Women's Emancipation Is Reproductive Independence

[Valley Oak]

If women are ever going to be fully liberated and empowered then they must have reproductive independence. All women, with no exceptions, even if married, must have the legal, cultural, and ethical right to reproduce with any man.

It's still a man's world and it's an entire society constructed by men and with most rules made by men. Men want their ladies to produce only their offspring. This is male domination and repression against women. Any woman must have the right, although married, to have as many children as she chooses, each child sired by a different father.

A social transition like this is very profound and expansive. It will take generations to build an entire civilization where women are completely empowered. The social fabric will radically change and everything else in society will gradually fall into place. All of our laws, culture, and government will be modified to reflect absolute female parity. Our culture, as in literature, music, film, values and traditions will morph as the fruit of nations who reach this high pinnacle of evolution.

Long live Reproductive Independence! Long live women's true emancipation.

[wisewomn]

Pretty radical stuff, Valley Oak. Along with the social and political evolution would have to be the evolution of males. Off the top of my head, I can't imagine any man I know who would be willing to stay with a woman who chose to have children by other men. For one thing, who would be responsible financially for those children, never mind who would help raise them?
None of this is to say that it's not a great idea. :-)

[comodin]

When a child is born, it is obvious who the mother is, but it is not obvious who the father is.

In a matriarchy, where all property passes through the mother's line, there is no doubt about the proper heirs; but in a patriarchy, there is no guarantee that a man, who is supposed to support the family, isn't working to raise a child, or children, fathered by some other man. Hence the serious focus on monogamy, which in the days of the Crusades, saw noble knights securing their "property rights" to their wives by the use of locked chastity belts during their absences. And this view of women as the property of men persists, since no man wants to be a cuckold.

In a culture where women had the freedom to consort with whomever they liked, it would be a matter of course that men would not expect to possess any woman, and marriage would not be an irreversible trap with legal penalties to enforce fidelity. The place of a male parent would probably be taken, as was and is usual in traditional societies, by some male relative, typically the child's uncle.

[wisewomn]

Exactly, Comodin.
Going back even further to the roots, I highly recommend "Sex, Time, and Power: How Female Sexuality Changed the Course of Evolution" by Leonard Shlain.

[wisewomn]

One other thing, Comodin. Matriarchy and matrilineal are two different things.

"By definition, ‘

matriarchy

’ is a form of social organization where the power lies in the hands of women; this is rarely, if ever, the case. Whereas,

matrilineal

descent is an anthropological term that refers to a specific form of inheritance (quite often found in Africa) in which property is transmitted through female lineage."
Setting the record straight: Matrilineal does not equal matriarchal | Water, Land and Ecosystems (cgiar.org)