cultivate those differences and create a fair, equitable and balanced society.
“They say gender roles are all socially constructed…”
“Then why isn’t it reconstructed under more equitable lines?”
“Why is the reconstruction along the same patriarchy lines as the critique?
“There is a demonic force in this world and its greatest (goal) is to destroy the family” “Because strong families are the greatest foundation for the spiritual reproduction of human beings…”
1. 3.Stay-at-Home Moms by Demographic Group | Pew Research Center
First of all, of course you got the extremist feminists who place LGBT issues at their forefront and think that all gender traits and roles are social constructs. However, there are plenty of feminists who believe gender roles are a feedback loop where biology and social environment influence one another. They don’t have this all or nothing approach. This is in line with Islam’s views on gender roles.
Getting onto the part of your essay where you think that it is illogical that men have oppressed women throughout much of history and that patriarchy is a sham. Now, while I disagree with you that third wave feminists believing that patriarchy is solely a social construct is false, that doesn’t mean that I believe it doesn’t exist. I believe patriarchy is the result of men’s biological traits and occupying dominant positions in social life. It is something that should be self-evident given a man’s biological disposition toward dominance & aggression and social realities where men have held leadership positions.
Use your logical thinking skills…
Men have androgens like testosterone, which is responsible for things like aggression, domination, and sexual prowess. Men are also hard-wired in their brains to be risk takers and competitive like you alluded to. Power (i.e. leadership) also has a tendency to corrupt and have a role in causing a person to lose empathy.
Thus, if men already have a predisposition biologically to domination, aggression, sexual prowess; and on top of this, you add the fact that men have been leaders (having power) in almost every realm (state, street, and home) of life throughout history, the abundant research on how “power” corrupts, plus the role of world religions telling men that they should be dominant and can use physical violence and/or forcible sex toward women, it should be glaringly obvious that it is very easy for a man to misuse and abuse his power, thus, oppress those whom are weaker. The collective individual beliefs, attitudes, and actions of a people (in this case men) exist, determine, and influence social norms. Hence, patriarchy becomes the norm due to the aforementioned.
I will elaborate more below.
With regard to biology and evolution, in the cerebellum, men have more connection between hemispheres which means an increased ability to translate perception to motor skill and ability, so that they can recognize a threat and act on it. Throughout evolution, men had to perform greater physical feats to defend the women and children of the tribe to ensure their surviveability and bloodline so they had to be more aggressive.
Contrast this with women who have more connections with the frontal lobes which translate into increased empathy, nurturing and social skills. These are essential to raising children. Millions of years of evolution has mapped out our survival.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/homo-aggressivus/201409/male-aggression
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/
The articles above are regarding male violence. One cannot deny that men are more prone to anti-social violent and aggressive behavior. Gosh, just go to any playground and you will see little boys playing much more roughly than little girls. The overwhelming amount of violence committed around the world whether on a grand political/war scale or street level with homicides, gang violence, police violence, drug violence, or in the home is done by men. Is this merely a coincidence and something that just started happening in the 20th century? How can anyone deny that men have a propensity to dominate, which can result in aggression, and can manifest in oppression?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/the-science-behind-why-power-corrupts-and-what-can-be-done-to-mitigate-it
Above is an article about how power corrupts.
And the following is a a 10 page research paper written regarding the neurological, psychological, and sociological factors that influences the misuse of power, and uses these same disciplines to define what is “the right use of power”.
http://www.hakomiinstitute.com/Forum/Issue19-21/6Power%20DifferentialPowerParadoxyes.pdf
Sorry I made an error in the second paragraph. I meant to write:
“Now, while I AGREE with you that third wave feminists believing that patriarchy is solely a social construct is false, that doesn’t mean that I believe patriarchy doesn’t exist. “
There are so many fallacies in this article that it made my head spin. Attributing rationality to social constructs, implicitly telling women that they allowed for patriarchy to happen and, worst of all, making a normative claim (“Male leadership is natural” and should be desired) based on general tendencies (“because males on general are X,Y and Z” whilst ignoring all the women who are also X,Y and Z)
There’s a very small part of the article that has the potential to be valuable but it’s not articulated well. Yes certain feminisms, not all feminisms as the author claims, do seem to be more concerned with “wanting what men have” instead of questioning how those occupations etc. were attributed a gender in the first place. However these are mostly (neo)liberal feminist tendencies, with their irrational push for simplistic %50-%50 divisons of power structures. That’s why you don’t see those feminisms pushing for %50-%50 agenda among miners or truck drivers.
To point to those feminisms as representative of all feminism is dishonest.
Ah yes, the classic feminist argument, “there are all kinds of feminisms”, I must congratulate you all, it’s a pretty successful tactic.
Noor and E: There are different strands of feminism though. I know that third wave is the one that gets the most attention and is the most popular; but there are plenty of feminists who don’t agree with the extremism of 3rd wave whereby they center women’s rights with what the LGBT community wants/needs where gender essentialism is totally disregarded and everything is deemed a social construct.
Having said that, E is spewing something that 3rd wavers do- she’s disregarding the natural makeup of men in that they are more likely to be dominant/leaders due to their biology. And then women like this will complain how men are screw ups who don’t pull their weight in relationships. Well, if you keep telling men that it’s not a masculine trait to be a leader, then how the hell do you expect men to man up and do right by women?
E: Noor clearly articulated that there are exceptions to the rule regarding leadership. Are u so dense that you don’t even know what group averages mean?? OF course not every man is going to be suitable for leadership and you will find women who are better suited for this dominant role, but that doesn’t mean we should cultivate it as a general norm. You’re not helping women and children by allowing men to be even more lazy f**kups who don’t want to protect and provide by saying it is not iherent in a man’s DNA to be a leader.
E: This comment of your made me want to vomit:
” instead of questioning how those occupations etc. were attributed a gender in the first place…”
It’s because men are more suited for leadership, STEM, and dangerous hard labor jobs ok.
Who said anything about STEM?