Reddit reviews The Creation of Patriarchy (Women and History; V. 1)

men created patriarchal structures to freely use womens' reproductive labor power


I can't recommend Lerner's Creation of the Patriarchy enough for this. An amazon reviewer sums up her thesis well:


>The struggle to control nature through agriculture created a shift toward patriarchy. Lerner reveals that it was women's reproductive capacity that men wanted to control for economic reasons. Children became an asset. Their labor was needed to till the soil and shepherd the herds. Certain "ecological conditions and biological irregularities" that threatened the survival of the tribe also contributed to viewing women's bodies as a commodity that could be exchanged with tribes, and acquired through tribal warfare leading to female slavery, concubinage, wives being subordinate to their husbands, and class formation. Lerner traces the rise of male power, the reification of women as the private property of men with the eventual subordination of women (and some men) through the codes and laws of the state, which dehumanized women in order to institutionalize male dominated hierarchies.


it all boils down to biology I think

Gerda Lerner's text The Creation of the Patriarchy is an excellent read. I highly recommend picking up a copy and reading the whole thing.

I've checked and all of these are available new and are not exorbitantly expensive. I haven't read all of them, some are just from my own personal wish list. These are radfem but not directly trans-focused. Sorry if that was more what you were looking for, if so I can check for more along those lines.

Life and Death by Dworkin

Intercourse by Dworkin

Letters from a war zone by Dworkin

The creation of patriarchy by Lerner

Origin of the family, private property and the state by Engels

Ain't I a woman: black women and feminism by hooks

Pornland by Dines

Anticlimax by Jeffreys

Are woman human? by MacKinnon