Prologue: Who Rules Who — Man or Woman?
In the last couple of decades, feminist propaganda has sought to persuade the world that women are powerless in society, and that men are the natural oppressors of women. It claims that wives are drudges in the hands of their husbands in the home; and that, outside the home, men have excluded women from political, economic and cultural power.
Some, like Ellen Galford of Britain, say: “Women are slaves and men are masters.”1 Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, eds., Picking on Men Again, London: Arrow Books, 1986, p.88.
Some, like Andrea Dworkin of the USA, say: “All housewives are economically exploited; all working women are.”5 Andrea Dworkin, Right-wing Women, London: The Women's Press, 1983, p.223.
And some, like Carol Hanisch of the USA, have even gone so far as to deny that women have any power at all over men:
The term men’s liberation was derived from the term women’s liberation and thus insinuates that women have power over men. Its very name infers liberation from female domination and is therefore an inversion of fact as well as women’s liberation principles.6 Carol Hanisch, "Men's Liberation", in Redstockings, Feminist Revolution, New York: Random House, 1978, p.72.
As a rule, those few women have not been taken seriously who have bothered to acknowledge female power over men: like Denyse Plummer, the Trinidadian calypso singer, who proclaims that “woman is boss”;7 Denyse Plummer, "Woman is Boss", on the cassette Who is the Boss?, Trinidad & Tobago: Multi Media Limited, 1988, CP 3889. or like the expatriate Nigerian actress Patti Boulaye, who says: “most men are controlled by women”;8 Interview by Rolake Omonubi, Sunday Tribune (Ibadan), January 22, 1984, p.11. or like the Argentinean, Esther Vilar, who said:
Women let men work for them, think for them and take on their responsibilities — in fact, they exploit them.9 Esther Vilar, The Manipulated Man, London: Abelard-Schuman, 1972, p.10.
This great division of opinion among women should prompt one to ask: Which kind of claim is true? Which picture is the illusion, and which the reality?
Conventional modern opinion, as well as the social science consensus, would appear to support the feminist picture. It is conventionally assumed that female power, if it existed, would be wielded by women, through some public system of authority. It is also held, by conventional expert opinion, that matriarchs (who would be the natural wielders of female power) are illusory; and that matriarchy (a system of females wielding authority) does not exist.
For instance, The Concise Oxford Dictionary (6th Edition, 1976) defines a matriarch as a “woman corresponding in status to a patriarch (usually jocular)”. The venerable compilers of that dictionary add that the word is derived “from Latin mater mother on false analogy of patriarch”. Treating the notion as a joke derived on a “false analogy” suggests that matriarchs are illusory, phantom figures. However, powerful matrons, often elderly, who dominate family groups and clans, who are patriarchs in all but their gender, are neither unknown nor rare.
Similarly, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th Edition, 1986) matriarchy is a “social system in which familial and political authority is wielded by women”. And that repository of conventional knowledge adds that “the consensus among modern anthropologists and sociologists is that a strictly matriarchal society never existed.” This is despite the fact that, in some African and Native American societies, women did have their structures of political authority parallel to and countervailing those of men.
When a definition will not allow us to acknowledge what is before us, it is flawed. For example, if we defined the sun as a square star, it would then be, strictly speaking, true that there isn’t and never has been a sun. But since such a claim flies in the face of our experience, we would have to reject that definition for not capturing the reality, and for misleading us into the absurdity of denying the existence of the sun we can see and point at. On similar grounds, we would have to reject the conventional definitions of matriarch and matriarchy for flying in the face of the examples cited above.
In any case, even if no “strictly matriarchal society” ever existed, that would not imply that female power did not exist. Authority is only one of the many types of power; and the wielding of authority is not necessary for the exercise of many types of power. Power without authority is neither unknown nor rare, as is recognized when it is said that someone is “the power behind the throne”.
Such obscurantist views from the organs of conventional knowledge suggest that female power has yet to receive the investigation it deserves.
Feminist propaganda and conventional knowledge notwithstanding, it seems prima facie odd to claim that women are powerless in society and, in particular, over men. If power is the ability to get what one wants, then women are far from powerless. Women do get, and always did get, what they want — be it riches, or thrones, or the head of John the Baptist, or routine exemption from hardships and risks which their menfolk are obliged to endure. That women operate by methods which often differ from those available to men does not in any way mean that women are bereft of power.
If women are not powerless, are they, perhaps, less powerful than men? Some feminists find it in their interest to have the world believe this. And for proof they point to the public structures of political, economic and cultural power, and show that these are almost exclusively occupied by men. But does that prove what they aim to prove? Not at all! All it shows is that in the public structures, which form the domain of male power, women are not well represented. If this under-representation is to prove that women are less powerful than men, it would need to be also true that those public structures exhaust the modes and centers of power in society. Alas, for feminist claims, they do not; for there indeed are other modes and centres of power which women monopolize. Such are the subjects of this inquiry.
In those centres, women control scarce resources, commodities and opportunities; and they distribute them. They exercise power through education, propaganda, directives, suggestions, rewards and punishments. They wield instruments of persuasion and coercion.
As this inquiry shall show, matriarchs (who wield female power) and matriarchy (an organized structure or institution for the exercise of female power) do exist, indeed have always existed. The power they wield is neither illusory nor a joke. Furthermore, in human society, it is not male power but female power which is supreme. Or rather, to change the imagery, however great male power may be, it is to female power what that one-seventh of an iceberg which is visible above water is to the six-sevenths which lies below the water line.
As we shall see, the male modes of power are actually tributary to the female modes, in as much as the fruits of male power are poured at the feet of women through the workings of female power. That men seek wealth, power, status and fame for the love of women is widely attested to by knowledgeable commentators. According to Esther Vilar: “Man’s work is only done with woman in view.”10 Ibid., p.39.
And from his studies of the human psyche, Sigmund Freud reports:
… in the greater number of ambitious day-dreams, too, we can discover a woman in some corner, for whom the dreamer performs all his heroic deeds and at whose feet all his triumphs are to be laid.11 Sigmund Freud, Character and Culture, New York: Crowell-Collier, 1963, pp.37-38.
From his own experience, Aristotle Onassis, an ambitious and very successful businessman of this 20th century, confirms this when he declared: “If women didn’t exist all the money in the world would have no meaning.”12 Jonathon Green, ed., Says Who?, Harlow, U.K.: Longman, 1988, p.598.
Moreover, male preoccupation with wealth, power, fame and status in order to win the love of women is quite natural, being rooted in the animal origins of humanity. As Robert Ardrey reports, it would be unreasonable,
in the light of our new knowledge of animal behaviour…to conclude that feminine attraction for wealth and rank, and masculine preoccupation with fortune and power and fame are human aberrations…13 Robert Ardrey, African Genesis, London: Fontana, 1967, p.162.
If the natural goal of male power is to pay tribute to women, then male power is naturally tributary to female power. If, however powerful a man may be, his power is used to serve the women in his life, that would make dubious the notion that men are masters over women. Because every man has as boss his wife, or his mother, or some other woman in his life, men may rule the world, but women rule the men who rule the world. Thus, contrary to appearances, woman is boss, the overall boss, of the world.
To understand why woman rules man, we need to examine female power and how it operates on men.