There's some good food for thought here. I'm of two minds about the concept of the 'patriarchy.' It's such a nebulous and often ill-defined term that makes it easy to dismiss entirely. But I think patriarchal culture does still exist, at least in Western societies. Modern Western society is the result of thousands of years of domination, slavery, exploitation, etc. and these ways of life persist to this day in all sorts of ways. Every aspect of living depends on how we can manipulate, erode, and exploit the Natural world in as many ways as possible, and these are remnants from many, many years ago when predominantly men engaged in dominator culture (herding culture, for example, paved the way to the modern factory farm - a horrific practice that never should have been normalized).
I think about patriarchy from this historical context, not for example, when it comes to talking about pay gaps, or #MeToo, or other complaints made about the 'patriarchy' today. I hate the way that it's framed now - rarely is it expressed in a way that I personally resonate with.
A culture that engages in partnership and co-existence is key, but I don't think that can ever be possible because we are so deeply entrenched in dominator culture.
Modern life has made all of this even more confusing to navigate. The problem is both sexes are ignoring what is needed most: The ability to partner, co-exist, and nurture compassion -- Women are now engaging in these 'dominating' practices (as I expressed in my latest piece), and men do much of the same, just in different ways. It's a lot to grapple with.
The connection you make between patriarchy and animal husbandry is bang-on... One of the strongest predictors of a patriarchal society is livestock herding. There has NEVER been a gender-egalitarian pastoralist society (that we know of). Not one.
This is probably the single strongest association between culture and "material conditions" (a.k.a. lifeway) that I've found in my time of studying anthropology.
If you're interested in working with me to develop a piece based on this idea, let's talk. It's one of the most interesting things that I've found, because it's just completely unambiguous. It is exceedingly rare for anything in anthropology to be unambiguous!
This will be a very interesting article to read. Grateful if your piece could also cover some things I am wondering about:
1. The correlation between 1. “stability” of food sources (includes both temporal/spatial stability of food provided through agriculture as well as through food storage techniques — probably grain as no refrigerators back in the day??) and 2. the formation of hierarchical societies in humans.
If there is a positive correlation between the two, it implies that when food sources are more spatially/temporally unpredictable that more cooperative behaviours would be exhibited in humans.
If there is an inverse relationship (negative correlation), it implies that abundant food sources (or resources in general for that matter) would be accompanied by more competitive and dominance based behaviours.
I have tried to condense my 80,000 word dissertation drawing on over 650 studies in this comment (my systematic review was related to supplementary feeding in wild birds but I did look a a few general reviews and meta-analyses that were across animals):
2. In animals, more stable food sources tend to result in more competitive and aggressive behaviours (and sometimes also more destructive behaviours , which I also studied).
If you find the opposite is true in humans — that more stable food sources = more cooperative behaviours and less stable food sources lead to more hierarchical/aggressive/ competitive behaviours, then I’d be grateful if you could explain (or hypothesise!) why.
3. Also would be interested to hear evidence for whether 1) the type of food sources (as I see Rozali has posted about pastoralist societies above and elsewhere writes about vegetarianism/veganism) moderates or mediates* the relationship between 2) food availability and 3) presence /type of hierarchy.
*statistical terms for the lay reader
And in all cases, would be great to understand the type of evidence you are drawing on, the judgment calls we can/cannot make based on its quality, the types of analysis used and assumptions therein.
I’m assuming for quantitative analysis it’d be mostly multiple linear regression with random factors and fixed factors (possibly a space-time autocorrelation matrix since we are talking spatial/temporal availability of resources), probably Poisson/negative binomial distribution. I’d probably use information theoretic modelling (“what’s the likelihood of the model, given the data?”) instead of / prior to null hypothesis statistical significance testing (“what’s the likelihood of the data, given the model”).
But it all depends on quality of evidence - my own studies were in birds so in real time whereas this would be drawing on archaeological data which I don’t know how to judge the quality or reliability of.
Quick thoughts me from me as had a hectic week, will reply to your other comments in due course, Crow!
I think that Tara Van Dijk is saying that patriarchy was eroded in the 20th century
I definitely do not dispute that all European societies were patriarchal until about the 1960s. I think Mary Harrington is right that the introduction of the birth control pill was a big part of what changed everything.
Anthropologically, we can get finer layers of meaning if we consider patrilocality/matrilocality (whether spouses live with/near the wife's family or the husband's family) and whether a society is matrilineal or patrilineal.
In every way, Western civilization has been patriarchal, going all the way back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans.
What I think Tara is saying is that there was a momentous shift in the 20th century... probably starting sooner with the "tender years" doctrine in the U.K. (in the mid-1800s).
(The tender years doctrine states that a young child should not separated from its mother)
In a world where divorce is easy (and where many couples never get married in the first place), the tender years doctrine eroded a lot of the power that husbands have over their wives.
After all, most mothers would do pretty much anything to avoid being separated from their children. Prior to the tender years doctrine, custody was given automatically to the father (at least in British common law).
Clearly, that's not fair, and provided a legal framework for men to dominate women. But now that it is relatively easy for a woman to leave the father of her children, much of the coercive power of the patriarchy is gone.
That is the argument, as I understand it. Maybe Tara will comment to shed more light on things.
Crow is right that mothers will do pretty much anything to avoid being separated from their children and unable to protect them. That gives fathers a lot of leverage to use the children as revenge against a spouse who leaves them. Your thumbnail of the young child reaching out for the father that the mother is taking him from is contradicted by empirical data: https://womenscoalition.substack.com/p/are-fathers-irrelevant-do-only-mothers.
For instance, let's say that you and your new bride lived in Canada, near your family, Crow. You had a falling out and she wanted to take the baby back to Cheran, where she has family. You would be able to prevent her from doing that and launch an Interpol 'man'hunt to pursue her as an international criminal, if she did it anyway. The top list of FBI's Most wanted are mothers: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-fbis-war-on-moms.
I think you should take a close look at that Women's Coalition site before you conclude that 'it is relatively easy for a woman to leave the father of her children.'
I’m thinking about writing a piece called “AntiVaxxers’ Fetishistic Disavowal” or “A Pervert’s Guide to the Medical Freedom Movement.” It is going to be about jouissance, Lacan’s Four Discourses, the antivaxxers’ libidinal economy, how medical freedom folk secretly obsess and desperately desire the very thing they claim to despise - the Criminocracy, the Cabal, The Globalists. And if anyone gets upset? I’ll say “Gotcha! You’re denying it so you must really want it! You are asking for it!” Good bit of Freudian unconscious impulses theorising to make myself look smart.
Haha yes I am glad you can see the humour and the awkwardness of the two articles I just proposed. I’m surprised anyone liked my comments at all. Tara has beaten me to it on the one relating to fetishistic perverse fantasies of “The Cabal” or “The Globalists” – see her piece on Conspiracy Theories. I shall have to ponder an alternative, perhaps “The Pervert’s Guide to Christianity” or “Hysteric, Obsessive, Perverse and Psychotic Attachments to the Devil” on the theme of Christian obsession with Satan and The Devil. The Devil is everywhere! In Buddhist monasteries! In meditation centres! In yoga studios! In crystal shops, psychotherapy clinics, ancient folk music! In polytheistic religions! In Tarot cards! In tea leaves! In science labs! In Marxist atheism! In mosques and temples! In indigenous symbols! Ahhhhh!!!! And how Christians secretly LOVE The Devil, can’t get enough of him, have perverted fantasies of him, really want him to stick around even while pretending they want him gone…The Christians denying the truth of my work are proving my point! It’s their regressive impulses! Oedipal fantasies! Unconscious desires!
While I’m super impressed that you feature diverse viewpoints on Nevermore Media – bringing in a Marxist-inspired political economist and geographer into a generally anti-Marxist freedom movement space no less! – I just think this particular style of critique (drawing from Lacan, Žižec etc.) is the problem, because it doesn’t allow anyone to have a real conversation about real issues and is derogotary and demeaning. It creates a ‘thought-terminating’ presumption where above I’ve diagnosed Christians as “crazy” and “you must really be wanting your own suffering / The Devil” and case closed, no further conversation needed. End of story. I know best. I know you better than yourself, I know what you REALLY want. It’s destabilising – not because I’m dishing out ‘hard truths’ but because this kind of mental gymnastics is designed to shatter your sense of self.
There’s little you can say to someone who thinks you secretly want the very thing you’re telling everyone you absolutely don’t want (whether that be The Devil, or capitalism, or State, or vaccines, or genocide, or whatever). I know Tara wants to open up more nuanced conversations about a range of topics (rather than blaming One Cause), which is a worthy goal, but this doesn’t help do that because it casts anyone who’s concerned about the issues as unhinged, irrational, perverse, etc. And if you don’t respect the person you’re talking to, you won’t bother digging in deeper to understand their point of view or engage in any meaningful convo about facts, evidence, ethics and so on. I think Tereza refers to this as “Like the person you’re arguing with” which is hard to do if you’re quietly on your high horse judging them “Mwahaha, I know your psychology better than you!”
The alternative, more compassionate approach I could take here is to take your concern at face value and say, “Hm, Crow seems to be awfully concerned about xyz, let’s dig into that and understand it more.” Rather than, “Crow keeps harping on about xyz, he must REALLY want the thing he is so outwardly against.”
One of the greatest ever couple therapists the late Dan Wile critiques different forms of couple therapy brilliantly in his book Collaborative Couple Therapy, including psychoanalytic approaches which appears to be the sort of thing Tara is using here – with zero empirical evidence as is usual in this approach. It’s not that hard to set up a thoughtful experiment to measure this empirically (e.g. see if there’s a correlation between “level of endorsement of feminist attitudes” and “level of happiness when exposed to text/images/subliminal messaging etc. of men dominating women” I imagine there’s ways to objectively assess the latter that don’t involve self-reports.).
Dan was all about improving romantic relationships and when I studied couple therapy, I had the chance to speak with him in person. I’ll summarise Dan’s misgivings about the psychoanalytic approach from his work ‘After the Fight’ where he talks about five levels of attack. The virulence of the attack increases as you go up the scale:
From pp. 106 – 109 of After the Fight:
--
Level 1 Attack: Criticising Behaviour
Marie: “You never talk to me anymore!”
Paul: “What about Wednesday when you were upset about your mother and we spent the whole evening talking about it?”
Marie: “You said ‘oh that’s too bad’ and spend the whole evening watching television!”
Level 2 Attack: Criticising Feelings
Paul: “You should appreciate the good things we have instead of dwelling on the bad. You worry too much.” Translation: Paul is dealing with Marie telling him what he should and should not do by telling her what she should and should not feel.
Level 3 Attack: Criticising Character – Name-Calling
When Marie criticises Paul for not giving her “just a little human treatment”, Paul escalates and says, “I’d give you a little human treatment if you weren’t such a nag.” [I.e. criticising character/identity rather than actions]
Level 4 Attack: Making Accusatory Interpretations
Paul: “I’m tired of you blaming me when you’re really angry at your boss.”
Marie: “Well, I’m tired of your seeing me as your mother hammering at you to do this and not do that.”
People don’t like being told that they are taking out on people the anger they have toward someone else in their lives. They feel invaded. They think their minds are being played with. They feel they are being ‘psychoanalysed.’
Level 5 Attack: Criticising Intentions
Paul: “I don’t believe it for a minute. You’re making up these problems to make me feel guilty. You’re trying to punish me…You’re trying to destroy the relationship…”
And Marie would be stunned: “What are you talking about?”
Paul: “You know exactly what I’m talking about. You set this whole thing up. You wanted us to fight. You’re sitting there gloating loving every minute of it.”
And now Marie would be really bewildered. “That’s ridiculous. I’m hating every minute of it. Not only am I now gloating, I hate fighting so much I feel physically ill. And I certainly didn’t set it up. If I had, I sure wold have made it work out better.”
This would be a powerful rebuttal. Paul, however, might be undeterred:
“I didn’t say you did it deliberately. You set the whole thing up unconsciously.”
Marie would be speechless. There would be no way for her to refute the charge…Paul would be seeing Marie as an all-powerful totally-in-charge malevolent force. In his view, whatever happened would be what Marie wanted to happen. If they had a fight, she must have wanted them to fight. If she suffered, she must have wanted to suffer. If she set him up in a way that did not work out well for her, she must have had her reasons for that, too.
It is clear why a Level 5 attack is more provocative than the other four. Paul would have gone beyond criticising Marie’s actions (Level 1), feelings (Level 2), and character (Level 3) – and beyond making psychodynamic interpretations (Level 4). He would be shaking her sense of reality (Level 5). In making a Level 2 attack, he was telling Marie what she should want; in making a Level 5 attack, he would be telling her what she does want – and that there is something very wrong with her for wanting it.
--
In his books (and plenty of free articles you can read on his website online), Dan talks about a better way to communicate, one that is more collaborative than adversarial, one that respects that sometimes people make mistakes but can sometimes snap themselves out of it by recognising what they are doing and why it’s making their partner mad and preventing intimacy. “After the Honeymoon” by Dan Wile may be a good one to invest in if you’re recently married!
In using this style of analysis, the article is essentially at a Level 5. I think it’s completely unhelpful and I personally wouldn’t use this style of critique in conversation with people who I disagree with. There’s not much point in psychoanalysing someone as having perverse fantasies about something they actually actively stand against, even if that something happens to be something I stand for. We can’t rationally talk about facts when I’ve psychologically diagnosed the other party so dismissively to begin with.
And yes, I think that even psychiatry and its DSM and "diagnoses" are a waste of time! So many psychological 'diseases', most of which have overlapping symptoms...reminds me of physical diseases having so many non-specific symptoms lol. Some feminist psychiatrists have figured out that psychiatry is made-up, now we just need them to understand that so is the rest of disease diagnostic criteria..and especially diseases said to be caused by microbes which tend to have many nonspecific symptoms. But it's great they're so close: https://whatwouldjesssay.substack.com/p/lets-apply-sagans-razor-to-psychiatry/
And to round it out, I’ll write one for Caitlin Johnstone. “A Pervert’s Guide to Anti-Imperialism,” and “Anti-Imperialism’s Fetishistic Disavowal”. And about “Hysteric, Obsessive, Perverse and Psychotic Attachments to The Genocidal Maniacs.” And how crazy anti-imperialists like Caitlin are shrieking obsessively about…oh wait, there is actually a genocide going on.
Well, that's the difference, isn't it? Is there really a patriarchy going on?
In the Anglosphere, we're about two generations removed from anything that could be called a patriarchy (in the anthropological sense of that term).
Is the problem with Western societies really domineering fathers? A hell of a lot of children grow up without a father these days, and I haven't noticed things getting better.
Feminism was always a zero-sum game for me. Bring someone else down and step past them, all justified by your victimhood. As if 2 wrongs make a right. Assuming there was a misdeed to begin with. Wage gap anyone?
No accountability, responsibility or ability to be self-aware. Its narcism.
You go girl!!!!
There is no power. Only obedience. Take back your power and go live your life.
There's some good food for thought here. I'm of two minds about the concept of the 'patriarchy.' It's such a nebulous and often ill-defined term that makes it easy to dismiss entirely. But I think patriarchal culture does still exist, at least in Western societies. Modern Western society is the result of thousands of years of domination, slavery, exploitation, etc. and these ways of life persist to this day in all sorts of ways. Every aspect of living depends on how we can manipulate, erode, and exploit the Natural world in as many ways as possible, and these are remnants from many, many years ago when predominantly men engaged in dominator culture (herding culture, for example, paved the way to the modern factory farm - a horrific practice that never should have been normalized).
I think about patriarchy from this historical context, not for example, when it comes to talking about pay gaps, or #MeToo, or other complaints made about the 'patriarchy' today. I hate the way that it's framed now - rarely is it expressed in a way that I personally resonate with.
A culture that engages in partnership and co-existence is key, but I don't think that can ever be possible because we are so deeply entrenched in dominator culture.
Modern life has made all of this even more confusing to navigate. The problem is both sexes are ignoring what is needed most: The ability to partner, co-exist, and nurture compassion -- Women are now engaging in these 'dominating' practices (as I expressed in my latest piece), and men do much of the same, just in different ways. It's a lot to grapple with.
The connection you make between patriarchy and animal husbandry is bang-on... One of the strongest predictors of a patriarchal society is livestock herding. There has NEVER been a gender-egalitarian pastoralist society (that we know of). Not one.
This is probably the single strongest association between culture and "material conditions" (a.k.a. lifeway) that I've found in my time of studying anthropology.
If you're interested in working with me to develop a piece based on this idea, let's talk. It's one of the most interesting things that I've found, because it's just completely unambiguous. It is exceedingly rare for anything in anthropology to be unambiguous!
This will be a very interesting article to read. Grateful if your piece could also cover some things I am wondering about:
1. The correlation between 1. “stability” of food sources (includes both temporal/spatial stability of food provided through agriculture as well as through food storage techniques — probably grain as no refrigerators back in the day??) and 2. the formation of hierarchical societies in humans.
If there is a positive correlation between the two, it implies that when food sources are more spatially/temporally unpredictable that more cooperative behaviours would be exhibited in humans.
If there is an inverse relationship (negative correlation), it implies that abundant food sources (or resources in general for that matter) would be accompanied by more competitive and dominance based behaviours.
I have tried to condense my 80,000 word dissertation drawing on over 650 studies in this comment (my systematic review was related to supplementary feeding in wild birds but I did look a a few general reviews and meta-analyses that were across animals):
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/aryan-sky-gods/comment/118221039?r=qdiky&utm_medium=ios
2. In animals, more stable food sources tend to result in more competitive and aggressive behaviours (and sometimes also more destructive behaviours , which I also studied).
If you find the opposite is true in humans — that more stable food sources = more cooperative behaviours and less stable food sources lead to more hierarchical/aggressive/ competitive behaviours, then I’d be grateful if you could explain (or hypothesise!) why.
3. Also would be interested to hear evidence for whether 1) the type of food sources (as I see Rozali has posted about pastoralist societies above and elsewhere writes about vegetarianism/veganism) moderates or mediates* the relationship between 2) food availability and 3) presence /type of hierarchy.
*statistical terms for the lay reader
And in all cases, would be great to understand the type of evidence you are drawing on, the judgment calls we can/cannot make based on its quality, the types of analysis used and assumptions therein.
I’m assuming for quantitative analysis it’d be mostly multiple linear regression with random factors and fixed factors (possibly a space-time autocorrelation matrix since we are talking spatial/temporal availability of resources), probably Poisson/negative binomial distribution. I’d probably use information theoretic modelling (“what’s the likelihood of the model, given the data?”) instead of / prior to null hypothesis statistical significance testing (“what’s the likelihood of the data, given the model”).
But it all depends on quality of evidence - my own studies were in birds so in real time whereas this would be drawing on archaeological data which I don’t know how to judge the quality or reliability of.
Quick thoughts me from me as had a hectic week, will reply to your other comments in due course, Crow!
Somehow I missed this comment until now... Very interesting subject... have you read "Against The Grain" by James C. Scott?
Also, have you heard of the Beer Before Bread hypothesis?
I think you'll find this article interesting:
https://nevermoremedia.substack.com/p/how-beer-enslaved-the-world?utm_source=publication-search
I did indeed! Commented on the article itself, would love to hear your thoughts on my etymologising musings: https://nevermoremedia.substack.com/p/how-beer-enslaved-the-world/comment/123187448
I think that Tara Van Dijk is saying that patriarchy was eroded in the 20th century
I definitely do not dispute that all European societies were patriarchal until about the 1960s. I think Mary Harrington is right that the introduction of the birth control pill was a big part of what changed everything.
Anthropologically, we can get finer layers of meaning if we consider patrilocality/matrilocality (whether spouses live with/near the wife's family or the husband's family) and whether a society is matrilineal or patrilineal.
In every way, Western civilization has been patriarchal, going all the way back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans.
What I think Tara is saying is that there was a momentous shift in the 20th century... probably starting sooner with the "tender years" doctrine in the U.K. (in the mid-1800s).
(The tender years doctrine states that a young child should not separated from its mother)
In a world where divorce is easy (and where many couples never get married in the first place), the tender years doctrine eroded a lot of the power that husbands have over their wives.
After all, most mothers would do pretty much anything to avoid being separated from their children. Prior to the tender years doctrine, custody was given automatically to the father (at least in British common law).
Clearly, that's not fair, and provided a legal framework for men to dominate women. But now that it is relatively easy for a woman to leave the father of her children, much of the coercive power of the patriarchy is gone.
That is the argument, as I understand it. Maybe Tara will comment to shed more light on things.
The tender years doctrine states that a young child should not be separated by its mother...
From its mother?
Yeah, these feminists will stop at nothing to dissect children!
lol, thanks for catching that. I'll change it.
Love it!
Crow is right that mothers will do pretty much anything to avoid being separated from their children and unable to protect them. That gives fathers a lot of leverage to use the children as revenge against a spouse who leaves them. Your thumbnail of the young child reaching out for the father that the mother is taking him from is contradicted by empirical data: https://womenscoalition.substack.com/p/are-fathers-irrelevant-do-only-mothers.
For instance, let's say that you and your new bride lived in Canada, near your family, Crow. You had a falling out and she wanted to take the baby back to Cheran, where she has family. You would be able to prevent her from doing that and launch an Interpol 'man'hunt to pursue her as an international criminal, if she did it anyway. The top list of FBI's Most wanted are mothers: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-fbis-war-on-moms.
I think you should take a close look at that Women's Coalition site before you conclude that 'it is relatively easy for a woman to leave the father of her children.'
I’m thinking about writing a piece called “AntiVaxxers’ Fetishistic Disavowal” or “A Pervert’s Guide to the Medical Freedom Movement.” It is going to be about jouissance, Lacan’s Four Discourses, the antivaxxers’ libidinal economy, how medical freedom folk secretly obsess and desperately desire the very thing they claim to despise - the Criminocracy, the Cabal, The Globalists. And if anyone gets upset? I’ll say “Gotcha! You’re denying it so you must really want it! You are asking for it!” Good bit of Freudian unconscious impulses theorising to make myself look smart.
I gotta say, you make a good point. But are you really saying that you don't think that Tara's put her finger on something very real? I do...
Haha yes I am glad you can see the humour and the awkwardness of the two articles I just proposed. I’m surprised anyone liked my comments at all. Tara has beaten me to it on the one relating to fetishistic perverse fantasies of “The Cabal” or “The Globalists” – see her piece on Conspiracy Theories. I shall have to ponder an alternative, perhaps “The Pervert’s Guide to Christianity” or “Hysteric, Obsessive, Perverse and Psychotic Attachments to the Devil” on the theme of Christian obsession with Satan and The Devil. The Devil is everywhere! In Buddhist monasteries! In meditation centres! In yoga studios! In crystal shops, psychotherapy clinics, ancient folk music! In polytheistic religions! In Tarot cards! In tea leaves! In science labs! In Marxist atheism! In mosques and temples! In indigenous symbols! Ahhhhh!!!! And how Christians secretly LOVE The Devil, can’t get enough of him, have perverted fantasies of him, really want him to stick around even while pretending they want him gone…The Christians denying the truth of my work are proving my point! It’s their regressive impulses! Oedipal fantasies! Unconscious desires!
While I’m super impressed that you feature diverse viewpoints on Nevermore Media – bringing in a Marxist-inspired political economist and geographer into a generally anti-Marxist freedom movement space no less! – I just think this particular style of critique (drawing from Lacan, Žižec etc.) is the problem, because it doesn’t allow anyone to have a real conversation about real issues and is derogotary and demeaning. It creates a ‘thought-terminating’ presumption where above I’ve diagnosed Christians as “crazy” and “you must really be wanting your own suffering / The Devil” and case closed, no further conversation needed. End of story. I know best. I know you better than yourself, I know what you REALLY want. It’s destabilising – not because I’m dishing out ‘hard truths’ but because this kind of mental gymnastics is designed to shatter your sense of self.
There’s little you can say to someone who thinks you secretly want the very thing you’re telling everyone you absolutely don’t want (whether that be The Devil, or capitalism, or State, or vaccines, or genocide, or whatever). I know Tara wants to open up more nuanced conversations about a range of topics (rather than blaming One Cause), which is a worthy goal, but this doesn’t help do that because it casts anyone who’s concerned about the issues as unhinged, irrational, perverse, etc. And if you don’t respect the person you’re talking to, you won’t bother digging in deeper to understand their point of view or engage in any meaningful convo about facts, evidence, ethics and so on. I think Tereza refers to this as “Like the person you’re arguing with” which is hard to do if you’re quietly on your high horse judging them “Mwahaha, I know your psychology better than you!”
The alternative, more compassionate approach I could take here is to take your concern at face value and say, “Hm, Crow seems to be awfully concerned about xyz, let’s dig into that and understand it more.” Rather than, “Crow keeps harping on about xyz, he must REALLY want the thing he is so outwardly against.”
One of the greatest ever couple therapists the late Dan Wile critiques different forms of couple therapy brilliantly in his book Collaborative Couple Therapy, including psychoanalytic approaches which appears to be the sort of thing Tara is using here – with zero empirical evidence as is usual in this approach. It’s not that hard to set up a thoughtful experiment to measure this empirically (e.g. see if there’s a correlation between “level of endorsement of feminist attitudes” and “level of happiness when exposed to text/images/subliminal messaging etc. of men dominating women” I imagine there’s ways to objectively assess the latter that don’t involve self-reports.).
Dan was all about improving romantic relationships and when I studied couple therapy, I had the chance to speak with him in person. I’ll summarise Dan’s misgivings about the psychoanalytic approach from his work ‘After the Fight’ where he talks about five levels of attack. The virulence of the attack increases as you go up the scale:
From pp. 106 – 109 of After the Fight:
--
Level 1 Attack: Criticising Behaviour
Marie: “You never talk to me anymore!”
Paul: “What about Wednesday when you were upset about your mother and we spent the whole evening talking about it?”
Marie: “You said ‘oh that’s too bad’ and spend the whole evening watching television!”
Level 2 Attack: Criticising Feelings
Paul: “You should appreciate the good things we have instead of dwelling on the bad. You worry too much.” Translation: Paul is dealing with Marie telling him what he should and should not do by telling her what she should and should not feel.
Level 3 Attack: Criticising Character – Name-Calling
When Marie criticises Paul for not giving her “just a little human treatment”, Paul escalates and says, “I’d give you a little human treatment if you weren’t such a nag.” [I.e. criticising character/identity rather than actions]
Level 4 Attack: Making Accusatory Interpretations
Paul: “I’m tired of you blaming me when you’re really angry at your boss.”
Marie: “Well, I’m tired of your seeing me as your mother hammering at you to do this and not do that.”
People don’t like being told that they are taking out on people the anger they have toward someone else in their lives. They feel invaded. They think their minds are being played with. They feel they are being ‘psychoanalysed.’
Level 5 Attack: Criticising Intentions
Paul: “I don’t believe it for a minute. You’re making up these problems to make me feel guilty. You’re trying to punish me…You’re trying to destroy the relationship…”
And Marie would be stunned: “What are you talking about?”
Paul: “You know exactly what I’m talking about. You set this whole thing up. You wanted us to fight. You’re sitting there gloating loving every minute of it.”
And now Marie would be really bewildered. “That’s ridiculous. I’m hating every minute of it. Not only am I now gloating, I hate fighting so much I feel physically ill. And I certainly didn’t set it up. If I had, I sure wold have made it work out better.”
This would be a powerful rebuttal. Paul, however, might be undeterred:
“I didn’t say you did it deliberately. You set the whole thing up unconsciously.”
Marie would be speechless. There would be no way for her to refute the charge…Paul would be seeing Marie as an all-powerful totally-in-charge malevolent force. In his view, whatever happened would be what Marie wanted to happen. If they had a fight, she must have wanted them to fight. If she suffered, she must have wanted to suffer. If she set him up in a way that did not work out well for her, she must have had her reasons for that, too.
It is clear why a Level 5 attack is more provocative than the other four. Paul would have gone beyond criticising Marie’s actions (Level 1), feelings (Level 2), and character (Level 3) – and beyond making psychodynamic interpretations (Level 4). He would be shaking her sense of reality (Level 5). In making a Level 2 attack, he was telling Marie what she should want; in making a Level 5 attack, he would be telling her what she does want – and that there is something very wrong with her for wanting it.
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In his books (and plenty of free articles you can read on his website online), Dan talks about a better way to communicate, one that is more collaborative than adversarial, one that respects that sometimes people make mistakes but can sometimes snap themselves out of it by recognising what they are doing and why it’s making their partner mad and preventing intimacy. “After the Honeymoon” by Dan Wile may be a good one to invest in if you’re recently married!
In using this style of analysis, the article is essentially at a Level 5. I think it’s completely unhelpful and I personally wouldn’t use this style of critique in conversation with people who I disagree with. There’s not much point in psychoanalysing someone as having perverse fantasies about something they actually actively stand against, even if that something happens to be something I stand for. We can’t rationally talk about facts when I’ve psychologically diagnosed the other party so dismissively to begin with.
And yes, I think that even psychiatry and its DSM and "diagnoses" are a waste of time! So many psychological 'diseases', most of which have overlapping symptoms...reminds me of physical diseases having so many non-specific symptoms lol. Some feminist psychiatrists have figured out that psychiatry is made-up, now we just need them to understand that so is the rest of disease diagnostic criteria..and especially diseases said to be caused by microbes which tend to have many nonspecific symptoms. But it's great they're so close: https://whatwouldjesssay.substack.com/p/lets-apply-sagans-razor-to-psychiatry/
And to round it out, I’ll write one for Caitlin Johnstone. “A Pervert’s Guide to Anti-Imperialism,” and “Anti-Imperialism’s Fetishistic Disavowal”. And about “Hysteric, Obsessive, Perverse and Psychotic Attachments to The Genocidal Maniacs.” And how crazy anti-imperialists like Caitlin are shrieking obsessively about…oh wait, there is actually a genocide going on.
Well, that's the difference, isn't it? Is there really a patriarchy going on?
In the Anglosphere, we're about two generations removed from anything that could be called a patriarchy (in the anthropological sense of that term).
Is the problem with Western societies really domineering fathers? A hell of a lot of children grow up without a father these days, and I haven't noticed things getting better.
Feminism was always a zero-sum game for me. Bring someone else down and step past them, all justified by your victimhood. As if 2 wrongs make a right. Assuming there was a misdeed to begin with. Wage gap anyone?
No accountability, responsibility or ability to be self-aware. Its narcism.
You go girl!!!!
There is no power. Only obedience. Take back your power and go live your life.