Jerry Seinfeld and the Creation of Patriarchy
This just in: men with power feel more comfortable with a clear gendered hierarchy.
*When Jerry Seinfeld was interviewed to talk about directing his new movie, he said he misses the “dominant masculinity” from that era.
He said, “There’s an element there that I think is the key element [of the 60s], and that is an agreed-upon hierarchy, which I think is absolutely vaporized in today’s movement.”
Seinfeld is not the only one drooling for yesteryear’s gender hierarchy.
We’ve turned back the clock 54 years by overturning women’s reproductive rights. Now even birth control is in jeopardy, unraveling decades of progress before our very eyes.
What’s happening here?
Are we in a time warp? Why all the regression?
In order to understand our current moment in history, we must place it within the larger historical narrative.
Gather round everyone. It’s story time!
*clears throat.
Once upon a time, nomadic hunter gatherer societies became stationary agrarian societies.
For the first time humans claimed ownership of land and property. But how to pass property from one generation to the next?
Well once upon a time there were such things as matri-lineal societies where property was passed from mother to child. Ancestry was traced through the woman’s line and children would inherit the mother’s name rather than the father’s.1
This made perfect sense. Before paternity tests there was no way of knowing for sure who the father of a child was. Only a child’s mother was certain and provable because… well babies come out of the mother.
So of course name and property would move directly from mother to child! Of course ancestry and posterity would be traced through the mother.
Why would it be any other way?
Eventually certain men2 wanted control of property and legacy.
But how could they when there was no way of proving which kids were theirs??
Quite the conundrum!!
Unless…….
unless they controlled who women were allowed to have sex with.
What if they forced women to swear fealty to only one sexual partner?
What if they criminalized women for having sex before swearing fealty to one partner and then forbade them from having sex with anyone except her sworn partner?3
By strictly controlling women’s sexuality the paternal line would be secured.
Then property, name and power could pass through the male line.4
But how could they keep women from claiming their own property and power?
What if they institutionalized and codified female subordination in all areas of society— home, political, and religious?
What if instead of everyone having equal, innate access to food and shelter (as it was during hunter gatherer societies), they created laws that said you can’t have food or shelter unless you pay for it? Then withheld the ability to earn money from women? What if they made women dependent on a man just to eat and live in this world?
What if they withheld a woman’s access to reading, writing and education?
What if they ensured that only men’s stories get told and written down? What if they transformed the limited narratives of patriarchy into just the way it is/ has always been/ must be?
What if they excluded women from public life and public power entirely by limiting their sphere to the home?
What if they told women that serving husband and children was the sole purpose of their existence, their sacred duty and the divine will of God?
What if they demoted all existing female deities from powerful creators to subordinate wives and mothers to male Gods? What if they then erased female goddesses altogether?5
What if they re-wrote all origin myths and creation stories to exclude women—the natural creators of life— and claimed male gods created all life on earth?
What if they cemented male rule as the will of God by only sanctioning male-written scripture and male clergy?
What if they cast out any woman claiming spiritual authority and called her a witch?
What if they erased or burned or buried spiritual texts written by women?
What if they severed women from power to change anything by not allowing them to vote, run for public office or hold any position of power?
What if when a woman tried to change something or voice dissent they called her crazy, shrill, unlikeable, ugly, stupid or hysterical?
What if they made a woman’s private decision to abort a pregnancy a public crime?
What if they policed what a woman is and isn’t allowed to wear and laid all the blame and responsibility for men’s sexual misconduct on women?
What if they told women they aren’t sexual beings at all? And shamed those who were?
What if a woman’s only power lied in her ability to attract a man; thus ensuring that women are so focused on their own bodies being thin and beautiful that there is little energy or vision left over for anything else?6
What if they created such an unfavorable stigma around a woman being single and undesirable to men that women would do anything to avoid life without a man?
What if they limited the height of a woman’s wildest dreams to peak at wedding dresses and baby showers?
What if they could keep power from women for so long in so many areas that even centuries later women completely forget they are the creators of life- the logical lineage through which to pass property and power?
……..
………………..
……………………….
And now it’s 2024.
The extent to which each one of these centuries-old “what ifs” still linger today is baffling and infuriating. There is still so much to be done.
But.
Should we not take a minute to understand just what a revolutionary time we are living in?
It’s only been 100 years or less since women7 have gained access to:
voting (1920) and holding public office
legally controlling when and if to have children (birth control was legalized in 1960, still working on abortion access…)
not being discriminated against to gain employment (1964)
having their own bank account and credit card (1974)
obtaining a mortgage without a male co-signer (also 1974).
Each one a massive victory in long, hard-won battles. Freedom our great great great great grandmothers could scarcely dream of.
Do we comprehend just what an unprecedented time this is?
Women can provide for themselves, live by themselves. Never have women had less need for men than right now. Never.
And since women no longer need men, in order to have them in our lives, we must want them.
And many don’t.
In that interview Jerry Seinfeld said, "We have no sense of hierarchy, and as humans, we don't really feel comfortable like that."
Let's make one little tiny, incredibly crucial correction to Jerry's statement there: "… as humans MEN, we don't feel comfortable without a hierarchy."
Yes we know Jerry. Men in power have been showing us their discomfort with equality for all of recorded history.
Is it any wonder Jerry Seinfeld wants to return to a dominant masculinity?
Is it any wonder Harrison Butker is singing the praises of limiting a woman’s sphere back to the home?
Is it any wonder they want to take away our ability to choose if and when to have a baby?
All of it is so utterly predictable.
Patriarchy’s rule is contingent on controlling women.
Never has the system that has ruled the world for centuries been in greater jeopardy.
And patriarchy is not going down without a fight.
But neither are we.
*This post was originally posted June 2024
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In 7500 BCE Neolithic communities near Turkey the woman would stay in her same childhood home throughout her life. If partnered, her partner or partners would come and join her in her home with her family, rather than the other way around. In the transition from matri-lineal societies to patri-lineal societies women began moving to a man’s home.
Let’s distinguish here the difference between patriarchy and men. Patriarchy is a dominator system created by a select group of men that has allowed the greediest, most power-hungry to rule, which has harmed both men and women throughout history.
ah the sacred institution of marriage.
The earliest written record of legal codes, The Code of Hammurabi, outline these sexual laws for women and men’s ownership over their wives in horrifying detail.
This is exactly what happened to Ishtar- the first deity of which we have written evidence. As well as Asherah- once the all powerful queen of heaven in ancient Sumeria, then demoted to Yahweh’s wife, then erased altogether.
“A cultural fixation on women’s thinness is not an obsession with female beauty but an obsession with female obedience…… Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history. A quietly mad population is a tractable one.” - Naomi Wolf
Also! Obsession with beauty standards is far from a recent phenomenon. Read about women’s anti-aging efforts all the way back in the 1100s in
‘s excellent article Women Aging in PatriarchyWhite upper-class women have had the advantage in all of these areas.
This is amazing. You talk about patriarchy, not in abstract, philosophical terms, but in a way that brilliantly takes people along for the ride—from the origin to the current pop culture. You even have gems hidden in the footnote, like this, which we believe deserves to be highlighted "Let’s distinguish here the difference between patriarchy and men. Patriarchy is a dominator system created by a select group of men that has allowed the greediest, most power-hungry to rule, which has harmed both men and women throughout history."
I have been repeating for many years: "If 50% of the world were your personal slave labor force, and you had built your entire worldly fortune upon that privilege, how motivated would you be to preserve it?"
Now, add all non-white men to that percentage. What would that percentage be? Do you think what we're seeing right now are the last vestiges of the desperation to preserve it? What does MAGA mean? Exactly that.
There is no reason under God for more than half the world's population to be enslaved by a small group. I believe that women who profess to like it that way, only enjoy being considered part of what they consider the "elite " group and the accompanying "perks".