Question: Is "the patriarchy" meaningful?
The #1 problem with "the patriarchy" is that there is no standard feminist definition for what the patriarchy, or patriarchy is. There is a standard anthropological definition:
A form of social organization in which the father is the supreme authority in the family, clan, or tribe and descent is reckoned in the male line, with the children belonging to the father's clan or tribe. [Courtesy of Dictionary.com, that time around.]
The feminist definition is more ambiguous. Pinning down what, precisely, someone means when they refer to patriarchy as a feminist is difficult, and requires direct inquiry. Different feminist writers have defined it in different ways; for example, you might find that:
In practice, "the patriarchy did it" is somewhere in the range from being a non-falsifiable hypothesis to being a conspiracy theory. Because the definition of what is and is not part of the patriarchy is not standardized, there is literally nothing that cannot be justified as the product of the patriarchy, including oppression of men by women.
However, in the narrower sense, where patriarchy refers to a family structure headed by the male elder, and by analogy to social structures that mirror that family structure, or interact with it, we can talk meaningfully about patriarchy. For any phenomenon X, we can say it is or is not caused by the patriarchy based on that narrow definition with a certain measure of certainty.
If something can be demonstrated a product of that family structure, it definitely is caused by the patriarchy. The patriarchy will be a necessary cause for X if we can show that X only occurs in patriarchies; and is a sufficient cause for X if X occurs in all patriarchies.
Since "patriarchy" is taken to be the historic state of most societies, this means that the patriarchy is only a sufficient cause for X if X is a constant over the larger part of history. The idea that every society ever has been a patriarchy, espoused by some feminists, mean we can't determine whether or not patriarchy was a necessary cause of X while respecting standard feminist doctrine.
This is what makes "X was caused by patriarchy" a typically non-falsifiable hypothesis when dealing with feminists online; until and unless a feminist admits to the existence of societies that are not patriarchies, you can't rule out the possibility that patriarchy is necessary for X, where X is any social phenomenon; even if it's clearly not sufficient.
Even if X was actually caused by feminists. However, if we stick to a fairly narrow view of what patriarchy is, and a few basic ideas - such as the ideas that feminists are opposed to patriarchy, that the very literal anthropological patriarchy makes for admissible examples, that European culture prior to the Enlightenment was decidedly patriarchal, and that modern Islamic societies generally are patriarchal as well - we can say some meaningful things in response to the claim "X was caused by the patriarchy."
A form of social organization in which the father is the supreme authority in the family, clan, or tribe and descent is reckoned in the male line, with the children belonging to the father's clan or tribe. [Courtesy of Dictionary.com, that time around.]
The feminist definition is more ambiguous. Pinning down what, precisely, someone means when they refer to patriarchy as a feminist is difficult, and requires direct inquiry. Different feminist writers have defined it in different ways; for example, you might find that:
- "The patriarchy" refers to a class of ways in which the larger social structure mirrors the root family structure.
- "The patriarchy" refers to a system whereby men are privileged and women are oppressed.
- "The patriarchy" is shorthand for "our current society."
In practice, "the patriarchy did it" is somewhere in the range from being a non-falsifiable hypothesis to being a conspiracy theory. Because the definition of what is and is not part of the patriarchy is not standardized, there is literally nothing that cannot be justified as the product of the patriarchy, including oppression of men by women.
However, in the narrower sense, where patriarchy refers to a family structure headed by the male elder, and by analogy to social structures that mirror that family structure, or interact with it, we can talk meaningfully about patriarchy. For any phenomenon X, we can say it is or is not caused by the patriarchy based on that narrow definition with a certain measure of certainty.
If something can be demonstrated a product of that family structure, it definitely is caused by the patriarchy. The patriarchy will be a necessary cause for X if we can show that X only occurs in patriarchies; and is a sufficient cause for X if X occurs in all patriarchies.
Since "patriarchy" is taken to be the historic state of most societies, this means that the patriarchy is only a sufficient cause for X if X is a constant over the larger part of history. The idea that every society ever has been a patriarchy, espoused by some feminists, mean we can't determine whether or not patriarchy was a necessary cause of X while respecting standard feminist doctrine.
This is what makes "X was caused by patriarchy" a typically non-falsifiable hypothesis when dealing with feminists online; until and unless a feminist admits to the existence of societies that are not patriarchies, you can't rule out the possibility that patriarchy is necessary for X, where X is any social phenomenon; even if it's clearly not sufficient.
Even if X was actually caused by feminists. However, if we stick to a fairly narrow view of what patriarchy is, and a few basic ideas - such as the ideas that feminists are opposed to patriarchy, that the very literal anthropological patriarchy makes for admissible examples, that European culture prior to the Enlightenment was decidedly patriarchal, and that modern Islamic societies generally are patriarchal as well - we can say some meaningful things in response to the claim "X was caused by the patriarchy."
Myth: Patriarchy is responsible for war. Often stated as "If women ran the world, there would be no war."
War is a historical constant. If you also believe patriarchy is a historical constant, connecting the two seems to make sense, especially when you think women are less violent than men.
The simple version of this myth - if we had more female leaders, we'd have less war - is easily dispelled by reality. Female leaders, modern or ancient, have often been willing to go to war. Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir - not pacifists. Few world leaders ever are. Female leaders go to war for the same reasons that male leaders do.
Feminism has had a mixed relationship with war, as well. While second wave feminists were largely overtly against war, first wave feminists were cheerful participants in the "White Feather" campaign encouraging young lads to sign up to head off to glory in WWI. We have female suicide bombers. Rwandan women played a prominent role in the genocide.
This is to say nothing of the fact that women also sign up to be part of the military effort themselves. It's extremely difficult to believe that a female-run society would avoid war; you have to be grossly sexist to think that men and women are that different, and that a society run by women will not run into the same issues of racism, religious conflicts, overpopulation, and resource ownership disputes that have driven warfare.
We can expect that men would still be the soldiers; but whether women or men are calling the shots, humans will engage in social-group level conflicts.
The simple version of this myth - if we had more female leaders, we'd have less war - is easily dispelled by reality. Female leaders, modern or ancient, have often been willing to go to war. Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir - not pacifists. Few world leaders ever are. Female leaders go to war for the same reasons that male leaders do.
Feminism has had a mixed relationship with war, as well. While second wave feminists were largely overtly against war, first wave feminists were cheerful participants in the "White Feather" campaign encouraging young lads to sign up to head off to glory in WWI. We have female suicide bombers. Rwandan women played a prominent role in the genocide.
This is to say nothing of the fact that women also sign up to be part of the military effort themselves. It's extremely difficult to believe that a female-run society would avoid war; you have to be grossly sexist to think that men and women are that different, and that a society run by women will not run into the same issues of racism, religious conflicts, overpopulation, and resource ownership disputes that have driven warfare.
We can expect that men would still be the soldiers; but whether women or men are calling the shots, humans will engage in social-group level conflicts.
Myth: Patriarchy is responsible for the bias against men in child custody.
Let me quote the Declaration of Sentiments from the Seneca Falls Convention, the 1848 meeting that is viewed as the start of the modern American feminist movement, to describe what was then the status quo:
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.
Men received custody in a divorce if there was any contest over it. This was, very literally, in keeping with the patriarchy in the narrow anthropological sense: A man's children were his heirs. The household belong to him, the children were his children first and foremost, and the mother would not be dragging them back off to her male relatives' house where they would be unwelcome.
Divorce was exiling the woman from the man's household. That was patriarchy. The fact that the bias now lies in favor is the result of several generations of hard work by first wave feminists, who didn't stop at equality; they kept fighting until women received default custody. If divorce law as practiced favors women getting kids, cars, and houses, it is not the fault of the patriarchy; feminists are actually to blame for it.
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.
Men received custody in a divorce if there was any contest over it. This was, very literally, in keeping with the patriarchy in the narrow anthropological sense: A man's children were his heirs. The household belong to him, the children were his children first and foremost, and the mother would not be dragging them back off to her male relatives' house where they would be unwelcome.
Divorce was exiling the woman from the man's household. That was patriarchy. The fact that the bias now lies in favor is the result of several generations of hard work by first wave feminists, who didn't stop at equality; they kept fighting until women received default custody. If divorce law as practiced favors women getting kids, cars, and houses, it is not the fault of the patriarchy; feminists are actually to blame for it.
Myth: Patriarchy is responsible for men not being able to be affectionate caring fathers/teachers/mentors to children.
Like the previous myth on divorce, this claim takes the results of feminist action and assigns those consequences to the patriarchy. Think, for a moment, about Medea as a play by, for, and within a patriarchy. Woman is evil and fickle; and in order to hurt the man who has wronged her, she kills his children, even though she bore them. In the ancient traditional patriarchal myth of Greece, it is the father who provides the soul, spirit, heart, and mind of the child; the woman is simply fertile ground in which he can plant his seeds.
Fast forward to Shakespeare, and our patriarchal framework is very similar. The father-child bond is viewed as authentic and central. Mothers are often absent. From Euripedes to Shakespeare to Disney, we have a constant celebration of the authenticity of paternal affection; but the mothers are very often completely absent, unless they are complicit in villainy [see Hamlet, Medea, and the assortment of evil fairy tale stepmothers].
Teaching - yes, even teaching of children - actually used to be a largely male profession, as men were the only people who held the necessary education to be teachers; and male teachers recently went into decline for exactly the same reason that fathers have difficulty taking pictures of their children in public: Pedophile panic.
That's the last several decades - the movement of men into and out of teaching before that had a lot to do with how much money was in the field and the supply of educated women. More on that when we talk about gendered professions and first wave feminism.
When Dworkin, MacKinnon, and the like demonized male sexuality, they drew on two consistent themes. First, men as rapists of women; second, men as molesters of children. Today's pedophile panic is largely the result of work by sex-negative misandrist "feminists" in the tradition of MacKinnon and Dworkin. It's not something inherent to patriarchy or even really caused by patriarchy, and the rising public paranoia about sexual contact between adult males is a new thing. The patriarchy, on the other hand, is old.
Fast forward to Shakespeare, and our patriarchal framework is very similar. The father-child bond is viewed as authentic and central. Mothers are often absent. From Euripedes to Shakespeare to Disney, we have a constant celebration of the authenticity of paternal affection; but the mothers are very often completely absent, unless they are complicit in villainy [see Hamlet, Medea, and the assortment of evil fairy tale stepmothers].
Teaching - yes, even teaching of children - actually used to be a largely male profession, as men were the only people who held the necessary education to be teachers; and male teachers recently went into decline for exactly the same reason that fathers have difficulty taking pictures of their children in public: Pedophile panic.
That's the last several decades - the movement of men into and out of teaching before that had a lot to do with how much money was in the field and the supply of educated women. More on that when we talk about gendered professions and first wave feminism.
When Dworkin, MacKinnon, and the like demonized male sexuality, they drew on two consistent themes. First, men as rapists of women; second, men as molesters of children. Today's pedophile panic is largely the result of work by sex-negative misandrist "feminists" in the tradition of MacKinnon and Dworkin. It's not something inherent to patriarchy or even really caused by patriarchy, and the rising public paranoia about sexual contact between adult males is a new thing. The patriarchy, on the other hand, is old.
Myth: Patriarchy is responsible for rape.
The theory here is that almost all rape is committed by men, and that men commit rape on women as part of a systematic method of oppressing women, consciously or unconsciously; and that they do so because the patriarchal structure of society tells them they're supposed to have power over women. There are several problems with this, and one singular grain of truth.
First and foremost, unless we define rape as something that men do to women, i.e., don't define it simply as sex without consent, then rape is something that women do quite often themselves. Rape is actually not really a heavily gendered activity. This is the lesson of a recent CDC survey, and less recently exposed in the handful of [mostly-ignored] studies that ask about whether or not men experience forced sex from women.
We just tend not to recognize it as rape. And if women perceive the threat of rape much more strongly than men in the here and now, it is mostly because feminists have been telling them that rape is a pandemic threat suffered by women.
The other problem lies in the idea that the patriarchal society considers rape OK. There is one grain of truth to that: If women are supposed to obey their husbands and fit neatly in the wifely role, they are obliged to provide sex on demand, according to the traditional patriarchal norm. However, other than the exemption for marital rape that we see in some patriarchies, rape is actually viewed very sternly by patriarchies. It's a serious crime, and men not infrequently kill themselves or face vigilante violence over the mere accusation of rape.
Rape will be committed outside of the patriarchy, in other words; and we can have a very seriously patriarchal patriarchy that frowns as sternly on rape as any society does. Blaming the patriarchy for rape makes about as much sense as blaming Woody Allen for jokes about having sex with sheep - they exist independent of Woody Allen, and while he did make a sheep sex joke in that one movie, there are only a small number of sheep sex jokes he can be blamed for.
First and foremost, unless we define rape as something that men do to women, i.e., don't define it simply as sex without consent, then rape is something that women do quite often themselves. Rape is actually not really a heavily gendered activity. This is the lesson of a recent CDC survey, and less recently exposed in the handful of [mostly-ignored] studies that ask about whether or not men experience forced sex from women.
We just tend not to recognize it as rape. And if women perceive the threat of rape much more strongly than men in the here and now, it is mostly because feminists have been telling them that rape is a pandemic threat suffered by women.
The other problem lies in the idea that the patriarchal society considers rape OK. There is one grain of truth to that: If women are supposed to obey their husbands and fit neatly in the wifely role, they are obliged to provide sex on demand, according to the traditional patriarchal norm. However, other than the exemption for marital rape that we see in some patriarchies, rape is actually viewed very sternly by patriarchies. It's a serious crime, and men not infrequently kill themselves or face vigilante violence over the mere accusation of rape.
Rape will be committed outside of the patriarchy, in other words; and we can have a very seriously patriarchal patriarchy that frowns as sternly on rape as any society does. Blaming the patriarchy for rape makes about as much sense as blaming Woody Allen for jokes about having sex with sheep - they exist independent of Woody Allen, and while he did make a sheep sex joke in that one movie, there are only a small number of sheep sex jokes he can be blamed for.
Myth: Patriarchy is to blame for slut-shaming and prudish morality laws that ban having fun.
The really funny thing is that feminists also engage in slut shaming, especially slut-shaming of men; and in a number of cases, it is feminists who have created prudish morality laws.
For a recent example, Iceland has banned strip clubs and prostitution; for an older example, the amendment giving voting rights for women at the national level in the US came bundled in with a second constitutional amendment that suffragettes also had on their priority list: Prohibition, aimed firmly at getting men to stay home.
Patriarchies often have their own associated bits of repressive prudery - but feminism has as its replacement its own forms of prudery. The prude/libertine dichotomy is one that cuts across the spectrum from feminist ideology to traditional patriarchy. Hugh Hefner isn't widely credited as a feminist; but Andrea Dworkin is credited as having been a feminist for her entire public career.
What many people seem to understand on a basic level is that in a largely heterosexual society, the opposite gender has a vested interest in regulating their own gender's sexual activity. This remains true whether men or women are in charge; and so both men and women, when placed in charge, will penalize sexual misconduct by the opposite gender.
Currently, male sexuality is, as a real matter of fact, much more strongly regulated in the US right here and now. Divorce and adultery laws, pornography laws, sodomy laws, age of consent laws, rape laws, prostitution laws, and the statutes surrounding the assignment of parental obligations all are either gender-neutral or punish the male sex more heavily; and the entire criminal justice system displays a large anti-male bias in the regulation of sexuality even when the laws are nominally equal, e.g., as in age of consent laws.
Patriarchy can and has run the gamut from decadent celebration of sexuality to puritanical zeal to suppress even the barest hint of sexuality; feminists are no different. It is generally true that out of the societies currently extant on Earth, the most prude tend to be the most male dominated, however; which makes this one of the myths about the patriarchy with the most truth to it.
For a recent example, Iceland has banned strip clubs and prostitution; for an older example, the amendment giving voting rights for women at the national level in the US came bundled in with a second constitutional amendment that suffragettes also had on their priority list: Prohibition, aimed firmly at getting men to stay home.
Patriarchies often have their own associated bits of repressive prudery - but feminism has as its replacement its own forms of prudery. The prude/libertine dichotomy is one that cuts across the spectrum from feminist ideology to traditional patriarchy. Hugh Hefner isn't widely credited as a feminist; but Andrea Dworkin is credited as having been a feminist for her entire public career.
What many people seem to understand on a basic level is that in a largely heterosexual society, the opposite gender has a vested interest in regulating their own gender's sexual activity. This remains true whether men or women are in charge; and so both men and women, when placed in charge, will penalize sexual misconduct by the opposite gender.
Currently, male sexuality is, as a real matter of fact, much more strongly regulated in the US right here and now. Divorce and adultery laws, pornography laws, sodomy laws, age of consent laws, rape laws, prostitution laws, and the statutes surrounding the assignment of parental obligations all are either gender-neutral or punish the male sex more heavily; and the entire criminal justice system displays a large anti-male bias in the regulation of sexuality even when the laws are nominally equal, e.g., as in age of consent laws.
Patriarchy can and has run the gamut from decadent celebration of sexuality to puritanical zeal to suppress even the barest hint of sexuality; feminists are no different. It is generally true that out of the societies currently extant on Earth, the most prude tend to be the most male dominated, however; which makes this one of the myths about the patriarchy with the most truth to it.
Fact: Patriarchy is responsible for alimony.
Alimony originates in the idea that marriage is a contract that sets forth obligations. Among those obligations is that a man is supposed to protect, care for, etc his wife as he would his children. It's his responsibility, as head of the household, to see to such things, and his wife's family gave her to him for safekeeping, so to speak.
In divorce, the contract is abrogated; but it's not fair for one party to unilaterally dispense with his entire side of the contract and simply kick the other out into the cold. Her family may not be able to take her back in. What, provide for herself? Patriarchy, remember? She's not going to have a real profession and can't own property.
Alimony is then the traditional patriarchal obligation: The patriarch rules the household, and his wife and children are his wards. The male children until and unless they establish their own households, and the female children until they marry into other households. This is where fault comes into play. If it's the man's fault that divorce happened, he's the one in breach of contract, and his wife shouldn't suffer from his abrogation; so he is obliged to continue, for some time, to pay out alimony to provide for her.
Think of Rochester keeping his insane wife-in-name-only up in the attic in Jane Eyre - fed, housed, given medical attention, et cetera, because it's his responsibility once she was foisted on him by her family, who didn't want to be bothered with that. Alimony is a tradition of the patriarchy.
Feminists have generally not chosen to fight alimony; it's one of several traditions originating with the patriarchy that they are willing, even insistent, on holding onto. Now, being in favor of alimony is a standard item of feminist doctrine; but it is worth remembering that it did not originate with feminism and in fact has direct roots in the patriarchy.
In divorce, the contract is abrogated; but it's not fair for one party to unilaterally dispense with his entire side of the contract and simply kick the other out into the cold. Her family may not be able to take her back in. What, provide for herself? Patriarchy, remember? She's not going to have a real profession and can't own property.
Alimony is then the traditional patriarchal obligation: The patriarch rules the household, and his wife and children are his wards. The male children until and unless they establish their own households, and the female children until they marry into other households. This is where fault comes into play. If it's the man's fault that divorce happened, he's the one in breach of contract, and his wife shouldn't suffer from his abrogation; so he is obliged to continue, for some time, to pay out alimony to provide for her.
Think of Rochester keeping his insane wife-in-name-only up in the attic in Jane Eyre - fed, housed, given medical attention, et cetera, because it's his responsibility once she was foisted on him by her family, who didn't want to be bothered with that. Alimony is a tradition of the patriarchy.
Feminists have generally not chosen to fight alimony; it's one of several traditions originating with the patriarchy that they are willing, even insistent, on holding onto. Now, being in favor of alimony is a standard item of feminist doctrine; but it is worth remembering that it did not originate with feminism and in fact has direct roots in the patriarchy.
Fact: Patriarchy is responsible for chivalry.
Chivalry is fundamentally the idea that men should take special care of women. Its origins lie in the patriarchal idea that women are incapable of fending for themselves. The chivalric code of knighthood from which modern Western chivalry descends directly required that a knight had the duty to defend, be polite to, help up, et cetera those unable to fend for themselves, including women, children, and the elderly.
Like alimony, this is something that feminists have not striven particularly hard against. In fact, every wave of feminists has made overt use of the tradition of chivalry in order to pass protections for women into law, even as a number of individual feminists have developed hostility towards some of the rituals of chivalry on a personal level; the rhetoric of chivalrous conduct, of what "real men" are regulated to do, could be translated with only moderate modernization in language from a fourteenth century manual of knightly conduct to Biden speaking on the obligations of men to women.
As long as a man doesn't make a great show out of it that demonstrates he feels he deserves something for his chivalry, "ladies first," "women and children first," door-opening, and going to lengths to insure that women are protected even if it means that some larger number of men suffer unnecessarily are things that are perfectly compatible with a society in which men are the literal, and not merely figurative, servants of women.
Chivalry was, in many ways, a complex method of demonstrating strength, control, and domination; and also always a way in which women were permitted to exercise power, as a sort of dynamic balancing act; women's reward for cooperating properly with the system and adhering to the regulation of female behavior and being a proper lady rather than merely a biological woman. In a female dominated society where every woman is a lady - even princess - chivalry fits equally well.
Chivalry is always the enemy of equality, however; whether the behavior is an exercise in complex male domination, petty compensation for male domination, or the due demanded by the socially dominant gender, it serves to reinforce inequalities.
Like alimony, this is something that feminists have not striven particularly hard against. In fact, every wave of feminists has made overt use of the tradition of chivalry in order to pass protections for women into law, even as a number of individual feminists have developed hostility towards some of the rituals of chivalry on a personal level; the rhetoric of chivalrous conduct, of what "real men" are regulated to do, could be translated with only moderate modernization in language from a fourteenth century manual of knightly conduct to Biden speaking on the obligations of men to women.
As long as a man doesn't make a great show out of it that demonstrates he feels he deserves something for his chivalry, "ladies first," "women and children first," door-opening, and going to lengths to insure that women are protected even if it means that some larger number of men suffer unnecessarily are things that are perfectly compatible with a society in which men are the literal, and not merely figurative, servants of women.
Chivalry was, in many ways, a complex method of demonstrating strength, control, and domination; and also always a way in which women were permitted to exercise power, as a sort of dynamic balancing act; women's reward for cooperating properly with the system and adhering to the regulation of female behavior and being a proper lady rather than merely a biological woman. In a female dominated society where every woman is a lady - even princess - chivalry fits equally well.
Chivalry is always the enemy of equality, however; whether the behavior is an exercise in complex male domination, petty compensation for male domination, or the due demanded by the socially dominant gender, it serves to reinforce inequalities.
Fact: Patriarchy is responsible for the tradition of gender-disparate sentencing. In other words., the fact that women serve substantially shorter sentences than men, if at all.
The current wave of feminism is fighting to have women in prison even less, and often assert that women receive a raw deal in the criminal justice system, in spite of well-documented biases that lead to women receiving lighter sentences. There is a pro-female / anti-male bias, and it is very substantial.
You might think, from that, that the light treatment of women in the criminal justice system is because of feminism. Feminists are fighting to have women let off the hook for crimes; women are getting preferential treatment; so it makes sense to assume that the former has caused the latter.
Now, let me quote from the Declaration of Sentiments, produced at the famous Seneca Falls convention - the seminal document of modern American feminism, and the reason why many people cite the specific year of 1848 as the start of first wave feminism:
He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband.
Women being let off the hook for crimes is nothing new. It's part and parcel of the tradition that says agency is masculine, and of the tradition that children and women are the wards of their patriarchs. Women are no more responsible for their own crimes, under that model, than children are. This is a very old phenomenon, in other words; and even though we now have nominal equality under the law, the stereotype persists.
As the actions of many modern feminists demonstrates, however, while the patriarchy is the concrete visible cause of treating women with kid gloves in the justice system, in a very meaningful way, the continued existence of patriarchy isn't necessary for this treatment to continue. If we let today's feminist groups write policy freely, they will not end this discrimination; so unless we consider feminists an instrument working for the perpetuation of the patriarchy, then patriarchy is not necessary to treat men worse in the eyes of the law.
You might think, from that, that the light treatment of women in the criminal justice system is because of feminism. Feminists are fighting to have women let off the hook for crimes; women are getting preferential treatment; so it makes sense to assume that the former has caused the latter.
Now, let me quote from the Declaration of Sentiments, produced at the famous Seneca Falls convention - the seminal document of modern American feminism, and the reason why many people cite the specific year of 1848 as the start of first wave feminism:
He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband.
Women being let off the hook for crimes is nothing new. It's part and parcel of the tradition that says agency is masculine, and of the tradition that children and women are the wards of their patriarchs. Women are no more responsible for their own crimes, under that model, than children are. This is a very old phenomenon, in other words; and even though we now have nominal equality under the law, the stereotype persists.
As the actions of many modern feminists demonstrates, however, while the patriarchy is the concrete visible cause of treating women with kid gloves in the justice system, in a very meaningful way, the continued existence of patriarchy isn't necessary for this treatment to continue. If we let today's feminist groups write policy freely, they will not end this discrimination; so unless we consider feminists an instrument working for the perpetuation of the patriarchy, then patriarchy is not necessary to treat men worse in the eyes of the law.
Question: Is the patriarchy is to blame for gendered professions?
The reflection of patriarchal family structures on the larger society is an easily applied explanation as to why women are much less likely to become leaders than men; and why the "best" jobs, the ones that involve becoming an authority of some sort or another, have been traditionally reserved to men.
Patriarchy in the broad sense is to blame for male priesthood and the number of male CEOs very directly: We're supposed to look up to "father" figures, and women have a lot of trouble looking all fatherly. Men being leaders can be taken as the most direct indication that a society can reasonably be called a patriarchy.
There are some cracks in that image, if we're looking at modern society. Women are breaking into leadership positions; it just takes time. Women didn't have even ground to stand in getting into business schools, law schools, and doctoral programs until only a couple decades ago; and high-level leadership positions are usually the result of an entire lifetime of work.
It's a nice story, but it's not the whole story. The high status professions aren't the only predominantly male professions; there are also the dirty and dangerous professions. And predominantly male professions aren't the only ones with a gender ratio problem; women have displaced men in education and clerical work, and retain a lock on some professions that only really became professions in the modern age, such as nursing and child care.
Feminists actually - on the whole - push back against attempts to bring more men into female professions, such as teaching; and are historically to blame for the gendering of many currently female professions. If every leader was a female feminist, we would still have gendered professions for the rest of us [and not merely the leadership]; unless you define patriarchy [not particularly meaningfully] as being the gendering of activity, patriarchy isn't necessary for professions to be gendered.
Patriarchy in the broad sense is to blame for male priesthood and the number of male CEOs very directly: We're supposed to look up to "father" figures, and women have a lot of trouble looking all fatherly. Men being leaders can be taken as the most direct indication that a society can reasonably be called a patriarchy.
There are some cracks in that image, if we're looking at modern society. Women are breaking into leadership positions; it just takes time. Women didn't have even ground to stand in getting into business schools, law schools, and doctoral programs until only a couple decades ago; and high-level leadership positions are usually the result of an entire lifetime of work.
It's a nice story, but it's not the whole story. The high status professions aren't the only predominantly male professions; there are also the dirty and dangerous professions. And predominantly male professions aren't the only ones with a gender ratio problem; women have displaced men in education and clerical work, and retain a lock on some professions that only really became professions in the modern age, such as nursing and child care.
Feminists actually - on the whole - push back against attempts to bring more men into female professions, such as teaching; and are historically to blame for the gendering of many currently female professions. If every leader was a female feminist, we would still have gendered professions for the rest of us [and not merely the leadership]; unless you define patriarchy [not particularly meaningfully] as being the gendering of activity, patriarchy isn't necessary for professions to be gendered.
) commands them to do, of both genders no less.
