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[AlexanderTheIncompetant]

Sorry for going back a bit, but look Deboche, bad education, illiteracy and monogamy (or whatever it is you said) does not equal patriarchy (or matriarchy for that matter). In real life it is associated with that, because most early societies were patriarchal AND uneducated (except higher orders of society) and rather conservative about sex (think medieval Europe) or because other patriarchal societies applied these things more or less exclusively to women (or the opposite for a matriarchal society) to control them, while men were educated and could be polygamous (like sharia law)

We can argue about the cause and the effect in this case. My point is that monogamy is a trait of patriarchal societies. I'll refer you to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_impact_of_female_education

Excerpt: "Recent research in human development has established a strong link between women's education and international development.
(...)
 In particular, researchers seek to determine what factors explain differences in rates of development. Women's education is one of the major explanatory variables behind the rates of social and economic development, and has been shown to have a positive correlation with both"

Ok, let me rephrase: illiteracy/bad education+patriarchy: exists/has existed
                                illiteracy/bad education EXCLUSIVELY/MOSTLY IN WOMEN: causes/is caused by patriarchy
                                illiteracy/bad education=patriarchy: is a ridiculous statement

And agriculture had nothing to do with hording, all mammals have hoarding behavior to deal with winter. Tribes would carry everything they made themselves and leave nothing behind when the food ran out; that's why, despite some 10,000-20,000 years of human tool-use we've only found a few artifacts in extremely out of the way places- usually near the remains of the tools' probable owners. Agriculture actually made it harder to survive at first, since we didn't know what we were doing and didn't get as varied a diet as our hunter-gatherer neighbors did. The only reason anyone put up with the back-breaking labor was to get our otherwise impossible alcohol fix on a regular basis, nomadic tribes had to either stumble on fermenting fruit by chance or wait long enough without food than was safe or comfortable.

http://www.economist.com/node/10278703
Here's a good article that backs my claim. You'll find many if you search.

Excerpts:
"Hunter-gatherers' dependence on sharing each other's hunting and gathering luck makes them remarkably egalitarian. A successful farmer, however, can afford to buy the labour of others, and that makes him more successful still, until eventually—especially in an irrigated river valley, where he controls the water—he can become an emperor imposing his despotic whim upon subjects. Friedrich Engels was probably right to identify agriculture with a loss of political innocence.
Agriculture also stands accused of exacerbating sexual inequality. In many peasant farming communities, men make women do much of the hard work. Among hunter-gathering folk, men usually bring fewer calories than women, and have a tiresome tendency to prefer catching big and infrequent prey so they can show off, rather than small and frequent catches that do not rot before they are eaten. But the men do at least contribute."

Finally, warfare is really just organized violence against an "other". If you seriously think we invented that then I invite you to look up what happens when two different pack-predators claim the same stretch of hunting territory.

Actually that article I posted does claim hunter-gatherers engaged in war but it doesn't cite its sources. Here's another article that explains why those claims are probably false:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/201103/steven-pinkers-stinker-the-origins-war

I'd say that patriarchy originated with men being the ones who risked their lives for meat, while women stayed near camp and gathered plants to (return to the original argument) safeguard the children. In the same way that today soldiers are venerated for putting their lives on the line for their nation, the men were seen as the heroic providers or whatever, and therefore people to look up to. In Iroquois nations, wisdom was highly valued and associated with elder women, who were consequentially the most looked up to: they chose the village leaders, transmitted heritage and clan membership to daughters (opposite of say Europe, where it's traditionally father to son), men went to live with their wives' family (again the opposite of in patriarchal societies). I deduce that the gender associated with the society's most valued ideal becomes more powerful.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Poorly educated women and better educated men is caused by patriarchy and keeps it going, since the women are not in a position to do much about it. If everybody is poorly educated, that is gender neutral; remember that those beloved hunter gatherers that deboche loves so much were all uneducated. Poor education=patriarchy is a foolish statement, since they are obviously not the same thing. The same is true of monogamy and patriarchy. They may coexist in some or many societies, but they are NOT the same thing.

Patriarchy likely emerged from the superior prestige granted to fighting and hunting, which were dominated by men. If these positions were most esteemed, then these people would be chosen as leaders, and go on to establish governments that kept people like them in power. Sometimes, this involved keeping women down by not educating them, hence the link with poorly educated women. Since this sort of patriarchy did not happen absolutely everywhere, we know it was not inevitable, unlike so many things in DF adventure mode. Where patriarchy was strongest was where ruling men deemed that women's opinions were innately less important, though even in these places women could still have great influence (the Sultan's wives in the Ottoman empire at times took over running it if the Sultan was incapable of doing so).

[AlexanderTheIncompetant]

 That's literally what I said.

[Urist Tilaturist]

I was just giving a briefer post for those with short attention spans.

[AlexanderTheIncompetant]

 Ok that's fine with me, although most of my post was quotes.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Long quotes still make a post much longer, and less likely for the "tl;dr" crew to read.

[pisskop]

Long quotes still make a post much longer, and less likely for the "tl;dr" crew to read.

I understand your logic, but presumably we are talking to a 'tl:dr kind of person.  Not with the level of persistence shown.

[Iapetus]

Yes, I meant patriarchal when it comes to how it works, not that it's necessarily run by men. We can argue about whether these things are linked to patriarchy.

I like the ideas of Chris Ryan who points out that humans are naturally polygamous but with the invention of agriculture came settlements and hoarding of wealth. The necessity to know who your children are so you can pass down your wealth is what makes monogamy necessary. You can also find similar ideas in Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising, which is where I got this:

"Progressive" means open to social change and improvement, as opposed to "conservative", which means preferring to stick to tradition.

Can anyone cite any pre-agricultural society (matrist or otherwise) that was notable for that?

Likewise, any that was notable for its scientific research?

Also, Ancient Greece was pretty patriarchal (or very, depending on which city), and was very approving of homosexual relationships.

And I really can't see any connection between hedonism vs. asceticism and matriarchy/patriarchy.  Nor with spontaneity vs. inhibitions.  It's not as if women are more spontaneous or hedonistic than men.


Finally, does anyone see a massive irony in the idea that patriarchy and oppression of women was caused by men caring about who their children were and wanting to make sure they were looked after?  (An idea I've seen before, attributed either to the dawn of agriculture, and/or simply discovering how conception worked).  As opposed to the presumably "good old days", when men could shag around without caring about who got pregnant and not being expected to worry about caring for their children or the mother.

[Deboche]

It's not worth it to do this again. If you want to discuss polygamy, there's a thread for it in Suggestions but know that polygamy isn't men shagging around, it's everyone shagging around. And in a primitive tribe, everyone takes care of young children.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Polygamy for everybody is everybody shagging around, but there have been many societies which have mixed monogamy with polygamy. It is not as simple as sorting them into 2 classes as in that simplistic diagram.

[Aslandus]

Yeah, pretty much everyone agrees that diagram is wrong... well, I don't know if Deboche agreed, but everyone else who responded did...

[Deboche]

That diagram is not necessarily meant to be applied to entire countries or peoples, rather groups of people or periods of time within a given society. It's the two ends of the spectrum all human groups swing between.

An example of a Matrist group would be hippies in the 60s, an example of Patrist would be present day Iran.

[LMeire]

The chart still implies a lot about things that otherwise wouldn't be related. Especially that bit at the bottom, why associate the gender of a deity with political-economic systems? What makes ascetic philosophies like Buddhism so anti-egalitarian? And why, in a chart so clearly meant as a pro-matriarchy advertisement, do we see "sex differences minimized" as one of the many pros in opposition to the many cons to the right of this long list of apparent sex differences? That's just hypocritical.

[Deboche]

The chart still implies a lot about things that otherwise wouldn't be related. Especially that bit at the bottom, why associate the gender of a deity with political-economic systems? What makes ascetic philosophies like Buddhism so anti-egalitarian? And why, in a chart so clearly meant as a pro-matriarchy advertisement, do we see "sex differences minimized" as one of the many pros in opposition to the many cons to the right of this long list of apparent sex differences? That's just hypocritical.

Buddhism doesn't have a god.

The chart contrasts two different types of society. Whether the traits are good or bad is a judgment on your part. In relation to sex diferences, I think the author means differences in opportunity, legal rights, clothing, role in society and so on.

[Iapetus]

It's not worth it to do this again. If you want to discuss polygamy, there's a thread for it in Suggestions but know that polygamy isn't men shagging around, it's everyone shagging around. And in a primitive tribe, everyone takes care of young children.

I wasn't just discussing polygamy.

I was discussing all aspects of "matrist" and "patrist" societies.  Which you keep claiming occur in certain circumstances, and have certain features, but without giving much if any evidence for correlation, let alone causation. 

Nor have you given much evidence for your claim that dwarven society is currently "patrist", but (on the basis of dwarven biology) ought to be "matrist" (other than the repeated assertion than monogamy = patriarchy).