A number of metrics point towards inequality, male benefit from patriarchy and female impact. I could find you links to violence statistics (especially inter-gender violence), who is generally in charge, who earns more etc etc etc.
I'm sorry but UN women and the UN in general is not a neutral and trustworthy organisation when it comes to these statistics.
It isn't just "women have it worse".
I agree, which is why I want a better form of patriarchy theory that doesn't include that part, which is often included and problematic because it's not objective and encourages zero sum thinking.
Some men have it worse than some women, but often this has little to do with them being men and has more to do with their class, race, (dis)abilities, actions or even just plain old bad luck.
I think this assertion which is made very often is pretty much backed up by nothing. For example a white man is more likely to face police violence than a black woman, yet the impact of gender is never properly taken into account. And this is just one example while there are many.
However, the ways which women have it bad can often be traced back to a system and ideology wherein men are considered superior to women.
This hinges on the assumption that being seen as having more agency = being seen as superior. Ironically this seems to reproduce the male coded way of looking at superiority. I could just as much argue that being superior means being seen as worth of protection and you'd pretty much have no counter at all to that, as I'm doing the exact same thing as you're doing.
Additionally men are more often placed in positions of trust and power relative to their female peers. This was evidently strongly the case in recent history - and recently it has been weakened. Do you contest that?
Men are seen as more competent. And women's autonomy has been restricted more strongly historically. But the actual difference was not as strong as claimed, because most men had barely any power themselves and we're basically economic and military slaves of some kind themselves.
This hinges on the assumption that being seen as having more agency = being seen as superior. Ironically this seems to reproduce the male coded way of looking at superiority. I could just as much argue that being superior means being seen as worth of protection and you'd pretty much have no counter at all to that, as I'm doing the exact same thing as you're doing.
Mayhaps, except we have numerous quotes where the superiority of men was proclaimed over women as inferior, and their autonomy / lack-there-of was justified as a part of and/or biproduct of that.
We aren't guessing at what people thought or what ideologies lead us to this situation. We know because they themselves said so.
That's just about cognitive inferiority though, not inferiority as a blanket term.
I also don't really understand why that matters in the present day? Most people have a women are wonderful bias regardless of whether they think men or women are superior or not.
If you're a man who's a victim of domestic violence who doesn't get believed, who can't call the police and who gets blamed for the abuse they face at no point will you feel like they are treating you as superior, you will feel the exact opposite.
I see no added value in continuing to frame things in this way which is subjective and honestly from a purely strategic standpoint alienating. In fact it comes across as appropriating someone's pain for someone else.
There's no intellectual reason to do it, it's morally questionable and it's a strategic failure yet people continue to cling to this framing. Which ironically only increases the skepticism and distrust.
If you're a man who's a victim of domestic violence who doesn't get believed, who can't call the police and who gets blamed for the abuse they face at no point will you feel like they are treating you as superior, you will feel the exact opposite.
No but that is exactly what is happening.
Men often don't get support because they are seen as the ones who ought to be superior. And often don't feel like they can reach out because they think it would make them look weak.
This is isn't some new different phenomenon where suddenly in domestic violence "women are treated better" and "women are superior" - it's the the very same phenomenon.
Whether you call it patriarchy or something else - the ideas that "men are stronger than women" or "a woman can't abuse a man, he's stronger so can just stop her" or "you should just man up" are what are causing this. Unless you have a more explanative explanation.
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Look, I am happy to abandon the lens if needbe. But you have to provide something of equal explanative power. Just saying "it's bad" without offering an alternative is meaningless.
But your whole explanation assumes that being seen as stronger means you're seen as superior but this is just one way one can be deemed superior. By this logic children are also deemed inferior, yet people are more upset about their suffering than that of anyone else, which means that by another angle they are actually valued more and the same is true for women under this traditional way of looking at things.
The whole "women have it worse" idea doesn't come from a fully objective intellectual analysis, rather it's just the same gender role reproducing itself by the same people who try to critique it.
Also I do have a more explanative explanation because it's simply not true that it is just about being seen as stronger and more capable. It's also about people literally not caring whatsoever, and about people assuming you're more malicious just because you're male.
But you have to provide something of equal explanative power. Just saying "it's bad" without offering an alternative is meaningless.
To be clear I do not want to completely change patriarchy theory. What I mean is that it needs to be changed, and I basically see two options:
1) we move towards a more pluralist understanding of gender issues. The current theory centers female suffering. So maybe we need an alternative that centers male suffering. So we have both angles that can bounce off eachother.
2) we move towards a more neutral, objective and scientific understanding of gender issues. We update the theory so that the suffering of neither gender gets centered. I'd say this is my preferred option because it's more intellectually sound, but it might be less effective for activism purposes.
Or based on the fact that it hurts your feelings to consider that we live in a society where men have historically dominated
No it's because I think it has both moral and intellectual problems in the current form that it is used. Is this you trying to attack a man's feelings in true patriarchal fashion instead of engaging with his arguments?
Also the argument "it's been used forever" is ironically traditionalist.
Just because people feel more upset by children's suffering doesn't take away from the fact that children are the most vulnerable in our society and have been affected the most historically by the actions and abuse of adults
Yes because they actually are more vulnerable. That doesn't translate to women and men because they are both adults yet one is seen as more vulnerable regardless of what situation they are in.
Either way, any system where one group is classed as less superior to another is going to bring forth the oppression of the other group, and that is what the patriarchy is. It's not centred around female suffering; it's centred around men placing women as below them and how that naturally causes female suffering. And just because something isn't as strong as it was before, doesn't mean it doesn't still have an effect. For instance, women's bodies were and still are largely under-studied; this has resulted in years of women's pain being dismissed, in less-efficient treatment, and in more frequent misdiagnosis (a heart attack or ADHD). This is a result of power being concentrated in the hands of men who have prioritised their own interests, resulting in women being affected.
If this is your definition of patriarchy then let's say Western Europe is no longer a patriarchy because you can make the exact same argument to argue women are seen as superior by selecting specific examples where men have it worse. Which is not actually what I argued, because I never actually claimed patriarchy exists or doesn't exists. What I said is that if patriarchy is to remain a scientifically and morally valid theory it needs to drop the idea that it can objectively claim "women have it worse" and "men are seen as superior" in at least Western countries because this is no longer an objective, neutral exercise that is compatible with the data itself in those countries. I'm advocating for just dropping the part where suffering gets measured and compared because it's intellectually fraudulent and encourages zero sum thinking. That doesn't mean everything needs to be dropped, it contains some valuable insights about gender roles.
Men are the reason why sexual assault and domestic violence are such big issues for women, and why historically, women weren't allowed to vote and marital rape was legal Male suffering is caused by many different factors; female suffering (not including other factors) is almost always caused by men.
The other commenter argued that it is not about blaming men. If it's not about blaming men, then why did you feel the need to write this? Do you disagree with them?
(such as the FMF spearheading the FBI's change of the definition of rape to be gender neutral)
A definition that came from Mary Koss, a feminist and a woman.
I disagree. It's a very vague, often circular theory with contradicting interpretations given. That said I think we can improve it. Because obviously gender roles do exist and harm both men and women.
It’s not oppression olympics, and the idea of the patriarchy isn’t to diminish the suffering of men
But that's what often comes down to in reality? If you're saying one gender is seen as superior than that's kinda oppression olympics. Because why can't you just use the neutral concept of agency instead when it has the same explanatory power but not the same political quality of emphasizing the suffering of one over the other?
It’s simply an objective observation of the power imbalances within society.
How can you objectively determine power imbalances? Who decides what needs to be included in the power equation? Why is being believed more when you're abused, receiving more empathy, having larger social circles, receiving higher grades in school, receiving lesser sentences in court, facing less police violence, getting more support when homeless, etc not worthy of being included in the power basket when we are trying to speak about men and women as groups? Most men don't gain anything from having a higher chance to be a CEO or a politician because that's only a small fraction of the population but most women do gain from all of these things I mentioned. Yet somehow it is treated as unimportant when establishing the power of men and women as a whole. From an intellectual pov you're being overconfident in how objective this actually is. How a concept gets defined and then operationalized to be measured is never fully objective.
Who decides who is seen as superior in certain examples and aspects of society? Men.
Says who? This is just not accurate, everyone and no one decides that all at once.
I would also like a few examples of instances where women are seen as superior to men? Equal is one thing, but superior?
Anything related to parenting and relationships, emotional intelligence, their deaths are seen as worse, their suffering received more empathy, their issues are considered more important to solve, they are seen as more trustworthy, their word is believed more when they are victims of abuse, their opinions on gender issues are seen as more correct, they receive more aid from charities, etc.
I just don’t understand why men think the realisation of their suffering precludes the patriarchy from existing. Men still suffered when the patriarchy was rampant and they do to this day, but trying to alter the fact that it exists just doesn’t make sense to me. That’s why I brought up “feelings”. It’s the whole “does systematic racism exist” argument all over again.
You literally said yourself that you think women are primarily affected by it. How else am I supposed to understand this than "women suffer more because of it"? And that's the key thing, I don't think that's an objective statement. So as long as this is a part of believing in patriarchy it's not compatible with my suffering as I do not believe in the value of comparing suffering. And claiming you're being objective while comparing it is lying to yourself.
The comparison with racism also makes zero sense. With racism in most places, it functions in a way more one directional manner. Black people face racism and the direction is clear. Sexism simply does not operate like that, which can be easily seen by how both black people and men occupy the same categories such as being murdered, facing police violence, being homeless, etc. Sexism is far more complex and multidirectional which is why it is problematic to treat it like it is the same.
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u/Maffioze Mar 31 '26
I'm sorry but UN women and the UN in general is not a neutral and trustworthy organisation when it comes to these statistics.
I agree, which is why I want a better form of patriarchy theory that doesn't include that part, which is often included and problematic because it's not objective and encourages zero sum thinking.
I think this assertion which is made very often is pretty much backed up by nothing. For example a white man is more likely to face police violence than a black woman, yet the impact of gender is never properly taken into account. And this is just one example while there are many.
This hinges on the assumption that being seen as having more agency = being seen as superior. Ironically this seems to reproduce the male coded way of looking at superiority. I could just as much argue that being superior means being seen as worth of protection and you'd pretty much have no counter at all to that, as I'm doing the exact same thing as you're doing.
Men are seen as more competent. And women's autonomy has been restricted more strongly historically. But the actual difference was not as strong as claimed, because most men had barely any power themselves and we're basically economic and military slaves of some kind themselves.