The Facade of Patriarchy

[rever]

My husband may be the head of the house; I am the neck that turns the head.
- An American housewife.

Many mammal societies once thought to be run by a dominant male are now known to be
matriarchies. Elephants are a good example. Because the big bull - the Alpha male - is always the
most noticeable and the most threatening, he was always mistakenly thought to be the leader. But the
true herd ruler is the Alpha female, who has swiftly and quietly led the group away to safety. She is
the one who takes all the decisions.
- Anne Rasa, naturalist and ethnologist.

Contrary to feminist propaganda, which alleges that most human societies
are, and have been, patriarchies, human societies are no exception to the
rule of matriarchies operating covertly behind a façade of patriarchy.
Indeed, patriarchy is a facade, most soothing to the male ego, for wife rule.
That this is so is confirmed by women from some of the most dissimilar
cultures in the world. Take what an American housewife told me during a
wedding reception on a boat in Boston Harbour, quoted above, about the
neck that turns the head. And take what a Saudi Arabian woman professor
said on the BBC World Service: "The traditional Saudi wife runs her family
and runs her husband."

It may be tempting to say that even if patriarchy is a facade for matriarchy
in the home, it couldn't be so in public life, which is almost exclusively a
male turf. But alas, whether in the home or the public arena, matriarchy is
the law of life. This proposition may be demonstrated by first looking at
some societies where matriarchy is not entirely covert, but operates, in part,
through formal, public institutions.

In many traditional African societies, men and women have long had
parallel organizations and complementary institutional powers. It usual for
the king, the queen (who, by the way, is not the wife of the king but the
head of the women's parallel branch of public organization), the war
marshal and the queen mother, with their respective councils an officials, to
exercise separate and countervailing powers. Viewed from that world, much
of Western political practices can be quite puzzling.
Zulu Sofola, a Nigerian playwright and researcher into African traditions,
once retold the following conversation which had taken place between
herself and her mother. It occurred at a time when Margaret Thatcher, Prime
Minister of Britain, was embroiled in one of her political battles. Zulu
Sofola's mother, who lives in the traditional Igbo milieu, asked her:

'Everybody is talking ill of Margaret Thatcher. Why doesn't she her
powers to stop them?

'She has no powers other than those of men,' Zulu replied.
'But where is their Otu-Omu (the council of women)? The Omu
should take the matter up and set these men right. Who do they think
they are?' demanded Zulu's mother.
'White people don't have Omu,' Zulu explained.
'Ah! Who speaks for the women?' her mother wondered.
'In the white man's world, nobody speaks for women,' Zulu told her.

As part of the intricate system of checks and balances in so traditional
African societies, women exercise the most effective sanction against
misrule. When a king becomes intolerable to his subjects, a procession of
grandmothers will march naked to his palace. No ruler survives this final
and dramatic repudiation by the mothers of his subjects. Usually, the threat
of this march is enough to bring erring and dictatorial rulers to heel.
In the West, where parallel male and female public institutions are not the
norm, women nevertheless operate a covert matriarchy. At society matrons,
Western elite women control political parties from behind the scenes, from
places where they are safe from political shrapnel. Those very few (like
Margaret Thatcher or Golda Meir) {70} who insist on savouring the risks of
political combat, have run the men around them like nannies run their packs
of little boys. For example, here is how Margaret Thatcher, by manipulating
men's fear of women, manages the male politicians and civil servants
around her. According to Anthony King, Professor of Government at Essex
University:

the use of the chopping block or of the garrotte. On the contrary, those
who Mrs Thatcher politically executes can look forward to a
knighthood if they are lucky, to a life peerage if they are luckier.
Rather, Mrs. Thatcher uses fear in two less malign ways that are
nevertheless equally effective.
The first is by means of face-to-face fear: 'fear at first hand'. Mrs
Thatcher has a formidable personality, and she is capable of
hectoring, cajoling, threatening, wrong-footing, bullying,
embarrassing and even humiliating her Ministers and officials... She
puts the fear of God into people, and they usually respond well. Of
course, there is no need to use this particular weapon very often: fear
of being on the receiving end of a Prime Ministerial tongue-lashing -
or even merely of Prime Ministerial froideur - is usually adequate to
the purpose.
One specific aspect of her use of face-to-face fear is worth
mentioning. Mrs Thatcher long ago observed that most well-broughtup Englishmen - especially, though not only, if they went to a public
school - have no idea what to do with a strong, assertive woman. Not
only are they brought up not to be rude to women: they find it very
difficult in general to deal with women in the same matter-of-fact,
direct way that they deal with men.
Women to them are mothers or nannies to be feared or sisters to be
bullied (or, alternatively, adored). The average Englishman of the
middle and upper classes simply quails in the presence of a
formidable female personality, torn {71} between the desire to strike
and the desire to sulk, not knowing what an appropriate response
would be. Mrs Thatcher long ago noticed that such Englishmen found
it hard to stand up to her - and conceived a considerable contempt for
the whole tribe. As one of her former Ministers, Sir John Nott, said in
a recent television interview, she thinks all men are 'wimps'.55

While the Maggie Thatchers are very few, it is more usual for ruling class
matriarchs to run ruling class patriarchs who run the affairs of the world.
Recall the case of Mary Cunningham of the USA. In the late 1970s, she had
used what Nigerians would call "bottom power" to rocket to Vice-president for Strategy at Bendix Corporation, and to become its effective second-incommand. In speaking about her controversial relationship with William
Agee, the Chairman of Bendix (whom she later married), she noted:
The indirect ways are more powerful… I'm building the chairman's
faith in me so I can sit at his shoulder and influence for the good of
society.
56
Yes, of course! Only for the good of society!
Perhaps the best recent example of how grand matriarchs run the grand
patriarchs is that of Winston Churchill, the great 20th century war leader of
the British. A woman neighbour of mine in London once claimed that men
were babies. In disbelief, I asked her if she thought that even leaders like
Churchill were babies. "Churchill was the biggest baby of all," she replied.
Not long after, I read Mary Soames' biography of her mother, Lady
Clementine Churchill, and had to agree that Winston, if not quite a baby,
was a standard patriarch - outwardly strong, dominating and masterly, but in
fact a champion coached and managed by none other than his wife!
On the jacket blurb of the biography, I read: {72}
Clementine Churchill was the perfect wife for Winston. For 57 years
she supported him through the triumphs, disasters and tensions which
ruled his public and private life… Always Winston trusted her
completely and she became a valuable counsellor and companion. He
invariably wanted her opinion - but did not always take her advice.
She believed in him passionately, and in his destiny – standing beside
him in public seemingly serene, cool and detached.57
Now, that passage could easily describe any famous manager-athlete
relationship, like the famous Angelo Dundee-Muhammed Ali combination.
Of course, as Winston's coach-manager, Clementine, her coaching done,
would sit by the ringside and look on, cool and detached, or even stay away
from the bloody fight, while her ward battled it out in the political ring. For
Clementine, coaching and managing Winston was a conscious and
dedicated career. Here is how their daughter, Mary, puts it:
Winston was to be Clementine's lifework. Her concentration on him
and his career consumed the cream of her thought and energy.
58
One should therefore not be surprised at Clementine's summative remark
the night after Winston's funeral. By Mary's own report, before she went to
bed that night, Clementine turned to her and said: "You know, Mary, it
wasn't a funeral - it was a Triumph."59 Well, whose Triumph? Clementine's
of course! She had managed Winston for 57 years, and at his death the
world came to pay tribute, ostensibly to him, but as far as she was
concerned, to her success as wife-coach-manager of his successful career.
Now that we have an inkling into women's true role in the management of
the world, it should be a sobering realization for men that our official bosses
and leaders, even the greatest among them, whom we all look up to as the
masters of the world, are each under the guiding thumb of some woman or
other, usually his wife. Whenever we gaze in awe at a head of state, or at a
head of household, we should gaze in even greater awe at the little lady by
his side who controls him like a puppeteer does a puppet. Appearances
should not be allowed to mislead us as to where the balance of power lies
between them.
We have seen how matriarchs rule men in public life - the Otu Omu, the
naked grandmothers, Maggie Thatcher, Mary Cunningham, Clementine
Churchill. But how do wives generally use the patriarchal facade to control
and exploit their husbands at home? Just consider some of the tasks a wife
is able to shift over to her husband by appealing to his ego as patriarch or
official head of her household. {73}
"O husband mine!" she tacitly says: "You are the official head of this house;
you are my leader, my lawgiver. You are the strong one. Won't you feed and
protect me and our little child? Won't you-see to it that our child is well
behaved?" In this way, she deftly assigns him the job of nest provisioner;
the job of nest protector; and the job of ogre or disciplinarian of the nest. If
he fails to provision the nest to her satisfaction, he suffers her contempt, as
well as his own, for not living up to his macho expectations. If thieves
attack her nest and he cannot fight them off, he suffers her contempt, as
well as his own, for not carrying out his macho duties. If he dies defending
her nest, she weeps for a day or a week, and sets about recruiting another
nest guard. She can discipline the child in his name, or frighten it with his
image as bogeyman (Wait till your daddy Comes home!), without herself
earning the child's resentment. By directing its resentment towards its
bogeyman father, she can retain the child's image of her as the "sweet
mother". If he declines to act as the disciplinarian and ogre; if he prefers to
earn the image of "sweet father", she resents it. As one wife, Natalie
Rogers, complained:
My husband preferred the role of playmate to the kids when they were
young, rather than accept his share of the disciplining. I felt like the
ogre.60
If the wife became the overt head of her own nest, she would have to do all
that for herself; and she would have to do far more. There is an Igbo
"Widow's Lament," based on farming life, which details the six occasions
when a widow recalls the death of her husband and cries uncontrollably.
The first three are when she needs him for farm labour (planting, tending
and harvesting), for each of which she now has to hire and pay labourers.
The fourth is when there is a meeting of the kindred: with her husband
dead, "who will inform the widow of the deliberations?" The fifth is when
there is a festival, and she has to buy her own fowl to cook for the feast.
The sixth "is the day she is drenched in her unrepaired thatched house; that
day she knows nothing is as painful as losing a husband."61
Let us consider the fourth job listed in that lament: his job as her political
emissary to the arena of public affairs. It entails much more than reporting
back what transpires in the assembly. As the ostensible head of her nest, he
participates in politics in order to protect her and {74} her nest from those
dangers, social and natural, which her society combats through public
measures. When it becomes necessary to protect the society by violent
means, he goes to battle and even dies that she may live on in safety. As her
voice in public affairs he contributes to deliberations which make laws that
serve her interest.
In Western societies in the days of male franchise, the husband, as voter,
was his wife's political emissary. He used his vote to elect male law makers
who passed laws in his wife's interest, laws which often punished the
natural inclinations and delights of men, and helped to trap men in nest
slavery. Some of these laws, passed by all-male legislatures, are monuments
to female rascality and misandry. For example, long before women got the
vote in the USA, there were laws against prostitution, a service which men
needed to lesson the tyranny of frigid or sex-striking wives. Also, there has
long been an anti-husband bias in the marriage and divorce rules of the
Western World, a bias which, in some cases, gave the family house, custody
of the children, etc. preferentially to the woman. Women did not have to
have the vote, did not have to become the majority of lawmakers, for such
misandrous laws to be passed. They were passed by male law makers, who
were elected by male voters, all of whom acted as instructed by their wives
and mothers! Oh yes! How readily a man will sacrifice men's interests for
women's once his patriarch's ego has been puffed, or his penis has been
twisted!
But why does the average woman prefer covert to overt matriarchy? Just
consider the matter from her standpoint. Overt leadership would give a
woman duties which expose her to too many pressures and risks.
As she well knows, uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. She therefore
concedes that onerous role to the patriarch, and saves herself a lot of
hassles. She makes him the formal leader of her nest, and shifts unto his
shoulders the burdens of decision-making, the anxieties of wielding
authority, the dangers of defending her honour and her life through lights,
lawsuits and wars. When she declares that she is weak, and lays her head on
his chest and weeps to prove it, and lets him make the decisions, she
simultaneously massages his ego and exploits him. She offloads highpressure -and high-risk jobs unto the patriarch, and takes for herself the
superior but safer position of the power behind the throne. Thus, behind the
patriarch stands his matriarch: she runs her world by running the man who
runs the world for her.
Under this arrangement, a woman has everything to gain and nothing to
lose, except little vanities. Being far more down to earth, she {75} prefers
the substance to the shadow, the power to the glory, the rewards to the
exertion.
Behold the matriarch, the great queen bee, in all her power. Hers is the
power to manipulate from hidden and protected places. She is the back seat
driver, giving instructions from the owner's corner. She is the supreme
executive, excellent at delegating the most burdensome and dangerous jobs
to her chief lieutenant, alias the patriarch.
And the patriarch? He is simply her foreman, a glorified foreman, who
oversees the work in the fields. With his ego well massaged by the
trappings of nominal leadership, he gladly supplies his matriarch, to the best
of his abilities, with wealth, honour, status, and fame. Each day he spends
eighteen hours or more as her agent in the great, wide, rough-and-tumble
world; for an hour in the morning, and an hour and a half at night, she
inspires and instructs him to make forays into the world for her. And while
he is in his office, working up hypertension or a coronary, she lounges at
her sauna or her hairdresser's; or she enjoys herself shopping, spending his
money, or nattering away with her fellow queen bees at the bridge table. His
are the risks and hardships; hers the leisured enjoyment of the rewards. Her
motto, in effect, is this:
O patriarch, O husband mine!
Suffer the burdens of leadership,
But hand me its choicest fruits.
Should he ever tire of being a figurehead, or should he, horror of horrors,
threaten to quit his job, the little wife has fine ways of intimidating her
huge, figurehead leader. In a letter to her daughter, one British wife
demonstrated just how easily a wife can quell a rebellion by her husband
should he even hint at it. Writing to her daughter Kate, she told the
following story: {76}
On that evening your Dad leaped out of his chair at 8 o'clock,
collected his wee bag full of empty Coke bottles and I thought Oh
Christ - here we go again - lemonade, big spender. I said I didn't want
any - that did it, he said he would get pissed by himself and for three
hours the air was Blue. I got the usual old guff about how the
daughters I loved have spent years pleading with him to leave me -
owing to me being sick in the mind, but he couldn't leave me because
A) he is the loyal type and he made up his mind to make the best of
me and B) he was worried about leaving his children in my care. He
was roaring with laughter telling me he had put in his resignation and
was leaving his job on December 31st and once he got that gratuity in
his hands, life was going to be all women and gambling, I would get
nothing out of it. All the people I think are my good friends, he said,
have all advised him to leave me. I thought it all over for two days –
not having said one word that evening - on Sunday night I said to him
very quietly - 'You are not going to do what you said you would with
your gratuity and savings - I sweated blood all those years for you, to
save and see that you never went without anything.' I said, 'you just
try it mate and I'll get a heavy mob (Kate's feminist friends) on to you,
that will leave you so that you won't look in a mirror for the next
twenty years and you tell me just one more time that I'm sick in the
mind and I'll kick your teeth so far down your throat that they will
come out the other end.' I banged the table saying 'do you
understand?' He was literally shaking like a jelly. Since then he has
been very nice and I'm almost certain his shouts about leaving the job
(my fault) were a come-on to get his own way. Anyway as I said,
everything is now very pleasant.62

Yes! When this nest-slave threatened to abscond with some of the proceeds
of his life-long toil (the gratuity and savings), he was brought to heel by his
owner. So much for the notion of the husband as boss to his wife!
But why do men settle for a patriarchy that is, alas, a mere façade? The
answer is quite simple. A facade is the most that their rulers will allow
them; and a facade is the least that will make the male ego feel good enough
to endure the burdens of his alloted role. Furthermore, should men try to
subvert matriarchy in order to substitute a genuine patriarchy, women will
thwart them. Men, therefore, settle for a figurehead patriarchy simply
because they must. {77}

[General Alek]

The neck is turned by the brain which is part of the head btw

[Darth_aurelius]

The neck is turned by the brain which is part of the head btw

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