To understand why conservative patriarchal authority figures believe they rule over every other creature, look at the ancient philosophical notions which lie behind male domination. For instance, we in the Christian West owe a lot of our thinking on sex and gender to guys like Thomas Aquinas who thought that Aristotle’s principles of Natural Law could provide a handy underpinning for Christian morality. According to Aristotle, man rightly takes charge over woman, because he commands superior intelligence, which would profit the women who depend on him. He compares this to the relationship between human beings and tame animals.
He says, “It is the best for all tame animals to be ruled by human beings. For this is how they are kept alive. In the same way, the relationship between the male and the female is by nature such that the male is higher, the female lower, that the male rules and the female is ruled.” Aristotle, Politica, ed. Loeb Classical Library, 1254 b 10-14.
Notice in Aristotle’s text is the phrase: “by nature”. Subordination is right because it corresponds to the way things have been made. Therefore, a woman’s place is in the kitchen (stable), because she was made barefoot and pregnant (a vessel to incubate male seed).
The Southern Baptist Convention agrees with Aristotle that by nature women are to submit to their husbands. But what else did Aristotle justify by using this same reasoning of natural law? Aristotle reckons that slavery is natural too because some people are by nature destined to be slaves.
He says, “That person is by nature a slave who can belong to another person and who only takes part in thinking by recognizing it, but not by possessing it. Other living beings (animals) cannot recognize thinking; they just obey feelings. However, there is little difference between using slaves and using tame animals: both provide bodily help to do necessary things.” He also says, “That is why the poets say: “It is correct that Greeks rule Barbarians”; for by nature what is barbarian and what is slave are the same.” Aristotle, Physica, vol. 1; Loeb Classical Library, 1252 b 8. See A.TH. van Leeuwen, The Nacht van het Kapitaal, Nijmegen 1984, pp. 182 – 205.
Down through history, men have been able to justify all kinds of intolerance, inequality, prejudice and injustice using variations of the so-called natural law theory. Wow, it sure is better to be under the control of the rational male mind than to just obey "feelings"! Thank you Thomas Aquinas for basing your Christian views of sex, gender and morality on such an enlightened and modern perspective on how things simply “are”. Speaking of modern, let’s move forward for a more up-to-date opinion on the subject from R. J. Rushdoony (1916-2001) whom I am sure many red state, Re-funda-publican men will agree with.
He says, “Dominion is God's principle for man over nature (Gen. 1:28), and for the male in the person of the husband and father in the family (I Cor. 11:1-15). Dominion as the male's nature and prerogative is to be found throughout the animal world as a part of God's creation ordinance. In animals, as Ardrey has pointed out, there is a primacy of dominion over sexual and other drives. "The time will come when the male will lose all interest in sex; but he will still fight for his status." In fact, "dominance in social animals is a universal instinct independent of sex." This male instinct for dominion reveals itself in animals in three ways: first, in territoriality, i.e., a property instinct and drive, and second, in status, a drive to establish dominion in terms of rank in a rigidly hierarchical order, and third, survival, and order as a means of survival. This is true of animals in natural setting; zoo animals, being in a welfare society, are more absorbed with sex. In the male, dominion leads to increased sexual potency and longevity. Moreover, "It is a curious characteristic of the instincts of order that most are masculine." The female's sexual and maternal instincts are personal and thus in a sense anarchistic. These characteristics are true of human life also. ~ R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 201.”
Wow, that’s even better than how Aristotle explained it. Conservative heterosexual men are on top because instinct dictates they dominate others. Just like in the animal world, might make’s right. After all, Aristotle says guys are by nature smarter as well as stronger. But what do conservative heterosexist males (and their submissive pawns) have to say when confronted with reports, documentaries and National Geographic footage of rampant bisexuality and homosexuality throughout the animal kingdom? They proceed to define nature not by how nature acts, but how they think nature “ought” to act, hah! Don’t you just hate it when nature acts unnaturally? That’s just so animalistic, eww. To correct this problem, nature itself must obediently deny its own intrinsic drives and instincts since they inconveniently diminish the perceived power of the ball. Something is deemed natural only when the men get together and say so. Take race mixing for instance. Poof....No longer unnatural. Blast those activist judges and their feelings!
The ends always justify the means when it comes to preserving male status and the rigid hierarchal order, as Rushdoony describes it. Women and gays represent all that personal stuff that is “anarchistic”. So what’s a dominant male to do besides suppress the obvious truth of diversity and chaotic unpredictability expressed by both the human species and non-human species alike? Well, if you can’t beat the crap out of it, shoot it or blow it up, you have to just vote against it.
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He says, “It is the best for all tame animals to be ruled by human beings. For this is how they are kept alive. In the same way, the relationship between the male and the female is by nature such that the male is higher, the female lower, that the male rules and the female is ruled.” Aristotle, Politica, ed. Loeb Classical Library, 1254 b 10-14.
Notice in Aristotle’s text is the phrase: “by nature”. Subordination is right because it corresponds to the way things have been made. Therefore, a woman’s place is in the kitchen (stable), because she was made barefoot and pregnant (a vessel to incubate male seed).
The Southern Baptist Convention agrees with Aristotle that by nature women are to submit to their husbands. But what else did Aristotle justify by using this same reasoning of natural law? Aristotle reckons that slavery is natural too because some people are by nature destined to be slaves.
He says, “That person is by nature a slave who can belong to another person and who only takes part in thinking by recognizing it, but not by possessing it. Other living beings (animals) cannot recognize thinking; they just obey feelings. However, there is little difference between using slaves and using tame animals: both provide bodily help to do necessary things.” He also says, “That is why the poets say: “It is correct that Greeks rule Barbarians”; for by nature what is barbarian and what is slave are the same.” Aristotle, Physica, vol. 1; Loeb Classical Library, 1252 b 8. See A.TH. van Leeuwen, The Nacht van het Kapitaal, Nijmegen 1984, pp. 182 – 205.
Down through history, men have been able to justify all kinds of intolerance, inequality, prejudice and injustice using variations of the so-called natural law theory. Wow, it sure is better to be under the control of the rational male mind than to just obey "feelings"! Thank you Thomas Aquinas for basing your Christian views of sex, gender and morality on such an enlightened and modern perspective on how things simply “are”. Speaking of modern, let’s move forward for a more up-to-date opinion on the subject from R. J. Rushdoony (1916-2001) whom I am sure many red state, Re-funda-publican men will agree with.
He says, “Dominion is God's principle for man over nature (Gen. 1:28), and for the male in the person of the husband and father in the family (I Cor. 11:1-15). Dominion as the male's nature and prerogative is to be found throughout the animal world as a part of God's creation ordinance. In animals, as Ardrey has pointed out, there is a primacy of dominion over sexual and other drives. "The time will come when the male will lose all interest in sex; but he will still fight for his status." In fact, "dominance in social animals is a universal instinct independent of sex." This male instinct for dominion reveals itself in animals in three ways: first, in territoriality, i.e., a property instinct and drive, and second, in status, a drive to establish dominion in terms of rank in a rigidly hierarchical order, and third, survival, and order as a means of survival. This is true of animals in natural setting; zoo animals, being in a welfare society, are more absorbed with sex. In the male, dominion leads to increased sexual potency and longevity. Moreover, "It is a curious characteristic of the instincts of order that most are masculine." The female's sexual and maternal instincts are personal and thus in a sense anarchistic. These characteristics are true of human life also. ~ R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 201.”
Wow, that’s even better than how Aristotle explained it. Conservative heterosexual men are on top because instinct dictates they dominate others. Just like in the animal world, might make’s right. After all, Aristotle says guys are by nature smarter as well as stronger. But what do conservative heterosexist males (and their submissive pawns) have to say when confronted with reports, documentaries and National Geographic footage of rampant bisexuality and homosexuality throughout the animal kingdom? They proceed to define nature not by how nature acts, but how they think nature “ought” to act, hah! Don’t you just hate it when nature acts unnaturally? That’s just so animalistic, eww. To correct this problem, nature itself must obediently deny its own intrinsic drives and instincts since they inconveniently diminish the perceived power of the ball. Something is deemed natural only when the men get together and say so. Take race mixing for instance. Poof....No longer unnatural. Blast those activist judges and their feelings!
The ends always justify the means when it comes to preserving male status and the rigid hierarchal order, as Rushdoony describes it. Women and gays represent all that personal stuff that is “anarchistic”. So what’s a dominant male to do besides suppress the obvious truth of diversity and chaotic unpredictability expressed by both the human species and non-human species alike? Well, if you can’t beat the crap out of it, shoot it or blow it up, you have to just vote against it.
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