No, on RF, I've long been proposing the opposite of a dichotomy, ie, government & society have elements of both patriarchy & matriarchy. This is a continuation of other threads & posts in that vein.
OK. I haven't read the other threads. The thread title is "Americastan: patriarchy or matriarchy". I think that explains why you have received multiple posts pointing out the apparent false dichotomy.
I've mentioned that men dominate in politics.
But the fact that women elect them is significant.
Reading the OP, you'll see that power is not about the gender of the tool (eg, the prez), but about the hand wielding the tool (mostly women). With women driving the evolution & implementation of public policy by their votes
You did not mention that men dominate in politics in the OP. In any case, I responded to this argument in my previous post. You don't seem to have read it, but I'll expand on it. I said before that this position seemed to me to be either disingenuous or hopelessly naive. Frankly, I'm leaning towards disingenuous both as the more likely explanation and as the more charitable interpretation. The implicit logic of your argument is that women are a larger demographic at the national level, and that this is a significant measure of power. But that is trivially an unjustified conclusion, requiring an entirely too-shallow view of political power. Here are a few objections:
1) It misunderstands the nature of patriarchical hegemony as a cultural phenomenon. The second quote above makes the same mistake in this regard that I pointed out in your characterization of the question of "who rules the country?" It treats women voters as a monolithic block, almost like a political party, that can wield power in an entirely organized way via voting. But of course neither women nor men are so organized, not in a strictly gendered way. Patriarchy doesn't mean "all men vote in the interests of men" any more than matriarchy means "all women vote in the interests of women." And, regarding hegemony, many women hold social and political views which are patriarchical, and vote accordingly. This is often true of conservative religious women. And of course many men are feminist. Voter demographics can't capture this at all in either direction. The very definition of "patriarchy" or "matriarchy" in this context has to do with an assessment of cultural forces that shape society in more complex ways.
Beyond that, as I said before, the other impact of hegemony is in
who is running for office, and what support do they get from the donor class, political parties, and media. The point is that all of these social institutions reflect hegemonic cultural attitudes about gender, and limit the opportunities of women in a way that suffrage can't make up for on its own. Your argument implicitly hand-waves away that 80% of congress is male by suggesting (but not stating outright) that it must reflect the wishes of women, since otherwise they would vote them out. That is an obviously uncharitable assumption to make, and not justified by any evidence whatsoever.
2) It oversimplifies the nature of representative democracy. Neither voting nor the exercise of power by elected officials simply reduces to nationwide polling numbers. For example, there have been more self-identified Democrats than Republicans for over 70 years (cf.
Pew Research). Yet we've had presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, H. Bush, and W. Bush in that time. It would obviously be silly to claim that partisan affiliation measured at the national level is the most important measure of political power. In the same way, restricted to only a consideration of partisan affiliation, you would find it difficult to explain Republican control of the house of representatives. Even beyond partisan affiliation, you need to account for how a 52% share of the popular vote leads to 57% of the seats in the house (cf.
The Nation)
One conclusion is of course simply that voter motivations are larger than is captured by partisan affiliation. This also applies to women, whose motivations are larger than gender. But what is also missing from the analysis is the state-by-state nature of voting, which helps explain the discrepancy between popular vote and seats in the house. These complications also apply to considerations of gendered power in voting, especially taking in context the cultural nature of patriarchy. Women voters with feminist values living in especially conservative areas wield less power than similar voters in liberal areas, regardless of population numbers.
3) Your argument proves too much, which further demonstrates that it is an oversimplification. For example, consider
1920 Census data on gender. I chose that year because of the 19th amendment, of course. That census counted 106 million people in the US, and an "excess" of 2 million males. That is 51% male to 49% female. Obviously we can't compare voter exit polls from the early 1920s since they aren't available, but we can imagine that immediately following gaining the right to vote women were pretty motivated. Your argument would seem to imply that somehow patriarchy ceased to exist at this very moment, which is prima facie silly.
I'm neither opposing or favoring the welfare state herein.
To make it about whatever ideology you believe I have is an ad hominem red herring.
It's not actually an ad hominem. The problem is that your framing of the question is prejudicial, and that prejudice reflects an ideological bias unsupported by any argument. You wrote:
Some contra-indicators based upon the premise that women (more than men) are nurturers are......
2a) Government moved from conquering other countries for material gain, to conquering
other countries for humanitarian reasons, ie, to force them into our progressive image.
2b) Government has moved from treating citizens as rugged individuals to treating them
as protected beneficiaries of largesse, eg, welfare, health care, Social Security.
You explicitly frame social safety nets and humanitarian concerns in foreign policy as anti-patriarchy, but there is no evidence to support that claim. The very premise that women are nurturers is itself an example of a patriarchical attitude. Your ideological preference for "rugged individualism" (i.e libertarianism) is also quite apparent here, but you give no particular reason to associate individualism with patriarchy and social welfare with matriarchy. You provide no historical evidence to support the claim that (for example) New Deal or Great Society social programs reflect an anti-patriarchical attitude.
Their election was the result of women being a powerful voting block.
Again, the gender of the politician becomes irrelevant if they represent the will of the voters.
You have provided no evidence to support this claim. In fact, according to Gallup, in 1932 more women voted for Hoover than FDR, and the gender gap was statistically insignificant in 1964:
"Attention to women faded in the election of 1932, dominated as it was by the Depression, and fewer observations were recorded. However, when Gallup surveyed expected voters in 1936, he asked those who had voted in 1932 to declare their choice. Of those who said they had voted, 63 % of the men were for FDR, but only 57 % of the women. Only 35 % of the men said they voted for Hoover, compared to 41 % of the women. (AIPO (Gallup) Poll #53). This differential voting pattern faded to less than two percent in Presidential elections until 1952...
The election of 1960 saw women once again fade from political sight. Some of this was due to the ongoing campaign of the DNC to downplay the idea that there was a woman's vote, and some was due to the rise of new issues. The gender gap dropped to between 2 and 3 % in 1960 -- too small to be statistically significant but implying that women still voted more frequently for the Republican candidate. The GOP women's division proudly declared that in the last three Presidential elections a majority of women voted for the Republican Party, and a majority of Republican votes came from women. (WD-RNC 1962) In 1964 as in 1960 the gender gap of 2 to 3 % was too small to be significant, but it was notable because, for the first time, women were more likely than men to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate."
(
Gender Gaps in Presidential Elections)
The evidence doesn't support your assertion that these changes in social policy are disproportionately driven by anti-patriarchical attitudes or the power of women voters.
