A website supporting my switchingview YouTube Channel

I have been studying Intermediate Type and Queer Ministry issues for over 20 years, but it was only when I researched Patriarchy that the jigsaw pieces fell into place and I could understand the different attitudes to homosexuality and gender variance across the world.

It used to be thought that Patriarchy (Father dominance) was the natural state in the human and animal world: a state ordained by a patriarchal God. More recent research has challenged these ideas, arguing that the original human condition was what I am calling Biarchy (men and women sharing authority). For example:

Neolithic cultures were relatively matrifocal, peaceful, and non-hierarchical in the social arrangement. . . . .

roughly egalitarian societies, in which women and men shared responsibilities and power, preceded patriarchal forms of cultural organisation. [Randy P Connor - Blossom of Bone - 1993]

No one is quite sure why patriarchy came into the world, but it seems that it started in the Asian Steppes about 4000 BCE, developed slowly in the various Mesopotamian civilisations, to become fully formed in the Roman Empire and succeeding European Christian Civilisations.

BUT - importantly - vast swathes of the world were totally untouched at this time and remained biarchal. That only changed when patriarchy was exported across the world by European colonisation.

There is quite bit of evidence to show that these gender egalitarian, biarchal cultures were welcoming to Intermediate Type people, but the acceptance changed to suppression when patriarchal cultures arrived.

This explains why Intermediate Type and Queer Ministry lives have been valued in different ways at different times and in different parts of the world.

I will be using these theories about patriarchy in all of my switchingview work on Intermediate Type issues. But the videos below will explore a wider range of themes related to patriarchy, gender, sexuality and history.

For more information - the Definitions and Laws webpage lists, defines and explains the various ideas used in the project in significant detail, and with supporting references.

Under the current schedule these may not be made until late 2026 or later. But due to the relevance of this topic to what is going on in the world, and especially the USA, I might bring this forward, or upload a few essays and texts in the meantime.

1. Patriarchal and Colonial Repression

Within Britain, much of the discussion about colonialism focusses on slavery. But a deeper analysis will show that colonialism caused many other equally damaging effects right across the world. There was:

• Theft - of land, wealth, and cultural artifacts
• Disease brought in by the invading peoples, alongside frequent famine from social/economic collapse, and
• Genocide. Such genocide could be actual genocide in which the population was deliberately killed off, or Cultural Genocide in which the people remained alive, but a new culture and religion was forcibly imposed on the indigenous population by the invaders.

These recordings contain three case studies which describe how the European colonial project worked to attack and suppress Intermediate Type people and their wider communities across the world, through the forced imposition of European laws, teachings and customs.

Part 1 - Spain, the Americas and the Conquistadores. 15th/16th Century CE.

Part 2 - British Punishment expeditions in Africa; 19th Century CE.

Part 3 - Forced Assimilation within Schools, often Church-run Schools, in Canada, USA and the Pacific Islands. 19th/20th/21st Century CE (and still ongoing).

2. A Skeleton Argument

The vast bulk of the evidence available about LGBTQIA+ issues comes to us in written and textual sources. But some interesting evidence is available from archaeology, and the study of skeletons and grave goods.

This recording describes some examples of this, and explores how the modern ability to accurately determine skeletal gender is challenging old patriarchal, heteronormative assumptions within the scholarship. I describe examples where skeletons of warriors and hunters are in fact female, and skeletons buried in women's clothing and with beads and mirrors which are male.

3.Intersectionality

The word intersectionality is used to describe how the study of discrimination and oppression cannot be sectioned off into discrete subject areas - race, gender, sexuality, disability. It is necessary to understand how these issues overlap and inter-react.

THere is an economic aspect to Patriarchy. Biarchal systems often tend to be Communitarian. There is an egalitarian value system with land, wealth and property managed for the good of the community. Patriarchal systems are more Possessive, with value systems based around the acquisition and control of personal wealth, and a man's control of his wife and children.

In this recording I explore how this research on economic relationships overlaps with other recent research on family, personal and religious relationships.