SIGMUND FREUD attributed the many maladies of human existence to traumatic sexual experiences in early life. Alfred Adler (1870-1937) attributed them to a different cause. According to Adler’s concept of “the will to power”, individuals – especially males – are driven by a determination to achieve superiority and domination over other human-beings. Assailed by feelings of insecurity and inferiority, emotional states which men are encouraged to associate with femininity, they embark on an unending quest for mastery. Of course, the will to power is not confined to men alone. Women’s all-too-real subordination in patriarchal society cannot fail to generate feelings of insecurity and inferiority – exciting the will to power in their own psyches.
Adlerian psychology, not much esteemed, it must be said, in the Twenty-First Century, nevertheless offers a useful way into the fraught world of Identity Politics. The practice of those promoting the politics of identity is driven by (some would say is utterly obsessed by) questions of power and privilege – who has it, who doesn’t, and what must happen if those without it are to get it. The answer would appear to involve an upward surge of resistance on the part of those for whom chronic insecurity and imputations of inferiority are a way of life, directed at those best positioned to claim superiority and exercise domination. In short, the question, repeated endlessly by identity politicians, is: “Who’s got the power?”
Obviously, the social strata with the most to gain from the quest for power through identity is the lowest. Unfortunately, determining exactly who has the least power in society is an extremely contentious exercise. People of Colour may find themselves arguing with the disabled community about which of them is discriminated against most viciously. LGBTQ+ people may find themselves at odds with women over whose lives are the more insecure. It’s tricky. Fortunately, near unanimity prevails over who wields the most power and enjoys the most privileges: White, Heterosexual, Males (WHMs).
In practical terms, identity politics has only one clear goal: to depose the dominant identity group – i.e. WHMs – and strip them of their power and privilege. But, even allowing such a revolutionary goal to be feasible, it cannot avoid raising some hugely divisive political questions. To whom should the WHMs’ power be passed? With the formerly all-powerful WHMs no longer in control, which identity group is best placed to achieve superiority and domination over the human-beings below them? People of Colour? Women? LGBTQ+? The Disabled? And won’t whoever ultimately wins that struggle suddenly find every group below them striving to replace them? Won’t the winners instantly become the next target?
And what about those people who belong in more than one identity group. A WHM with a severe disability, for example? Or a Person of Colour who is also a member of the LGBTQ+ community? Or a White Lesbian? What happens when an individual’s advantages and disadvantages cannot be stacked in neat and tidy piles? Whose Will to Power should prevail in those circumstances?
Because there’s no point in arguing that as soon as WHMs are hurled from their privileged perches the struggle for superiority and domination will cease, and the will to power will miraculously fade from in the human psyche. Consciousness of privilege is well-nigh impossible to eliminate. Like the determination to defend one’s position in the social hierarchy, it is one of those human predispositions that are pretty much ineradicable. Awareness of those below cannot help but cultivate a sense of superiority. Just as knowing that the lower orders want what the powerful possess cannot help encouraging the ruling elites to keep them in check. And vice-versa. The Will to Power is as much about clawing-up as it is about kicking-down.
Patriarchy, the power structure that prevails across the planet, is no anthropological accident. The prehistoric overthrow of the daughters of the Earth Mother by the sons of the Sky Father made certain that human society was vertical rather than horizontal in its orientation. And the beauty of a vertical social structure, from the point of view of males, is that it makes it possible for all men to define themselves as essentially not-women. No matter where a man is positioned in the social hierarchy, there is one psychically empowering privilege which he shares with all who embrace the rules of masculinity – a lifetime exemption from the socially-constructed inferiority and insecurity inflicted upon the feminine.
The identity politicians’ obsession with power and privilege is understandable but, ultimately, futile. Even if the WHMs were cast to the bottom of the social hierarchy, how long would it be before they became the most vociferous challengers of the privileges enjoyed by all the identity groups above them? How long would it be before the cry – “Who’s got the power?” – became “We got the power!” “We” being all men: gay and straight, black and white, abled anddisabled, rich and poor.
It’s hard to deny that old Alfred Adler was on to something with his Will to Power: repudiation of the feminine has always been the inexhaustible power-source of patriarchy.
As Chris suggests, the reason that liberal particularism is ultimately a con is because it actually obscures ‘who has the power’.
These theories attempt to bury any real analysis of the material conditions, which would ultimately expose the basis of class society in every epoch: the exploitation of man by man, where the working masses of society are ruled by a tiny exploiter class.
The Poststructuralist demagogues have managed to construct an ideology which arbitrarily divides society along the lines of physical human traits, and claims that everybody within such a division shares the same interests — regardless of class.
This conveniently busts up the working people into innumerable warring factions — so rather than working people recognising they all have common interests and a common exploiter, they become mired in sectarianism (and easily manipulated by the ruling elite).
Because it is anti-scientific (openly railing against the Enlightenment and the scientific method), this ideology is unable to produce any type of social progress. Instead, it is a destructive force: despite hiding behind ‘left-sounding’ phrases, it is really an ideology opposed to the ideas of socialism.
Thanks Chris. The irony with Identity Politics for me is that it is being driven mainly by White Heterosexual Males.
Oh..? Explain that please.
Sorry david but where I sit I think women are playing as large a part.
The Greens for example.
The patriachy is held up by women and men, generally well to do women and men. And they do sit in the Green Party. And besides there is a lot of money to be made castrating boys and desexing girls.
Many men do play a role.
I question your assertion though.
Let’s be honest patriarchy is no longer a matter of sex. If we have not yet learned that much, we are all doomed.
It comes back to the appalling concept of ‘equity’ as defined by the woke/left: Equal outcomes.
In order to create equal outcomes requires ever more tyrannical control of society and as you say, it would never end because as soon as the system had deposed white hetero men from their position, then it would seek to redress the balance for, say, gays, short people or left handers, etc.
Meanwhile if we examine wealth statistics in the USA, whites aren’t even near the top of the pecking order! They come 6th. Indians are the highest income earners followed by people from various East Asian nations. It seems America is indeed the land of opportunity…for those wishing to grasp it.
Also, the concept of a patriarchy is massively missing the point. For nearly all human history life was a terrible struggle for nearly everyone. A struggle to find food, shelter, security, to reproduce and avoid sickness. Generally, this struggle was undertaken by men and women as a family unit with each providing what they’re best at. Neither gender was in total control – it was a team effort.
Aha, Andrew! The old Hobbesian “nasty, brutish and short” argument.
Not true.
Human-beings in their 200,000+ years of hunting and gathering became highly proficient at feeding, clothing and housing themselves and, according to the anthropologists, lived relatively abundant and relaxed lives.
Did they succumb to disease and infection? Yes. But, on average, if you made it out of infancy, you could anticipate a reasonably long and happy life.
It was the agricultural revolution and the development of cities and states that produced the ultimate triumph of the Sky Father and his devotees – along with its practical economic and political consequences – Patriarchy.
The division of labour you describe among those who worked the land holds true only where slavery gave way to serfdom. Family values and involuntary servitude were seldom a happy mix!
I see you’ve fully bought into the ‘myth of the noble savage’ Chris. Rousseau would be proud of you!
The reason our ancestors took up agriculture is because it was a damn sight easier than hunting and gathering all day, every day to eke out an existence. Sure, it brought with it consequences, such as hierarchical social structures, new diseases due to proximity with others, but it also kicked off science and civilization.
I’m disappointed with Chris’s indulgence of feminist nonsense about patriarchy, but he’s essentially right about quality of life in hunter-gatherer vs early agrarian societies. Small-scale interpersonal violence was (and still is) frequent in hunter-gatherer societies, but outright wars (less frequent, large-scale violence) didn’t happen until we settled in agrarian communities. Health and life expectancy of most people declined with the switch to agriculture, though the elite did well out of the change.
Absolutely Andrew.
Ummm… No. Surprising Research Reveals Rampant Violence in Early Farming Societies. This part I found especially chilling:
how exactly do the left define equity….while your at it define woke andrew, if yer agin it you must be able to define it.
https://onlinepublichealth.gwu.edu/resources/equity-vs-equality/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
Woke started off ok – it was basically an awareness of the issues the black community in the USA faced. But now it’s been sucked into this intersectional nonsense and seems to be mostly about angry white wimmin. LOL
your OPINION is not DEFINITION andrew
The reason the first has something right is that adults suffer/deal with child sexual abuse a life long. The reason the second is wrong as woman too will do anything to stay in power. The current lot of neo liberals, males and females show that aptly. It does not matter what they do and to whom so as long as it benefits them. Hence why our dear leaders will always get a nice cushy job in a nice far away office for excellent pay while their own country males and females languish in emergency housing eating only when given a food packet drowing in debt to Winz. Of course its a con, but then people are told to choose a side, identify with that side and exercise a bit of power over the side that is/are the ‘others’. Fuckwits all of them.
Great essay. Thanks Chris.
I have met and worked with and for many bosses.
And the biggest balls were owned by a woman boss.
My conclusion was that balls does not make the boss.
johan
and some of the stupidest, most vicious and nasty bosses are ladybosses gender does not determine dickheadedness
gagarin well said.
I remember puzzling over the idea that feminism was the desire to reverse patriarchy when I first heard it.
There may be some who wish to inflict relative powerlessness on men (in the example of this particular example of identity bestowing power over),
but my understanding of socialism is not reversing power and privilege according to membership of particular groups, but of sharing it. Of horizontal relationships between people taking precedence over vertical top-down relationships.
Perfection is not possible, but I understand socialism as sharing resources, including power and human value, as a first principle, and competing for more than others as secondary and always held in check by this primary value.
The change isn’t about who, but what matters.
If you want to know “who has the power”? Try the thought experiment of removing that person/group from existence and imagining what changes might occur as a result. Are they simply replaced by a similar figure or group, in the way water returns to it’s undisturbed state once a dropped stone passes through it, look to see where do the ripples go, does anything fundamental actually change?
What you will likely discover is that many we think of as “powerful” are mere figureheads and are easily replaceable. Finding the source of true power is considerably more difficult, and often when you think you’ve found it, like water, it slips through your fingers, or just simply evaporates into thin air.
Real time example, replace Jacinda with Chippy. The differences are superficial at best. Parked priorities are not cancelled priorities.
If they had any real power maybe things would be different, maybe they would have made real changes to benefit all New Zealanders (their theoretical masters), but really they are just puppets. Who pulls the strings? And who pulls the puppeteers strings? And so on…
Who are they replacing luxon with?
Another puppet, when the time is right.
in NZ and we live in NZ, give me a CONCRETE example of women being disadvantaged by society (other than our shameful record on domestic violence) indeed in some fields the matriarchy has become the patriarchy…I think we’ve done pretty well on the gender equality front, hence the scabbling round for more inconsequental affronts to keep the pot boiling.
2018 report on Ministry of Women website, showing that women are disadvantaged in employment after they become mothers, with low income women, renters, Maori and Pacific women being more disadvantaged than higher income women – but all women are disadvantaged compared with men after they became fathers.
https://women.govt.nz/documents/parenthood-and-labour-market-outcomes
so middle class women don’t give a fuck about poor women that’s class not gender karolyn
our laws are skewed (some might say rightly but never the less) boys continue to do worse at school (can we have a campaign to increase the number of boys doing science) and why do more men suicide if they are the top bannanas?
the ministry of women is hardly a source.
That’s not what the research shows, gagarin. Please re-read what I wrote.
Some middle-class women are only aware of the disadvantages they face, and may not be aware of the bigger disadvantages experienced by women on lower incomes.
The research shows that there is a mix of disadvantages because of economic class, and because of females as a sex class (not gender, which is a social category – females are a biological sex class).
So you don’t like the research outcomes so you dismiss it because it’s commissioned by the Ministry of Women – surely it’s their job to commission such research? It was carried out by academics at AUT. What flaws have you seen in the actual research report?
In spite of the fact that girls tend to do better in education than boys, the boys tend to go onto higher paid jobs. Many girls express an interest in STEM subjects at NZ schools, but fewer go on study them at Uni than boys do. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/slow-progress-in-getting-new-zealand-women-into-traditionally-male-fields/EUR6VKCDOJOOICK4O6DCBC67QQ/
Boys and girls do equally well at science in Australian schools. However, more boys go on to do STEM careers than girls, and the women that do are more likely to be in lower level and less secure jobs than the men. https://www.schoolnews.co.nz/2020/06/girls-score-the-same-in-maths-and-science-as-boys-but-higher-in-arts-this-may-be-why-they-are-less-likely-to-pick-stem-careers/
And yes, it’s notable that more men than women successfully commit suicide, but some research shows more young women than young men attempt suicide. Females tend to self harm more. Whether that means men have tougher lives, or not is open to debate. It requires understanding the reasons for suicide.
The thing about patriarchal societies is that they are very hierarchical – ie some males have more power and influence than others. But, overall sch a society tends to be organised to benefit males more than females as a sex class.
Karolyn (sorry I didn’t mean to call you Karen) – what is your evidence that New Zealand society is “organised to benefit males more than females as a sex class.”?
karolyn what is the ‘mission’ of the ministry of women?
I’m not saying feminism is bad but in the areas where it benifits middle class white women it is applied rigorosly not so much when it affects the pasifika or immigrant women cleaning your newly renovated office toilets or wiping your parents arses.
Karen, can you tell me which sex accounts for 89% of workplace fatalities?
And can you tell me which sex gets lighter sentences on average for the same offence?
And can you tell me which sex is doing better at school?
And Gagarin is absolutely right about the Ministry for Women – they’re a woke propaganda mouthpiece, not an impartial source.
@Karolyn NZ actually does a better job pointing to the sex-based wage gap as not so much the difference between men and women (as is fashionable to say) but between mother and fathers. Indeed in both UK and US young professional women (<30 years old) are on average better qualified and higher paid than their male counterparts as are women over 40 who have never had children.
Why do you think the wage gap exists once a child is born? What choices do men and women as parents tend to make. Do you see this as socially mandated or personal preference?
Otherwise in reference to Gagarin, if we consider other sex-based stats such as educational outcomes, social isolation, suicide etc, are there conceivably any areas of society where men are disadvantaged?
Tui the most likely cause of the so-called “gender pay gap” is sexual selection, i.e. different hierarchies of priorities in men’s and women’s choice of sexual partners. Women on average are attracted to men who “kick arse”. Which makes perfect biological sense, as those men are likely to have access to resources. And men who kick arse generally get ahead at work (provided they don’t lose it and start grabbing arse). These alpha males can end up in very high-paying jobs like CEO positions, and it’s these very high salaries that drag up the male average income. Men in general can’t help but notice how much women are impressed by power and status, so men tend to push hard to work. And the female preference for alpha males has the the long-term evolutionary consequence of ratcheting up the levels of competitiveness, boldness and ruthlessness in the male population.
There is no comparable sexual payoff for women who “kick arse” – these traits aren’t necessarily a turn-off for men, but neither do they turn men’s heads. Men have other priorities in mate choice – men are attracted to women who look fertile. Smart, emotionally mature men focus more on women’s personalities, but it’s rarely a kick-arse personality that they’re looking for.
men being disadvantaged was not my issue tui…just that we in NZ have done pretty good(not perfect) in the field of womens equality and in some fields boys and men are now under represented….my mate is a teacher and male teachers are rarer than hens teeth..any of the govt depts(at least in frontline and middle management) or social work. and educational outcomes are serverly distorted especially in science(..not saying there aren’t reasons but…………..)
I’m a woman and I have lived my entire life doing what I have wanted. And the only times I have felt disadvantaged is when politics came into play. I’ve experienced sexism and all sorts of physical power tactics but you just ignore it and give back as good as you get. I was very well paid for all of my working life so nothing held me back in real terms.
I believe in meritocracy and making your own way and if you find your path blocked somewhere, go around it, rescope, find another way. And when the politics get you (as comes to all of us eventually) dont take it personally. Accept that people are a**holes and get stuck into finding another way.
How much simpler life is if we all just get on with things without navel gazing. So much more satisfying too. All this identity stuff just does my head in.
congratulations on coping fantail but you shouldn’t have had to, and it’s not applicable to most working women who aren’t as tough…class will always trump gender in the disadvantage stakes
True enough Gaga. But we were working class so when I think on it more, maybe it is a mixture of luck in terms of personality and upbringing. And actually this encompassed race as well at that time.
Back in the day, even more than class, having a parent or family that valued education was a huge determinant of getting on in life. Bursaries and similar were available so class was not as much as a a factor. Simon Bridges and his Dad’s history is a really good example of that (In his Bio) and when I think back, it was a big factor for the handful of Maori friends I trained and worked with.
indeed fantail my mam taught me to read(using comics) before I even went to school then I was lucky enough to go to grammar school that’s why I get boringly passionate about education and the lack of the path I had as aworking class kid….that particular ladder has been well and truly pulled up
How do “the right” keep on winning? They foment politically irrelevant topics that have nothing to do with the reality of peoples day to day lives and sadly, loads of people (often intelligent and politically astute people) get sucked into it.
Apparently the most pressing and problematic issues that people are facing are whether or not we have quota’s for women on boards, or encourage Maori participation in government or advocate for equal rights for the trans and gay community.
“Demagogues take the anger that people feel and what demagogues say is don’t look at the people who really own the system, don’t look at the ruling class, don’t look at the people who cause the problems. Look at immigrants, look at people of color, look at gay people, look at people who might be different to you. You’re supposed to hate those people. Let’s rally together around hating those people rather then looking at those who are really causing the problem.” Bernie Sanders on Sky news when asked why people tack to the right when times are hard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgoPQS1kBUw
Right on queue – as if to make my previous point for me – here it is https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/distressing-police-called-as-queer-community-targeted-by-protest-at-auckland-library-drag-reading/UTQGWO5IHBBKLHVZ4NA4J6KBAQ/
“LGBTQ+ people may find themselves at odds with women over whose lives are the more insecure.”
It isn’t hard at all. If a trans woman lives as a woman, she ought to be regarded as such — in fact she’s much more likely to be than not. It’s good that only a loud few bigots disagree, only a pity they exist at all.