# The Inevitability of Patriarchy By Steven Goldberg **URL:** **By** Riqui Leon **Published:** April 1, 1974 --- “Recommended reading: Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, which deals with the need for self-esteem and independent purpose in women and men alike.” The Inevitability of Patriarchy was written by a sociologist at City College of New York. Prof. Goldberg has put together a cogent and internally logical argument for the biological origin of male dominance over females. Claiming to respect the "feminist assumption" that human nature does not dictate inherent roles or tasks according to sex (except for giving birth and exerting "great strength"), he proceeds to build a case based on his own hypothesis: that the traditional, establishment male/female roles stem from our differing genes. His protests notwithstanding, Goldberg has an axe to grind—and it's a collectivist, anti-individualist axe if ever there was one. A straw woman is set up: the feminist who promotes her desire for equality through the biological-versus-cultural-determinism debate. Whether or not Goldberg knocks over the straw woman is largely irrelevant—for feminists, libertarians or anyone else. The point is that he misses, or deliberately evades, the major issue: a society that classifies people according to biological factors over which they have no choice or control is destructive of individual liberty. If men and women have different genes, so do different men and different women. We don't need more excuses to label people; we need to think of ourselves and others as unique beings and not as group members. Incidentally, while Goldberg claims to have nothing more than a hypothesis, in _Sexual Suicide_ George Gilder refers to Goldberg's book as having presented "conclusive evidence that the observable relative aggressiveness of males is biologically determined." _Sexual Suicide_ doesn't even try to be scientific or logical. Its author's qualifications: former editor of Ripon Forum magazine. (Ripons are "liberal Republicans"—sometimes known as Ripoffs.) _Suicide_ is the longest editorial I've ever read and the least respectable. Through ridicule and misrepresentation, Gilder takes on women's lib, Masters and Johnson, open marriage, legalization of marijuana and whatever else his personal prejudices preclude. Everything that's wrong with "society" is attributable to the disintegration of the family, which is attributable to the separation of love and sex, which is attributable to the aforementioned no-no's. What to do? "The first and most important step in restoring a sense of order and purpose and community is to reestablish the social pressures and cultural biases in favor of durable monogamous love and marriage... that the women's movement and the Playboy philosophers find so 'oppressive.' It is women who will most benefit in the beginning, for their discomfort in the toils of male sexuality is already including a revulsion toward sex altogether." I haven't noticed any revulsion toward sex, except in the writings of those misogynists whose potency is threatened by anyone with something more than a slave mentality. These "pressures and biases" Gilder wants to introduce, we are told, would lead toward a more "tranquil, orderly, creative, productive society." And he may be right—at least about the tranquil part. Repressed individuals often appear tranquil. But Gilder's anti-libertarian, value-laden vision of the future is pretty bleak. Who says life should be tranquil? Or orderly? Or that if he's right, and the death of the family does lead to the extinction of the human race, it's anything other than evolutionary progress? These questions don't arise. We are to take Gilder's world-view as a given and "reason together" from there. It took me an hour to un-depress myself after reading this book, but it sure felt good when I stopped. My initial reaction when asked to write reviews of these books was elation: finally a libertarian would say something in print against sexism. I prepared an opinion poll, which I administered to 38 friends who are "good and true" believers—23 men, 15 women. Libertarians—at least these 38—don't seem to be caught up in the "argument from biology." To wit: 30 of them believe that men are no more innately aggressive than women; 22 didn't accept the idea of maternal instincts; only one thought that men are innately more creative than women. Only one disagreed that most non-physical differences stem from learned behavior, rather than inherited traits. Nine said that women have less economic value than men, which is why they don't earn equal pay for equal work. Yet most of them (26) agreed that in present society, women are more oppressed than men. You may wonder why I would take a survey in the first place. Well, we at Rampart College have had many requests for libertarian literature on sexism and feminism. There isn't any. The only major article I've ever seen on the subject by a libertarian was Rothbard's travesty in an old issue of _The Individualist_. I don't even want to comment on that—not publicly—except to say that it did serve to alert libertarian women to their voice, or lack of one, in the "movement." So I polled my friends in the hope of proving to myself, if to no one else, that libertarians can be somewhat consistent. I found their opinions reassuring. I can't imagine them finding _Inevitability_ or _Suicide_ even marginally worth reading. My basic quarrel (read: anger) with these books is their implicit assumption that male and female are the basically valid divisions between human beings. Yes, I know, _vive la difference_; I can tell one from the other and I like it that way. So what? What I want to know is, didn't these men ever hear of individual differences (as opposed to class/categorical ones)? How does one account for the passive man, the aggressive woman and the mixture of both traits to be found in the majority of humans? And, finally, what is the purpose of making such distinctions, if not to maintain a status quo that acts against an open social system? What do women want? From Freud onward, no one has come up with a satisfactory answer. Because there isn't any. There aren't "women who want..."—any more than there is a "common good" or a "general welfare." These are phrases that obliterate clear thinking and sensible understanding. What exists is the individual, and it doesn't help our ability to remember that fact, when we're bombarded with terms that trap us into viewing each other collectively rather than separately. Being self-directed and self-responsible, which each of us is by nature, means we don't have to play a part written by "society"; we can write our own script. Recommended reading: Betty Friedan's _The Feminine Mystique_, which deals with the need for self-esteem and independent purpose in women and men alike. _Reviewed by Riqui Leon / The Inevitability Of Patriarchy (256 pages, indexed) / BFL Price $6.95_