Hence, the core contradiction and paradox of our system – namely, that the natural and real condition of matriarchy and polyandry has been reversed by white male patriarchy and the male imposition of monogamy because of the advent of Anglo-American and European colonialism – impacts virtually all other aspects of the global system. For instance, why Roe v. Wade could ever be nullified and reversed under the noses of liberals and with universal suffrage in place is because of the core contradiction and paradox of our whole system, which then extends into the subtle but important branches of the social world such as public reasoning and science. As the 19th century American women’s rights activist Helen Hamilton Gardener argued:
“When religious influence and dogma began to lose their terrors, legal enactments were slowly modified in woman’s favor and hell went out of fashion. Then, Conservatism, Ignorance, and Egotism, in dismay and terror, took counsel together and called in medical science, still in its infancy, to aid in staying the march of progress.”
Another interesting and valid point which Otto Weininger made was that adultery could be borne only out of monogamous marriage. Logic dictates that without monogamous marriage, there cannot be adultery. One is necessary in order for the other to occur and to take place. Thus, a “moral deviation” like adultery can occur only in the event of a supposedly moral act such as monogamous marriage. As Weininger argued:
“Based on any deviations from the strictest moral law – and such a deviation is implied in every empirical marriage – a fully satisfactory solution of that problem is no longer possible: at the same time as marriage adultery came into the world.”
Hence, the Nietzschean notion of Christian and religious morality as the height of hypocrisy and disingenuity and so forth. And in a sense, morality is borne out of “immorality” and vice versa. As Shakespeare wrote in his “Dark Lady Sonnets”: “Love is too young to know what conscience is, Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?”
Moreover, love is the necessary condition for a contingent condition like “morality.” Why “morality” would have anything to do with marriage or sexual relations, as both Bertrand Russell and Michel Foucault noted, was because of the procreative factor of sexual relations. As Russell argued, there are three factors which foster the relationship between morality and marriage. For one, the marriage must be a happy one in order for it to be moralistic. Second, there has to be a moral dimension in the bearing of children. And third, there has to be a moral dimension in the rearing of children. But without the first factor, the other two factors are undermined, and the outcomes of childbearing and child rearing become foregone conclusions in the event of an unhappy marriage.
Hence, the “grand strategy” of patriarchy and the imposition of monogamy vis-à-vis women is to confine the role of women in society to a one-dimensional role, namely, the role of childbearing and child rearing, even though women are capable of transcending that one-dimensional role. As Helen Hamilton Gardener argued: “Every fallen woman is a perpetual monument to the infamy of a religion and a social custom that narrow her life to the possibilities of but one function, and provide her no escape – a system that trains her to depend wholly on one physical characteristic of her being, and to neglect all else.” Hence, the prevailing notion and the widespread resignation towards the idea that one’s approach towards the system should be an approach that is based on accepting the system for what it is rather than how it should be.
Adam A. Azim 