Quentin

The word "matriarchy" exists, which produces a wonderfully human cognitive error: once a thing has been given a noun it must be real, because it has a word! So I would like to introduce an important new category and, by the prevailing standard, an important new political reality: Cricetarchy — rule by hamsters. From Cricetinae, the hamster subfamily. As in, “The Cricetarchy demands another sunflower seed from the human underlings.” Having now supplied an intellectually rigorous noun, we naturally require an academic discipline devoted to recovering the erased history of Cricetarchal social order. Departments of Hamster Critical Theory are to be founded. With tenured Hamster Studies professors. Conferences must be held. Someone at Yale must explain, with grave moral urgency, how adult human males have historically existed beneath the invisible structures of hamster power. If you squint, rearrange enough definitions, and make some enchanted declarations that absolve one of evidence, we can make it work 🐹. Perhaps we should invoke some impressive, scholarly words to show how serious we are. Let us sprinkle in "metaphysics", "materialism", "hermeneutics", "ontology" and "discursive power structures" a few times -- the philosopher's collection of magic words, granting one infinite ability to Just Say Things without any proof, backed by forty pages of nouns -- and announce that Cricetarchy operated not through crude physical domination but via “distributed networks of hamster-coded influence”. Checkmate, reality. Now I want everyone who isn't completely molested by symbols to perform an exotic, highly unofficial procedure known as Looking At The Thing. Those who aren't ideologically or philosophically one-shotted immediately see the issue. A tiny rodent can't rule over a man! Why? The hamster possesses no means of imposing its decisions upon the man. It can't compel obedience individually, can't organize coercion collectively, and can't prevent the human subject from simply picking up His Fuzzy Excellency and returning him to the cage with his little spinny wheel. If further evidence is required, you may conduct an experiment in reality (the strange external domain where propositions are checked to make sure you're not just making shit up) to confirm. The academics and philosophers are unconvinced. They begin vigorously generating many symbols. Definitions are widened. Categories dissolved. Saying many things and feeling many feelings, epistemically, axiologically, post-structural nominalism, and so on, and so forth. Concluding that just because Hank can physically place the Hamster King into a shoebox, that's nothing more than vulgar attachment to naive empiricism. They refuse to look to the body's reality for correspondence, opting for internal self-citing recursion (words cite words to prove words). If there's no way to verify the claim, then perhaps hamster governance is a real thing? Much to ponder. Wait! If all it takes is being bigger and stronger, well, what about the bear? It's far more physically powerful than a man. Does that mean Ursarchy — from Latin ursus, rule by bears, is a thing? Alas, the Great Bear Empire never arrives. While they overpower man in one-on-one combat, men have superior actionable intelligence that lets them organize at scale and vanquish the bear. Humans possess something more politically important than individual strength: scalable coordination. We aggregate intelligence, construct weapons, form coalitions, punish defectors, and concentrate the capacities of thousands or millions of men into a single organized unit. The relevant political animal is not the solitary man. It is men organized together. The capacity for violence is still what determines rule, and its most powerful manifestation is found collectively. A unit of men wield extraordinarily more violence than bears by combining their physical and intellectual abilities. Interesting. So we may conclude the capacity to rule is ultimately determined by those who are the most effective Thing Doers, not the most elaborate Thing Sayers. Now I'd like to revisit a lovely little made-up word that is near and dear to the hearts of many: matriarchy, rule by women. These elegant lady creatures have intelligence comparable to men. So they could plausibly coordinate enough to rule them. Let's go to the body now, you can't forget that! That will determine the tie breaker. (The philosophers, academics, and feminists are still hard at work rotating many symbols. Convinced they can eschew external verification if only they rearrange enough definitions and thoughts in their heads.) Oh dear, sexual dimorphism has entered the chat. These lithe, lovely mamas aren't just a little weaker and smaller than men, they're dramatically less physically capable. Like, it's not even close! The body cannot simply be defined out of the nature of coercion, enforcement, and dominance. The academic vomits with rage. Men are overwhelmingly physically stronger, more aggressive, have far better spatial intelligence, quicker reaction times, and greater speed. Now that's a tough one to overcome. Let's go to history and see if this adds up. History and anthropology are unambiguous. There has never been a matriarchy and it's excruciatingly clear why: when intelligence is similar, a smaller, weaker, slower animal cannot rule and dictate to a larger, stronger, faster one at scale. Historical sources in QT. Anyone who says "matriarchy" as if that's ever been a thing is at best incredibly naive, and at worst, a liar. They might as well be telling you about Cricetarchy and a fairytale about hamster kingdoms. It has never existed. It will never exist. Because that smaller, weaker, slower animal with similar intelligence will never rule over a larger, stronger, faster one... unless the stronger one allows it. In which case, you're not truly ruling sister. You occupy a position that can be taken away when the stronger animal says "no". You "rule" at the mercy of those who have granted you permission to do so. Rule exists where a command is backed by an enforcement structure capable of surviving disobedience. A queen (or any political leader) without men with guns behind her is just a lady in a silly costume. Rights are not self-enforcing sentences. Laws are not spells. Borders are not lines that remain sacred because a legislature described them. Every political order rests upon institutions capable of compelling compliance. Throughout recorded history, this force has been supplied by men. Men give women rights. Women do not give men rights. Men rule over women. Women do not rule over men. Because the male body is what enforces laws, boundaries, consequences, and exerts vastly greater coordinated violence than any other species, or subspecies, of animal on earth. That's the inevitable material reality language eventually encounters: behind the statute is enforcement; behind enforcement is organized force; and behind organized force are male bodies acting in coordination. This upsets academics, philosophers, feminists, and the very online because it exposes their "matriarchy" language manipulation for what it is: a facade. A fantasy inside their heads and behind screens that has no correspondence outside of it. You may rename a relationship. Dilute a definition. Invent a new symbol. Produce an ontology of the category and a hermeneutics of the ontology. You may build an immaculate web of symbols in which every word certifies the next... But stacking words on top of words does not change the reality of the body and how rule is determined. You Can't Just Say Things.