Patriarchal Chaos

Disclaimer

There are two sides to this post, a secular side and a religious side. I will present the secular side first, warning the reader before it goes religious.

I don't want to defend my leftiness here. You don't have to read too many random selections of my political or religious posts to figure out I am a far-flung lefty social-justice-warrior type of person. Obviously I am very concerned about numerous issues regarding sexuality, politics and religion.

As an amateur anthropologist, I can't change the fact that I am a straight white guy. My question in this post is largely about what is the appropriate role for a heterosexual male in the new cultures we now find ourselves in. I am not defending any privilege or trying to justify any advantages, I just want to reorient to the new reality.

Secular

Society is inherently, by default, matriarchal. There has not been any globally influential culture where women did not exercise considerable authority over their children. Though this is a generalization, in today's industrialized democracies women have more authority over their children than men do.

The question then is what roles should fathers play, considering that the mother's role in most cases is guaranteed. There are numerous arrangements in today's industrialized democracies: strong authoritarian fathers ruling with an iron fist over their household, more laid back fathers attempting equal power sharing with the mothers, fathers separated from the household but who still regularly spend time with the children, estranged fathers who rarely see their children, and absentee fathers who's identity might even be concealed from the children. Besides investment in time in the children, a father's investment of financial resources in the children also varies greatly.

Let me here define purely matriarchal cultures as where women have clear authority above and beyond men in the same culture, usually with far less binding definitions of marriage than what we normally have in industrial democracies. Such cultures have failed to transition to industrialized democracy, 1st world level that most people on Earth want to live in. In fact they tend to be extremely marginalized, normally at the complete mercy of far more influential neighboring cultures who better manage the contributions men can make to child rearing.

This is patriarchal chaos: the mismanagement of the potential contributions men can make to the culture.  I do not here justify extreme patriarchy, where instead women's contributions to culture are stifled. For example the trend in the USA of men making more money than their female peers must be putting the USA at a disadvantage as women are given unequal incentive to contribute. However in any culture the women's contribution is guaranteed, and the question remains to what degree do the men contribute.

I recently read a blog post on how roosters, when their numbers are not sufficiently culled, routinely gang rape hens. It amazes me that animals with such simple brains could even grasp the concept of that kind of team work for that abstract of a cause: could it be that the most man-hating criticisms of maleness are true and in the wrong circumstances we are all gang rapists? This post apocalyptic road warrior scenario seen in some sci-fi films is one extreme example of patriarchal chaos.

The other extreme is where the men do not engage or contribute to the rearing of children what so ever. At first is seems like this far-fetched scenario would only be possible in one of the marginalized purely matriarchal cultures alluded to above. However there are numerous examples in recent history where a male parent was so involved in his career that even though he technically remained in the household with the children, compared to the mother, his time contributed to rearing the children amounted to a handful of hours per month, so that in the end his contribution was almost purely financial.

Numerous examples also exist where fathers contributed nothing at all in time or financial resources. In nearly all of these cases the mother is considered to be at a major disadvantage in society along with her children. Such cases exist also with fathers, and even with males making more on average than females in the USA, the father in this case still is considered to be at a disadvantage along with his children, simply because he does not have another parent with which to share the burden of raising children. But it is far more common to have mothers without the involvement of fathers, and their resulting disadvantage is the other end of patriarchal chaos I refer to.

Managing the resource that is maleness - or in other words patriarchy - is key to industrialized democracies. Sexual harassment laws in the workplace are a good example. When a man is being paid, it is reasonable to expect him to keep from making advances on his female coworkers - because THAT is part of what he is being paid to do. Today's definition of professionalism demands that male coworkers refrain from complicating the relationships in the workplace with their rooster-like instincts.

But what about in VOLUNTEER organizations? At a paid job, what the man's needs are being met through him receiving a pay check in exchange for his labor. But at a volunteer position what needs of his are being met and how? I hereby assert that in volunteer organizations men are NOT being paid to reign in their rooster-like instincts.

I think this is why we see more division of sexes when it comes to volunteer organizations ("Boy Scouts" vs. "Girl Scouts," "Masons" vs. "Eastern Star," etc.) In some cases it is fine and good for hetero couples to pair up as a result of their participation in the volunteer organization (Church-based singles groups, many college clubs, etc.) However when the volunteer labor of married people is desired, especially child rearing heteros, new hetero couples forming from these married heteros is extremely destructive, creating more patriarchal chaos in the form of divorces and less involved fathers.

This is the end of my explanation of patriarchal chaos from a purely secular perspective:

Religious

As an LDS who is clearly lefty, I understand the concerns around how the LDS religion handles major issues around sexuality, especially LGBTs and issues around women "not having the priesthood." Here I am not defending the Church's stance on anything LGBT, or their definition of who does and does not hold priesthood in spite of the literal text of various sacred temple ceremonies, nor do I think it is wise to tell women they do not hold the power of God to bless others, when the exact opposite teaching was practiced for the first half of our religion's existence. I am not here challenging or demanding that the LDS leaders to change their views, but I see these concerns clearly.

With that said, obviously the term "patriarchal chaos" is derivative of the term "Patriarchal Order" in LDS theology. With the most common and important type labor contribution in the all-volunteer LDS Church (Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching), or in other words the primary form of overt ministry our religion engages in, women contribute as much or more than men do. As you can see from the last few paragraphs from Secular section above, I think this is possible not because the type of labor is sexually divided (Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching are identical in practice,) but WHO we do that labor with is sexually divided. 

If women are formally recognized as holding the Melchizedek Priesthood after their temple endowment, this will create the following problem: asking a partner in a hetero child-rearing couple to spend significant time with a partner in a different hetero child-rearing couple of the opposite sex. So let's say a wife of a bishop is called to be the Elder's Quorum President. She calls a newly wed male college student to be her first counselor and single mother to be her 2nd counselor. Can you think of a place in secular society where it is considered appropriate for a married man to be spending many volunteer hours alone with a single mother and a woman of another marriage without his wife present? Social catastrophe, if not happening in most cases, would still happen frequently enough to counter the Church's family-building agenda and efforts.

THAT is the bag of worms the LDS church is not prepared to face when it comes to recognizing women as priesthood holders. Right now we are keeping it simple. Patriarchal Order is invoked to prevent patriarchal chaos, because as our excommunicated polygamist child bride raping enemy rivals have proved, under the wrong circumstances, we may not be any better than roosters: