“Patriarchy” is a floating signifier. It has no clear meaning. Indeed, it means whatever is convenient for it to mean in any given context. “Patriarchy” is furthermore a thought-terminating cliche. Instead of carefully thought out social analysis the Patriarchy is deployed as a non-explanation.
The Patriarchy is a useful non-concept for feminists to deploy to avoid ever holding any individual woman accountable. It’s not her fault she’s enforcing traditional male gender roles, it’s the Patriarchy. She couldn’t possibly be the abuser in the relationship, and even if she was it’s not really her fault it’s the Patriarchy. Don’t be angry at mothers who have their baby boys’ foreskins removed without anesthetic, it’s the Patriarchy.
The Patriarchy is a parody of class analysis. In this regard it is like, nay is, a conspiracy theory. Instead of naming an exhaustively analyzed and theorized capitalism, conspiracy theories decry a shadowy, conniving, amorphous Other. Conspiracy theory and Patriarchy theory inculcate paranoia and fear of this Other but offers no constructive response to combat the evil it describes. Patriarchy theory groups all men as the oppressor and all women as the oppressed. It thus resists intersectionality by smoothing over the many cases where a woman has power over a man or boy.
Patriarchy theory is false consciousness. It’s not even a particularly useful tool for analyzing women’s issues, let alone men’s issues.
Is this going to be a antifeminism menslib community?
-6 votes after 36 minutes, so hopefully not.
Seriously though, I hope this post gets taken down. This is a small community, downvotes don’t bury anything. It’s typical Petersonian propaganda that tries to argue against what is stated in the sidebar by flaunting abstract wordings, accusatory misogyny and straw men. If this stays up I’m so out.
I fail to see what I have in common with Jordan Peterson beyond a passing interest in Jung. I support trans rights, and indeed equal rights for all.
abstract wordings
Did you read my post? The entire point I’m making is that “Patriarchy” is “abstract wording”
accusatory misogyny
Care to point out what exactly I wrote was misogynistic?
straw men
You’re the one throwing out strawmen by calling me a misogynist, Petersonian.
Altho I myself am an egalitarian and therefore antifeminist, many of the points I made above are not inherently antifeminist. Before Patriarchy theory’s ascendency in the Fourth Wave, it was contested amongst feminist theorists. It was feminists themselves who first pointed out how incoherent, self-contradictory, and wholly unsuited to its purpose Patriarchy theory is.
Dude you are not even using the basic vocabulary in the right way - go be egalitarian somewhere else.
“It has no clear meaning. Indeed, it means whatever is convenient for it to mean in any given context.”
Just wrong. This post proves you know how the Internet works so you could just looked up the meaning. Here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy It took me less time than you writing all this nonsence.
Oh, and because many deliberately understand this wrong: it doesn’t talk about all men. It says powerful men. Men in power. Its dominatly men with some women sliped through. That is the patriarchy. A system made from powerful men for powerful men.
That Wikipedia article is one of the worst offenders as it freely confuses the anthropological sense of “patriarchy” which is quite clearly defined.
Your definition adds something that no other definition I’ve seen before, including Wikipedia, specifies: powerful men. This ambiguity of multiple, conflicting definitions is exactly what I’m talking about.
Jesus christ why people must be like this?
Like what? Critically thinking? Not accepting of dogma?
First you would need to know a bit of theory - since you seem have a very strange understanding of what patriarchy is.
I read quite a bit of Radical Feminist theory in my younger days, and did my penance of apologizing for the half of the human race to which I belong. Only later did I go back and fact-check their assertions and found almost all of them to be falsehoods.
So how did you miss that it’s not a critique of individum but of a structure?
In theory it’s merely referring to a social structure. Just as in theory feminism supports equality. But actual practice doesn’t match up with the theory. “Benefiting from the Patriarchy” and like phrases are often used against individual men, or even women who don’t toe the party line.
Than you should address people’s misunderstanding of the theory they use and not attack a theory based on wrong interpretation.
It’s an incoherent theory so nah.
no
