THE IDEOLOGICAL WAR
Undoubtedly, the patriarchal war that was fought at a physical level did also take place at mental and social levels. It is hard to know for certain how this ideological war took place, but the vestiges of it in the mythological knowledge that has survived up to our time, together with the evolution of the religious knowledge, comprise the best hints available.
The Venus of Willendorf, dating back around 25.000 years, is the best known icon associated to the imaginary of the goddess-mother. The large amount of similar statuettes that have been found all over Eurasia, together with the highly relevant feminine goddessess in ancient mythologies, seem to corroborate the entity of the goddess-mother as the first element of worship. This primitive divine identity would have very little to do with the contemporary concept of “god”, since it would probably lack attributes such as superiority, omnipotence or domination which are nowadays associated to said idea. The large magnitude of concepts as live or death would be what would lead us to imagine the magical faculties that, in time, would become divine entities, extending afterwards also to elements such as the harvest, war, the earth, the sky, fire, water, etc.
Since there was not a divinity imaginary previous to the goddess-mother, the mindset that would arise with it would be the result of a process of collective construction, based on the cohesion of a community led by the women-mothers. The rituals around this emerging divinity, more than worship ceremonies, would be festive spaces of celebrations, more similar to communal popular parties than to ceremonies of prayer. Those ritual congregations would probably be connected to astrological elements such as the moon cycles, or solstices and equinoxes, and they would help reinforce the bonds within the community. It is likely that, since those were divinities of fertility and procreation, sex be a central or recurrent element in those rituals. The mindset to be built with the imaginary of the goddess-mother would hardly allow men to exert violence against women within their clans, since they would be perceived as subjects of creation and elements to worship.
The rapes carried out within the raids of the men-warrior can be placed opposed to that ritual, communal and sacred sex. Those men would have perceived women as objects, as a part of the booty they deserved due to their victory. Between those two ends, a large range of sexual practices can be imagine, and those would condition the identity of man, since it is probably in the sexual field where gender identities were most precisely defined. We can see how sex was always linked to feminine deities, and was perceived as something to control and dominate by the masculine authority. The ideological war of religious conservatism, with taboo and stigmatisation as control tools can be better understood if we analyse it from this point of view: as tools for patriarchal control on the body and desire of women.
Understanding the evolution of human sexuality, and how it has affected the reproductive scenario and the relationships between genders is a key element to understand how the patriarchal domination narrative was constructed. However, the taboo generated around sex in the latest millennia, together with the sexual repression unfolded by the power institutions (mainly religious institutions) may make this task difficult. The current social construction of human sexuality is largely away from the sexuality of other animal species, since its current redefinition around property, shame, sin and guilt has constructed an imaginary which is hard to analyse without offending anybody’s sensibility. The hypersexualisation that can be found in advertising and other expression of the hegemonic western culture take a part in aggravating the difficulty of a correct analysis.
The Masculinisation of Divinity
The improvement in live conditions that agriculture and stockbreeding meant brought together a demographic growth of human communities, and that led to increased conflicts and wars between communities. As clans of men-warriors were consolidated, warlike rituals started to gain more and more relevance, generating an imaginary with masculine divinities that would defy the power of the goddess-mother. Those gods-warriors, forged with blood and fire in the frenzy of battle, would make it possible to justify acts of violence beyond the principle of self-defence, promoting genocide of the rival communities. With them, the ritual of sacrifice could start, making the act of killing a divine experience, as opposed to the act of giving birth associated to the goddess-mother.
The brotherhood between men-warriors closed ranks against the sisterhood and the leadership of the women-mothers, constructing narratives where masculine entities, strong and brave (essential qualities for the warrior) made bloody and heroic warlike feat. Thus was constructed a cultural substrate that allowed to redefine the position of the man, not only in warlike clans, but also within the villages that were gaining more and more importance, and where, till that moment, they had been pussed into the background. The imaginary of the goddess-mother, which had emerged in a peaceful way in the human narrative lost its hegemony to the imaginary of the god-warrior that imposed themselves through force, war and domination.
At a tangible level, the increase and development of the military needs led to a technological race that, with the development of smelting, opened the door to the age of metal. Peaceful societies were annihilated when facing the progress of military technology, and the relationships between different communities were redefined in terms of winners and losers, oppressors and oppressed, masters and slaves. Each military victory convinced the men-warriors that their gods were stronger than those of their enemies, and the processes of enslavement and cultural assimilation against the defeated communities generated societies beyond the tribe or the clan. This gave way to larger collective identities, always centred on the superiority of the victor people, generating an imperialistic imaginary of territorial expansion which, in time, would open the door to the nationalist narrative that would dominate the human mindset.
The institutionalisation of domination and violence against the defeated people, as well as genocide, was centred in two elements: on the one hand, the defeated enemies were taken up as slaves; on the other hand, the payment of taxes and levies were imposed to the communities that kept their freedom. The hierarchisation and stratification of that divided the society in classes as a result of war, gave way to the structures of State, where reduce elites ruled on larger and larger territories. The god-warriors became established, fragmenting the goddess-mother in various feminine deities, and constructing religious imaginaries where gods and goddesses competed for being worshipped by humanity. The deities of the defeated peoples were either absorbed or syncretised, leading to fluid pantheons in constant reorganisation.
The hierarchy of human societies was also translated to divine societies, and the privileged position of a god-warrior in the pantheons we know nowadays (Horus, Marduk, Teshub, Zeus, Jupiter, etc.) reflects the patriarchal domination of the religious imaginary, opening the door to the monotheism of a masculine god. The syncretisation of the deities in one only god, annulling the feminine identity from the divinity imaginary would lead to the definitive invisibilisation of the woman in the society.
While the privileged classes were able to devote time and effort to know and understand their diverse deities, the oppressed classes, particularly the slaves, found in monotheism a simple form of unity and resistance. The imaginary of an only supreme god, omnipotent and omnipresent, placed all men as equals in the eyes of god, defying the stratum societies of masters and slaves.
Moreover, the patriarchal narrative that was extending also among the oppressed men would entail a strong dissociation of their gender roles: on the one hand, they were able to impose themselves on the women of their condition; on the other hand, they had to serve the women in higher strata. This would probably produce a strong misogyny in them, increasing the violence against “their” women. That resentment of the enslaved men against the woman, and the leading role of those in the dissemination of monotheism would lead to the evolution of societies to come into the expression of patriarchy.
Man as an Exclusive Political Subject
As cities and commerce grew more and more important, politics was consolidated as a tool for pacification (“politics is war without shedding of blood”), facilitating a larger circulation of people and goods. The “free” men rushed into the public life to consolidate their power, not only in the battlefield, but all the spheres of society. Marketplaces, squares, administrative and government centres are dominated by men. Together with the religious temples, which relied on priestess for millennia, ended up being controlled by men. Women were set aside to the private space as “ladies of the house”, aiming at tying them to reproductive labour and pushing them aside from the politic life. With some exceptions, women barely had any legal weight, and they existed in the social and political life through men, be it their father, husband or son.
The patriarchal social institutions need of patriarchal family institutions, and marriage got consolidated as a domination tool on women. The Hammurabi code, the first known legislative framework, describes the conjugal institution based on a commercial exchange, where the man takes possession of the woman after paying a certain economic amount to her father, her previous owner. The narrative that can be deduced from its 282 laws makes clear the strong patriarchal character of the Sumerian society, the first known State system.
With the beginning of what we understand as philosophical knowledge in ancient Greece, some thinkers tried to rationalise the sexist oppression, aiming at providing scientific explanations to justify the rule of men over women.
A token of that is the thinking of Aristotle, one of the most influential thinkers for the western narrative, who defines the man, in his biology treatises as the representation of the human being, describing the woman as a “mutilated man”, an imperfect man. He states that her soul is inferior than that of the man, as are the souls of animals or slaves. His ideas on reproduction and his conception of the female body were studied and repeated by men for centuries, instilling his philosophical view of man as shape and woman as matter; man as subject and woman as object.
However, it was the Roman man who draw the most popular profile in the masculine imaginary, due in part to the idealisation that it experienced with the Renaissance in the Western Europe. The mentality of the man-warrior in the ancient Rome was based on the duality soldier-peasant and inspired on the war god, Mars, held the symbol that is nowadays attributed to man and masculinity. This solider-peasant would fight in far lands serving the empire, and aspire to return to his home in victory, to toil the land, enjoying the privileges that entails being a part of the largest domination structure of the known world, with what was known as pax romana. His duty and serfdom to the empire were considered as superior than anything else, being a clear inspiration to the fascism that would be redefined in the Italy of the 20th century.
The Roman civilisation made a further progress in the invisibilisation of women, solidifying the patriarchal domination throughout the massive extension of land it got to control. During the centuries that its rule covered three continents, it was consolidated as the maximum expression of the empire of the ancient times. Based on conquest, standardisation and assimilation of other peoples and cultures, they designed a system where, both literally and metaphorically, all roads led to Rome. This is undoubtedly a paradigmatic example of the model of central civilisation.
SOURCE: THE INTERNATIONALIST COMMUNE OF ROJAVA
