Ages ago, I wrote a long very speculative high level strategy on how to fight off misandrists.

I can't be bothered to look it up but it's somewhere.

But it was just a high level strategy with nothing really actionable.

I think today I've stumble something more actionable that actually achievable and would move our cause forwards quite a lot.

So, by request, I'll copy/paste here a comment I made on a different thread responding to the most recent version of "patriarchy theory is an apex fallacy" post on this subreddit.

For context the post basically said that in the "Patriarchy" the men in power are only a small portion of men so you can't generalize the benefits that men in power receive to all men.

TL;DR: In this wall of text I present a hyper intellectual discourse advocating that we should be arguing against the use of the terms "Patriarchy, Toxic Masculinity and Feminism" not by using intellectual arguments but by saying that it hurts our feelings.

​

This is so true and so very important to understand.

It's also very important to understand that academic feminists agree with you on this point.

But they will insist on continuing to use the same misleading terminology that enables equivocation.

I'm just a terminally online keyboard warrior, but I do want to keep spreading the following concept because I'm convinced that it's crucial for us to progress with our advocacy. That way less lazy people are at least aware of it, or may even use it:

It is very important that we keep debunking this mainstream interpretation of patriarchy. But we also need to stop the more "educated" version from implementing policy.

Let me put this a different way.

And I'm take this opportunity to plug one of my favorite flash games "War Omens". It's a card collecting game and each card has a quote on it. There are two in particular that always come up in my thoughts:

The first one:

Slaves do not dream of freedom. When their eyes sadden at the gleam of gold, they are not pining to be free. They want slaves of their own.

​

The second, and the one appropriate here:

'Xoros is the greatest bullfighter in the world,' may be an obvious lie, but you are still tricked to believe Xoros fights bulls, or that he even exists at all.

Presenting patriarchy as a system by which men as a class oppress women as a class is the obvious lie.

The lie you get tricked into believing is that this is the lie that's being used to on decision makers to push through misandrist policy.

I've had a couple of arguments with "academic feminists" online and both pretty much claim that the only people who interpret the word in this way are reactionary alt-right lunatics.

What I worry about is that this is the kind of discussion that happens during policy making (whether is legislators writing laws, or marketing teams that are trying to have some kind of moral framework for their marketing strategy and anything in between).

So we can talk about "patriarchy"'s apex fallacy until we've beaten the dead horse into mush, but there's always going to be an enormous number of misandrist who will refuse to understand and another whole bunch of naïve people who only heard the misandrist side of the story. So it's still very important that we fight on that front, but it's not going to move the needle much on the policy front.

So at the very least, I want people to understand this. People call it the mote an bailey which is true, but then seem to believe that since they've debunked the baily they don't need to worry about the mote anymore. But that's not true, the mote is what's used to push through misandrist policy.

The primary mechanism they use to enable this mote and bailey tactic is equivocation (use the same word or phrase in different contexts but with different meanings and then applying conclusions reached about that phrase in one context to the same phrase in the other context).

If we can stop the misandrists from using equivocation, I hope this will cripple them in the policy making arena.

The three big phrases used for equivocation are:

Patriarchy, Feminism (as gender equality) and Toxic Masculinity.

Instead of Patriarchy, insist that people use the phrase "systemic gender expectation". Treat the use of Patriarchy as a personal attack on your masculine identity.

Instead of Toxic Masculinity, use the phrase "harmful gender expectations" (or "toxic gender expectations" most seem to prefer that, I just think the word "toxic" is toxic :P). Use the same tactic for forcing people to make the switch.

Instead of Feminism (in the context of a theoretical framework or movement for gender equality) use the phrase "Gender Equality" or "Egalitarian" or "Egalitarianism". The reason is that you feel that the name itself is discriminatory against men.

The advantage of the arguments I've proposed is that they are valid and must be respected by anyone wishing to maintain the moral high ground. But they don't require you to go a thousand kilometers deep down a rabbit hole of byzantine feminist theory.

The other benefit is that it calls for empathy towards men. Rank and file feminists really do put empathy as the most import thing. If you put it front and center they will respect it and value it. Radical misandrist among them will fight back but every single time you can get a rank and file feminist to feel a little bit of empathy for men despite their echo chamber brainwashing is a massive win for us.

To me, the end game here is not the destruction of the feminist infrastructure. It's a complete reform of feminist ideology up to including its very name.

The reason why that needs to be the endgame is because of how modern democratic capitalist societies operate. Decision makers are amoral sociopaths, corporations are equally amoral. But to operate effectively in a society of moral humans they do need to observe some sort of moral code. In the past, religion kinda served that purpose. Today there is a massive "feminist" industry that serves this purpose.

With disasters like Budweiser and the M-She-U (Disney's efforts to gender transition the Marvel universe to introduce a new generation of female heroes by having them humiliate the male heros they are supposed to replace), it's clear that executives are being misinformed.

The problem is that they have nowhere else to turn to. The left has a very sophisticated and well established system based on feminist ideology. And the right has their heads up their ass full of conspiracy theories.

In other words, I believe that we can't destroy the feminist industry because it's the only usable moral framework that today's amoral institution can outsource their morality to.

But we CAN reform it, INCLUDING the name. But not necessarily the individuals. There's tons of self-motivated entrenched people in there who are also completely morally flexible. We shouldn't be trying to remove them, it's a waste of energy, just give them a better moral framework to sell.

So our job is to make as much noise as possible to condemn the use of the words Patriarchy (because it hurts our feelings), Toxic Masculinity (because it hurts our feelings) and Feminism (but we can't accept/identify with an gender egalitarian movement that has "fem" in the name, it hurts our feelings).