Before you complain about 'patriarchy': Column Feminism flourishes in the West because the patriarchy is dead, but don't count on it staying that way.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds | USA TODAY

So last week, gay conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos declared October 18 ”World Patriarchy Day.”

Yiannopoulos wrote: “Feminists like to claim that there is a sinister cultural phenomenon known as the ‘patriarchy,’ through which all men, especially if they are white, contribute to a set of values and social norms that marginalise and exclude women. What a load of old (bull). I honestly can’t believe people fall for this rubbish. So, in an attempt to redress the imbalance between fact and fantasy, World Patriarchy Day is the day on which you should feel free to express your masculinity in the most odiously toxic manner imaginable.”

This went onto Twitter with the hashtag #WorldPatriarchyDay in a bit of trolling that soon had feminists complaining precisely as intended. In other words, a typical day on the Internet.

But it led Rachel Edwards to write a thoughtful piece noting that there isn’t actually a patriarchy, at least not in the West, where one hears the most complaints. “Feminism can only exist in the kinds of countries that are doing so well that they don’t have to consider eating rats for much needed sustenance. It can only exist in a place with enough human rights to care that you as a woman are a little upset. Feminism can only exist in countries where women can be smart enough to understand the concept of oppression, yet stupid and coddled enough to believe that such words describe the country that they live in. In fact, a country has to care about women, period, for feminism to even be a thing.”

That’s true, and by any reasonable standard the West is looking as much matriarchal as patriarchal, with women overrepresented among college graduates and living longer than men.

But take heart, would-be patriarchs. Because that’s all going to change. The Western values that, as Edwards notes, make feminism and complaints about the patriarchy possible are pretty much unique, and they’re not likely to last long in their current form if trends continue.

In academia, we have a saying: Personnel is policy. If your history department hires a bunch of Marxists, you’ll have a Marxist history department. If the law school hires a bunch of law-and-economics types, you’ll have a law-and-economics based law school. And because most people tend to stay for a long time, and because people tend to hire people like themselves, those changes will be long-lasting.

Which brings me to the unprecedented mass-migration being experienced at present by Europe and, to a lesser degree, by the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people — soon, it seems likely to be millions — are coming from countries where the patriarchy really is a thing. These are places where honor killings, female genital mutilation and the legal and social subordination of wives and daughters to husbands and fathers are considered the norm. (The Dutch are already getting upset about the Syrian refugees who are bringing child brides with them.)

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Some of these people, of course, will eagerly adopt the culture of their new lands, and try their hardest to assimilate. But many more will not. They will, as people tend to do, cling to their native culture and customs regardless, either ignorant of (or more likely) feeling superior to the traditions of their adoptive countries. (This is normal for all sorts of people: When Americans do that, they’re called “ugly Americans.”) And to the extent that their behavior is visible, some percentage of the native population will adopt it, at least to some degree, especially if it seems that it is successful.

The end result will be that patriarchy will be back in the West. Because personnel is policy, and immigration is all about who will be staffing your nation in the future. Keep that in mind as these things are debated.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

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