There are certainly natural centralizations of power within gender. As explained in the intro they are not necessarily required in our current social situations, but the way humans are made, there have been social structures in place in our history and they have had uses in gender.

A family living off the land might for instance run into a period of scarce resources, and the priority to the resources could be useful in different places. Going to a hunter/gatherer figure it could be more useful in helping the hunter/gatherer get more resources. Also it could go to any female because she could at any time be eating for two (hunter and female are not exclusive relationships, meaning hunter does not imply male). Resources could also be prioritized to the youth for healthy development.

I don’t intend to get anywhere discussing the priority of resources between the genders from the start. The usefulness is in developing the discussion as the centralization of power extends into matriarchal, patriarchal, and egalitarian social structures. Decision making is taken out of the group and given to an individual. Social norms develop differently in separate cultures, and as always, there is no one right way. But here discussed is a dissection of the usefulness of a patriarchal social structure, where the male is placed as the head of a family and the lineage is traced through male offspring. I do not intend to actually find patriarchy useful, merely intend to explore the usefulness of it as a means to see why the centralization of power occurs.

In patriarchal social structure, male is given importance over the distribution of resources, establishing the centralization of power. Decision making is itself a resource, but this resource is being genderized. It isn’t simply the first born child, but the first born, male, child.

The distribution of decision making effects all the social norms, for instance in a heterosexual relationship today, male performance is associated with decision making in dating, through the initiation of conversation, financial contribution to the relationship, initiation of sex, success associated with the male. This is all discussed through a simplistic view of patriarchal social structure, understanding there are variants of these situations but by dissecting the prominent.

There is a certain point I moved across quickly that I would like to go back to. Decision making is itself a resource. The most usefulness of patriarchy would be that there is an understanding of who is responsible for decisions. If a family does something and it is positive or negative, under the view of patriarchy, we know who is responsible. In a relationship we do not have to wait around to see if either side does something, when we naturally expect one side to be the decision maker. Men are expected to talk to women, so if men do not talk to women then it is understood that the correspondence is not desired. If we did not have this understanding we might have groups standing around, not knowing who should be doing what. This does not justify patriarchy but attempts to articulate a usefulness of it, when it is understood who does the decision making.

The decision of who makes the decisions is therefore already decided in a patriarchal social structure. Removing one of the major decisions of authority. To further understand the centralization of power it should be understood that the elimination of decision making is part of the process to articulate the one right way, and avoid conflict and ambiguity in the transference of the centralization of power.

To conclude from the development of the genderization of the centralization of power, it is first used to eliminate decisions. First half the population does not make decisions, and then the transference of power is no longer a decision. So one of the key uses of the ability to prioritize resource distribution is to come to a ‘rule’ on how decisions are made, therefore eliminating decisions in the process.

Key notes to understand and later be articulated include:

1.) There is no one right way.

2.) Decisions cause anxiety.