is the man or bear thing rhetorically or optically the perfect feminist meme that is beyond criticism? no.
but is it leaps and bounds better at getting men to understand the material consequences of patriarchy on the physical and emotional health of women than that stupid “kill all men” meme from last decade? definitely.
So when is a societal ill not the patriarchy? There doesn’t seem to be any delineation between what is and isn’t, so it almost seems like some sort of mysterious Satan figure
Good question!
Handling this question is tricky, but I’ll give it a shot with some examples. It’s worth noting that there’s often overlap between different systems, where those in power in one area also benefit disproportionately in others. (This concept is a key part of intersectionality theory.)
Thank you for responding.
What I’m getting is that patriarchy is a system that is structured in a way that it benefits (or disenfranchises less) those that are:
And that you can keep identifying different traits and expanding the list where relevant?
No that’s kind of the opposite of the point I was making. The patriarchy is only one of all those systems of oppression that I listed.
There is a lot of crossover, yes, but I am not equivocating any of those. They are generally distinct.
Ah, gotcha, sorry my mistake. Thank you for all your help btw.
So it’s specific for when men are less disenfranchised than women? Regardless of the perpetrator of said injustice?
So looking at that other guys examples. The only one that doesn’t immediately make sense is:
And to me the only example that comes to mind is women expecting men to pay for dates? Which I think is part of patriarchy as it’s inherited from a time where women couldn’t work or had severely limited career prospects?
And other things like
are a response to a historic lack of agency among women, requiring them to force their husbands to find success for them.
I’m not getting this one though, could you explain how this is patriarchy?
Some of this is starting to get beyond my rhetorical capacity so I won’t pretend to have answers for your questions here, I apologize.
Maybe other commenters can give you satisfactory answers, but in the meantime I’ll refer you to this book by bell hooks (free PDF). Should get you 99.9% of the way there. :)
No worries, thank you for getting me this far!