Does the patriarchy continue to exist in modern times?

I've been wandering around Tumblr a lot recently, mostly MRM and feminist blogs, and the concept of the patriarchy comes up a lot. Men's right activists seem to believe that the patriarchy doesn't exist these days, that it's a thing of the past, and women are basically as equal as men these days while feminist are insistent that it's still prevalent in today's society, actively oppressing women and preventing them from being equal to men. Some even posit that some of the problems that men's right activists fight against are actually caused by the patriarchy.

For those of you who don't know what the patriarchy is.

/wikipediacopypasta

So I ask you, KHV. Do you believe that a social system in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it continues to exist today? And why do you hold this opinion? Could you give examples?

 

Frankly in my country I don' t think there' s much to do left. Laws have been tweaked sufficiently to put make us equals on paper, give or take a few minute details. Mentalities on the other hand still have a little way to go, but I' m confident that they will given enough time.

I' m sure the US could use some improvement too, but it seems feminists often see problems where there aren' t any. For instance, since this is a gaming forum, I take it a few people here have seen this :

Spoiler

Well my answer to that would pretty much be this :

Spoiler

 

As far as men's rights activism is concerned, MRAs definitely suffer from patriarchy, because patriarchy causes both men and women to hold inequal views of men and women. Some believe men superior godlike creatures with all-encompassing authority, while some inevitably react to this by thinking them inferior manchildren who deserve to be curbstomped on sight; I've met men and women of both camps, and I don't particularly like hanging out with any of them. They're all obnoxious and preachy, and they all tend to make me feel guilty for things beyond my control.

That said, I don't really like most MRAs either. They also come off as preachy. And the term irks me. Can we not just recognize that everyone is granted some rights someone else doesn't have, and denied some that plenty of others enjoy, and fight for everybody's rights at once? Always with the segregation and splinter groups. All it does is make people beef with each other.

 

There's a lot of definitions to patriarchy, in religion, in government, in a lot of different societies. The U.S. could be called patriarchal because there's a lot more males in the government than females. There's never been a female president, etc... Is it in my POV? I still think women have a long way to go to reach the same ground as men. There's a reason why there's a "glass ceiling" for women. Though I do admit, it's a lot less than it used to be. A lot of it depends on a person's POV in a job, but in most cases, it is that in government when it comes down to it, men will still want to have more control then woman unless if something drastically changes. Does it make it right? Depends on your POV, does it make it fair? Depends, this comes from anywhere, if you look at most religions, men still dominate. There has never been a female Pope as far as I know, and sorry if I'm wrong, nor has there been a large religious figure who is a female from Christianity. It has been this way thousands of years. Does it make it right? Most likely not, but again, it's what is decided by a group of people who have always chosen who are male.

There are other countries like this, North Korea and probably most of the Middle East is the only one that pops in my head that I can strongly stand behind but that is extreme. There's also the other side of that where you look at places like Norway. It is a country run by women, when a women is pregnant, her husband is given maternity leave for a year with the wife, there's little to no homeless, etc...

There are probably several patriarch run countries who have it the same way. It honestly comes to the country, their beliefs and what happens inside the country/relgion that causes it to be run these days unless it's a government/religion that has held traditions dating back hundreds of years. I hope that was on topic enough, I'll edit if not.

 

I don' t think women really have any ground to complain about their representation in politics in the US. In my country we passed mixity laws so that half our politicians are women. It might look like a good idea at a quick glance but it actually isn' t. In practice it means we pick people based on sex rather than merit.

The thing is, there are fewer women than men interested in political careers, it' s a cold hard fact. Because of that law inexperienced women have been propelled on the front lines while more qualified men had to sit on the bench. I' d call that sexism. We hoped they would at least make our debates a little less petty. They didn' t.

In the US you seem to have plenty of women in politics, and you didn' t have to force anyone' s hand to get there. Sure, you haven' t had any female president yet, but just like us you' ve had female presidential candidates whose scores weren' t exactly neglectible. Now openly atheist politicians on the other hand, you have an unmistakable issue there.

Point is, just because the representation of genders or ethnicities in a profession doesn' t match their percentage in the overall population doesn' t necessarily mean they' re being discriminated, and vice-versa. You' d be better off comparing the numbers with the proportion of said profession wannabes, keeping in mind they don' t have to match closely.

Mmm ... mother Teresa ? But yes, all the main monotheistic religions are patriarchal. They' re written that way. What are you gonna do, rewrite the bible ? All you can do is stick their fallacies up their asses whenever you can, if they keep being called on them they might end up calling it an unfortunate misreading, like those embarassing bible verses advocating for slavery. They already do to some extent, how many Christians actually believe women should remain silent in the presence of a man ?

 

I can't speak for other countries or even most states in USA, but for the most part, men and women run on equal rights nowadays. I know there are still some places that probably don't give women as much rights, still around. It's not fun to think of, but it's the case. I for one never believed in men being greater than women. But the same could be said in reverse.

Men are idiots, I know from experience. Women are crazy, at least the one's I've seen. We're all equally f***ed up, so I think we all deserve the same rights.

 

The patriarchy absolutely exists today. Its hold is loosened by feminist / activist activities but there is still a hell of a way to go. The problem is, it's not as evident these days. Not many people are explicitly told their place in society. It's implicit but it's there. Because we are creatures of society, our upbringing and our idea of the "norm" are directly inherited from the values and examples of society... and our society is definitely still a patriarchy.

These are, by no means, the only examples of patriarchy, but rather some to illustrate the point:

• There are more male CEOs than female. One could argue that this is simply because men have more business-savvy than women, or that they work harder in these fields and are rewarded for it. That not only accepts that there are general traits that can be justly applied to an entire people, but disregards that women are growing up in a culture that teaches them not to be interested in business, or that they don't need to work hard in that field.
• The same could be said for female teachers; there are more female teachers than male. One could argue that this is simply because women are more so the caregivers & educators, or that they work harder in these fields and are rewarded for it. That not only accepts that there are general traits that can be justly applied to an entire people, but disregards that men are growing up in a culture that teaches them not to be caregivers, or that they don't need to work hard in that field.
• We still have concrete expectations as to the relationship between sex and gender; someone must fit into our conception of male by having a penis and being a strong, stoic, successful breadwinner. Someone must fit into our conception of female by having a vagina and being caring and submissive.
• Victims of rape are frequently blamed for the crime, saying that they were "dressing provocatively." Not only is that unfair to the victim, but it propels the assumption that men are insatiable sexual creatures, unable to control their desire.
• There are more male prisoners than female. Men are raised in a culture that teaches them to be violent, or at least, more so than women.
• A girl who sleeps around is labelled a slut and is socially shamed; a man who sleeps around is lauded as a "conqueror" or hero.
• A woman without traditionally "feminine" traits (athletic, unfashionable, doesn't wear makeup, hates children, etc.) is labelled as a tomboy.
• A man without traditionally "masculine" traits (passive, fashionable, caregiver, emotional, etc.) is called effeminate or a sissy... and that is insulting. It is not only a component of the patriarchy that we call them these names and can use them to harm, but that we consider these traits masculine or feminine in the first place.
• Women are taught that attention from men is how they should judge their self-confidence; a woman will dress up and go out in clothes that may not make her feel confident, but that can increase her chances of attention from men. She is not only objectifying herself, but allowing her self-worth to be decided by others.
• Women are not eligible to be drafted into the military (if there is a draft).
• Cases of men's body issues (whether it be eating disorders or body dysmorphia), abuse against men, rape of a man, etc. will go severely unreported because it is considered "shameful," and many men will not seek help.
• Insurance covers erectile dysfunction and prostate exams, while women must foot the bills for their own mammograms and birth control.
• I could go on
• but I won't
• ( a note: I base most of these off of American culture/society--some may not exist in other countries, some may be worse in other countries, and of course, different places have their own unique issues. I live here and know the most about American culture, so that's what I'm describing.)

All of these are, happily, falling away, but they are still present in our society and pretending that they aren't, or are a thing of the past, is plain ignorant. A key point that I tried to make in balancing my examples is that patriarchy harms men just as much as it harms women.

Source

A lot of people--male and female--fear feminism and the end of patriarchy because they feel it challenges their way of life or their rights, and forces them into some kind of lifestyle. The very purpose is to end forcing people into a particular lifestyle. No true feminist wants to replace the patriarchy with a matriarchy, for that would be equally evil.

 

You bring up a lot of great points, Misty...

The thing about the bible, going to Patman's post, is that when the bible by at least some religions, note: Not all... Was written a 100 years after Jesus's death. There's a massive amount of problems with that, but lets stick with the topic for this debate:

The only people who could write back then were either rich males/merchants or monks. All are male, and writing even today goes from the author's POV. So what I would write would be different than someone else's.

Adding to your post, I have read in cases where women are trying to get restraining orders against men and are refused because the judge is a male who thinks: "She's a woman and he's her husband, suck it the hell up." Which in some cases ends up with the woman beaten to death because her husband beats her.

Hell, in my hospital which is fairly neutral, I need to be either 35, have two kids and/or have a life threatening condition in which I can't become pregnant to have a surgery to be sterile. I can never have kids, via genetics and a birth defect. When my mom tried to have the same surgery, she couldn't because she needed her husband to sign off and he refused. And that was 30 years ago.

Times are changing, but it's still has a VERY long way to go before we even can call it even ground.

 

I have several things to say here and I' m not sure where to begin.

First, just because there are exceptions to a trend doesn' t mean there' s no trend. Second, the explanation for that trend is not necessarily entirely sociological, there are fundamental biological differences between men and women. Hormones for instance, which impact our moods and personalities. We don' t understand all the factors yet, and yes, they don' t set everything in stone, but it would be foolish to deny them entirely. I don' t expect every single area of society to be balanced in gender representation anytime soon. Strike that, not ever. I' m sure some men make it harder for, say, women to become CEO, but even if both sex were given a fair chance everywhere I would still expect to find gender discrepencies.

That' s why I don' t see the point of reaching a gender representation balance for the sake of gender representation balance. I' ve been an I.T. student, I' ve seen first hand how very few girls those careers draw. Trust me, we weren' t happy about it. I can' t think of any sociological explanation for that (aren' t girls suposedly slightly better at math than us ?), but the point is that, as long as people choose a career they' re happy about, on their own free will, who cares if there' s a gender discrepency ? Would the video game industry be fundamentally better if it wasn' t as masculine ? Their products seem to satisfy boys as well as girls.

Incidentally, you' ve picked as an exemple one of the few professions where I think gender representation does matter : teachers. Kids need role models to construct their identity, and nope, their parents don' t necessarily cover both genders (single parents, gay couples etc ...). There' s a corelation between the feminisation of teachers and the number of male drop outs, and male nerds are generally stereotyped as sissies. Coincidence ? We need to send kids the message that being knowledgeable is a positive and desirable trait, for both sex. Once they' re knowledgeable they' re empowered enough to follow their dreams, whatever those dreams might be, whether they fit the current gender trends or not.

I wouldn' t give the same sociological explanation as the one you mentioned to explain the feminisation of education. Teachers are supposed to be authority figures, not replacement mothers. Hell, in the past it was considered a masculine profession for that very reason. If I am to believe the studies I' ve read most men are unconsciously drawn to "successful" careers while most woman are unconsciously drawn to lightweight hours careers (to take care of the kids). Problem is being knowledgeable doesn' t culturally qualify as success anymore, fame and money do (especially in the US). People would rather become Justin Bieber or the Koch brothers than Gilles de Genes. Do you even know who Gilles de Genes is ?

Hopefully this post makes sense, despite me jumping all around the place.

 

Oh I agree, gender discrepancy is going to exist no matter where or what society's circumstances are. That doesn't mean we need to resign ourselves to it, though. The problem is that not all of these genders are as simple as a natural imbalance. I would never advocate what you brought up earlier, with France mandating an even 50/50 separation of male to female in politics, for example. These positions should be merit-based and nothing else--being of any sort of group (whether it be a white male or a black woman) should give you no edge, especially not in a democracy. The problem is the societal conditioning that influences the discrepancy. Biology may play a part but we need not limit it to that.

It's interesting you bring up the IT field to me personally because until a year or so ago, I was seriously considering it as my career path (computer networking, to be specific). I think I was certainly recognized within my high school's tech department for being the only girl enrolled in these classes, and my teacher, I think, took a special liking/notice to me based on it. He said that, regardless of whether it was right or wrong, I could easily get a lot of job opportunities in the field. I think that only motivated me to work harder in my classes, because I didn't want to take advantage of my sex to get into the field and not have the skills to back it up (especially in such a technical, hands-on field). I don't know why it is such a male-dominated field really, but I think it speaks to the very discrepancy you're writing off, in a way that is actually negative to men.

I didn't mean anything by the particular selection of teaching ( aside from maybe that I am going into the field and that, in my education, I can count my male teachers on one hand), but you are right that it is one of the major problems with education today. It should be a balanced field because then children can have models of positive male figures and female figures. The problem is that women are tremendously represented in the field, and men are concurrently underrepresented (though, thinking about it, most of the authority figures/administrators in my school were male). American education, at least (don't know about the rest of the world), is also tremendously failing male students. So we are in agreeance there.

While not as simple of an example, why shouldn't this apply to other professions? Teachers aren't the only role models children have, and it's important for them to have role models in all fields.

Teaching is as much about authority as it is about nurturing. A school run under a completely authoritarian banner would fail its students as much as a cushy one would. Neither one of those options, however, should be indicative of the gender of the teacher. Teaching, however, has been a very female-dominated field, at least here. It goes back to the days of governesses and schoolhouses and all, but I think it also has its roots in women being the traditional nurturers, not to mention the modern distrust of men around children (which is entirely unjustified but I do think it influences things...).

But does it really stand to test that these unconscious draws are born from biology or society? I think society. Men would want the "successful" (as in, financially lucrative) careers because they are conditioned to be the breadwinners; women would want the lightweight careers because they are conditioned to be the homemakers.

& I did not know who he was, I suspect because I've never really studied physics or the sciences much at all, really. Always been more into English & History. But I'd rather be today's Jane Austen than a popstar anyday. The fact that most people don't think that way speaks to the flaws in our society, some of which are caused by the patriarchy, others by human flaw & greed.

 

I meant this is the only profession where I' d like to see a close to 50/50 representation, to match that of the kids and because of all the time they spend there. School is the mini-society we put under their eyes.

Agreed. My wording was clumsy.

Well, men have more upper body muscles and women have uteruses and breasts. Look at other social animals, who tends to be the hunter and who tends to take care of the babies ? So yeah, I' m pretty sure that societal norm comes from biological imperatives.

I can' t say for sure, but I wouldn' t be surprised to learn that this gender role distinction is ingrained in our psyche to some degree, via DNA, rather than just being a social consequence born of purely physical divergences.

I ... was being rethorical. Should have put a smiley or something. ^^

 

The lioness. >:E

It may be that the specific example you gave is ill-fitting, but I would point out that not every lucrative career depends on strength or athleticism. I think "lightweight" in this instance is meant to address the amount of time investment more than physical or mental exhaustiveness: Women tend towards jobs that leave them energy and free time, because they are cast as caretakers and expected to use that extra time to tend to the home. Men tend towards the dull, repetitive nine-to-fives that earn more money by virtue of keeping you around longer, because apparently their #1 job is to make the paper. Is that a matter of biology? It may have been at first, but I believe cultural expectation has outpaced biological imperative. We are no lions, nor are we apes, spiders, or dolphins. We should be able to form our own rules.

 

To be fair we' re closer to monkeys than lions. Gorillas and some other apes have a matriarchal society, but chimps ? Macho macho males.

Lucrative careers are based on competition, in the broad sense of the term.

Yes, we' ve obviously outgrown those biological imperatives (well, most of them, I' m not about to get pregnant anytime soon), but I still cannot help but wonder how much of our gender role perception is or can be influenced by genes.

 

Oh yeah I know, that was mostly just fluff. But see, it goes either way, even in nature - even amongst similar species.

Sure, but it's not always physical competition. Ladies can get in on it, too.

Of course. But wouldn't it further our understanding of that to attempt to challenge the status quo? In that way, we might brush up against those hard biological limits, if they exist.

 

I think it's a bit of both...

The genes of men are usually aggressive and protective of women for generations. In the wild, males usually are the ones fighting for the women. I know humans have been around for god knows how many thousands of years, but if you really think about it...

The way that society has been set up, say in the U.S., women didn't get the right to vote until the 1920's. In the 1950's, they were still at-home moms who baked apple pies and cookies for children and their husbands via society's standards. Men for generations have been protecting and supporting women. It has only recently changed, women for years, even in the American Revolution have joined wars and fought alongside men in secret, hell, in World War II, women took over the workforce when men were overseas. It was only then that they became a massively bigger role in working and other things. Societies standards for women didn't change for even a longer time, not until at least the 1960's or later. There are a lot of men who even today view women as they did before World War II. I know a few cults that don't allow anything to be watched except everything BEFORE the 1960's to keep women in that mindset.

Men for a long time have had the same instincts as animals even if it's deeply hidden biologically to protect women or that women need men. This is slowly changing, note: some faster than others, but it takes generations for it to happen. The debate on how many generations is for another day, but between society's view and that instinct, it is a very uphill battle.