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emma_reads95's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Quite good however it keeps refering to socialism and communism as the same ideology, which is a pet peeve of mine
thepurplebookwyrm's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
1.75
More accurate rating:
Okay, so technically, and to be fair, I guess it's between a 5 and 6/10 if you've legit never read anything whatsoever about this topic, and if it succeeds in pushing readers to seek further scholarship elsewhere. But for my part, and considering the legitimate flaws of this publication: yeah I can't possibly rate this anything above a 3.5-4/10.
I thought Angela Saini’s The Patriarchs would, essentially, give me an updated, and more multi-disciplinary version of Gerda Lerner’s very recently read The Creation of Patriarchy. That is: an overview of contemporary research, and theses, on the origins of patriarchal, or androcratic societal systems, from varying, but interrelated historical, archaeological, anthropological, etc… points of view.
Unfortunately, this book’s title turned out to be pure bait, and it is thus the most disappointing non-fiction I have read this year – so far. Indeed, whilst I’ll concede the book presents some older research (with massive caveats I’ll come back to shortly), you will not really get any sort of properly articulated, current hypotheses regarding the origins of patriarchy, much less an overarching thesis like in Gerda Lerner’s (infinitely more engaging, and scholarly) treatise.
My suspicions were quickly aroused as The Patriarchs's incredibly meandering and scattered structure became apparent to me. Ms Saini wasted spent a lot of time describing contemporary patriarchal cultures, and poo-pooing the baddies of Western Colonialism for exporting their Christian, then capitalist patriarchy to the Global South. Deep breaths: once again, we already know this, so what is the point of going over it again when you’re supposed to be looking into the fucking origins of it all, thousands of fucking years ago, hmm??
And no, spending a couple of chapters going into descriptions of some of the world’s few remaining matrifocal societies doesn’t compensate for this book’s (yet again) ‘spread-too-thin’ superficiality; yes, just as with the recent train wreck of a read that was Period, Ms Saini spent too much time including way too many details that weren’t immediately relevant to the (supposed) topic at hand, instead of focusing on findings, from various scholars and researchers, that actually pertained to the subject of the emergence of patriarchy. In a book that is shorter than Gerda Lerner’s, and pretends to look at the evidence from different fields of research, you can’t afford to lose sight of your purported topical through-line like this!
This book is undoubtedly a work of pop-science non-fiction, because it really shows in a bad way. I guess I’ve grown used to more academic, or scholarly publications, because the absence of proper citation work really freaking bugged me in this one. All the more so given I know, for a fact, that Ms Saini misrepresented some of the scholarship she cited in The Patriarchs. To be more specific: the way she talked about Lerner’s book (which I just read, so I’m not exaggerating here), and research, exuded so much bad faith it actively angered me*. I can’t express how thoroughly shattered my respect for her work as a journalist was reading this book. Given she did this, and given the lack of citations, how can I then trust she properly represented other scholars’ and researchers’ work?
Finally, The Patriarchs does this infuriating, ‘wokist’ thing of downplaying the very existence of patriarchy, and sex-based oppression, by not only being confusingly silent on the importance of humanity’s 'Ur-difference', that of sex, and the unequal division of reproductive labour that is inherent to our condition as gestating mammals… but also by watering down the actual meaning of patriarchy. I wish I’d written the relevant page number down before I got rid of my copy, so take all of this with a healthy pinch of salt of course, but the author more or less concluded her book with the idea that: ‘eh, patriarchy is a system of oppression like any other, where some people have power over others’. Some peopl. Riiiiiight.
When I read that, I was kinda like: fuck straight off, honestly. What is even the point of writing a book like this if we’re gonna, yet again, yeet sex class analysis out’ the window, and thereby minimise the historical struggle of women for the recognition of our dignity as human beings in the face of, and liberation from systems of male domination and privilege? I’m… just so sick of this shit.
So yeah, this was a paltry 3.5-4/10 read for me. But I’ll be generous and allow that if you’ve never, ever read anything about this topic, The Patriarchs isn’t the worst book you could pick up as an introduction to it. But please, for the love of Goddess, don’t stop your exploration there, because overall, this really ain’t it!
*Full context: I honestly don’t know if Ms Saini read The Creation of Patriarchy in full, because she contended, in The Patriarchs, that Gerder Lerner stated women’s subjugation was partly due to their weaker ‘biological natures’. But that is absolute horseshit, plain and simple. What Ms Lerner did, in her treatise, was look at several different factors which could’ve constituted necessary conditions for a gradual shift from primitive egalitarianism (or matrifocality) to male-dominated social groups, which then would’ve progressively coalesced into patriarchal state societies. Some of those factors are, yes, biological, insofar as women are the human beings who bear, birth, and breastfeed children, which creates an inherent, unequal division between the sexes in terms of reproductive labour. This is feminist theory 101, for fuck’s sake, and shouldn’t be controversial in the slightest!
Ms Saini also then went on to disagree with Lerner about the primacy of sex, as opposed to socio-economic class, as an axis of oppression, referring, specifically, to the historical relationship between marriage and slavery. Now, putting aside the question of ‘which axis of oppression came first’, since it’s mostly a matter of speculation and opinion at this point, the hilarious thing is that Ms Saini followed her blanket disagreement – delivered without any sort of supporting argumentation, mind you – with a near copy-paste of Lerner’s own development on the subject in The Creation of Patriarchy. I swear you cannot make this shit up – wild'.
Okay, so technically, and to be fair, I guess it's between a 5 and 6/10 if you've legit never read anything whatsoever about this topic, and if it succeeds in pushing readers to seek further scholarship elsewhere. But for my part, and considering the legitimate flaws of this publication: yeah I can't possibly rate this anything above a 3.5-4/10.
I thought Angela Saini’s The Patriarchs would, essentially, give me an updated, and more multi-disciplinary version of Gerda Lerner’s very recently read The Creation of Patriarchy. That is: an overview of contemporary research, and theses, on the origins of patriarchal, or androcratic societal systems, from varying, but interrelated historical, archaeological, anthropological, etc… points of view.
Unfortunately, this book’s title turned out to be pure bait, and it is thus the most disappointing non-fiction I have read this year – so far. Indeed, whilst I’ll concede the book presents some older research (with massive caveats I’ll come back to shortly), you will not really get any sort of properly articulated, current hypotheses regarding the origins of patriarchy, much less an overarching thesis like in Gerda Lerner’s (infinitely more engaging, and scholarly) treatise.
My suspicions were quickly aroused as The Patriarchs's incredibly meandering and scattered structure became apparent to me. Ms Saini wasted spent a lot of time describing contemporary patriarchal cultures, and poo-pooing the baddies of Western Colonialism for exporting their Christian, then capitalist patriarchy to the Global South. Deep breaths: once again, we already know this, so what is the point of going over it again when you’re supposed to be looking into the fucking origins of it all, thousands of fucking years ago, hmm??
And no, spending a couple of chapters going into descriptions of some of the world’s few remaining matrifocal societies doesn’t compensate for this book’s (yet again) ‘spread-too-thin’ superficiality; yes, just as with the recent train wreck of a read that was Period, Ms Saini spent too much time including way too many details that weren’t immediately relevant to the (supposed) topic at hand, instead of focusing on findings, from various scholars and researchers, that actually pertained to the subject of the emergence of patriarchy. In a book that is shorter than Gerda Lerner’s, and pretends to look at the evidence from different fields of research, you can’t afford to lose sight of your purported topical through-line like this!
This book is undoubtedly a work of pop-science non-fiction, because it really shows in a bad way. I guess I’ve grown used to more academic, or scholarly publications, because the absence of proper citation work really freaking bugged me in this one. All the more so given I know, for a fact, that Ms Saini misrepresented some of the scholarship she cited in The Patriarchs. To be more specific: the way she talked about Lerner’s book (which I just read, so I’m not exaggerating here), and research, exuded so much bad faith it actively angered me*. I can’t express how thoroughly shattered my respect for her work as a journalist was reading this book. Given she did this, and given the lack of citations, how can I then trust she properly represented other scholars’ and researchers’ work?
Finally, The Patriarchs does this infuriating, ‘wokist’ thing of downplaying the very existence of patriarchy, and sex-based oppression, by not only being confusingly silent on the importance of humanity’s 'Ur-difference', that of sex, and the unequal division of reproductive labour that is inherent to our condition as gestating mammals… but also by watering down the actual meaning of patriarchy. I wish I’d written the relevant page number down before I got rid of my copy, so take all of this with a healthy pinch of salt of course, but the author more or less concluded her book with the idea that: ‘eh, patriarchy is a system of oppression like any other, where some people have power over others’. Some peopl. Riiiiiight.
When I read that, I was kinda like: fuck straight off, honestly. What is even the point of writing a book like this if we’re gonna, yet again, yeet sex class analysis out’ the window, and thereby minimise the historical struggle of women for the recognition of our dignity as human beings in the face of, and liberation from systems of male domination and privilege? I’m… just so sick of this shit.
So yeah, this was a paltry 3.5-4/10 read for me. But I’ll be generous and allow that if you’ve never, ever read anything about this topic, The Patriarchs isn’t the worst book you could pick up as an introduction to it. But please, for the love of Goddess, don’t stop your exploration there, because overall, this really ain’t it!
*Full context: I honestly don’t know if Ms Saini read The Creation of Patriarchy in full, because she contended, in The Patriarchs, that Gerder Lerner stated women’s subjugation was partly due to their weaker ‘biological natures’. But that is absolute horseshit, plain and simple. What Ms Lerner did, in her treatise, was look at several different factors which could’ve constituted necessary conditions for a gradual shift from primitive egalitarianism (or matrifocality) to male-dominated social groups, which then would’ve progressively coalesced into patriarchal state societies. Some of those factors are, yes, biological, insofar as women are the human beings who bear, birth, and breastfeed children, which creates an inherent, unequal division between the sexes in terms of reproductive labour. This is feminist theory 101, for fuck’s sake, and shouldn’t be controversial in the slightest!
Ms Saini also then went on to disagree with Lerner about the primacy of sex, as opposed to socio-economic class, as an axis of oppression, referring, specifically, to the historical relationship between marriage and slavery. Now, putting aside the question of ‘which axis of oppression came first’, since it’s mostly a matter of speculation and opinion at this point, the hilarious thing is that Ms Saini followed her blanket disagreement – delivered without any sort of supporting argumentation, mind you – with a near copy-paste of Lerner’s own development on the subject in The Creation of Patriarchy. I swear you cannot make this shit up – wild'.
vaekay's review
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Sexual harassment, Domestic abuse, Xenophobia, Classism, Misogyny, Rape, Hate crime, Murder, Trafficking, Adult/minor relationship, Sexism, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Abortion, Colonisation, Confinement, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Pedophilia, Pregnancy, Sexual assault, War, Police brutality, and Violence
Minor: Cancer, Suicidal thoughts, Pandemic/Epidemic, Infidelity, Transphobia, and Drug use
chelsevie's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
Rafia Zakaria called this book a 'must read for every feminist' -- and I couldn't agree more. I truly learnt something on every page of this well-reaearched and insightful exploration of the cultural and historical roots of patriarchy.
Anthropology, Archaeology, Sociology and even Biology, all come together here to paint a fascinatingly complex portrait of patriarchy, and the gendered oppression and revolution that it inevitably feeds.
Anthropology, Archaeology, Sociology and even Biology, all come together here to paint a fascinatingly complex portrait of patriarchy, and the gendered oppression and revolution that it inevitably feeds.
_pickle_'s review
informative
slow-paced
1.0
The first half of this book was repetitive and in search of a thesis. I found the second half better: clearer and with less repetition, but it wasn't enough to salvage the book. I am still interested in the topic of how it came to be that patriarchal systems became dominant when there is nothing certain or inevitable about that fate.