Patriarchy is often a word tossed around in feminist circles. The cynical side of me thinks it might be just a term they came up with to silence accusations that they hate men. "No, we don't hate men, we hate patriarchy." Also tied to this view is the idea that non-feminist women are "participating in" patriarchy, whatever the fuck that means, and so they have a very "with us or against us" mentality when it comes to women. So much for a movement about, supposedly, women's liberation. They don't really WANT your liberation, they want your suffering. They want to jack off to your pain as another poor, pathetic victim of "the patriarchy".

People who know me well know my dislike of conspiracy theories. They have become common in our culture because people want something outside themselves to blame for all the things that have gone wrong with society, 9/11, wars, the plummeting economy, the deterioration of freedoms, and environmental crises. All conspiracy theorists do this, and to me, believing patriarchy is behind all the problems facing women and girls is not really all that different from saying our economic collapse can be blamed on the Jews. Both take a group that had nothing to do with anything and uses it as a handy scapegoat.

The feminists say blaming patriarchy is not blaming men. Seriously? Patriarchy is a word whose etymological roots derive from "father", and simply describes any society in which men have most of the political power. The thing is, most societies, past and present, were patriarchies, regardless of culture, and I think of this as proof that men are simply more dominant and more predisposed to prefer political leadership than women, who seem across all cultures to prefer domestic and private leadership. This is not because of some lizard people thing, but just because of biology; women have the babies, the babies need to be fed and nurtured and protected at home, men have to go out and be the ones protecting them and getting food for them.

Patriarchy theory also, ironically for the fact that feminists celebrate these women, ignores the fact that none of this means that women never held political power. I mean, you could say that women like Queen Elizabeth I and other female monarchs had social obligations that were placed on them because of the fact that they were women, but the fact remains that all political leaders have had social obligations and expectations placed upon them. Bess' father, Henry the 8th, ended up breaking with the Catholic church for the right to divorce, he didn't just easily get the right to do anything he wanted just because he was a man, as feminists might claim.

Political power is also not the only kind of power that exists. Because women have traditionally, in most cultures, influenced children in their early development more than fathers and men, that is one kind of power they've traditionally held. The neoteny (retention of biologically young or child-like characteristics into adulthood, with traits like smooth skin, large eyes, etc.) women have relative to men makes women look younger than they are and causes the "empathy gap" a lot of men's rights activists talk about. They look weak and helpless and innocent and naive physically even if they're not, relative to men. So they end up getting away with things men wouldn't or getting lighter sentences than men. Women also cry more then men, having physically different tear glands. Crying is an evolutionary strategy for women to emotionally influence men as a kind of negative reinforcement. They may not even be intentionally manipulative, but their bodies are designed for it. Another non-political power women often have, even in traditional "oppressive" and "backwards" "patriarchal" societies, is the power over all the household money. In Japan, for example, stay at home mothers are common, but they usually all control all the money their husband earns, from which they give him an allowance for personal spending. Women, as an "oppressed class" seem to do an awful lot of the shopping, too, whether with money they actually earned, or commonly, their fathers', boyfriends', or husbands' money. And divorce for women is like hitting the jackpot, what with the skewed way alimony and child support laws work.

So anyway, I think patriarchal theory makes way too many blanket assumptions that are not correct, and then the core of feminist thinking is mired in this flawed logic. It is rooted in Marxist thinking about class, but instead of the bourgeoisie oppressing the proletariat, it's men as a class oppressing women as a class. This creates generalizations and does not allow for nuances and exceptions. It also dismisses the women who have and who continue to have political influence. It also ignores advantages women have versus men that have nothing to do with political power. The theory also uses oppression as a model for explaining behaviors which have less to do with oppression than, in my opinion, they have to do with biological characteristics.