Patriarchy Theory: Why it's a flawed theory and why it matters!

[Anpu23]

First this is a response piece to @ludorock and her piece Patriarchy is Real and Why you Should Care feel free to compare and contrast (also feel free to tag her as she's already blocked me)

What is Patriarchy? Unfortunately there are two separate definitions, one is the anthropological/social definition that of a society that is ran by men. This is any society that has a male dominated ruling class and is notable in most societies in the history of humans. The other, and more disingenuous definition is the idea that men in a hierarchal structure use that imbalance of power to suppress, control or minimize female impact on a society.

Most people conflate the two definitions and it is both a false dichotomy as well as disingenuous. The early work on feminist Patriarchy is The Second Sex by writer Simone de Beauvoir which amongst other things applies Marxist class theory to gender.

The problem with this is that most gender relationships are much more complicated and nuanced then class theory would allow.

This idea that women had no political power before they won the vote in the west is false as proven by such movements as the Teetotalers and of course the Suffragette movement itself. Without female political power both of those movements would have failed.

Further the idea now that women have no political power is ludicrous as the single biggest voting block in the US is women. With 74% of all women registered to vote, as opposed to 71% men Source and as there are 4 million more women then men this is a very significant difference. or rather 123 million women vs 115 million men. And as women turn out more for the vote 63% for women vs 59% for men source actual voting numbers are roughly 68 million men vs 78 million women. By feminist definition this would represent a matriarchy. The argument that there are few women in politics is simply because women as a whole do not vote for them and there are few women who run as 10 million votes would put any presidential candidate into power.

But why does this matter? It comes down to root cause of social problems, from a feminist perspective the Patriarchy is the main source of multiple social problems including ones lobbied for and put in place by feminists themselves (gender inequality in legal and social services come to mind). How can you fix something without understanding it? Misdiagnosis just leads to complications and compounding of problems. Often you will hear feminists saying "patriarchy hurts men as well" while pointing out issues that both the men's movement and the feminist movement agree are large areas needing improvement. But without mutual agreement to root cause there can be no consensus for corrective action.

Thanks for reading

Anpu

[ludorock]

1. I haven't blocked you, I don't know why you thought I did. You are one of many people assuming that. I really don't block people very much, so I did get your at! =)

2. Yes. Class, race, sex, sexuality, religion and a whole host of other identities all intersect, and trying to just talk about one of them will always fail. Hell, trying to talk about just two of them will fail because there is inevitably more to be uncovered. Finding liberation from sexism and sex-based violence and bigotry is not just about sex, it's about all the pieces that come together to put people into their places in society.

Men should care about women's issues because women's issues affect them. Women should care about men's issues because men's issues affect us. The title of patriarchy, I would say, gives this impression that women are helpless and men are in total power and control and that's just not true. Women do have lots of power, and men are disenfranchised in many ways. When you take race into account, or class, it gets even more complex and difficult to work through. Women perpetuate the patriarchy, just as much as men do - and that's part of the problem. Patriarchy isn't just men upholding some status quo, it's everyone buying into the lies and harm, which means yes women uplift it and support it and encourage it, as well.

The Second Sex is a really interesting piece of work that talks about class, biology, the physicality of living in the bodies we do, and how we define the bodies that we and others have, and it's worth a read through because it's one of the earliest works that explores the topic of sex/gender the way it does. The problem with any book like this is that, within 5 years, it's rendered largely irrelevant because of how much more we've learned, how much more insight we have, and how much deeper of an understanding of the systems that rule us than we did before. It's a great starting piece, and important to read if someone were interested, but it's also important to read more modern works to get a sense of where we're at today, as well. It was written in 1949, I believe, so it's quite dated in many ways by this point.

Overall I don't disagree with what you said? It is a matter of coming together and working together to love each other, care about each other's problems, and work to defeat the system that we all perpetuate and which oppresses us all.

[Anpu23]

Sorry, when I @ mentioned you, your name didn't highlight as usual so I assumed that I was blocked. It was an error, and when I published I saw that you weren't. I was waiting to get confirmation of publishing before correcting it. Sorry for the miscommunication. I certainly didn't mean to misrepresent.

[ludorock]

No worries! I get it! There's no need to apologize, that's why I added the smiley face, 'cause it's all good. I don't have anyone blocked, actually. I like this take, and appreciate that you cared enough to continue to parse through a really complicated idea, the more we talk about it in meaningful and open ways, the better.

[WowwGirl]

Very nicely written sir

[WowwGirl]

Thank you

[MCheetah]

This is very logical and well written. I imagine it will go over most feminists heads, if not all of them.

Everything you said makes perfect sense, and I have an even easier way to explain why women are essentially more "important" than society than men. Women get pregnant and give birth; men can't. Hypothetically, all it'd take is a giant sperm bank to replace men, a far as reproduction goes. You can't do that with women, as the artificial womb isn't a thing yet (although we're pretty close and it's ALMOST a reality). By this very objective fact of life, women will ALWAYS be more "important" than men. Our entire society is built around this, which is why women have been shielded from most of the horrors of life for most of history (not aside some terrible things like rape, sex trafficking, etc).

In the MODERN day and age, women have it so good, they don't know how good they have it. They think being coddled and protected from war and death makes them "oppressed." Then you get feminists and all their retardation. No, not dying in war or factories for some asshole queen or king is "oppression," even after the age of safe childbirth and pregnancies. So many of these women are just EXTREMELY narcissitic and spoiled, and that's mostly men's fault for that.

Honestly, I love GOOD decent women. There's just so few of them nowadays. Harder to find good men nowadays, too. I wish we lived in a world where this sh*tty movement of feminism isn't even a thing, and by extension, MGTOW and the Red Pill also aren't a thing. When men and women, or hell even same-sex couples, can com together, it can be beautiful. But that's not the reality I live in. I live in a world where feminism exists, and it's disgusting. Social justice and wokeness in general, is pretty disgusting. It's the antithesis of love.

Or to put it shortly: "This is a man's world. But it'd be nothing, NOTHING without a woman or girl." Welcome to 2021, where the world means nothng...

https://www.youtube.com/embed/H77fRz1rybs

[Jamie05rhs]

I feel like there was a good introduction here, but I was waiting for the heart of the argument and I never heard it. The essay just ended abruptly.

I feel like you had a good thought and you started writing something but you ran out of time.

[Anpu23]

I've written so much about this, that I felt I was getting repetitive. Sorry to disappoint.

[Jamie05rhs]

@Anpu23 It's alright. I wasn't really disappointed; I just felt like there was a lack of material to examine. Maybe you could write a Part 2 sometime.

[Anpu23]

Sounds good.

[yrdady]

The problem is spread of power, of the state. No state, no problem with any ideology. It's when ideologies affect the state, that it is bad. But when a group starts claiming they don't have political power, and go after it, as a group or an ideology, that's bad. That's when we see bad things happening.

You can argue that all people should have representation, and that was denied people, and that's fair. That's first wave as it were, and it was foregone that this new class would start voting with their sensibilities and temperaments, but when people started ideologizing, it got bad. Our state, our nation is collapsing like the British Empire, and Roman Empire, not from without but from within, and many people are suffering in the process. Always those who seek power act like victims who need power because they never had power. There are victims in life for sure, but the real victims more often are just props for the power hungry ideologies. But without the state- if we lived in a constitutional republic with a limited government, all their wailing would be void. But now we have Biden et all mandating our private lives and spending beyond measure in large part because of voters who believe in deconstructing the patriarchy (men and women).

[Anonymous]

Once things get hard everybody reverts to patriarchal gender norms. Natural disaster, violence, war, economic collapse etc.

The biggest reason that it's a flawed theory is that people assume that the good times will last. They never do. All civilisations eventually fall.

If you look at the history of the fall of major civilisations of the past, a symptom of decline is the sexual liberation of women, homosexuality, transgenderism, effeminate men, falling birthates and rampant degeneracy. Everything we have right now. It won't be long.

[Anonymous]

The notion of patriarchy is just a tool feminism invented to brainwash young western girls into believing they are oppressed when in fact they are the most privileged and entitled class of humans in the history of the species. Feminism cannot exist without the support of western women, and brainwashing them early is the only way feminism can maintain the support they need before females mature enough to use their brains for themselves.

[TheBigGuy9]

Women have political power, especially those who are Democrats. They don’t even have to debate you. All they have to do is call you derogatory adjectives and that’s what makes them smart, so they say.

[KrakenAttackin]

I would say "Patriarchy" has worked out very well for women indeed.

[walker10]

It really matters