<html><head><style type="text/css"></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div>This seemed like it could be a worthwhile addition to the discusion on patriarchy's origins and perpetuation. It's from Bertrand Russell's 1928 book _Power_ (pgs. 158-159 of the 1996 Routledge edition):<br><br>"The authority of parents has of course been reinforced by their possession of property, but if filial piety had not existed young men would not have allowed their fathers to retain control of their flocks and herds after they had become feeble.<br><br>The same sort of thing happened in regard to the subjection of women. The superior strength of male animals does not, in most cases, lead to a continual subjection of females, because male animals have not a sufficient constancy of purpose. Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilisation than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality. A man, says St. Paul, 'is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man' (Corinthians xi, 7-9). It follows that wives ought to obey their husbands, and that unfaithfulness is a worse sin in a wife than in a husband. [...] [Examples from code of Hammurabi, etc.]<br><br>The basis of the difference between morality for men and morality for women was obviously the superior power of men. Originally the superiority was only physical, but from this basis it gradually extended to economics, politics, and religion. The great advantage of morality over the police appears very clearly in this case, for women, until quite recently, genuinely believed the moral precepts which embodied male domination, and therefore required much less compulsion than would otherwise have been necessary."<br><br><br><br>-B<br><br><br><br><br></div></div></body></html>