> Men suffer under patriarchy because patriarchy is a system set up by a few men over everyone else- including most men. It is a system that allows for the most greedy, aggressive and selfish to rise to the top and dominate over everyone else.
This is essentially what anarchists have been saying about patriarchy and other -archies for a century or so, hence the name (an... archy).
The conflation of patriarchy with "men" is an example of those in power trying to identity-amalgate and shift the blame. By that I mean: the patriarchy is the hand of a few powerful men that oppresses many (men and women), and in order to protect themselves, these men lie and say "actually, all men, you are the patriarchy, the patriarchy benefits you, the patriarchy is not evil, and an attack on the patriarchy is an attack on all of you." I could take this sentence and plop it into so many ideologies. White supremacy, heterophilia, Zionism, Han Chauvinism, all ideologies that seek to uplift a very few powerful people, oppress all others, and then pick an identifying attribute to create a moat of proletariat around them to duke it out in culture wars.
Billionaires claiming the union is an attack on hardworking individuals. Reactionary white supremacists claiming Black Lives Matter is an attack on all white people. Fascist Israeli leaders claiming opposition to their slaughter of Palestinians is an attack on global Jews. The CPC claiming criticism of them is actually racism against all Han people.
But billionaires and their hardworking employees aren't the same at all. White supremacist leaders are the only ones under attack by Black Lives Matter, not random white people in suburbs. A criticism of the terrorist-funding fascist Netanyahu and his government (who is happy to send his police to beat Orthodox Jews) has nothing to do with Jewish people around the world. A criticism of the CPC has nothing to do with Han around the world (and on that note, it's becoming such that anyone with Asianic heritage is becoming "Han" by the CPC's encroaching standards). Yet each of these smaller groups claim to speak for / be one with these larger groups.
I'm sad when see fellow leftists fall into the trap of attacking class allies, but to be fair it's very hard to sit down and convince every single person scared of the big Black Lives Matter protest that we probably actually share a cause and common enemy.
I have no solutions other than personally always trying to remember who really is the source of so much suffering in the world and avoiding lashing out against class allies. This article is a great example that I feel follows the same strategy.
The word describing what you're talking about is plutarchy, not patriarchy. A plutarchy is a system of the well heeled and connected, maintained for the well heeled and connected, everyone else be damned.
Patriarchy is grounded in the gendered axis, skewed toward elder men. Sic, patriarchs. One of men in general, regardless of age would likely be an andro-archy or some such.
You're correct in that the Western world is highly plutocratic. That is the inevitable outcome of power laws in economics, combined with wholly private ownership of the means of production without a sufficiently strong regulatory apparatus capable of thwarting the natural tendency of humankind to conspire to improve their lot at other's expense.
Just letting you know that using the right word can help you hone in on what you're trying to say. Vocab is worth investing in! Names have power!
What you say regarding rampant misogyny I take to be true, and I think about that and similar all the time as the one of the primary problems I'm not sure how to solve when I wonder about my ideology and how to improve the world.
It's not just that there's rampant misogyny, there's also rampant racism and religious prejudice, and various other forms of outgroup hate or disregard that gets trained into people.
I can say there's no excuse for misogyny or racism all day, and I certainly speak out against it if I encounter it, but it doesn't really help me solve the problem of how rampant it is.
If a boy, as he's growing up, is told every day that he must behave one way, and his sister another, and watches his father beat his mother for "misbehaving," and he himself got beat the one time he tried on his sister's dress, and in so many other ways had patriarchy essentially beat into him (even outside of a flagrantly abusive childhood, this form of indoctrination will be happening), I'm not sure I can entirely blame the boy when he becomes a man for being misogynistic. Well, maybe I can, I grew up in a culture that violently punished me for questioning gender roles and I didn't end up misogynistic. Then again, I don't think I can "take credit" for not being a misogynist as an adult, questioning assumptions about gender just seemed obvious to me and I was always confused about the rigidity.
Blame or no, what I want is to overcome the indoctrination and help more people not be misogynists or racists or whatever. I'm not sure how.
I constantly waffle between "all people share responsibility in creating a just society" and "there are thought leaders that are responsible for leading people to just societies." I think back to slavery - is it reasonable to expect every single non-slaveholder to be an abolitionist? I want every single person to be an abolitionist, but I'm still not sure if it's a reasonable expectation.
It's an exaggeration but there might be some truth in it. For example, J. K. Rowling was advised by her publisher/agent to use those initials rather than a first name because a feminine name would have discouraged boys from reading her books.
On the other hand, I read somewhere that a lot of romantic novels (Mills & Boon, etc.) are written by men using a feminine pseudonym so probably someone should check the stats to see if there really is an asymmetry here.
Gender performance is very much a cultural thing. I could see some seeing these cultures as being both more and less forgiving depending on the performance in question.
Crying would probably be an example. US culture has a pretty strong demand that men never show tears (or most emotions in general). That's not really true of a lot of other cultures.
While I agree to some extent, it's good to have a discussion on this from time to time as it's an important social topic. Especially when young girls became acquainted with history of women's rights and so on, they immediately tend to become convinced that men are the source of all evil. Some spit it out explicitly, some just hide that feeling in their hearts and go through lives like this.
For this reason, it's worth remembering that the source of these problems for women and men is the same, even though effects differ.
(1) For individual asault cases, these are violent people, almost always men, who choose men and women as their victims. (2) For systemic issues, it is the law. (3) For cultural issues (e.g expectations that men should "take care of the family" while women should take care of children/older family problems) this is the society with its prejudices.
And while we can't do much about (1), there is a lot to be done for (2) and (3), and an honest and civilized discussion rather than flagging all posts on the subject is a part of it.
I believe this is the first time in history that the 'oppressed' class has better average material conditions (measured in things like life expectancy, serious workplace injury and death, imprisonment, suicide rates, outcomes in courts, genital mutilation, educational attainment) than the 'oppressor' class.
I feel like that should give more pause to people to check priors. I'm not sure aliens landing on earth today would come to the same conclusion that most people have as to who is oppressed here.
> its not because of patriarchy but because of HUGE HUGE empathy gap towards men and boys
I recommend you continue reading the article, this is addressed as a fundamental aspect of the patriarchy and is basically what the entire article is about - the author writes that the patriarchy makes having empathy towards boys and men "gay" and highlights specifically a trans man who at first experienced all the benefits of the patriarchy, such as people finally listening to him when he spoke, and then discovering this exact downside that you listed when his mother died and nobody would comfort him. Nobody had empathy for him.
> women are put on a pedestal and protected from all harm
This is an odd thing to say considering for example women face more sexual violence than men, whereas men face more of other kinds of violence. It seems our society is simply harming people in different ways.
> Let's change the legislation to be gender neutral. The same rights and obligations regarding gender must be guaranteed for everyone.
I agree with this, however it's worth noting that because of biological differences, this necessitates for example that States aren't allowed to legislate different kinds of bodily autonomy based on someone's anatomy. Basically, abortion must be legal in this world you envision.
> 2. Declare zero tolerance for all violence, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator or victim.
So far as I know, in most nations that you as an HN poster are statistically likely to live in, striking someone is assault and is prosecuted. This includes instances of women striking men, if you're operating under the misguided belief that this isn't the case.
> 3. Let's invest in men's healthcare as much as women's.
I'll do you one better - let's just make it free for everyone :)
> Let's tailor the safety net of welfare services to be more suitable for men and accessible to men
I love the idea of expanding social services and welfare, I agree, we should do this!
> Let's secure the child's right to their parents and treat fathers and mothers as equal parents.
This sounds wonderful as well, however I wonder if you'll like how this looks in practice, such as for example in France where paternity tests are often banned since the result of a paternity test can cause great harm to the child (when the non-biological father abandons the kid or whatever). Do you still like this idea?
> Let's make the school more suitable for boys, and make education motivating, supportive and encouraging for boys.
Is it not already? Well, more funding for education, and an education system that's more motivating, supportive, and encouraging for people sounds wonderful, so agreed, we should do that.
> Let men and boys be just beginning, as he himself arranges to be. They are not pressured, let alone forced, into any mold.
Including if he wants to be a drag queen, a poet, a stripper, an effeminate model, or androgynous k-pop star, right? If so, we're in full agreement, in that we both agree that we should dismantle the patriarchy.
> Declare paper abortion as human right.
This doesn't quite make sense since an abortion is entirely a discussion about a woman's bodily autonomy, whereas child support is not a question of men's bodily autonomy. An unfortunate side effect of biology but quite concrete.
It's just not true. For a start, pink men's clothes have been around for a good while now. Also if you thought your clothing colour choice was affecting your ability to date just wear another colour, talk about an easy change.
I've never been a "strong" man, physically or behaviourally. Bit of a joker sometimes, but mostly quiet, somewhat emotional. It never caused an issue. Of course, some women won't be attracted to that personality type, but then that'll be true in all directions.
I don't know, maybe it's the men and women who use the dating apps? Or maybe the problem is something else that you're doing?
Barry Humphries, who famously wore fabulous pink dresses as Dame Edna Everage, was married for 33 years to Elizabeth Spender (played the wife of Michael Palin's career torturer in Terry Gilliam's Brazil)
Point being, you've claimed as "absolute" something that is very clearly and absolutely not true.
The actor wears pink - according to the GP that absolutely tanks any chance of dating (for the record, Barry's been cross dressing longer than he's been married, and his flamboyounce isn't limited to characters he plays on stage; he's very much of the world's a stage tradition).
Moreover than one single example of what a daft bit of absolutism the comment contained should prompt in any reasonable thinking person a host of other counter examples.
John Oliver - British dweeb with a high pitch voice and glasses? Married. For more than a decade. To a smoking hot former US Army medic.
Pretty sure Oliver can't bench press.
Adam Hills, Alex Brooker & Josh Widdicombe - host a disabled talk show (The Last Leg), Adam's missing a foot, Alex also along with flipper hands, and Widdicombe's an asthmatic. All married. With kids.
While there are certainly areas, where boys and young men are now in a disadvantage (college degrees, high school grades) - something that we should try to mitigate - in other social contexts, women are still heavily discriminated against.
Asserting that one group has it “harder” than the other, speaks to poor methodology and understanding of the situation.
Tell me even one metric women are doing worse than men or boys regarding life?
- Most suicides, men
- Most homeless, men
- Most with out partners, men
- Most with out child (even though they would wanted one), men
- Most dying at work, men
- Most getting divorced, men
- Most with out college or other degrees, men
- Most died by violence, men
Women experience more sexual violence than men. Women experience more instances of genital mutilation, are more often sex trafficked and enslaved, and experience more instances of domestic abuse.
Most getting divorced as "men" makes no sense unless you mean that homosexual men couples more frequently get divorced than homosexual women couples, considering a heterosexual divorce results in +1 count of divorces-per-gender equally.
But the point is that a lot of the things that men suffer under is exactly the same thing under attack by feminists. Feminists aren't your enemy and "all the men on earth" isn't the enemy of feminists or people resisting patriarchy.
Do you believe the assigned-male-at-birth person who chooses to resist gender hierarchy by dressing in drag and protesting at the capital is your enemy?
> Women experience more sexual violence than men. Women experience more instances of genital mutilation, are more often sex trafficked and enslaved, and experience more instances of domestic abuse.
I believe the parent meant Western societies.
In any case, even though I agree with the spirit of your comment (in theory, feminists should fight with the very same root causes that make both men and women suffer), in practice their focus is very much shifted towards women. And when we get to the point where systemic oppression/privilege is considered (military service, being able to save one's life during a war), most of them suddenly become quiet.
> Men suffer under patriarchy because patriarchy is a system set up by a few men over everyone else- including most men. It is a system that allows for the most greedy, aggressive and selfish to rise to the top and dominate over everyone else.
This is essentially what anarchists have been saying about patriarchy and other -archies for a century or so, hence the name (an... archy).
The conflation of patriarchy with "men" is an example of those in power trying to identity-amalgate and shift the blame. By that I mean: the patriarchy is the hand of a few powerful men that oppresses many (men and women), and in order to protect themselves, these men lie and say "actually, all men, you are the patriarchy, the patriarchy benefits you, the patriarchy is not evil, and an attack on the patriarchy is an attack on all of you." I could take this sentence and plop it into so many ideologies. White supremacy, heterophilia, Zionism, Han Chauvinism, all ideologies that seek to uplift a very few powerful people, oppress all others, and then pick an identifying attribute to create a moat of proletariat around them to duke it out in culture wars.
Billionaires claiming the union is an attack on hardworking individuals. Reactionary white supremacists claiming Black Lives Matter is an attack on all white people. Fascist Israeli leaders claiming opposition to their slaughter of Palestinians is an attack on global Jews. The CPC claiming criticism of them is actually racism against all Han people.
But billionaires and their hardworking employees aren't the same at all. White supremacist leaders are the only ones under attack by Black Lives Matter, not random white people in suburbs. A criticism of the terrorist-funding fascist Netanyahu and his government (who is happy to send his police to beat Orthodox Jews) has nothing to do with Jewish people around the world. A criticism of the CPC has nothing to do with Han around the world (and on that note, it's becoming such that anyone with Asianic heritage is becoming "Han" by the CPC's encroaching standards). Yet each of these smaller groups claim to speak for / be one with these larger groups.
I'm sad when see fellow leftists fall into the trap of attacking class allies, but to be fair it's very hard to sit down and convince every single person scared of the big Black Lives Matter protest that we probably actually share a cause and common enemy.
I have no solutions other than personally always trying to remember who really is the source of so much suffering in the world and avoiding lashing out against class allies. This article is a great example that I feel follows the same strategy.
Thank you for bringing clarity to the conversation.
As a fellow anarchist, I tend to forget to ask simple questions like:
Who stands to benefit?
Probably not poor, misogynist men.
The word describing what you're talking about is plutarchy, not patriarchy. A plutarchy is a system of the well heeled and connected, maintained for the well heeled and connected, everyone else be damned.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy
Patriarchy is grounded in the gendered axis, skewed toward elder men. Sic, patriarchs. One of men in general, regardless of age would likely be an andro-archy or some such.
You're correct in that the Western world is highly plutocratic. That is the inevitable outcome of power laws in economics, combined with wholly private ownership of the means of production without a sufficiently strong regulatory apparatus capable of thwarting the natural tendency of humankind to conspire to improve their lot at other's expense.
Just letting you know that using the right word can help you hone in on what you're trying to say. Vocab is worth investing in! Names have power!
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What you say regarding rampant misogyny I take to be true, and I think about that and similar all the time as the one of the primary problems I'm not sure how to solve when I wonder about my ideology and how to improve the world.
It's not just that there's rampant misogyny, there's also rampant racism and religious prejudice, and various other forms of outgroup hate or disregard that gets trained into people.
I can say there's no excuse for misogyny or racism all day, and I certainly speak out against it if I encounter it, but it doesn't really help me solve the problem of how rampant it is.
If a boy, as he's growing up, is told every day that he must behave one way, and his sister another, and watches his father beat his mother for "misbehaving," and he himself got beat the one time he tried on his sister's dress, and in so many other ways had patriarchy essentially beat into him (even outside of a flagrantly abusive childhood, this form of indoctrination will be happening), I'm not sure I can entirely blame the boy when he becomes a man for being misogynistic. Well, maybe I can, I grew up in a culture that violently punished me for questioning gender roles and I didn't end up misogynistic. Then again, I don't think I can "take credit" for not being a misogynist as an adult, questioning assumptions about gender just seemed obvious to me and I was always confused about the rigidity.
Blame or no, what I want is to overcome the indoctrination and help more people not be misogynists or racists or whatever. I'm not sure how.
I constantly waffle between "all people share responsibility in creating a just society" and "there are thought leaders that are responsible for leading people to just societies." I think back to slavery - is it reasonable to expect every single non-slaveholder to be an abolitionist? I want every single person to be an abolitionist, but I'm still not sure if it's a reasonable expectation.
> Women read books by men, but men don’t read books by women.
WHAT?
It's an exaggeration but there might be some truth in it. For example, J. K. Rowling was advised by her publisher/agent to use those initials rather than a first name because a feminine name would have discouraged boys from reading her books.
On the other hand, I read somewhere that a lot of romantic novels (Mills & Boon, etc.) are written by men using a feminine pseudonym so probably someone should check the stats to see if there really is an asymmetry here.
This is also a cultural thing. Eastern cultures gives more leniency to what men should and should not act like.
Could you detail that some more? Because my understanding is anything but. Especially Korean, Japanese and Indian culture.
Gender performance is very much a cultural thing. I could see some seeing these cultures as being both more and less forgiving depending on the performance in question.
Crying would probably be an example. US culture has a pretty strong demand that men never show tears (or most emotions in general). That's not really true of a lot of other cultures.
Are you a woman or a man?
I'm going to do something anti-woke and assume that Celeste with the blog Matriarchal Blessing whose profile picture is this: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... -- is a woman.
This belongs to a category of rabbit holes of the human condition that are entirely pointless to argue or worry about.
While I agree to some extent, it's good to have a discussion on this from time to time as it's an important social topic. Especially when young girls became acquainted with history of women's rights and so on, they immediately tend to become convinced that men are the source of all evil. Some spit it out explicitly, some just hide that feeling in their hearts and go through lives like this.
For this reason, it's worth remembering that the source of these problems for women and men is the same, even though effects differ.
(1) For individual asault cases, these are violent people, almost always men, who choose men and women as their victims. (2) For systemic issues, it is the law. (3) For cultural issues (e.g expectations that men should "take care of the family" while women should take care of children/older family problems) this is the society with its prejudices.
And while we can't do much about (1), there is a lot to be done for (2) and (3), and an honest and civilized discussion rather than flagging all posts on the subject is a part of it.
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I believe this is the first time in history that the 'oppressed' class has better average material conditions (measured in things like life expectancy, serious workplace injury and death, imprisonment, suicide rates, outcomes in courts, genital mutilation, educational attainment) than the 'oppressor' class.
I feel like that should give more pause to people to check priors. I'm not sure aliens landing on earth today would come to the same conclusion that most people have as to who is oppressed here.
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> its not because of patriarchy but because of HUGE HUGE empathy gap towards men and boys
I recommend you continue reading the article, this is addressed as a fundamental aspect of the patriarchy and is basically what the entire article is about - the author writes that the patriarchy makes having empathy towards boys and men "gay" and highlights specifically a trans man who at first experienced all the benefits of the patriarchy, such as people finally listening to him when he spoke, and then discovering this exact downside that you listed when his mother died and nobody would comfort him. Nobody had empathy for him.
> women are put on a pedestal and protected from all harm
This is an odd thing to say considering for example women face more sexual violence than men, whereas men face more of other kinds of violence. It seems our society is simply harming people in different ways.
> Let's change the legislation to be gender neutral. The same rights and obligations regarding gender must be guaranteed for everyone.
I agree with this, however it's worth noting that because of biological differences, this necessitates for example that States aren't allowed to legislate different kinds of bodily autonomy based on someone's anatomy. Basically, abortion must be legal in this world you envision.
> 2. Declare zero tolerance for all violence, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator or victim.
So far as I know, in most nations that you as an HN poster are statistically likely to live in, striking someone is assault and is prosecuted. This includes instances of women striking men, if you're operating under the misguided belief that this isn't the case.
> 3. Let's invest in men's healthcare as much as women's.
I'll do you one better - let's just make it free for everyone :)
> Let's tailor the safety net of welfare services to be more suitable for men and accessible to men
I love the idea of expanding social services and welfare, I agree, we should do this!
> Let's secure the child's right to their parents and treat fathers and mothers as equal parents.
This sounds wonderful as well, however I wonder if you'll like how this looks in practice, such as for example in France where paternity tests are often banned since the result of a paternity test can cause great harm to the child (when the non-biological father abandons the kid or whatever). Do you still like this idea?
> Let's make the school more suitable for boys, and make education motivating, supportive and encouraging for boys.
Is it not already? Well, more funding for education, and an education system that's more motivating, supportive, and encouraging for people sounds wonderful, so agreed, we should do that.
> Let men and boys be just beginning, as he himself arranges to be. They are not pressured, let alone forced, into any mold.
Including if he wants to be a drag queen, a poet, a stripper, an effeminate model, or androgynous k-pop star, right? If so, we're in full agreement, in that we both agree that we should dismantle the patriarchy.
> Declare paper abortion as human right.
This doesn't quite make sense since an abortion is entirely a discussion about a woman's bodily autonomy, whereas child support is not a question of men's bodily autonomy. An unfortunate side effect of biology but quite concrete.
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It's just not true. For a start, pink men's clothes have been around for a good while now. Also if you thought your clothing colour choice was affecting your ability to date just wear another colour, talk about an easy change.
I've never been a "strong" man, physically or behaviourally. Bit of a joker sometimes, but mostly quiet, somewhat emotional. It never caused an issue. Of course, some women won't be attracted to that personality type, but then that'll be true in all directions.
I don't know, maybe it's the men and women who use the dating apps? Or maybe the problem is something else that you're doing?
I'm married now, but I remember very well what girls/women were looking for 15-20 years ago.
Barry Humphries, who famously wore fabulous pink dresses as Dame Edna Everage, was married for 33 years to Elizabeth Spender (played the wife of Michael Palin's career torturer in Terry Gilliam's Brazil)
Point being, you've claimed as "absolute" something that is very clearly and absolutely not true.
OK, not "absolute". How about "vast majority"?
I'm not sure what that proves - the actor's wife is married to the actor, not to the character played by the actor.
The actor wears pink - according to the GP that absolutely tanks any chance of dating (for the record, Barry's been cross dressing longer than he's been married, and his flamboyounce isn't limited to characters he plays on stage; he's very much of the world's a stage tradition).
Moreover than one single example of what a daft bit of absolutism the comment contained should prompt in any reasonable thinking person a host of other counter examples.
John Oliver - British dweeb with a high pitch voice and glasses? Married. For more than a decade. To a smoking hot former US Army medic.
Pretty sure Oliver can't bench press.
Adam Hills, Alex Brooker & Josh Widdicombe - host a disabled talk show (The Last Leg), Adam's missing a foot, Alex also along with flipper hands, and Widdicombe's an asthmatic. All married. With kids.
We can go on for a very long time here.
It's just a very stupid claim to make.
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news you can use
While there are certainly areas, where boys and young men are now in a disadvantage (college degrees, high school grades) - something that we should try to mitigate - in other social contexts, women are still heavily discriminated against.
Asserting that one group has it “harder” than the other, speaks to poor methodology and understanding of the situation.
Tell me even one metric women are doing worse than men or boys regarding life?
- Most suicides, men - Most homeless, men - Most with out partners, men - Most with out child (even though they would wanted one), men - Most dying at work, men - Most getting divorced, men - Most with out college or other degrees, men - Most died by violence, men
and so on...
Women experience more sexual violence than men. Women experience more instances of genital mutilation, are more often sex trafficked and enslaved, and experience more instances of domestic abuse.
Most getting divorced as "men" makes no sense unless you mean that homosexual men couples more frequently get divorced than homosexual women couples, considering a heterosexual divorce results in +1 count of divorces-per-gender equally.
But the point is that a lot of the things that men suffer under is exactly the same thing under attack by feminists. Feminists aren't your enemy and "all the men on earth" isn't the enemy of feminists or people resisting patriarchy.
Do you believe the assigned-male-at-birth person who chooses to resist gender hierarchy by dressing in drag and protesting at the capital is your enemy?
> Women experience more sexual violence than men. Women experience more instances of genital mutilation, are more often sex trafficked and enslaved, and experience more instances of domestic abuse.
I believe the parent meant Western societies.
In any case, even though I agree with the spirit of your comment (in theory, feminists should fight with the very same root causes that make both men and women suffer), in practice their focus is very much shifted towards women. And when we get to the point where systemic oppression/privilege is considered (military service, being able to save one's life during a war), most of them suddenly become quiet.
so why don't men start cuddeling groups then?