Feminist writers claim American society is fundamentally flawed because of “patriarchy.” Whether by accident or design, this claim coincides with the Marxist goal to destroy the concept of family. This destruction is needed to implement the theft and redistribution of all property.
Christians believe that God created man and woman, and called them to join in marriage, raising children in families. If these activists are successful Christian families won’t be allowed to parent children in the way we believe.
The activists are educating the American public to reject the roles of husband and wife, to redefine the family as merely “something that takes care of you.” Defending against this assault means re-educating both Christians, and the public, regarding the roles of husband and wife. We also need to re-assert the mother-and-father model of family.
Previous attempts to ban families, such as in Russia, failed horribly. But failures never stopped Marxists before. We need to work, so that these activists don’t get the opportunity to try again, this time with America being the victim.
Why does this document mention Marxism so much?
Socialism and communism are both rooted in the philosophy of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. Its proponents believe in Marxism so strongly that you’d think it is a religion. It is the fire behind the intolerant college scene, Bernie Sanders’ political rise, and the “Antifa” rioting. Marxism also drives the assault on the family.
What is this patriarchy that must be destroyed?
Many voices criticize patriarchy and want to replace it with… something. But all these voices come with many definitions. Their ideas of patriarchy might not match up with yours. Let’s discover what exactly we’re supposed to condemn. Here are a few prominent voices on patriarchy.
Gloria Jean Watkins, who writes under the name Bell Hooks [i], says in Understanding Patriarchy that:
“Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation.” [ii]
She would prefer to call it “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” [iii] but can’t stand the resulting laughter. She calls this laughter “a weapon of patriarchal terrorism” [iv] Again,
“Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.” [v]
She argues that a society that expects men and women to fulfill roles damages them. Quoting Terrence Real:
“Psychological patriarchy is the dynamic between those qualities deemed ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ in which half of our human traits are exalted while the other half is devalued. Both men and women participate in this tortured value system. Psychological patriarchy is a ‘dance of contempt,’ a perverse form of connection that replaces true intimacy with complex, covert layers of dominance and submission, collusion and manipulation. It is the unacknowledged paradigm of relationships that has suffused Western civilization generation after generation, deforming both sexes, and destroying the passionate bond between them.” [vi]
Video blogging on the site EverydayFeminism.com, Marina Watanabe gives her version of patriarchy:
“In the simplest terms, patriarchy is a social system that values masculinity over femininity. This type of social system dictates that men are entitled to be in charge and dominate women. And it implies that the natural state of gender relations is a dynamic of dominance and submission….This system forces people into strict boxes called gender roles, and gender roles hurt everybody. If someone who is assigned a certain gender at birth doesn’t fit into the social norms expected of that gender, they’re often ostracized by society.” [vii]
From the London Feminist Network (founded by Finn Mackay):
“Patriarchy is the term used to describe the society in which we live today, characterized by current and historic unequal power relations between men and women whereby women are systematically disadvantaged and oppressed. This takes place across almost every sphere of life, but is particularly noticeable in women’s under-representation in key state institutions, in decision-making positions and in employment and industry. Male violence against women is also a key feature of patriarchy. Women in minority groups face multiple oppressions in this society, as race, class and sexuality intersect with sexism for example.” [viii]
Is patriarchy really all of that?
Collecting these definitions, patriarchy is:
1.) A political and social system where strong men dominate women and weak men. Because of their domination, and use of terror and violence, they get to take what they want. It causes male violence against women.
2.) Something that requires men and women to act in society-approved gender roles.
3.) A life-threatening condition, debilitating men’s health and sapping the spirit of the nation.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition is:
“Definition of PATRIARCHY
social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line” [ix]
The activist definitions differ from the dictionary listing mostly through claiming that violence is an integral part of patriarchy. The violence claim might just be there to grab your attention, to convince you that their arguments have urgency. However, the claim can’t be proven because there are no non-patriarchal societies. There is no way to compare two places and show that patriarchy increases or reduces various crimes.
In fact, statistics of property crimes, and of violent crimes against women, vary widely between nations, cities, and even between neighborhoods of the same city. The statistics show that many factors influence crime rates. You can’t blame a patriarchal society structure for crime – unless your intent is slander.
In this study we’ll ignore the sensational claims and accept the dictionary definition of patriarchy. Anyway, for activists these extra claims are just talking points. They don’t want to reform it, but would rather remove patriarchy from America.
“Remove patriarchy!” disguises the real goal: abolishing the family
Suppose we humor our “prominent voices” and contemplate removing patriarchy from American society. How might this be done? Both Bell Hooks and Finn Mackay have advice. (Marina Watanabe is silent here.)
In her Understanding Patriarchy, Bell Hooks uses the language of social revolution. She would remove the roles, behaviors, and expectations that society has of men and women. In illustration, she recounts an episode in the life of a son of Terrence Real, a fellow author. One day the boy dressed up in girls’ clothes, like a Barbie doll. He was quickly set straight by his neighborhood playmates. Boys don’t dress up like girls, right? Apparently Mr. Real didn’t like that result, and neither does Ms. Hooks.
“[Terrence] Real at least offers his boys a choice: they can choose to be themselves or they can choose conformity with patriarchal roles.” [x]
Her “visionary feminist thinking” [xi] would invalidate male and female roles. It would also invalidate parenting roles, because in her world whatever the child invents, or is influenced to believe, is already normal and acceptable, to be immediately acted upon. We already see the results of such thinking every day, such as a 5-yr old being transgendered. [xii]
Bell Hooks’ writings have also been applauded as being Marxist.
“This brand is specifically Marxist, as it primarily consists of a critique of the current ‘racist, sexist, capitalist state’–one of Hooks’ favorite and frequently repeated phrases–and gestures toward the development of a new social order based not on artificial (gender, racial, economic, and political) dualism but on the respect for each individual as an individual, not a politically constructed identity.” [xiii]
Finn Mackay prefers the traditional revolutionary route to change.
“Feminism is one of the oldest and most powerful social movements in history; it is a revolutionary movement, and that means change. There is so much wrong with the present system that we can’t just tinker round the edges, we need to start again; our end point cannot be equality in an unequal world. This is also the reason why feminism is not struggling to simply reverse the present power relationship and put women in charge instead of men (though this is a common myth about feminist politics). Feminism is about change, not a changing of the guard.” [xiv]
The Hooks and Mackay quotes are in line with standard-issue Marxism. It abolishes the concept of private property, giving everything to the State. But people who marry, raise children, and plan their lives around their families, won’t go along with this scheme. So the family must also be abolished.
“With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike, whether they are legitimate or not.” [xv]
“But what will quite certainly disappear from monogamy are all the features stamped upon it through its origin in property relations; these are, in the first place, supremacy of the man, and, secondly, indissolubility. The supremacy of the man in marriage is the simple consequence of his economic supremacy, and with the abolition of the latter will disappear of itself. The indissolubility of marriage is partly a consequence of the economic situation in which monogamy arose, partly tradition from the period when the connection between this economic situation and monogamy was not yet fully understood and was carried to extremes under a religious form. Today it is already broken through at a thousand points. If only the marriage based on love is moral, then also only the marriage in which love continues. But the intense emotion of individual sex-love varies very much in duration from one individual to another, especially among men, and if affection definitely comes to an end or is supplanted by a new passionate love, separation is a benefit for both partners as well as for society – only people will then be spared having to wade through the useless mire of a divorce case.” [xvi]
In summary, remove the roles of the parents. After that the family structure itself is pointless. The concepts of the activists align themselves with classic Marxist thought.
The Bible, gender roles, and the family
Moses, describing the origin of mankind, splits the story into two sections. Genesis 1:26-30 tells the story of the sixth day. God created mankind, both male and female (verse 27). Together they are to “be fruitful and multiply” (verse 28) and rule over all the fish, the birds, the beasts, and over plants of the earth (verse 29). The man and woman together have this task. The second section, Genesis 2:15-25, tells details of creating Adam, then Eve. After instructing Adam that he needed a helper (verse 20) God created Eve, a suitable helper, from a part of Adam.
In Genesis 2:24, marriage is described as the husband and wife becoming one flesh, Adam and Eve style. It isn’t merely a social arrangement, but something much closer. In Matthew 19:6 Jesus repeats this concept to the Pharisees, that “what therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” There is no way around it, God created marriage.
In marriage the husband and wife are equally important but have different roles. The husband is to be the head of the partnership. [xvii] The concept of patriarchy comes from this. This headship is confirmed in the account of the fall (Genesis 3). One of Eve’s consequences was that “yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (verse 16). God also chastised Adam for listening to Eve and eating the forbidden fruit (verse 17), indicating Adam’s existing responsibility over Eve.
After Jesus’ resurrection the marriage pattern, with its roles, is retained. All believers, both male and female, have equal standing in Christ (Galatians 3:28). Yet the husband is to love his wife even as Christ loves the church (Ephesians 5:25, 28). Putting your life on the line to protect your wife and family is quite a charge, not lording it over them. This charge doesn’t belong in the same world as the claim of “dominating your wife.” [xviii]
American society accepts and builds on the Christian concept of family. There are laws to protect individual family members from physical, financial, or property abuse. Men and women are equal before the law. There is nothing like the sharia law convention that “the man’s testimony in court is always believed more than that of a woman.” (Quran 2:282, Sahih Bukhari (a Hadith book) 6:301) That is, civil law doesn’t put up with the claim of
“…the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.” [xix]
Abolishing patriarchy and the family has been tried before (it failed)
These activists, Marxist or not, wish to redefine male and female roles, make marriage insignificant, and thereby abolish patriarchy from society. It turns out that this has been tried before, with abject failure.
In 1917, as soon as the Bolsheviks (Communists) gained the upper hand in Russia, even before concluding a peace with Germany, they began implementing their “end private property” and “end marriage” plans.
“To clear the family out of the accumulated dust of the ages we had to give it a good shakeup, and we did,” declared Madame Smidovich, a leading Communist and active participant in the recent discussion. [xx]
The plan was to remove the responsibilities, and thus the roles, of the husband and wife. Without those roles patriarchy would disappear.
“Will the family continue to exist under communism? Will the family remain in the same form? These questions are troubling many women of the working class and worrying their menfolk as well. Life is changing before our very eyes; old habits and customs are dying out, and the whole life of the proletarian family is developing in a way that is new and unfamiliar and, in the eyes of some, ‘bizarre’. No wonder that working women are beginning to think these questions over. Another fact that invites attention is that divorce has been made easier in Soviet Russia. The decree of the Council of People’s Commissars issued on 18 December 1917 means that divorce is, no longer a luxury that only the rich can afford; henceforth, a working woman will not have to petition for months or even for years to secure the right to live separately from a husband who beats her and makes her life a misery with his drunkenness and uncouth behaviour. Divorce by mutual agreement now takes no more than a week or two to obtain. Women who are unhappy in their married life welcome this easy divorce. But others, particularly those who are used to looking upon their husband as ‘breadwinners’, are frightened. They have not yet understood that a woman must accustom herself to seek and find support in the collective and in society, and not from the individual man.” [xxi]
The government promised to remove from women the tasks of keeping house and of raising children. In place of these things the women were expected to do more factory work, what the bureaucrats really valued. Immediately there was a flood of divorces. Because divorce was easy, sometimes obtainable within an hour, men flitted from girl to girl.
“ ‘Some men have twenty wives, living a week with one, a month with another,’ asserted an indignant woman delegate during the sessions of the Tzik. ‘They have children with all of them, and these children are thrown on the street for lack of support!’ (There are three hundred thousand bezprizorni or shelterless children in Russia to-day, who are literally turned out on the streets. They are one of the greatest social dangers of the present time, because they are developing into professional criminals. More than half of them are drug addicts and sex perverts. It is claimed by many Communists that the break-up of the family is responsible for a large percentage of these children.)” [xxii]
“The peasant villages have perhaps suffered most from this revolution in sex relations. An epidemic of marriages and divorces broke out in the country districts. Peasants with a respectable married life of forty years and more behind them suddenly decided to leave their wives and remarry. Peasant boys looked upon marriage as an exciting game and changed wives with the change of seasons. It was not an unusual occurrence for a boy of twenty to have had three or four wives, or for a girl of the same age to have had three or four abortions.” [xxiii]
It also became dangerous not to participate in “free love” (meaning “sexual relations unbounded by moral rules”). As it is said, “everything not forbidden is compulsory.” [xxiv]
“Some members of the League of Communist Youth, an organization which now numbers between a million and a half and two million young men and women, regard the refusal to enter into temporary sex relations as mere bourgeois prejudice, the deadliest sin in the eyes of a Communist.” [xxv]
The Soviet government found that the number of divorces exceeded the number of new marriages. Between the chaos of the new morality and severe losses of men from the Great War and the Russian Civil War, a demographic disaster was looming. By 1936 the Soviet government had rolled back their laws on families and marriage.
“The idea that the state would assume the functions of the family was abandoned,” Goldman wrote. [xxvi] (Wendy Goldman, history professor at Carnegie Mellon University)
In the great Soviet Motherland they abolished marriage roles, parental roles, and any point to having a family. When the populace embraced their new freedoms things fell apart.
Marxism is still alive in America
Communism failed in the Cold War, but so what? Its proponents want to try it again because it just hasn’t been done “right.” [xxvii] Marxists make new proponents every year because we give to them our children.
Marxism is quite alive in our colleges and universities, especially in the humanities. [xxviii] Since getting a teaching degree means passing many humanities classes, teaching candidates spend a lot of time with these Marxist teachers. This discipleship creates the next generation of Marxist teachers. And since practically all university students spend some time taking humanities classes, all students get a dose of Marxist thought.
The continuing infatuation with Marxism helps explain how “multiple genders” and “gender fluidity” came about. If you get people to believe that gender roles are meaningless they will be willing to accept meaningless definitions of family. For example,
Whatever you define family as, family is just a part of belonging to something that takes care of you and nurtures you… [xxix]
The Marxist hope is to move from “gender roles have no meaning” to “when anything can be a family, nothing is a family.” So you see, the apparently obscure argument about patriarchy has society-shaking implications.
Your Call To Action
God created man, woman, and marriage. The married couple are to “be fruitful and multiply”, raising their children in their family. We also see that the husband and wife have different, complementary, and equally valuable roles. But the complaint about patriarchy is intended to break these roles and rebuild society without families.
You have everything at stake in this argument, for “everything not forbidden is compulsory” will come true. Ask that Colorado cake baker: sooner or later, they’ll come for you, too. [xxx] What can you personally do to defend your interests in your family, in your way of life?
First, ask God for understanding. Study the Bible to understand the roles he gave to husbands and wives in families. Also learn how the Bible is a guide for organizing modern society. Sites like the Illinois Family Institute can help you learn.
Second, don’t sacrifice your children’s faith to God-hating indoctrination. It is foolish to pay dear money to send your children to a college, even your own alma mater, if they will learn things only from a Marxist perspective. As an education consumer, with the power of the purse, you have many good alternatives. Refuse to pay for a college education that will ruin your children.
Third, don’t sacrifice your children’s faith to what is going on in your grade schools and high schools. Their staffs will discourage your intervention, claiming that they are the experts. But garbage content dressed up in professional technique is still garbage. [xxxi]
There are still many ways to bring the public schools to task: elect school board candidates not beholden to the unions; deny taxes or bonds for schools; expose the things they teach; encourage spying when they do things behind the parents’ backs. Use your imagination. You can also ask your sons and daughters what they’re being taught, and use your wisdom to correct their understanding.
Fourth, don’t encourage public officials who advocate, or approve of, multiple-gender teaching and other such evil things. All candidates, even a first-time candidate for dog catcher, should be examined on a range of policy and moral issues. Judge them even on issues not immediately pertinent to their intended office. People rise from low offices to higher ones. The longer officials are in office the harder it is to remove them from politics. Prevent bad government through early disqualification of bad candidates.
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Footnotes:
[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_hooks
[ii] Hooks, Bell, Understanding Patriarchy, 2004, http://imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Real, Terrence, How Can I Get Through To You?, http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/DCARead?standardNo=0684868776&standardNoType=1&excerpt=true
[vii] Watanabe, Marina, https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/11/what-is-patriarchy/
[viii] What is Patriarchy? http://londonfeministnetwork.org.uk/home/patriarchy
From their home page:
We work closely with other groups in London and elsewhere in the UK, supporting various feminist campaigns in order that we can broaden our movement and work together for women’s rights and against patriarchy in all its forms.
[ix] Merriam-Webster dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patriarchy
[x] Hooks, Bell, Understanding Patriarchy, 2004, referencing an anecdote of Terrence Real
[xi] Ibid.
[xii] https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/kindergarten-celebrates-5-year-old-transgender-transition-kids-traumatized
[xiii] Kindig, Patrick, https://patrickkindigfeministtheory.blogspot.com/2012/02/bell-hooks-and-post-marxism.html
[xiv] Mackay, Finn, The biggest threat to feminism? It’s not just the patriarchy, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/23/threat-feminism-patriarchy-male-supremacy-dating-makeup
[xv] Engels, Frederick, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Ch II.4, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm
[xvi] Ibid. Note that this section is also a justification of “free love”, flitting from partner to partner at a whim.
[xvii] Deffinbaugh, Bob, The Meaning of Man: His Duty and His Delight, https://bible.org/seriespage/3-meaning-man-his-duty-and-his-delight-genesis-126-31-24-25
[xviii] Clark, Tom and Clark, Mary, Role of Men, https://lifehopeandtruth.com/relationships/family/role-of-men/
[xix] Hooks, Bell, Understanding Patriarchy, 2004
[xx] A Woman Resident in Russia, The Russian Effort to Abolish Marriage, The Atlantic, July 1926, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1926/07/the-russian-effort-to-abolish-marriage/306295/
[xxi] Kollanti, Alexandra, Communism and the family, Women’s role in production: its effects on the family, 1920, https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm
[xxii] A Woman Resident in Russia, The Russian Effort to Abolish Marriage
[xxiii] Ibid.
[xxiv] Williamson, Kevin, The Right Not To Be Implicated, National Review, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374115/right-not-be-implicated-kevin-d-williamson
[xxv] A Woman Resident in Russia, The Russian Effort to Abolish Marriage
[xxvi] Svab, Petr, The Failed Soviet Experiment With ‘Free Love’, https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-failed-communist-experiment-with-free-love_2242535.html
[xxvii] Sanders, Perry and Sitar, Dianna, Socialism Hasn’t Failed; It Hasn’t been tried – Yet!, New Unionist, December 1993, http://www.deleonism.org/text/nu931201.htm
[xxviii] Caplan, Bryan, The Prevalence of Marxism in Academia, http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/03/the_prevalence_1.html
[xxix] Snetiker, Marc, Ellen DeGeneres talks Finding Dory, http://ew.com/article/2016/04/18/finding-dory-ellen-degeneres/
[xxx] Henneberger, Melinda, I’d make a cake for a same-sex wedding, but Colorado baker Jack Phillips shouldn’t have to, The Kansas City Star, December 5, 2017, http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/melinda-henneberger/article188235799.html
[xxxi] Higgins, Laurie, Illinois Association of School Boards’ Disturbing Document, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/education/illinois_association_schools_disturbing_document/
The goal of the SPLC’s malignant slander is to stigmatize and marginalize any group that defends marriage and sexual morality. Is the Plainfield Patch absolved of all moral culpability for smearing IFI because technically all it did was cite the anti-Christian hate group known euphemistically as the SPLC?