Vulgar History - Author Interview： Angela Saini (The Patriarchs： The Origins of Inequality)

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name 1.00

00:00:17.000 is Anne Foster and today I'm bringing you an interview with author Angela Saini. So

00:00:22.520 Angela is an award-winning journalist and author and her most recent book, The Patriarchs,

00:00:27.580 How Men Came to Rule is a finalist for the 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Writing and one of

00:00:33.600 Amazon Best Books of the Year so far for 2023. It's among other accolades. It's a really

00:00:39.620 interesting book, and I'm really happy that it's getting the attention that it's receiving.

00:00:43.320 And I'm really happy that she was able to make the time to talk to me on Vulgar History about

00:00:46.900 it. Because as you know, throughout all the episodes of this show, especially when we look

00:00:51.560 back at the international season, to me, it just started to feel like, wow, the patriarchy is 0.99

00:00:56.320 everywhere just getting in the way of all of these cool women in all different time periods

00:01:00.460 ancient history and modern history all different countries every continent and I started to think 1.00

00:01:05.560 of it as like this thing this like all-encompassing single thing the patriarchy and I have been

00:01:10.840 wondering where did it come from and why and how is it everywhere and then when I came across this

00:01:16.780 book that very much delves into those questions and we're going to talk about it in this interview

00:01:21.060 that, spoiler, it's not just one thing that spread around the world. It wasn't like the world was

00:01:27.100 this utopia of women's rights, and then suddenly some guy came up and made it be a patriarchy.

00:01:33.420 There's so much more nuance to it than that. Angela's science background, I think, really

00:01:37.460 brings an interesting level to this book. She traveled around the world. She talked to lots

00:01:41.880 of people to really interrogate just this concept of the patriarchy. So I hope you enjoy this

00:01:46.760 interview with Angela Saini about her book, The Patriarchs, How Men Came to Rule.

00:01:53.860 So I'm joined today by Angela Saini. Welcome, Angela.

00:01:57.760 Thank you for having me. It's such a pleasure.

00:02:00.160 I'm really happy to talk to you because, well, first of all, I read your book and I found it

00:02:04.600 so interesting, but even just the idea of your book, I was so intrigued because I've been

00:02:09.780 thinking about this a lot lately with my podcast. Just there's so many, I've been looking at

00:02:14.440 different cultures, through different years. And to me, I was like, oh, the patriarchy,

00:02:19.180 it's always there. And then I saw your book and I thought, ooh, has it been? So I'm curious to

00:02:25.500 know, first of all, how did you get the idea to write this book?

00:02:30.140 Well, I do feel, like you say, it's this big gaping question that's been there for so long.

00:02:35.940 And it's in the background all the time that whenever you read feminist literature

00:02:40.520 or world history, the question I always had was, well, how did men come to have so much power?

00:02:47.840 How did it come to be this way? Why does the world look the way it does? And I was a bit

00:02:52.260 disappointed by the literature that we had available looking at that question. And I think

00:02:56.800 that's partly because, well, it's lots of reasons, but I think it's partly because sometimes we

00:03:01.380 naturalize it. We treat this as a form of oppression that has always been there, that women 1.00

00:03:06.760 were the original oppressed group and that there is something maybe biological underpinning that.

00:03:13.280 But I think also, you know, we just think that it's so long ago, that it must have started so

00:03:18.000 long ago that there's no way to trace that history. But with the information that we have

00:03:23.560 now from archaeology, anthropology, even fields like genetics, but also the different ways in

00:03:31.240 which historians are writing about gender in the past really gives us an opportunity now to look

00:03:38.300 at this history in far more detail than ever before. When you talk about looking back in the

00:03:43.800 history, in your book, you talk about a lot of places you travel to, a lot of people you talk

00:03:48.040 to. Can you talk about the Turkish city that you visited? I don't know how to pronounce the name of

00:03:53.480 it. There's a lot of accents on almost every letter. Çatalhöyük. Yeah, it took me a few

00:03:59.500 a few times before I got comfortable with it. So this was one of the first places I visited,

00:04:04.460 and I knew it had to be because Chattahuyuk is famous as being one of the oldest human

00:04:09.160 settlements on the planet. And we do have, although this is pre-writing, this is thousands

00:04:14.460 of years before the first pyramids in Egypt, thousands of years before Stonehenge, so

00:04:19.820 unimaginably old. But it really does give us an insight into these sophisticated early human

00:04:26.700 societies and how they organize themselves. So this is in southern Anatolia in Turkey,

00:04:32.000 not very far from where the recent devastating earthquakes happened near the border with Syria.

00:04:38.420 This site was occupied around 7400 BCE. And what you see is thousands of people must have lived

00:04:46.040 here and only a fraction of it has been uncovered. There is so much more excavating to do.

00:04:50.020 but every single archaeological measure that we have available to us shows that men and women

00:04:57.440 lived very similar lives they ate pretty much the same foods they did pretty much the same work as

00:05:04.000 each other they spent around the same amount of time indoors and outdoors they were buried in

00:05:08.700 similar ways which of course is a very important measure of inequality because more high status

00:05:15.960 individuals tend to be buried in more elaborate ways. And there are lots and lots of female 1.00

00:05:20.200 figurines from this period of time. So everything that we have tells us that gender didn't really

00:05:26.920 matter very much at Chetel Huyuk. And that's sort of the narrative that in reading your book,

00:05:32.500 I was confronted by how I've been kind of trying to deprogram myself from thinking this way,

00:05:39.240 that kind of things were great, almost a garden of Eden, everything was fine. And then suddenly

00:05:45.200 the patriarchy arrived, and now we've been fighting our way out of that. But of course,

00:05:49.740 there's not one narrative for all of world history. Every country has been different.

00:05:53.740 Every society has been different. You also talk in your book about indigenous people

00:05:57.920 of North America. Can you talk about that side of things as well?

00:06:02.140 Well, it's been interesting. I moved to the US just under two years ago, and it's been

00:06:06.660 enlightening for me because I know a lot about colonial histories in Europe and in Asia.

00:06:13.160 I grew up in London. My family is of Indian heritage and I used to work in India. I knew

00:06:18.960 a lot less about the colonial impact on indigenous societies in North America. And what's interesting

00:06:27.120 is it's very important in the intellectual history of how Western scholars understand

00:06:33.440 patriarchy because when settler colonialists first came to the US in regions like New York,

00:06:40.120 a territory which at that time was occupied largely by the Haudenosaunee.

00:06:45.240 Here is a society that was democratic, very egalitarian,

00:06:50.420 in which women had an enormous amount of authority and power.

00:06:55.540 Clan mothers predate the founding fathers of the U.S. by centuries. 0.99

00:07:00.940 Here are societies in which women are in charge of agriculture, 0.99

00:07:05.180 that are matrilineal, so dissent is recognized from mother to her children 1.00

00:07:09.800 rather than father to her children. The fathers are not as important as mothers within families.

00:07:14.860 And this was a real shock to European settler colonialists because they had imagined that male

00:07:21.120 domination was, in a biblical sense, almost hardwired into us, that this was the divine

00:07:27.240 order, that men had always been in charge, that fathers had always been at the heads of their

00:07:32.280 families. So to encounter societies in which that wasn't the case, not just in North America,

00:07:37.720 indigenous societies, but all over the world. There are matrilineal societies all over the

00:07:42.840 world. They didn't know what to make of it. So what was interesting was that in the middle of 1.00

00:07:46.960 the 19th century, at the same time that philosophers and anthropologists were grappling

00:07:52.500 with the fact that social revolutions had been happening in Europe, the French Revolution,

00:07:58.880 the foundation of America, you know, these pushing back at established hierarchies and social orders,

00:08:05.440 they looked at gender inequality and they started to think for the first time, at least in Western

00:08:11.920 literature, well, how natural is this? Is there some divine order behind this or actually is it

00:08:17.400 constructed? Is it something that we've invented? And encountering people and societies like the

00:08:23.960 Haudenosaunee and seeing how differently people might live, they had to square that circle that

00:08:29.000 their vision of how history worked was actually not how it worked for other people. And the way

00:08:34.860 they squared that circle was to say to themselves, well, these people are primitive. You know, we are

00:08:40.080 modern and they are primitive. In their societies, men just haven't figured out that they should be

00:08:45.240 in charge yet. And, you know, we are civilized and that's why we have the family structures that we

00:08:50.660 do. That's why we have the marriage customs that we do. That's why women are domesticated and men

00:08:56.220 have public facing roles because that's what happens in civilized societies. And so, of course, 0.95

00:09:01.820 the devastating repercussion of that is that they tried to civilize indigenous communities 0.93

00:09:10.140 into patriarchy. And they did this very systematically. It's there right throughout 0.87

00:09:16.240 the literature, this kind of way of thinking. But for example, in indigenous boarding schools,

00:09:22.260 young girls would be taught to be housewives. And this was very much a foundational philosophy

00:09:28.720 of the United States that women should be domesticated. This is why women were denied 1.00

00:09:32.960 the vote when the United States was founded, after the United States was founded. Boys were taught 0.97

00:09:38.800 to do agricultural work and to be the heads of their households. Christianity undermined, 0.69

00:09:45.960 you know, Christian missionaries undermined ways of organizing people and ways of marriage that

00:09:53.220 had existed for centuries. It was devastating. It was a real undermining of culture. And not

00:09:59.860 without resistance, men and women in indigenous communities really pushed back against all of

00:10:06.020 this. And they found it so barbaric, the way that European settlers would treat women. They just

00:10:13.160 found it so strange, this idea that women would be treated as property because it was so antithetical 0.67

00:10:18.120 to the way that their own families were organized. But of course, that bit by bit, piecemeal

00:10:26.160 pushing and tearing apart of customs did have an effect. Although a lot of it was retained,

00:10:34.840 so Haudenosaunee society today remains matrilineal. Women still have a lot of power, 1.00

00:10:39.760 clan mothers still have a lot of power. So a lot was retained, but at the same time, a lot was lost.

00:10:45.940 And that's part of what you, you talk about this quite a bit in your book. And I just found it

00:10:49.340 such an interesting thing to think about the concept of what naturally are humans like naturally

00:10:54.980 is patriarchy. What, what human societies would be like when evidence of what you were saying in

00:11:01.320 Turkey and then in, in indigenous groups in the, in the United States, they showed that that's not

00:11:07.200 inherently what people are like. So it's that push and pull. So it's saying like, well, this is,

00:11:12.200 I think you mentioned this, I think a few times in the book, but about if this is how people

00:11:16.580 naturally are, then why are women fighting back? Why are women fighting for the vote? Like why do 0.97

00:11:21.060 they, why does this have to be enforced with laws if this is how people naturally are?

00:11:25.800 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if, if anything is, you know, deeply rooted and biological,

00:11:32.480 if this is a pattern that we follow without thinking about it, then why do we feel uncomfortable

00:11:38.920 in these deeply patriarchal societies?

00:11:41.780 Why do we push back?

00:11:43.100 Why has there always been resistance?

00:11:44.700 From the beginning, as soon as you see 0.86

00:11:48.260 kind of gendered oppression emerge, 0.98

00:11:52.100 you see pushback immediately. 1.00

00:11:53.900 And you see this real desperation

00:11:55.960 on the part of patriarchal elites

00:11:58.660 to cast people in a way that makes them seem inferior

00:12:05.480 or makes them seem subordinate.

00:12:07.100 You see this in all different types of human oppression. I've written books on race as well

00:12:12.940 as gender, and you see this all over the world, that as soon as you get a dominant hierarchical

00:12:19.080 group, that group inevitably, even though its power is always socially formed or politically

00:12:25.540 formed, they will pretend and try to impose this idea that they are naturally more powerful,

00:12:31.260 that they have some qualities that the subordinate group does not have, and that's why they have

00:12:35.720 this power. And of course, patriarchal elites have been masterful at doing this over the

00:12:42.260 centuries, although it does happen falteringly. And sometimes it does look very desperate. If you

00:12:49.560 look in ancient Athens, for instance, ancient Greek literature is deeply misogynistic,

00:12:55.680 is famously misogynistic. It's full of this hatred of women, you know, from the Pandora's

00:13:03.100 box onwards, this idea that women are the source of evil, that they need to be controlled, that

00:13:08.540 they need to be curtailed somehow, that if we're not careful, they will rise up against us. 0.97

00:13:12.720 Legends of the Amazons, which again, reinforce this idea that if we're not careful, that women 0.99

00:13:17.220 will rebel. Why would you express these kind of misogynistic fears? Why would you harbor them

00:13:25.160 if you weren't afraid that your power rested on something far more precarious than it actually

00:13:30.780 did well and that's where too in your book you talk about perhaps um in cultures like that um it

00:13:37.040 could come from the the history of slavery so if a lot of people women were being taken and forced 0.95

00:13:42.580 into roles in the household then of course they would not take to that happily or naturally and 0.65

00:13:48.960 there would have to be rules to enforce that can you talk about that side of things as well

00:13:52.440 and now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors

00:13:56.080 Welcome to the Realms of Peril and Glory.

00:14:02.240 Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale,

00:14:05.940 the paranormal mysteries of liminal London,

00:14:10.280 and the cyberpunk chaos of Cyborg.

00:14:15.520 Be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows like Oxventure and No Rolls Barred.

00:14:22.320 Search realms of peril and glory to find out more

00:14:26.500 The war is over and both sides lost

00:14:33.520 Kingdoms were reduced to cinders

00:14:35.560 And armies scattered like bones in the dust

00:14:38.740 Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world

00:14:43.200 Praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight

00:14:46.220 But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins

00:14:50.360 this is old school adventuring

00:14:52.800 at it's most cruel

00:14:54.140 your torch ticks down in real time

00:14:56.560 and when that flame dies

00:14:57.920 something else rises to finish the job

00:15:00.220 this is a brutal rules light nightmare

00:15:02.520 with a story that emerges organically

00:15:05.220 based on the decisions that the characters make

00:15:07.840 this is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s

00:15:10.260 and man, it is so good to be back

00:15:12.540 join the Glass Cannon podcast

00:15:13.840 as we plunge into the shadow dark

00:15:15.600 every Thursday night at 8pm Eastern

00:15:17.660 on youtube.com slash the glass cannon

00:15:19.940 with the podcast version dropping the next day.

00:15:23.320 See what everybody's talking about

00:15:24.620 and join us in the dark.

00:15:32.400 Ever look at someone at the top and wonder,

00:15:34.780 do they even remember where they started?

00:15:37.300 What did it take to get there?

00:15:39.080 I do on every episode.

00:15:41.540 I'm Evelyn and on my podcast, Reppin',

00:15:44.080 the people the world thinks it knows,

00:15:46.920 gets to say who they actually are.

00:15:49.520 The grit, the doubt, the moments nobody sees.

00:15:53.120 And everything they learned getting there, it's yours for the taking.

00:15:58.180 Reppin', find us wherever you listen.

00:16:00.820 Go get it now.

00:16:03.420 Do you love Disney?

00:16:04.960 Do you love Top Ten lists?

00:16:06.460 Then you're going to love our podcast, Disney Countdown.

00:16:09.160 Hi, I'm Megan the Magical Millennial.

00:16:10.820 And Biscuits, I'm Jeremy, a.k.a. Jarendell.

00:16:14.000 And we are the hosts of the hit Disney podcast, Disney Countdown.

00:16:17.000 On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney.

00:16:22.780 The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore.

00:16:27.140 There is nothing we don't cover on our show. Right, Jeremy?

00:16:30.020 Ooh, girl, you know we are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life.

00:16:37.220 So if you are looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.

00:16:44.360 And we're back.

00:16:45.240 This idea of the domesticated woman is actually relatively recent in human history. And we first see examples of it in ancient Athens in the idea of the oikos and the polis. The polis, the public space, the oikos, the domestic space. The woman belongs to the oikos and the man belongs to the polis.

00:17:04.800 But even in early Athens, the oikos was not this kind of hidden away, cloistered area. 0.85

00:17:12.340 The home was, you know, I know I'm talking about upper class homes here because poorer

00:17:17.020 people would not have that division.

00:17:19.000 They wouldn't be able to afford that kind of division.

00:17:21.080 Everybody worked, including children, among less wealthy families, but in wealthier households. 0.91

00:17:26.500 The oikos was a center of production and industry. 0.96

00:17:29.840 It had to be.

00:17:30.440 It was part of the vibrant economy of Athens.

00:17:35.060 You know, this is where food was produced, where clothes were produced.

00:17:38.140 There have been an army of people working within the home because that is where production

00:17:44.140 happened, industry happened.

00:17:45.940 But what you see very slowly is that slowly, that power that resides within the home slowly

00:17:50.980 starts to seed.

00:17:52.220 And with it, the power of women then within wider society because they are seen to be, 1.00

00:17:58.180 that is seen to be their appropriate space. And ironically, one of the big spurs for that 1.00

00:18:03.860 is the advent of democracy. Here we see democracy as, you know, today we associate it with freedom

00:18:12.200 and liberty and this idea of egalitarianism. But when democracy was first introduced in ancient

00:18:17.840 Athens, women didn't have the vote, neither did slaves or certain categories of people who were 0.99

00:18:23.340 who were not wealthy enough, not considered citizens in the same way. And what that did was 0.80

00:18:28.720 essentially move a lot of power within society out of the oikos into the polis, so into the 0.99

00:18:35.940 hands of men. So ironically, democracy was what undermined a lot of women's authority 1.00

00:18:41.340 in those early societies. And we forget this. We forget how the levers of power are exercised 0.95

00:18:47.860 in sometimes quite subtle ways, but sometimes quite overt ones in different societies at

00:18:53.220 different points in time in order for a small elite of people at the top, the men at the top

00:18:59.680 to grab power. Well, and then I think the example of ancient Greece is so valuable because in a

00:19:05.800 Western European sense, because then the Romans were inspired by them. And then people in all

00:19:11.420 kinds of European countries were inspired by the Romans. And then when England and Portugal started

00:19:17.080 colonizing, then they brought that message to the places they were going. So it really,

00:19:21.040 it's not just this came out of nowhere. It was a message that was created and then intentionally

00:19:25.460 spread. Yeah, absolutely. What we have to remember is that there is no necessarily

00:19:31.420 unbroken line between antiquity and the present as much as Western philosophers would like to

00:19:38.340 pretend that Western Europe is just a continuation of what was happening in ancient Greece and Rome.

00:19:44.780 Actually, it was all very deliberate. The creation of the modern nation state in regions like Western

00:19:51.020 Europe borrowed heavily from that particular period of time rather than others, because it

00:19:58.080 served them so well. You know, when they created their own democracies, they also didn't give women 0.95

00:20:03.940 the vote. How convenient to be able to have a historical precedent in which women didn't have 0.97

00:20:09.180 the vote for you to then create your own societies in which women don't have the vote, in which 0.55

00:20:14.260 slaves also don't have the vote, which only a certain caterer of people have the power.

00:20:20.880 You know, we can see this so clearly in modern day Western societies. I mean, I live in New York,

00:20:25.720 you only have to go downtown. It's full of these neoclassical buildings, just one after another,

00:20:30.980 column after column after column. That is testament to how much we have borrowed

00:20:36.920 as humans from a period of time that even in its own time was seen as particularly weird and

00:20:44.220 misogynistic. Ancient Athens was not typical of the world of gender relations across the world

00:20:49.680 at that period of time. It was strange. Even neighboring Sparta had very different

00:20:56.100 rules around how men and women lived, how boys and girls behaved. In ancient Egypt at the same time,

00:21:02.440 women were working in the professions. There were women pharaohs, women rulers. 0.99

00:21:07.200 So the fact that we choose Athens, ancient Athens rather than anywhere else, I think says a lot

00:21:13.080 about the type of societies modern nation builders were trying to create.

00:21:20.120 You mentioned in your book, and I thought this was interesting, you gave an example that I was

00:21:23.260 familiar with from Star Trek, where it just kind of like the way that people imagine what a

00:21:28.660 matrilineal society would look like. And in the Star Trek example, it's a planet where women are 1.00

00:21:32.620 taller than men. And basically, it's basically patriarchy, but just gender reversed. And so I

00:21:38.560 think that's how, that's an example of how I think when people try to think, well, what's the opposite

00:21:43.440 of patriarchy? Well, it's women doing the exact same thing in reverse. But in your book, you 1.00

00:21:48.740 explain that's not how a matrilineal society necessarily would have worked. Yeah, we see a 0.90

00:21:54.040 lot more social variation between matrilineal societies and anthropologists have cataloged

00:21:59.260 at least 160. There's only one illustration in my book. It's a map of existing current day

00:22:04.400 matrilineal societies and each of them are very different. You know, there are some that worship

00:22:08.520 goddesses, many that have very different ideas around marriage customs, some that are hunter-gatherer

00:22:15.200 societies, others that have been very influential, wealthy, royal societies, hierarchical in their

00:22:22.140 own ways, but also continuing matriliny. So every single one is different. And the further you go

00:22:27.900 back into the past, actually, the more social variation you see in how people live. Patriarchies

00:22:33.100 are not all the same. Even they show huge variation between them. We just don't recognize it that

00:22:38.500 way because the way in which we use the word patriarchy feels so flat. It's almost as though

00:22:45.080 this is the same thing and exists all over the world and it was invented at one point in time

00:22:49.160 and we're just all living with its effects now. In reality, it's not like that. Of course,

00:22:54.640 you only have to look at the history of the Americas to know that's not true.

00:22:58.760 Patriarchy might be thousands of years old in Europe. It's only a couple of hundred years old

00:23:04.940 in North America, because indigenous societies just didn't organize themselves that way.

00:23:11.360 There are huge differences. And what I wanted to do with this book is not present the case of the

00:23:17.480 matrilineal society or the matrilocal society as the only alternative to patriarchy, like this kind

00:23:25.520 of binary opposition. And, you know, we could live this way instead. But just to show people

00:23:31.140 that there is no natural reason why we have to live in male-dominated communities because lots

00:23:40.300 of people don't and haven't. We have created things the way that they are and we can invent

00:23:45.400 something else. There is nothing that's stopping us from inventing something else. I wonder if

00:23:51.040 sometimes we're constrained by this idea that there is something natural about it. We've become

00:23:56.540 so resigned to it, but there really isn't. Well, and I think that's an argument in your book,

00:24:01.180 you mentioned this, that political leaders routinely invoke tradition and nature when

00:24:05.700 clamping down on women's rights. So there's this concept that is weaponized to say like, 0.63

00:24:11.700 well, this is just how things are. So stop fighting it because that's just how things

00:24:16.500 have always been. It's nature. Yeah. And it's in their interest to do that. And I've seen that

00:24:21.640 also, you know, in my previous work, looking at things like caste and race, they do exactly the

00:24:27.840 same. You know, the elites do exactly the same, that they try and frame things as natural.

00:24:32.560 But you see it, this kind of resignation or fatalism around patriarchy, you see even in

00:24:39.860 feminist literature, remarkably, you know, it's, it still surprises me how often I will read books

00:24:45.020 that will say, it has been like this since the dawn of time. And now we're fighting back or

00:24:50.680 implying that gender equality is something new that we're now inventing and it's never existed

00:24:56.380 before. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing. Humans have always experimented in how 0.99

00:25:03.120 they live, have always switched things around and tried different things. What makes societies now

00:25:10.280 feel so monolithic and unchangeable is the fact that we have created establishments, institutions,

00:25:17.280 states that are so rigid in the way they operate, so bureaucratic, that even small amounts of change

00:25:24.640 take a huge amount of effort, especially in societies like the US, where vested, powerful

00:25:31.140 interests have a huge role to play in lobbying, in getting people into power, that pushing back

00:25:38.080 against them becomes even harder then. So you feel hopeless after a while. It feels that nothing

00:25:45.460 thing you do will ever be able to fix this, that you always seem to go back to the beginning.

00:25:50.200 However many steps you take forward, there always seems to be a few steps back. But that's just

00:25:54.260 because those in power have designed things this way. It has always been in their interest to do

00:25:59.560 it. To move forward, what I would love, and maybe I'm too radical in trying to imagine this,

00:26:06.880 what I would love is that we rediscover that ability to be socially nimble, that we can

00:26:13.020 somehow lose a few layers of this strangulating bureaucracy and just find a way to get things

00:26:23.720 done faster, get change to where we want it more quickly. Well, and I think for me, what I found

00:26:29.760 really eye-opening just about the way you lay out everything in your book is just what you were

00:26:34.120 just saying that this was invented. It's like someone, like people intentionally, the people

00:26:39.760 in Athens decided to do this. And then the people who were inspired by them chose that.

00:26:43.780 It's not just, well, this is just how human society is. Women are nurturing and men are

00:26:48.920 warriors. And that's just how society is. It's like, if that's a society, like your book really 1.00

00:26:53.980 breaks down why that's not true and why that can't be true because of the ancient cultures

00:26:58.400 that you look at, but also just looking at the exceptions that there's always been.

00:27:02.480 In every culture, there's been women who fight back where it's like, oh yeah, where 0.98

00:27:05.780 men are inherently better, but except for like, oh, but Elizabeth the first, well, she was 0.53

00:27:10.200 different. You know, that's okay. Victoria, it's like, that's cool. But otherwise women are not

00:27:15.000 capable. So like the argument falls apart when you start examining it, which is what your book 1.00

00:27:19.140 very artfully does, just really looks at these sorts of things. Well, I just think it's important

00:27:26.120 to remember that there have always been powerful women throughout history. There is a huge and 0.99

00:27:31.300 growing literature, examining those women and the power that they had. But what never happens 0.60

00:27:38.280 is our underlying narrative that we have always been patriarchal never changes. That always stays

00:27:44.560 the same. All that happens is that these women become footnotes. There have been millions of 1.00

00:27:49.080 women throughout history who have fought in wars, on the front line who have fought in wars,

00:27:53.820 been part of guerrilla armies as well as standing armies defending nations, who have been queens and 0.50

00:28:02.620 kings and pharaohs and had very high status, who have run societies, who have taken the reins of

00:28:10.160 power, who have led in their own right, not just because they are the wives or daughters of someone

00:28:16.780 unimportant. We have loads of examples of this. Why are they always only ever footnotes to that

00:28:24.080 main story? Why does our main story never change? I think that's what needs to happen now. We need

00:28:29.460 to be able to incorporate that women's history into bigger history and say, how is it that we 0.90

00:28:38.280 have come to imagine that societies right throughout history in every part of the world

00:28:43.780 have always been as gendered as they are now. That just doesn't make any sense. There's no

00:28:48.700 reason to assume that. There is a trajectory here and it's complex. There's no doubt. I wish this

00:28:55.660 story was simple. And I sometimes do wonder if readers would prefer it to be simple. They want

00:29:01.900 there to have been one moment 5,000 years ago at which everything changed and now we're living

00:29:07.080 with the effects of it. And that's just not how it is. This is a slow grift, depending on where

00:29:13.660 you are in the world. And it is still happening. The origins of patriarchy are something we're

00:29:20.340 still living through because people are still reasserting it, still recreating it. Look at

00:29:25.540 Iran, look at Afghanistan. Here are societies in which patriarchy is being reasserted and

00:29:31.380 recreated for the 21st century, not reaching back into some imagined past and then, you know,

00:29:40.520 this is how we're supposed to be they are making it anew they're creating this fresh

00:29:46.340 and that's the way i think we need to imagine this uh just as a as a final thing i was at the

00:29:52.840 very very end of your book i think it's the end of your epilogue where you're kind of talking about

00:29:57.760 you say i'm left wondering if the radical societies we create now could someday form the

00:30:02.820 basis of tomorrow's habits and customs and i find that very a hopeful sort of note to end your book

00:30:08.720 on thinking this was not, we're not powerless in this situation. I mean, societies have,

00:30:15.220 there's always been, even within a culture, not everyone in that culture accepts that culture

00:30:20.180 and acts the same way. And so just becoming aware of it, I find just a useful way to think about

00:30:27.440 things that perhaps we could find a new way or people in the future could look back and choose

00:30:32.700 a different inspiration. When you were writing the book, were you thinking, I don't know,

00:30:37.000 were there points where you just thought, well, this is a depressing thesis. How am I going to

00:30:42.000 find hope in this story? I actually found it very optimistic throughout because every time I

00:30:49.900 expected to see no resistance or things were really bad, I found examples of people pushing

00:30:58.060 back always in every single society and of things being more precarious than we imagine,

00:31:03.380 of negotiation within marriages, within families, but also within societies between people.

00:31:11.320 The story that emerges is one of social conflict, eternal social conflict almost.

00:31:18.400 Different people have different ideas of how we should live. There is no one way. As much as we

00:31:23.600 might fall back on this aphorism that everybody wants an equal society, what does equal actually

00:31:31.360 mean what do we actually think that that means it means different things to different people

00:31:36.540 and there are many people in society who don't really want an equal society they just want a

00:31:42.520 bit more power for themselves ultimately because they haven't had it historically and is that an

00:31:47.900 equal society or is that just just a redistribution of power what would a truly equal society look

00:31:54.880 like one in which nobody has more power than anybody else one in which there are no hierarchies

00:31:59.800 in which nobody is vulnerable. Nobody has to need anything or want anything because society

00:32:06.100 provides for them and cares for them and looks after them. We're not going to get to that kind

00:32:10.320 of society just by, you know, taking turns to elevate groups of people. We're only going to

00:32:15.840 get there if we have really wide scale change in how we think about our values, the kind of world

00:32:23.600 we want to live in. And also through love, we've kind of forgotten that this is also an essential

00:32:30.120 human quality. The fact that we as a species are able to care for others, even those who we're not

00:32:37.660 related to, is quite remarkable. It is such an important part of who we are, that we can have

00:32:44.900 empathy with someone on the other side of the world in a war zone or suffering hunger, and we

00:32:51.520 can want to help them. That is the quality within ourselves that we need to reclaim if we're going

00:32:56.720 to build a kind of truly equal society. Well, thank you so, so much for joining me today. I

00:33:02.640 think your book is so, well, you're saying like it's filling a gap, I think, in the Scarlet Lee

00:33:08.160 record. There wasn't a book like this before that I've encountered. So I'm really grateful that it

00:33:12.080 exists. And thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. I really

00:33:16.880 appreciate it. So again, the book that we were talking about is Angela Saini's book, The Patriarchs,

00:33:23.660 How Men Came to Rule, which should be available everywhere around the world, all different

00:33:28.240 countries. And if you want to keep up with her and her work and where she is and where she'll

00:33:32.520 be appearing doing talks and things, she has a website, which is angelassaini.co.uk. Saini is

00:33:38.300 spelled S-A-I-N-I. And my name is Anne Foster. I don't know if you've been hearing, my cat Hepburn

00:33:44.880 has been really enthusiastic while I'm recording this introduction and extra. Anyway, you can keep

00:33:50.320 up with me on Instagram at vulgarhistorypod, on TikTok at vulgarhistory. If you go to vulgarhistory.com

00:33:56.800 as well, there's links there to the store and you can also look there. We've got transcripts are

00:34:01.680 rolling in from Aveline Malek at the Wordery. So if you prefer to read or you want to,

00:34:07.720 after you've heard a podcast, you want to go back and read it in words, you can find that

00:34:10.620 all at vulgarhistory.com. I also have a Patreon at patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer, where if

00:34:15.960 you subscribe, you can get access to early and ad-free versions of all episodes of Vulgar History.

00:34:21.580 Anyway, I hope you're all doing really well. I hope the patriarchy is not getting in your way

00:34:26.840 too much today. And I'll talk to you all next time. So until then, keep your pants on and your tits out.

00:34:34.040 Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Anne Foster and edited by Christina Lumagi. 0.99

00:34:40.620 To be continued...

00:35:10.620 and the cyberpunk chaos of Cyborg.

00:35:17.220 Fall in love with our core cast,

00:35:20.380 or be awed by our incredible guests

00:35:22.980 from familiar shows like Oxventure,

00:35:26.280 Three Black Halflings,

00:35:27.980 and No Rolls Barred. 1.00

00:35:31.320 Ignite your imagination

00:35:32.820 and discover the realms of peril and glory today.

00:35:36.840 Go to RealmsPod.com

00:35:38.580 or search Realms of Peril and Glory wherever you listen to podcasts.

00:35:43.960 Two, one, you win!

00:35:47.120 There are vampires out there.

00:35:49.420 They walk among you, shoulder to shoulder, in the dark.

00:35:52.420 Heading to work, heading home, going to the bar.

00:35:54.960 It's a life just like anyone else's, and I have grown used to it.

00:35:59.200 To the darkness, to the moon, to the taste of blood on my tongue.

00:36:02.920 But vampires are dying out.

00:36:05.020 We are a fading kind, and I am the first one created in so long, and that is a dangerous

00:36:10.600 thing to be.

00:36:12.000 Those who came before me, elders of all stripes, they do not want to see our kind gone, and

00:36:16.740 they will do anything to keep their power.

00:36:19.440 And for myself, and for Grace, who created me, that is a sword that hangs above our heads.

00:36:24.880 And the worst person of all carries our secret, and he will use it however he sees fit.

00:36:31.280 Who do you look to when things are at their darkest?

00:36:34.620 From the creators of Parkdale Haunt comes Woodbine,

00:36:37.060 a podcast about monsters, dreams, and changes.

00:36:40.280 Those you want, and those you never saw coming.

00:36:43.520 Season 2 arrives September 24th, distributed by Realm.

00:36:47.500 Hi, I'm Whitney.

00:36:48.980 And I'm Katie.

00:36:50.000 And we're the hosts of True Crime Campfire.

00:36:52.540 We set out to make a true crime podcast we'd want to listen to.

00:36:56.100 We get right to the story.

00:36:57.400 We don't do a lot of extra talking, and when we do, 0.99

00:37:00.160 it's usually to roast the short hairs off of some loser, murderer, or scammer. 0.98

00:37:04.020 You'll laugh, but only at the people who deserve it. 0.98

00:37:06.660 Like, which serial killer would you most like to shove into a locker?

00:37:10.740 BTK and his awful poetry.

00:37:12.920 Dude got caught because he didn't understand what a floppy disk was.

00:37:16.660 We look for the stranger than fiction stories, like the case of Patty James,

00:37:20.540 a killer catfish before the internet was even a thing.

00:37:22.980 Or Howard Walmsley, a sentient wad of damp laundry who convinced his town he'd won the lottery,

00:37:28.860 fleeced local businesses out of thousands, and then became a romance scammer.

00:37:33.160 We've covered tons of cases you've never heard of. 0.94

00:37:35.880 Cults, scammers, killers.

00:37:37.740 So come find your next great binge.

00:37:39.620 Listen to True Crime Campfire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:37:44.880 New episodes every Friday.

Vulgar History - July 07, 2023

Author Interview： Angela Saini (The Patriarchs： The Origins of Inequality)

Episode Stats

Transcript