With production at the helm of the trajectory of life, we have been steered towards the austerity of alienation, so far so as to lead us to see ourselves as separated from this thing we call "nature". With the binary process of "is or is not", "do or do not", "left or right", it should be no shock that the gender binary is so prevalent that it virtually disappears. The last trick of any take-over is to convince you that it has always been. The dominance of production is the leading force, and most silent at times, in the control over women. The premise for this thought may never be spelled out, and never elucidated, but is no less there. We have become automatic in our thought, to the end that we have lost the ability even to think. Thought is now reduced to comparison against a preset of ideals, so deeply placed, that we often do not recognize them as thoughts at all.
If asked what a woman is, most people, male, female, or otherwise, would not tell you "women are what we use to make babies", however, that does not take away the underlying fact that societies have controlled women, and their ability or want to reproduce since the beginnings of civilization in the agrarian Neolithic Revolution. There is little reason to think that, prior to this "revolution", half the entire population would have, or could have, been relegated to a sub-level of social hierarchy, because it would have been impossible and non-beneficial without the formation of society as we now know it. Despite the technological expansion, little has changed within the social construct since this time. This separation is touted now as logical, with reason showcasing a "might makes right" theory" that women are somehow weaker than men, and therefore shaped to fit the role of domesticate homemaker, leaving men to do the physical toil of field labor. What is not recognized is that there is little to show this as being the case, evidenced in the outcome of labor being held in large numbers by women today. What is possible, and aught be examined, is the mindset following, not preceding, agrarian society, that production trumps all means. Where once, it is conceivable that egalitarian principles were beneficial, if only on a base level of survival, hierarchy and dominance would be the tone for a settled society based on production. The theory of socialism highlights this tendency as well, with it's forced labor imperative, where the ruling tendency is not always direct authority of another person, rather the authority of the meme itself. If then, we can see that a ruling force of slave-ship mentality is not merely brute force, but a force of thought, it becomes easier to understand the patriarchal rise.
In a mindset of production, that which produces results wins. As we have viewed the land, so we shall view ourselves. The land is fertile, and can produce food, but the amount of food, and food for whom, is dependent greatly upon the control measures placed upon it. An area of jungle that is untouched by agriculture is a bounty of food, but not all edible by humans, and the food that is, is not always able to be stored away in vast reserves necessary for survival in sedentary societies through harsh seasonal changes. It must then, in the goal of production, be razed and re-birthed, impregnated by the seed of labor to produce what is desired. When we view the land as a resource, and see only what we can produce, we take away the life of the land, and it's importance of existence for it's own sake. This we also do to women, because women can produce children, another product necessary to the growth of workers and society. The growth imperative is the control, the whip holder. Women then, have been subjugated as a factory for life, and treated much as we treat all other domestic crops and animals. Of course, even the most ambivalent meat eater would cringe at the telling of the torture of factory farmed animals, if confronted directly with it, but indirectly consents to the process not by only consuming the product, but by believing the story. Whether or not the eater of said meat stops consuming the factory farmed animal's flesh, the concept of production does not escape that of any domesticated food, and continues so long as the only source of life is under controls. When women have come forth with the recognition of this state of inequality, they are met with some sympathy but mostly disregarded and placated with pay raises and new laws, but never the changing of the story. Women have the right to abortion, jobs and education in this country, but to what ends will any of this serve, if the woman is still raped, exploited and taught the re-installment of patriarchal dominance by our schools? Even a change in curriculum would not change the very base element of the school itself, it's purpose: to produce workers! There is plenty of "evidence" to support the notion that educated women have less children, but do we even ask why the question of how many children a woman births is relevant? It is relevant because it is how we define and control women as a whole. A maker of children, or not a maker of children, but rarely an equal, and if even, only in economic terms, but still a woman. The hatred of women extends to the hatred of children and the hatred of life itself. This will never be remedied with any societal shifts, but only with the destruction of the societal foundations. To make women equal workers is only to enhance the progress of progress, but never to validate the existence of any life based purely on it's existence.
Perhaps most sad, is the inability of leftists to understand this origin. With work as a driving force, they pile through the world uniting forces to take over the means of production, without ever recognizing what production has produced. Otherwise fighting for social equality, but still holding the recipe for inequality so dear is the rapacious nature of domestication. The gender binary itself could have originated in this mode of thought. Definition is the key-guard of control. Science requires categorization of all things, and in a technocratic world, nothing refutes science. The shift from agrarian living to technocracy is not a shift at all in some ways. In many ways, it is a continuance of the same social order, hellbent on dominance. We cannot eat steel, but need it to protect the food. We cannot eat bombs, but need them to secure the land. We cannot eat computers, but need them to track the shipments of crops. We cannot eat cameras, but need them to monitor the stores. In the same sense, we cannot eat women, but use them as incubators for our armies. This is the underlying force of control that exists. All other societal imbalances are secondary, and if we intend to maintain mass society, and industrial life, even with the egalitarian work forces controlling the means of production, we would have to accept rape culture, because that is the inevitability of a production based society. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the women of the not-too-distant dystopian society are controlled and valued only for the reproductive abilities. This story can be viewed in the present tense as the paradigm of civilization itself. The focus of some environmental groups today seems to be on over population, but rarely seek the origin of the population expansion. While agriculture may have given rise in the ability to feed more children, and sedentary life required the use of more workers, the doctrine of control lies in the production mindset itself. Daniel Quinn has espoused the ideas of food abundance being the origin of population growth, but this lacks a few elements of understanding, or rather frames certain elements into understanding without looking at others. The idea that food abundance creates population does not account for the wealth of food the unfettered world contains. Pre-Agrarian society was not afflicted with massive famine and starvation, because the world before agriculture was much more bountiful than the monocropped world of today.
The world of gathering and hunting was not a world that did not allow for population growth based on it's lack of food, shelter or water rather based in it's lack of social structure of hierarchy and mindset of production that is inherent to agricultural life. It is also not as if the switch occurred in one lifetime, or even five generations but over a long period of time, ranging possibly in the high thousands of years. The social structure of agriculture did not, then, precede agricultural life, but followed it, and could be said to be a product of it just as population growth is a product of it as well. It is then easier to say that population growth is a product not of the food, but of the social structure that the life-way demands. The food has been there for hundreds of thousands of years, but the control over the food has mandated the control over all life, and maintains itself through the subjugation of half the population, relegated to duty of baby production first, sexual commodity second, and possibly human being third. The very roots of gender role lies in production oriented living, be it agrarian, industrial or technocratic. So long as the concept of progress and production are in play, we will see such gross inequities that allow for all inequity.
The historical lens we use is short sighted and seeks only to benefit the story it promotes. If we look back in our written history, we see that women of all religions, of all regions, are banished to a second class of living. This is not at all to say that this is the case for all cultures within the time period of our written history, because it clearly is not, rather to show that our written histories are merely one sided, and tell the one-world story in the first person narrative. It must be so to maintain that what we have is progress. If what we have differs from the trajectory of human life, as it does, then what we have is not progress of human life, but progress of the meme. The story tells us that history and science on are on the side of progress, doing everything in it's power to defend and perpetuate dominance imperative. The history of this culture however is not long, and the wildness that permeates everything is and is still alive today, and can be, must be mustered if we ever hope to see our selves break from the prison of production.
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