That’s like saying the road is the cause of all car crashes.
The road is the context in which all (mostly all) crashes occur, its contours or grading maybe contributed to the crash, but it almost never would be the sole cause.
Most people who just wave their hands and say “patriarchy” are parrots who just know they get a cracker when they say the line. It’s resulted in trash discourse.
It’s resulted in people just tuning out when they hear the word, too.
Kinda sucks, because it’s a really useful foundation to talk about society through a certain lens. It’d be hard to talk about traffic if I didn’t understand what a road was.
But, I admit, many people who pipe up with “patriarchy” don’t really want to talk any farther, and that does make dealing with those people pretty frustrating. Like if a cop showed up at every crash and excitedly pointed out the existence of a road and then left.
I am biased because I own (small) parrots who genuinely love crackers, and any reference to that cute behavior is positive for me. But I believe this would be a great metaphor even if I weren’t biased in favor of parrots.
It’s just the broad description of the gender roles/hierarchy present in our society. Being aware of them and how they negatively impact gender interaction seems fairly useful to me. Usually it’s helpful to understand the current structure of something and how that’s causing problems to make any meaningful and positive changes.
On the contrary, the term is performing exactly as designed - blame men for men being shitty (toxic masculinity), and blame men for women being shitty too (internalized misogyny).
How is “women are also perpetuating and engaging in the patriarchy, this is a problem” blaming it on men? “The Patriarchy” is not blaming stuff on men, it’s a descriptor of the gender-roles-system we live in and people of all genders can be perpetuators of its toxic aspects.
Because “patriarchy” isn’t just a neutral, ivory-tower descriptor of a system of gender roles. Just look at Twitter, or Reddit - the number of feminists using the word patriarchy on a daily basis to blame men far outnumber the tiny number of academic feminists that (supposedly) use the term without misandrist intent. Words’ meanings are determined by their use, and going by its use, “patriarchy” is a misandrist term that is used to blame men for all of society’s ills, which has resulted in demonstrable negative societal outcomes for men and boys. It’s naive or disingenuous to act otherwise.
And even among more academic feminist circles, it’s naive to think the term “patriarchy” isn’t being used in a misandrist way by a significant percentage of feminists - radical feminism, just to target the low-hanging fruit, is entirely organized around mistaken and harmful ideas of “male supremacy”, and as a result most of feminism’s terminology is also entirely organized around men being the oppressor, and women being the oppressed.
This is where we get the real brilliance of feminist thought: “academic”, “neutral” terms like “toxic masculinity” and “internalized misogyny” ensure that all discourse about society’s ills are entirely framed around oppressor/oppressed language (where, of course, men are always the oppressors and women are always the oppressed), which, as discussed above, ensures that the public at large will blame men for literally anything that goes wrong. And, of course, this is exactly what we see on social media, from both men and women. It’s a brilliantly designed system. Horrible, but brilliant.
The consequences of this inherently misandrist philosophy have been felt throughout society for decades. There are practically no domestic violence shelters or rape resources for men, even though men constitute almost half of rape victims. Men having lower rates of graduation from both high school and college (and of course all of the feminism-funded scholarships are for women, even though they’re currently approaching 60% of graduates - gEnDeR eQuALiTy). Generations of boys having now grown up internalizing this misandry, being told that they’re inherently aggressive rapists and being forced to take re-education classes. The results of this widespread, societal internalized misandry are clearly visible here in this thread.
And, of course, as mentioned above, the incredible brilliance of the system is that all of these failings (and countless, countless others) are conveniently deemed due to the totally neutral academic term “patriarchy”, and not due to feminists pushing misandrist policy for decades that have had demonstrable negative outcomes for men. So, out here in the real world, men get blamed for women’s problems, and they get blamed for their own problems as well.
Feminism doesn’t have a monopoly on gender equality, as much as people claim it does (“If you believe in gender equality, you’re a feminist whether you like it or not!”). Feminism is fundamentally built on decades of misandrist philosophical baggage, and it’s time we threw it all out, burned the system down, and started over with a philosophy that’s actually dedicated to gender equality, from the ground up.
If patriarchy is the cause of literally everything in gender interaction, it’s not very useful as a concept.
That’s like saying the road is the cause of all car crashes.
The road is the context in which all (mostly all) crashes occur, its contours or grading maybe contributed to the crash, but it almost never would be the sole cause.
Most people who just wave their hands and say “patriarchy” are parrots who just know they get a cracker when they say the line. It’s resulted in trash discourse.
It’s resulted in people just tuning out when they hear the word, too.
Kinda sucks, because it’s a really useful foundation to talk about society through a certain lens. It’d be hard to talk about traffic if I didn’t understand what a road was.
But, I admit, many people who pipe up with “patriarchy” don’t really want to talk any farther, and that does make dealing with those people pretty frustrating. Like if a cop showed up at every crash and excitedly pointed out the existence of a road and then left.
I am biased because I own (small) parrots who genuinely love crackers, and any reference to that cute behavior is positive for me. But I believe this would be a great metaphor even if I weren’t biased in favor of parrots.
It’s just the broad description of the gender roles/hierarchy present in our society. Being aware of them and how they negatively impact gender interaction seems fairly useful to me. Usually it’s helpful to understand the current structure of something and how that’s causing problems to make any meaningful and positive changes.
On the contrary, the term is performing exactly as designed - blame men for men being shitty (toxic masculinity), and blame men for women being shitty too (internalized misogyny).
How is “women are also perpetuating and engaging in the patriarchy, this is a problem” blaming it on men? “The Patriarchy” is not blaming stuff on men, it’s a descriptor of the gender-roles-system we live in and people of all genders can be perpetuators of its toxic aspects.
Because “patriarchy” isn’t just a neutral, ivory-tower descriptor of a system of gender roles. Just look at Twitter, or Reddit - the number of feminists using the word patriarchy on a daily basis to blame men far outnumber the tiny number of academic feminists that (supposedly) use the term without misandrist intent. Words’ meanings are determined by their use, and going by its use, “patriarchy” is a misandrist term that is used to blame men for all of society’s ills, which has resulted in demonstrable negative societal outcomes for men and boys. It’s naive or disingenuous to act otherwise.
And even among more academic feminist circles, it’s naive to think the term “patriarchy” isn’t being used in a misandrist way by a significant percentage of feminists - radical feminism, just to target the low-hanging fruit, is entirely organized around mistaken and harmful ideas of “male supremacy”, and as a result most of feminism’s terminology is also entirely organized around men being the oppressor, and women being the oppressed.
This is where we get the real brilliance of feminist thought: “academic”, “neutral” terms like “toxic masculinity” and “internalized misogyny” ensure that all discourse about society’s ills are entirely framed around oppressor/oppressed language (where, of course, men are always the oppressors and women are always the oppressed), which, as discussed above, ensures that the public at large will blame men for literally anything that goes wrong. And, of course, this is exactly what we see on social media, from both men and women. It’s a brilliantly designed system. Horrible, but brilliant.
The consequences of this inherently misandrist philosophy have been felt throughout society for decades. There are practically no domestic violence shelters or rape resources for men, even though men constitute almost half of rape victims. Men having lower rates of graduation from both high school and college (and of course all of the feminism-funded scholarships are for women, even though they’re currently approaching 60% of graduates - gEnDeR eQuALiTy). Generations of boys having now grown up internalizing this misandry, being told that they’re inherently aggressive rapists and being forced to take re-education classes. The results of this widespread, societal internalized misandry are clearly visible here in this thread.
And, of course, as mentioned above, the incredible brilliance of the system is that all of these failings (and countless, countless others) are conveniently deemed due to the totally neutral academic term “patriarchy”, and not due to feminists pushing misandrist policy for decades that have had demonstrable negative outcomes for men. So, out here in the real world, men get blamed for women’s problems, and they get blamed for their own problems as well.
Feminism doesn’t have a monopoly on gender equality, as much as people claim it does (“If you believe in gender equality, you’re a feminist whether you like it or not!”). Feminism is fundamentally built on decades of misandrist philosophical baggage, and it’s time we threw it all out, burned the system down, and started over with a philosophy that’s actually dedicated to gender equality, from the ground up.