To clarify, this is the critique behind my initial post, which proved somewhat controversial:
I. Mainstream #feminism today tends to see “patriarchy” everywhere and (consistent with that view) focuses almost solely on issues affecting more women than men, and on differences of outcome where women seem to do worse than men.
II. Definition of #patriarchy (in bold, my emphasis):
“Social system in which the father or a male elder has absolute authority over the family group; by extension, one or more men […] exert absolute authority over the community as a whole.”
— Britannica.
“Social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line.”
“Society in which the oldest male is the leader of the family, or a society controlled by men in which they use their power to their own advantage.”
— Cambridge English Dictionary.
III. According to normal definitions of the term (and also because there are important issues affecting more men than women, and differences of outcome where men are clearly doing worse than women) prosperous liberal democratic countries today are obviously not patriarchies.
IV. When confronted with this error, #feminists often bend and distort the definition of “patriarchy” to make it a synonym of “sexism”, and (consistent with that redefinition) say that the patriarchy is also hurting men, and that ending the patriarchy will benefit men, too.
V. That redefinition of “patriarchy” is unnecessary and confusing. Why conflate two words with very very different meanings? Can we then say that the Taliban and the old tribes of hunter-gatherers were merely “sexist”, instead of outright “patriarchal”? Should we then lump together under the same category truly retrograde societies where a few old men are the only people legally entitled to exert absolute authority and to inherit and all women are legally subservient, and extremely egalitarian 21st-century Sweden? The redefinition is (conscious or unconsciously) disingenuous.
VI. In spite of all those issues, bona fide #feminists often accept this bizarre framing for the sake of moving the conversation forward and making actual progress against sexism, naïvely assuming that finally we are all now talking about the same thing (ie, fighting sex-based discrimination, wherever it occurs).
VII. After making this concession, inevitably it so happens that the original denouncers of the patriarchy get back to focusing only on issues affecting more women than men, and on differences of outcome where women do worse than men — ignoring or dismissing all male issues, just as before.
VIII. The result is that all participants in the discussion have now agreed that our modern, developed, equal-under-the-law societies are patriarchies (I invite you to re-read the three definitions above) while at the same time having made zero progress against actual sexism of any kind. In fact, participants make negative progress, because this swallowing-the-patriarchy move generates a lot of guilt and resentment.
I find this recurrent pattern dishonest, counterproductive, and irritating.
@tripu care to actually address my points instead of tagging me in your continued BS?
Meanwhile let me spoon-feed you the meaning of the word and what it is commonly associated with in this context:
In which definition that you yourself are quoting here did you read the word country? Countries are not patriarchies? What are you even talking about? Patriarchy is a culture and it is wide spread in all modern societies. Men are considered superior in pretty much every relevant activity, and more often than not assume leadership roles, be it families, neighborhoods, corporation, governments or whatever other organizations. Woman are objectified and assigned intrinsic value, while men are expandable, unworthy unless proven otherwise. This stems form the most basic notions of patriarchy, that at some point in the past were (and to some degree today are) objective reality due to natural selection:
“Women are incubators, hence intrinsically valuable as long as they stay incubators and don’t veer from that path, and men are not worthy of life unless proven loyal and otherwise useful, since intrinsically they pose a competition for ownership of the incubators”. This is the culture that men as rulers establish, and once it is established it is supported by men and women alike. In modern societies you can only hear distant echoes of this blatant truth, but it doesn’t take a genius to put the two and two together.
Your points seemed all very confusing to me. And you did not argue against any of mine, specifically. But I’ll try to answer. I hope you’ll reciprocate.
