Possibly downvoted to oblivion, but I think this is a necessary post. If we are going to justifiably complain about the logical inconsistencies with feminist philosophy we need to make sure our own logic criticizing that philosophy is air-tight. This post is to point out a logical mistake we make in discussing the existence of the patriarchy and to highlight what we actually mean.

tl;dr at bottom

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In the recent thread "The statement "men suffer under patriarchy too..." u/confusedbonobo007 pointed out a logical error in our discussions of patriarchy. Namely, they stated that the fact that men are harmed by the patriarchy does not invalidate the idea of a patriarchy, just like white people being harmed by white supremacy does not invalidate idea of white supremacy.

This is true.

Just becomes members of a group A are harmed by societal framings meant to benefit A, does not mean that societal framings meant to benefit A do not exist.

But this does not in turn mean that society views group A as more valuable than other groups. This is where patriarchy differs from white supremacy.

We know that white supremacy does exist in Western society because there is this general notion in that white people have more intrinsic value than people of other races. This of course depends on how you measure value but it seems to be true across most naive measures (intellectual, attraction-wise, economic).

Now, the patriarchy is not about value. By etymology (i.e., patri- "father" and archy- "rule") it concerns a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it. Given western history, we have to admit this is indeed the case (i.e., that men generally have held institutional power). Heads of state were historically male, and men have generally been considered the heads of households and decisions were made by such men to affect the women who were in these households. So by this definition the patriarchy did exist and arguably still does.

Now what is often conflated with this idea of patriarchy is the idea of "male supremacy" that is, the notion that men are intrinsically more valuable in society than are women, and this is clearly not the case. In particular, unmarried men with no families are typically seen as expendable both as labor and in life, and only become essential when they prove they can do something of value to society. The fact that society does not care about male suicides, male graduation rates, or male pain in general is evidence that male supremacy does not exist.

On the other hand, women were not seen as expendable in any arena, but their value has historically been limited to their reproductive capabilities. Of course capitalism being what it is (i.e., in constant need of endless supplies of cheap labor), women were eventually wrapped up into the nexus of labor but they still retained their outside-economics value in reproduction, while men had no value outside-economics.

tl;dr: Patriarchy refers to the idea that men are (or generally have been) heads of state or household. No reasonable reading of Western history can contest this. However, this idea of the patriarchy does not make any comment on the relative intrinsic value of men or women. With regard to intrinsic value, it is NOT the case that men are on average considered more valuable to society than are women. In fact, quite the opposite is the case. While, women's intrinsic value exists in the limited space of their reproductive capabilities, men have no intrinsic value and thus must make themselves valuable to society in which case they then have the option of joining the patriarchy. This framing is particularly socioeconomics-motivated and not gender-motivated and as such does not constitute men oppressing women, but socioeconomics oppressing both of them.

tl;dr; tl;dr: The patriarchy (men generally being heads of governmental or economic institutions) does exist. Male supremacy (the societal belief that men are intrinsically more valuable than women) does not exist.

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Edit: My thoughts have changed since this first post. See bottom comment for more context.