What do you think of this explanation of the "patriarchy"?

Oncefa2 · 2021-09-07T21:57:45+00:00

I agree with what they're trying to say (it even says gender roles and blames women too in the second pic) but why does it have to be a patriarchy that forces people to act like it?

Shouldn't it be simply traditional gender norms?

I've had this conversation a million times with people. Gender norms are obviously real and obviously harm everyone.

I think what feminists don't like about this is that it implies that men are just as much victims as women, and women are just as guilty (and benefit just as much from the system), as men.

The fundamental cornerstone of patriarchy theory is that women are the biggest victims, and men somehow benefit from it, even if it harms some men or has "side effects".

Feminists ultimately want to reframe everything under that umbrella, so they won't talk about gender norms on their own. They'll only talk about patriarchal gender norms and "the patriarchy also harming men".

It is reactionary and it shuts down conversations. Because any time a man talks about anything, like domestic violence for example, they fall back on that type of regressive rhetoric to control conversations and silence people instead of listening to them.

I actually just made a post about this, coincidentally.

a-man-from-earth · 2021-09-07T21:46:41+00:00

What we need first and foremost is a working definition of patriarchy, because very often the term is used in motte-and-bailey fashion to blame men.

TintelFroot · 2021-09-07T22:16:36+00:00

"patriarchy"

a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.

Since they themselves admit not all men hold power they should stop misusing the world "patriarchy", it's an oligarchy like how difficult is it to use the right term?

problem_redditor · 2021-09-07T22:50:41+00:00

Okay, let's just brush past their use of the word "patriarchy" for a second. I love how they say that by opposing the patriarchy feminism is helping men. That's observably bullshit. By their definition, the patriarchy is being held up by none other than so-called "progressive" feminists who supposedly seek to tear down the status quo.

According to feminists, men need to make way for women and offer them positions based on their sex via affirmative action policies. Men need to take on responsibility for women during sexual encounters because women are uniquely unable to consent when they're drunk or merely intimidated by a big scary man. Men need to “offer more respect” to women and never never never do or say anything bad to a woman. Men need to take steps to protect women from domestic violence while sidelining male victims of domestic violence because protecting women is the priority here. Men need to support "listen and believe"-type policies that trample over men's due process rights because it would benefit some women in the process. Men need to protect women from harm even at the expense of men, because it’s the least they could do! Etc. Oh wow, it's like they're enforcing the traditional "strong man" role on men while simultaneously labelling it as "toxic masculinity" and claiming to oppose it. And they always fucking rely on male hyperagency and female hypoagency to justify all of these discriminatory laws and policies and social attitudes.

EDIT: And as Karen Straughan noted. "You have feminists in Britain advocating the blanket elimination of incarceration for female offenders. You have Madame Justice Hale of Britain's Supreme Court ordering magistrates and judges to be even more lenient on women criminals than they already are. You have feminists wanting to cancel Aziz Ansari because a woman he had sex with somehow thought that stopping moving her hand while still sucking his dick would be an obvious enough "non-verbal cue" that he should have KNOWN she wasn't consenting. Expecting her to take responsibility for her own decisions and actions? Anathema to a lot of feminists."

"Women don't CHOOSE to go into nursing instead of software development because they want to, yo. Those women WOULD choose tech if only we changed the entire culture and curriculum to suit them, lowered standards, made the math less hard, banned Star Trek figurines at the office, and while we're at it, let's get rid of all the autistic nerds who do 90% of the actual work because they make neurotypical women feel unwelcome and creeped out. And why? BECAUSE APPARENTLY WOMEN HAVE NO FUCKING AGENCY. All obstacles must be removed and a straight, even path cleared for them, and they need to be guided, coddled and encouraged the entire way, otherwise they're like Roombas, just bouncing off of surfaces with no ability to steer themselves."

Feminism itself is a perfect display of how women can insist on being perceived as weak and in need of special protection and entitlement. Feminists seem to have been promoting and capitalising on Victorian-era views of gender rather than challenging it, and they don't notice that they're actually supporting the gender roles they claim to oppose.

But remember y'all, feminists want to smash the patriarchy. Also, the patriarchy hurts both men and women and perpetuates a view of men as strong and women as weak and thus denies men help afforded to women. Also, we should continue elevating women at the expense of men and men need to take responsibility for women's wellbeing. We should even correct for the negative consequences of women's own choices because these choices aren't free, these agency-less damsels are steered into doing these things. Also, remember, we want to smash the patriarchy. THIS TOTALLY ISN'T INCONGRUENT AT ALL.

I'm going nuts.

iainmf · 2021-09-08T01:40:33+00:00

Al they are doing is making an observation about society and then blaming patriarchy. Then once they've established that 'patriarchy' is to blame they say feminism is the solution.

You might as well say feminism is the result of a patriarchal society that sees women as vulnerable and men as powerful protectors.

Or using the word 'patriarchy' just reinforces patriarchal ideas about men being powerful and women being weak.

MathematicianNo4277 · 2021-09-08T06:08:23+00:00

Mixing true things with untrue things doesn't make the untrue true.

Traditionnal gender norms hurt both genders. "The patriarchy" is a conspiracy theory.

It's the same stupid debate as around the word "feminism". No, you don't need to be a feminist to fight for gender equality, and no, you don't need to believe in "the patriarchy" to see gender roles.

The problem with those two words is the same: their meaning is "whatever is convenient to me right now".

That's a clever tactic to demonize dissenters: grab a concept nobody well meaning can disagree with, slap the patriarchy sticker on it, then call anyone who doesn't believe in "patriarchy" a dangerous fascist.

Step 2: use "patriarchy", that you have to believe in or you're a fascist, to spread hate.

It's a very old tactic, typical of extremists and the right. It's usually used with terms like "family values", "patriotism", "capitalism", "freedom" (in the US), "christian values"...

Skirt_Douglas · 2021-09-08T16:22:59+00:00

If you are going to call something a “system”, you need to be able to point out and explain the mechanisms by which it operates. There is no such thing as a system with no operational mechanisms, so if patriarchy is a “system” then what are the mechanisms that it uses to administer itself?

The idea that men must always be strong and other gendered expectations are best explained by cultural norms, not a “system” of some kind.

Making this about a non-existing “system” is just a recipe to do nothing about the actual problem, which is cultural. You don’t need to invent patriarchy in order to see why mandatory conscription, high suicide rates, and discrimination in education, forced circumcision etc are bad for men. You don’t need to invoke patriarchy in order to address these issues, and you don’t need to defeat an invisible shadow government to solve them.

Campaigning against patriarchy to solve men’s issues is like protesting against reptilian infiltrators in government to fight for free healthcare.

We already have issues that we are interested in solving, we can already see the causes of the problems and come up with means to solve them. To then say “hey stop focusing on solving your problems, join us in chasing our tails about smashing the evil manpire!” Is no different than just saying “Shut up about the things you care about and just do as we say.”

To which I respond… No.

Blauwpetje · 2021-09-08T14:10:18+00:00

When one, as I do, believes in Popper's Critical Rationalism, the term patriarchy doesn't make sense because it is not falsifiable. When you ask a feminist: under which circumstances will you admit that systematic disadvantages for men are not caused by patriarchy?, there will be no answer, or such an extreme answer that the burden of proof against there being a patriarchy becomes virtually impossible.

The_Mura · 2021-09-08T08:54:06+00:00

The problem for me is that the focus is always entirely on the ways men need to change, as if there are not ways women need to change. There are a lot of ways women reinforce patriarchal norms that do not get much attention. The fact that most women don't "date down" assumes that man should be the breadwinner. A lot of women dont like "weak" men. In many ways, our patriarchal norms are entangled with gaining women's approval. Theres a bit of give and take, where men change themselves for women, and vice versa. But the women are not seeming like they are willing to compromise anything.

The patriarchy was not "created by men." The patriarchy is an emergent property of human civilization, meaning that it came about as an incidental consequence of our evolutionary history. Children take 9 months to develop, and the mother is vulnerable for the duration. Infant mortality was insane in prehistory. So it became essential that men be the ones that take the risks. We evolved around this dynamic, and so have our cultures. And when you have thousands of years of men being the risk takers and women playing it safe, you get a deeply ingrained cultural dynamic where men are assumed to be more capable than women by default. It was not "created" by any man or group of men. To put it in gamer terms, patriarchy is the meta. The meta is not created by any one person, it is created by the interactions lots of different players.

rishajd81 · 2021-09-08T07:37:02+00:00

I think "Goodbye, since you are clearly not capable of having a better descussion than two short-circuiting AI generated Bots from 2004"

Algoresball · 2021-09-08T11:59:48+00:00

Feminism grew out of the civil rights movement and tried to shoehorn itself into civil rights language

Richardsnotmyname · 2021-09-11T11:50:09+00:00

It depends on what the fuck even is the "patriarchy" anymore. The basic original meaning is just a house headed by a father, like matriarchy. Then to feminist, it's a political system where men lead, which logically also means that back when Theresa May was the PM, Britain was a matriarchy but no one ever talks about that. After that it got stretched into a system that benefits men. Then it stretched to traditional gender roles. I just don't know what the fuck "patriarchy" stands for anymore.

SolarEngine89 · 2021-09-08T13:23:49+00:00

Ahm. According to historical data, I think that it is just a bias of modern over-concerned mentality.

"Patriarchy" is, in essence, conspiracy theory created by suffragettes back than to have some ideological grounding to their matter.

What they call "patriarchy" is just another facet of inequality of income/ambition/effort in society, that happens because of a lot factors, but, mostly, because people are different from each other in many terms, and can assume different positions in society according to their abilities/circumstances.

In modern times blaming "patriarchy/traditional gender norms" is very common among people who see ability instead of adapting to system/ working on themselfs try to bend the system to their needs, using demagogy, populism and completely oblivious to majority.

They can not / do not want to understand, that social communication is alvays a compromise between people engaged in communication.

So, in short. It was a fraud back than, and a buzzword now. Like heresy is, essentially everything, that priests do not like/accept for various reasons, ranging from rational to irrational.

DistrictAccurate · 2021-09-08T16:00:42+00:00

Shouldn't it be simply traditional gender norms?

Yes and no. Yes, because "hatred" is very vague and less of a description than an accusation. No, because the termonology used in the context of women's issues carries an inherent connotation of severety that cannot be matched unless a consistent terminology is used across all issues. Such attempts have failed every single time so far, as you can't prevent alternative terms (which are usually only applied to female victims) from being used.

reddut_gang · 2021-09-08T23:47:32+00:00

To me, this whole "patriarchy hurts men" bullshit is nothing more than a marketing ploy for feminists to sound good when men start discovering the way they are hurting through gender inequality. It sort of brainwashes them into thinking feminism is on their side even though they found these inequalities without any help from feminists, and feminists would much rather those things stay hidden.

SaltMarshGoblin · 2021-09-07T22:04:43+00:00

But traditional gender roles are a part of patriarchy.

Patriarchy doesn't mean "men are bad" or "men are the problem". Patriarchy is a system that hurts men AND women (and NB folks, etc!)

Title	What do you think of this explanation of the "patriarchy"?
Author	DrH_0506
Upvotes	36
Comments	29
Date	September 7, 2021 8:17 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/pjv0zo/what_do_you_think_of_this_explanation_of_the/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/what-do-you-think-of-this-explanation-of-the.1067986 https://theredarchive.com/post/1067986

Comments