Hello and I have a question.

flaumo · 2025-02-04T20:09:29+00:00

I am no expert, but yes, there are definitions of "patriarchy" in sociology and anthropology that are precise and concrete. For example the "pater familias" had absolute power, including life and death, over his household, wife and kids included. Or strongly patrilinear societies, where the lineage always runs through men and men make decisions.

Modern western society is clearly no patriarchy in that sense.

Ego73 · 2025-02-04T19:24:52+00:00

As the greatest scholar of patriarchy said, it's when men and horses run everything

Adjective_Noun-420 · 2025-02-04T21:57:05+00:00

Its a place for men, but it’s explicitly a left wing space for men. Trumpists aren’t welcome except as guests. They can go to the, much larger, MensRights sub; this one is for this specific niche

To answer your question, the problem was more that there were many definitions for “patriarchy”, ranging from anything from essentially “men are otomologically bad” to “any kind of entrenched sexism, including misandry” (but feminists call it “patriarchy” because most of them believe that misandry is still ultimately men’s, as a group’s, fault)

Excellent_You5494 · 2025-02-05T00:17:01+00:00

No, it's ever changing, and the goalpost moves in every argument about it to suite the needs of the sexist proporting the patriarchy.

When called out the sexist will default to the dictionary definition and the arguments restart and repeat.

It's a boogeyman, and all-encompassing evil, used to hate males, as i have said many times.

RecreationalPorpoise · 2025-02-05T02:20:59+00:00

If any man has anything good, it’s a patriarchy.

rump_truck · 2025-02-06T13:21:57+00:00

As a general rule of thumb, anything that can be summarized as "men bad" is defined as loosely as possible, and anything that can be summarized as "women bad" is defined so strictly that it cannot exist in our world. Take misogyny versus misandry for example.

If you ask them to define misogyny, they usually start out with something like structural bias against women. But a homeless man calling another homeless man weak is also misogyny, because only women are supposed to be weak. The target does not have to be a woman, and it doesn't require any institutional action, or even an individual with any sort of structural power. Any gender bias at all can be called misogyny.

Misandry? It only counts if it's the female ruler of a country, that has never once in its entire history had a male ruler, using her power as ruler to pass laws that say men can't vote or own property. Anything short of that is just sparkling rudeness, a real man would take it silently. Or it's benevolent sexism, because the real victims of gender-based drafts are the women who are seen as too weak to be shot.

Any time you apply a similar level of strictness to both gendered counterpart terms, things start looking a lot more even.

ChaosCron1 · 2025-02-07T18:03:20+00:00

There's clearly defined meanings of patriarchy that exists in academic literature. Remember, though, that patriarchy and "Patriarchy Theory" get muddled together.

A patriarchy is a hypothetical social system in which the father or a male elder has absolute authority over the family group; by extension, one or more men (as in a council) exert absolute authority over the community as a whole. Building on the theories of biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin, many 19th-century scholars sought to form a theory of unilinear cultural evolution. This hypothesis, now discredited, suggested that human social organization “evolved” through a series of stages: animalistic sexual promiscuity was followed by matriarchy, which was in turn followed by patriarchy.

The consensus among modern anthropologists and sociologists is that while power is often preferentially bestowed on one sex or the other, patriarchy is not the cultural universal it was once thought to be. However, some scholars continue to use the term in the general sense for descriptive, analytical, and pedagogical purposes.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/patriarchy

Lindsey German, compiles different theories of patriarchy and it's role in both women's liberation and socialism.

(Also, give this article a solid read if you get the chance. The author rejects the Theory of Patriarchy in terms of the material conditions of capital)

Hartmann defines patriarchy as “a set of social relations between men, which have a material base, and which, though hierarchical, establish or create interdependence or solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women.” She further argues that “the material base upon which patriarchy rests lies most fundamentally in men’s control over women’s labour power… [it] does not rest solely on childbearing in the family, but on all the social structures which enable men to control women’s labour”. “Control is maintained by denying women access to necessary economically productive resources and by restricting women’s sexuality”.

https://isj.org.uk/theories-of-patriarchy/

Alda Facio, is arguably at the forefront front of feminist theory at the moment and has an article describing "patriarchy" which is on the front page of google so be aware.

Patriarchy is a form of mental, social, spiritual, economic and political organization/structuring of society produced by the gradual institutionalization of sexbased political relations created, maintained and reinforced by different institutions linked closely together to achieve consensus on the lesser value of women and their roles. These institutions interconnect not only with each other to strengthen the structures of domination of men over women, but also with other systems of exclusion, oppression and/or domination based on real or perceived differences between humans, creating States that respond only to the needs and interests of a few powerful men.

Some aspects, elements or characteristics of modern Patriarchy are the following:

Patriarchy had a beginning and therefore can have an end. Even if we still do not know how exactly it came into being we do know it came about after millenniums of different more egalitarian human organizing. The earliest forms of Patriarchy only began at the most 6 millenniums ago.

We also know that there are different models of Patriarchy at different times and in different cultures and places but the lower value given to women and their roles as compared to men and their roles remains constantin all models. In other words, Patriarchy co-exists with very different forms of government and socio religious political organizing such as empires, kingdoms, theocracies, republics, democracies, etc. and can co-exist very well with capitalism, socialism, etc. However, due to the globalization of neoliberal capitalism, almost all existing Patriarchies today can be categorized as capitalist Patriarchies.

In all known Patriarchy negative meanings are attributed to women and their activities through symbols and myths (not always explicitly expressed). These symbols and myths are different in different cultures but within each culture they attribute negative meanings to women or the feminine.

Patriarchy is made up of structures or institutions that exclude women from participation in, or contact with, spaces of higher power, or what are believed to be the spaces of greatest power economically, politically, culturally and religiously.

Despite the above, women are not treated identically in Patriarchy, nor are all women excluded in the same way from spaces of power. In fact this different treatment is a mechanism by which the lack of solidarity and competitiveness among women is promoted. This lack of solidarity and competitiveness among women sometimes escalate to outright contempt for each other, thus ensuring their loyalty to men and male values.

Patriarchy is produced by and at the same time promotes, a mindset based on dichotomous, hierarchical and sexualized thinking. This mindset divides reality into two dichotomous categories placing all of perceived reality either into things and acts associated with nature or things and acts produced by culture. Furthermore, everything placed within the category “culture” is overvalued while everything associated with nature is undervalued. By situating men and the masculine under the higher category of culture, and woman and the feminine under the less valued category of nature, “man” and masculinity become the parameter, model or paradigm of humanity, while the subordination of women is justified based on their alleged inferior "natural roles".

In Patriarchy, gender roles and stereotypes may be different in each social class, age and culture but through the mechanisms, structures and institutions mentioned previously, it makes these roles and stereotypes seem natural and universal.

In any given Patriarchy all men will not enjoy the same privileges or have the same power. Indeed, the experience of domination of men over women historically served for some men to extend that domination over other groups of men, installing a hierarchy among men that is more or less the same in every culture or region today. The male at the top of the patriarchal hierarchy has great economic power; is an adult and almost always ablebodied; possesses a well-defined, masculine gender identity and a well-defined heterosexual identity, adding a few more features by region. For example, in Latin America, for a man to be at the top of the patriarchal hierarchy, that man has to be white and Christian, in addition to the other characteristics shared with Patriarchy’s counterparts across regions.

Across Patriarchy’s different models, women are exposed to different degrees and types of violence, some common to all and others specific to each cultural, religious or economic model adopted by the Patriarchy.

Patriarchy was the first structure of domination, subordination and exclusion which is recognized as such by History with a capital H (recognized patriarchal history) and still remains a basic system of domination. Ironically, while being the most powerful and enduring system of inequality, it is hardly ever perceived as such even by women themselves. In fact, precisely because the invisibilization of Patriarchy is one of its institutions, even some feminists deny its existence

No_Ad5208 · 2025-02-05T01:08:29+00:00

It's the social structure in which men have more power than women?

Brief_Ad7468 · 2025-02-05T02:15:17+00:00

I’m sure it depends on who you ask, but I think of it as a philosophy that regards men and all things masculine as being superior, but that superiority requires rigid adherence to certain expectations. This is tricky though, because it’s not always obvious and there are also aspects of it that have changed over time. For example, most men regard women in a positive way, but that doesn’t mean they’re seen as equals (or even people) necessarily. A better example would be that while traditionally male dominated fields pay well, careers that are typically female dominated (nursing, childcare, teaching, etc) tend to pay pretty poorly because as a society, we don’t think of those things as real work and don’t value them, regardless of whether they’re actually done by men or women. Patriarchy cripples everyone, man or woman. Feminism has done some good, but that good has primarily been to allow women to enter areas traditionally reserved for men. It would have been better to promote the understanding that feminine things are equally valuable to masculine things, so that anyone could happily embrace either if they were so moved, but also didn’t feel like they needed to. As it stands today, women mostly feel free, even compelled, to do masculine things, but men do not feel free to take an interest in feminine things. Feminism’s work is only half done, and not the better half IMO. Though none of us created patriarchy, we all play our roles in upholding it, women just as much as men, and this is an area where feminism unfortunately rarely dares to venture.

justsomething · 2025-02-05T14:12:04+00:00

The interpretation that I see the most is that it is just the totality of all gender expectations and their consequences in our society. And that when looking at the totality of those consequences men tend to benefit more / suffer less from them than women do. I would generally agree with that definition, but it's a matter of to what degree.

You'll have some who argue that men's suffering doesn't exist or is negligible. Or that men can't experience any negative consequences due to their gender (misandry isn't real). The oppressor oppressed dichotomy really entrenches these ideas, but that's more a part of critical theory than pure "patriarchy".

Like I said, I would agree with the first definition. I just think that the difference in harm that men and women suffer from these expectations is a lot smaller than many people are willing to admit.

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