“This book has taken years of research,” writes award-winning science journalist Angela Saini. “The biggest challenge has been untangling the mass of assumptions that bog down this subject, disguised as objective knowledge.”
In The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule, Saini takes a rigorous, broad-ranging and illuminating look at the various historical iterations of patriarchy, and, in tandem, the progression of the feminist cause. The result is an uncompromising deconstruction of the complex manner in which patriarchy has knotted itself into our lives and societal structures, how this affects not only women, and the importance of not viewing history as a static, objective report.
This insistence beats like a pulse throughout the book, reminding the reader that it is necessary to interrogate the uncritical way we accept the organisation of society. More and more evident – and less ignorable – are the disparities created by categorisation and hierarchy, and how both play a role in patriarchy and capitalism. The Patriarchs is an urgent and necessary wake-up call of a book, teeming with research without being taut: managing to do the difficult thing of unpicking complex theory and academia, and fluidly delivering it in an accessible, thoroughly readable way.
There is so much to learn from Angela Saini, and The Patriarchs is a hopeful, essential read, not just for feminists, but for anyone with a stake in existence. Particularly urgent are the points Saini raises about the “devil’s bargain” of compromises feminists make within patriarchal states; whether that’s with the continued inequality faced by black women, or trans women, or poor women, or disabled women. Saini, quoting German Marxist Clara Zetkin, dismisses the idea that “there was some universal sisterhood wrapping ‘a unifying ribbon around bourgeois ladies and female proletarians’. Zetkin’s focus instead was on those at the very bottom of society’s heap.”
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The Patriarchs is a lesson in modern, inclusive, socialist feminism, a book that not only educates and forces the reader to ask questions, but that inspires hope. This hopefulness is everything, the understanding that the individualistic attitudes that have lacerated society into factions and fuelled paranoia and hatred stand in direct opposition to community and equality.
The strength of Saini’s arguments are in their in-depth intersectionality and highlighting how isolating the past into contextless segments – the way that racists, transphobes, sexists and homophobes do, for example – can be used to bolster bigotry with the precedent of longevity. “Evidence across cultures proves that what we imagine to be fixed biological rules or neat, linear histories are usually anything but. We are a species that shows enormous variation in how we choose to live, with remarkable leeway for change. By thinking about gendered inequality as rooted in something unalterable within us, we fail to see it for what it is: something more fragile that has had to be constantly remade and reasserted.” In this way, Saini looks at how colonialism, archaeological biases, individualism, religion, war, racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia have all relied on the patriarchal structure.
“There are no natural limits to how we make the future; only our imaginations and our courage. Yet, we hesitate. Standing at the precipice, we look back and feel terrified at what we might lose. Imagine instead everything we could gain.”
The crux of Hags is that women, once they reach middle age, become ignored and written off as valueless to society. However, Smith uses this as a Trojan horse to unload outdated and exclusionary views on gender masquerading as feminism
The opposite to Saini’s book would be Hags by Victoria Smith, a deliberately selective look at history filtered through a reliance on online discourse about feminism and gender. For Smith, a hag is a silenced, systemically ignored middle-aged woman and examples of this voiceless cohort include women who have commanded huge public followings for decades now. Using legitimate issues such as the gender pay gap and misogyny, Smith demonstrates what Saini meant when she wrote about the “devil’s bargain of feminism”.
The approach is scattered and tedious, with arguments hinged to memes and repetition. The crux of Hags is that women, once they reach middle age, become ignored and written off as valueless to society. However, Smith uses this as a Trojan horse to unload outdated and exclusionary views on gender masquerading as feminism. There’s little to no fact-based analysis of patriarchal hegemony and intersectionality and it lacks critical engagement with trusted sources. Where Saini takes a broad, worldwide approach to the history of inequality, Smith picks and chooses what benefits her own arguments. Where Saini emphasises the importance of self-examination and development, especially in activism, Smith appears to batten down the hatches.
Where Saini is hopeful of and for the next generation of feminism, Smith is patronising, dismissive and often just outright cruel about younger people and inclusivity. In the same way that Saini uses fact, research and considered analysis to develop her points, Smith holds up tweets, memes and blog comments as evidence. The worst part is that the book encourages the reader not to question anything, going to great lengths to make a mantra out of how criticising any middle-aged woman is unequivocally sexist and ageist.
