Western society is patriarchal in a historically demonstrable way. Scholars on both sides of the concept have verified this in many ways. Doesn't really require that we wait for people to believe it. Nor does it require that we teach them how it is patriarchal. They obviously don't want to know if they haven't learned it for themselves already.
If the last 2,000 years of history of men in power talking about their dominance over the world, and the inferiority of women hasn't been enough to convince people, they are simply not worth the effort.
And it doesn't really matter if they do or not. The ones who want to do something about it are the only ones who need to understand what it is and how it came about. That is how the first wave of the modern mainstream feminist movement, the Women's Suffrage Movement, got started. Not by convincing the ignorant, but by understanding it themselves and doing something about it.
So when someone says there is no such thing as patriarchy, the proper feminist response to that is the same as someone telling you they believe in God: No one cares what you believe.
With that out of the way, some said mostly the right stuff in their response to demonize feminism. I can't blame them wholeheartedly, because some of the women that claim themselves as feminists don't really understand what true feminism is. Though I wish they had gotten "faulty generalization" right. But I'm a nitpicker.
The problem with third-wave feminists, who are usually young, ignorant, and emotionally unstable (like most millennials), is that unlike the generations previous (first and second-wave feminists) they have never been introduced to the philosophical and socio-political underpinnings of the movements. They've just been introduced to the ideological considerations, most of which they got from the internet. As a pro second-wave feminist myself, I truly despise the third wave for their efforts in destabilizing the movement with their bad behavior and even worse reasoning skills.
Though, they would likely say I am just mansplaining feminism to them now. I gave up on hope a long time ago, actually. Not just for the new feminists, but for all of humanity.
Not every man benefits from the patriarchy. This is a lie the patriarchy tells in order to keep other weaker men on their side. It's like when they used to tell poor white people that they needed to side with the white masters because they were the only ones protecting them from the revenge of the blacks.
And violence is not the main tool of the patriarchy. Government, money, and religion are the main tools of the patriarchy. The same tools are used to keep minorities and the poor in line. Many men like to think they benefit from the patriarchy—which is just basically the male-dominated power structure of the world. But many of those men are in no way a part of that power structure.
It is similar to how many white people believe they benefit from white privilege. And they are led to believe that by the fact that they don't face as many disadvantages as minorities do in certain cultures and societies. But what they fail to realize is that the only privileges they are allowed as "first-class citizens from birth" are privileges that the establishment allows them to have. That benefit is entirely about being acceptable to the power structure. It is a benefit that can be taken away at any time. Just like it is taken away from minorities. Step out of the acceptable white citizen parameters, and see what happens. See how quickly that label of "white trash" gets applied.
All of that being said, there are certain things that are afforded to people on one side of a social divide that is not afforded to others. For example, men can go out at night alone without having to worry about the constant threat of being raped by a violent male.
Now, some "meninists" would argue things like men face rape in prison and the military. Well, yes, they do. But so do women. From male guards and fellow soldiers at way higher rates than men. And men in these situations face rape from other men, not women. Things are not all equal.
These arguments are supposed to be that the threat of rape for men is just a bad as it is for women. However, look at what had to happen to that man before he was placed in a similar situation that a woman faces just jogging down the street in many places, every day of her life. The average chance of sexual assault for a woman is around 17% during her lifetime. 90% of sexual assault victims are female. And that doesn't even include other forms of violence. For men, the threat is around 3% I believe (will have to double-check that) and mostly involves prison life and molestation as a child.
Things are certainly not equal. Though, this is typically the means by which misogynists and just the willfully ignorant, both of the male and female variety, obscure the information and issues. By attempting to play the numbers game with a level of intelligence which is obviously inadequate for the task. They think 17% and 3%, or 90% and 10% are equal quantities by their reckoning.
Feminists in the other generations were pretty smart, informed, politically active individuals. Now, we have fucking Twittter and YouTube feminists who don't know the first thing about the movement. But people take them seriously because no one reads or takes classes on this stuff anymore. They are informed about feminism the same way they are informed about everything else. Mainstream media and the jungle of the World Wide Web.
We used to call this the "dumbing down" of the world, but let's be honest. People were always this stupid in terms of the majority. The only thing that has changed is how much we are willing to tolerate the stupid these days. They have therefore formed guilds and collectives of their own. And now, stupid is the norm. That is what you faced in that other group. The normalization of stupid.
Feminism isn't the problem. Even the patriarchy isn't really the problem anymore. The problem is stupidity. It's free-range and organic now. Welcome to the new world in which the stupid on both sides of the social divide are just pecking at the same birdseed of ignorance in their ever-widening enclosures.
So, just to be clear on the issue here without the faulty generalization fallacies: Do all men benefit from violent male behavior? No. Is violent male behavior the detriment of all women, even those who manage to avoid facing it directly in their lives? Yes.
By the way, women didn't always stay home and cook. For pretty much all of prehistoric modern human existence, women did in fact go out and work like men. Actually, better than men in ways. They hunted small game and gathered resources in larger groups than the men, and carried their children along with them in some cases.
This all started to change slowly about 10,000 years ago, and by 6,000 years ago, became some sort of norm in many of the larger settlements of humans. So we can't point to some kind of biological or genetic reason for what is essentially a new norm of the human species—a different standard of social equality for women.
Something happened in that 4,000-year interval between the establishment of the first agrarian societies and the first large scale kingdoms that made women the second class citizens of the human race. Something social, cultural, and systemically implemented. Social equality between men and women isn't a new thing, but something old and original that was taken away at some point.
Women are not socially, economically, and religiously unequal today because of their biology. They are unequal because of a plan that was put in place by society as a whole very long time ago, but not nearly as long as we have been around as a species. You may even argue, as both misogynist and feminist scholars have argued, that the inequality of women in society has been an essential property of human civilization itself. Like war, technology, medicine, and education, the inequality of women is an institution. All a part of the ongoing plan, but no one knows how it actually started. We just understand it now for what it is. Bigotry and oppression.
And who maintained that plan throughout the millennia? Men did. Still do. It's a proven fact in recorded history. Not even one that most men in power deny. And that is what they call the patriarchy.
Actually, back when this all started, the physiology of men and women in terms of muscle mass was a lot closer. Only in the last few thousand years has the gap widened between the size of men and women with bigger men and smaller women. And that was probably by social design, even if not consciously done. But that would have been secondary to the initial rise of patriarchal society.
We know early on, bigger men were more useful in agrarian societies for farming and animal husbandry. And we know that around 3-4000 years ago, the smaller, thinner woman started showing up in the archeological evidence. Probably precisely because their skillset and domestic duties had changed in a world with more humans and more conflict.
What people don't typically think about is that even if we could say there is no active patriarchy anymore, that past patriarchy designed our societies. And both conditionally and functionally, our societies pretty much still works exactly the same way they did three thousand years ago, and probably the same in the most important ways as 6,000 years ago. Even without patriarchy, patriarchal society still reigns supreme.
The greatest degree of stupidity on this issue comes people from claiming that patriarchy is a myth, but then those people are the same people who turn around and say the only reason men rule the world is because women are weaker and less intelligent. But oh yeah, there is no patriarchy. Their misogyny is entirely just a coincidence. Even though men have been using that same excuse literally since time immemorial.
People sometimes confusing the falsehood of a collective male dominance with the reality of a collective male delusion. SOME men are in charge of society. Not all men. Some men are benefiting greatly by the divide between men and women. Not all men.
Men do rule society simply by making sure that the most powerful seats are always in the hands of a majority of men. But if you think you are one of those men, you are greatly mistaken. You are the minion of those men.
It's a male-dominated society, and you are (a male) and I am (a male) part of those who are dominated.
Women aren't kept in their place though much violence anymore, though it is certainly still an ongoing issue in our world. Political and economic marginalization is far more the cause. Because if women were political and economically protected as they should be, would we have politicians closing down their health clinics to avoid abortions? Would we have men getting away with that violence against women in the courts?
The male-dominated establishment does use violence for other things. Keeping smaller countries in life. Keeping minority males in line through ongoing police brutality. But that doesn't really apply directly to the problem of misogyny. You have to make distinctions. They are very important in understanding the etiology of these problems.
Feminism is not wishful thinking. Do you think the women's suffrage movement succeeded in hope? For decades, women at the time held out hope that one day men would come to their senses and grant them the same privileges as all male citizens. Never happened. So they took the streets and marched on Congress, and took the rights that have been denied them. Not through hope, but action.
Whenever someone says that something entirely conceptual and non-substantial is essential to the human condition—hope, love, happiness, faith, passion, dreams—what they are really saying is that their emotional dependence on such immaterial platitudes is what is really essential to the human condition. Like a drug is to a drug addict. Essential to their ability to rise and cope with an unforgiving reality.
What I am advocating are a release from that dependency on mind-altering, dopamine-producing fantasies of wishful thinking, and idealistic self-delusion. Hope is nothing but a crutch used to convince people that they cannot stand independently on their own two legs.
A person without hope is not a machine. A person without hope is a person who has overcome their emotional and intellectual weakness. A person who is not a wisher, but a doer.
In the choice between two closed doors, one with a randy lady behind it and the other with a hungry tiger, you can simply close to your eyes, pick a door, and hope for the best; or you can see the reason in pressing your ear to the doors and knocking to see if you hear giggling or purring.
You need to stand up and fight, women. And know exactly what kind of feminism actions you are doing. Maybe read up on it a bit.
You need to stand up and fight, women. And know exactly what kind of feminism actions you are doing. Maybe read up on it a bit.
