Yes, Patriarchy Is Dead; the Feminists Prove It
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/09/23/yes_patriarchy_is_dead_the_feminists_prove_it_120031.htmlYes, Patriarchy Is Dead; the Feminists Prove It
By Cathy Young - September 23, 2013
When writer Hanna Rosin recently published an article on Slate.com stating that “the patriarchy is dead,” much of the feminist response amounted to “burn the heretic!” New Republic editor and blogger Nora Caplan-Bricker accused Rosin of “mansplaining” -- the femosphere’s pejorative term for supposedly obtuse and arrogant male arguments on gender, apparently now also applied to female dissent -- and being the patriarchy’s unwitting tool. San Jose State University philosophy professor Janet Stemwedel tweeted her gloating over Rosin’s Wikipedia page being vandalized to read, for a brief time, “Hanna Rosin (born 1970) is a terrible human being.”
Ironically, the feminist tendency to shoot the bringer of good news was the very topic of Rosin’s essay, adapted from the new epilogue to the paperback edition of her book “The End of Men” -- which, despite its title, is more about female ascendance than male decline. Rosin noted with bemusement that rebuttals to her report on women’s rising fortunes were greeted with palpable relief -- not by male chauvinists but by feminists. (It isn’t just Rosin: When a recent study demonstrated that female political candidates are not judged more negatively than male ones, not even for their looks and dress, feminists reacted with either silence or sniping.)
So where is this dreaded American patriarchy Rosin is covering up? Some critiques of her argument boil down to “it’s only affluent white women who are doing well” (and poor minority men are presumably basking in privilege). A gentleman critic, fellow Slate.com author Matthew Yglesias, cites men’s numerical dominance in corporate America -- as if Rosin might be unaware of these statistics. (One figure he omits: Women control 60 percent of the wealth in the United States.) But mostly, Rosin’s detractors focus on women’s abuse by men and on pervasive cultural biases against women, from beauty pressures to so-called “slut-shaming.” Patriarchy, says Caplan-Bricker, is “living in a society where both women and men save their harshest judgment for women.”
In its present form -- as a secular cult that should call itself the Sisters of Perpetual Grievance -- feminism is far more a part of the problem than part of the solution. It clings to women’s wrongs and turns women’s rights into narcissistic entitlement. It is far too easily prone to bashing men while painting women as insultingly helpless and downplaying their human capacity for cruelty. (The notion that abuse and dominance would not exist without patriarchy is not only naively utopian but utterly sexist.) It is also deeply irrelevant to most women, only 5 percent of whom consider themselves “strong feminists,” even though 82 percent believe that men and women should be social, political, and economic equals.
Of course the patriarchy -- at least here in the West -- is dead. Whether feminism deserves to survive it is up to the feminists.
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Really?
Who would you identify in the civil rights movement whose "worst fear" is that racism might be ended?
Who in the GLBT movement would you say is "afraid" homophobia might someday be a thing of the past?
I don't know a single feminist whose afraid that someday sexism and patriarchy might be a thing of the past, let alone that they're already over and we just don't want to admit it!
I doubt you do either. And the fact that you have to qualify this alleged fear by saying "most of the time" they don't even know that's what they're thinking" is very telling.
No offense, but couldn't this be seen as yet another example of some guy trying to tell women "what they REALLY want"? "Here's what they're saying, and here's what they think they're thinking, but I KNOW that deep down they're thinking something entirely different, and what they say they want isn't really what they want at all." Something of a mind-reader, are we now?
As I said in another post on this thread, this article reminds me way much of Rush Limbaugh telling us we live in a "post racial society" and that the contemporary civil rights movement is just an elaborate scam perpetrated on poor, unsuspecting people of color who don't even know they've been liberated! 
Personally, I'm skeptical of any claims that centuries old forms of oppression have somehow disappeared from our society. Racism didn't end with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, no matter what Scalia & co. might want to believe. And sexism and the patriarchy sure as hell ain't over--not when we have the legislature of one state passing "rape insurance" legislation, and multiple others requiring women requesting abortions to submit to a "vaginal scan" in order to get the care they require. Not when we have warehouses full of rape kits that various police departments just couldn't be bothered to investigate.
Sorry, I just don't buy it.
For instance, what's the difference between a "pre-industrial" society vs. a post industrial society in terms of "protecting" women presumably so they can propagate and continue the species? (Which I take it is your explanation for why women had to be "protected"
. Women are no longer necessary to have children? Seems to me that the basic mechanics of procreation haven't been altered all that much by industrialization. So wherein lies the distinction?
In any case, what precisely were women being protected from? Other men? Certainly not from slavery, rape, death in childbirth, malnutrition, etc.
My guess is your response might be that they were being "protected" from death in warfare, which is a somewhat valid point, if you ignore the fact that women have always been casualties in war (especially those on the losing side). My thought is that women not being used as cannon fodder (aside from certain exceptions, such as for instance the Soviet Union in WWII) has always had more to do with the fact that war prior to the 20th century generally involved brute force against brute force, that is, physical muscle mass strength, and women generally speaking have less physical strength all else being equal than men. Besides which, someone had to mind the kiddies, plant and harvest the crops, herd the livestock, do all the work involved in actually maintaining a society, while the men were out killing each other, so it made sense for it to be the women.
Not to mention that this "protection" hardly applied or was of much benefit to most women in most societies. Even during relatively violent eras, for instance in France of the Middle Ages, only a tiny fraction of people were involved in warfare: most people it seems to me led lives of stultifying tedium, digging in the dirt, managing their flocks. What good was patriarchal "protection" to women and girls in an environment like that? And could it possibly have been worth the cost in terms of a relatively diminished quality of life? By "relatively" I mean I take your point in another post that the overwhelming majority of people, men and women, have throughout history lived lives of oppression, poverty, and ignorance. But, if it sucked being a French peasant in 1325, it most likely sucked even worse being that French peasant's wife or daughter.
And I don't know about the "hypocrisy" of asking for suffrage "to send men to die." I mean yeah, the whole "white feather" thing was disgusting. There's no doubt that shaming men into the military is pretty sleazy, and certainly not one of history's finer moments. As I recall from my reading, it wasn't only or even predominantly women who were free and easy with the charge of cowardice if a young man felt reluctant to join the slaughter. I seem to recall, for instance, a scene in "All Quiet on the Western Front" where it was (male) school masters who were among the most avid cheerleaders for carnage.As I said, not one of the specie's best moments.
I think our definitions of terms such as "patriarchy" and certainly "protection" are rather different. As I said in an earlier post, I see it as less "protection" and more "control." Women's reproductive abilities (and their manual labor of course) have in patriarchies always been under the strict control of men. Women and girls who tried to elude this control were dealt with harshly.
This remains the case in much of the world today, and there are many in the US who would love for us to revert to using all the instruments of state power and physical force to keep women "in their place."
This has less to do, I think, with "protection" and "survival" than with domination, control, power and privilege.
Best wishes
See my post 28, in response to Major N, for my quick take on casualties of militarism, men vs. women. In short, I think in any calculation of who suffers from militarism (which I consider a corollary of patriarchy, that is, either caused by patriarchy, or used to justify it, or concomitant with it) you have to include those who suffer/die due to mass bombardments, occupations, counterinsurgency campaigns, famine, epidemics all due to warfare. To tease out American military casualties of the 20th century as a primary data set is I think misleading. I mean, there's a whole world outside of the US, and thousands of years of history that also have to be considered. I know this isn't directly relevant to your post above, but figured I'd add it into the mix while it was on my mind.
As far as men defending hearth and home, perhaps if women in all these instances were given military training, and access to arms, not to mention some modicum of political power, these various awful situations might come out differently? Generally speaking, it seems to me, it's been men who've decided to enforce the notion that a woman's place is in the home, even if it is obviously militarily disastrous. Even allowing women into the workplace can be an issue: Albert Speer kept urging Hitler to allow women to work in the armaments factories, as they were in the US, Britain, USSR (in the USSR they were also flying combat missions and even, some of them, fighting on the front lines, not to mention as partisans). This went against Nazi ideology, of course, and like all right wingers Hitler decided better to lose the war than compromise on ideology. Of course, after the war all those manufacturing jobs in the US especially reverted to their "male only" status. Not to mention "whites only" and "non-disabled only." Passing strange, isn't it, how a group of people can be perfectly competent at some job one year, and then too fragile, impaired, or unsuited the next?
Interesting point about women going off to join the Visigoths. One theory of why the Roman Empire collapsed as it did -- when by and large the populations of the "civilized" regions outnumbered the invading "barbarians" -- is that most people who were inhabitants of the Roman Empire basically didn't give a fuck who governed them--life as a slave or landless peasant doesn't inspire one to fight and die for the Empire. And there are accounts of Puritan women, kidnapped during Indian raids on New England settlements (for instance, during "the Deerfield massacre" who chose to stay with their captors, when offered the choice of returning to their families. Life as a Puritan woman was by all accounts pretty awful, life with "the savages" was much preferred. And of course those who complained about the Puritan view of women ran the risk of exile (like Anne Hutchinson) or hanging (like the majority of the Salem "witches" . Thank god, goddess, or flying spaghetti monster we've outgrown that sort of nonsense.
I've been thinking about your point about the "White Feather League" or whatever it was called, and your calling out feminists who indulged in this sort of shaming of military age men as hypocrites. I'm not quite sure "hypocrisy" is how I'd term it: but it certainly was reprehensible. Of course, when push came to shove it was each individual man who had to decide for himself whether to enlist or not, at least until the draft took hold in all the various nations. So they also have some responsibility to bear, don't you think?
Anyway, since you bring up that era, I'd have to say "white feathers" is pretty small potatoes compared to the hypocrisy that was rampant those years. I mean, take "poor little Belgium." Here's a nation, the king of which raked billions from the central Congo, in a campaign the barbarity of which is really almost unrivaled in all human history, getting bent out of shape over being invaded. Compared to what the Belgians did to the Congo, German atrocities during the occupation were pretty tame (not to minimize anyone's personal suffering, and truth be told the German occupation was hardly benign). And there's Great Britain championing "poor little Belgium" and denouncing German imperialism. I mean really, England calling out another nation on its imperialism? Then there's Russia, coming to the defense of its "Slav brothers" in Serbia, all the while keeping a tight, one could say hermetically sealed lid of oppression on Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine... Russia was called "the prison of nations" and suddenly Czar Nicholas II is taking on a role as "the Great Liberator?" Now THAT'S world class hypocrisy right there. Makes even Dick Cheney look like a relative amateur.
Interestingly enough, all the major decision makers of "The Guns of August" were men. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only woman who was even close to holding political power among the major powers at the outbreak of the Great War was Tsarina Alexandria--who argued against Russia joining the war. So it's hard for me to fault feminists too much for also being swept up in the war fever, as opposed to anyone else. More troubling to me in fact is how almost all of the socialists in the German Reichstag voted for the war--along with socialists in France and Britain. So much for working class solidarity. Maybe if Juares hadn't been assassinated things might have been different, but I tend to doubt it.
Speaking of commercial fishing boats (sort of) you should check out Lucy Gwin's "Going Overboard" -- about her being the only woman working on the ships that serviced the offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico in the 1970s. Don't worry, it's not a feminist rant. But it is a really good read, should have won some awards or something, IMHO.
"If domination...Hillary would be a coal miner, not a candidate for president."
Well, that's a handy slogan but hardly applies. The patriarchy, if not dead in America, is definitely gasping. But if the patriarchy weren't about domination and power, I tend to doubt that every single president in our nation's two hundred thirty plus year history, not to mention the overwhelming majority of senators, congress-critters, governors, legislators, Supreme Court judges, etc. would just happen to be men. Hell, if denying people the right to vote for the first century and a half (give or take) of the nation's political existence wasn't about power, what on earth WAS it about? And please don't say "protection."
Anyway, the point is one only talks of "protecting" those with a relative lack of power, which obviously you know. Empowerment, as opposed to "protection," is what any liberation movement is about. Of course, with empowerment comes responsibility. But I for one would prefer to be empowered--and responsible--than "protected" at the expense of my fundamental rights, no matter how benign or even beneficial that protection might be. "Protection" can always be rescinded. Empowerment--political rights--not nearly as easily.
Best wishes.
that only a lifetime ago, say seventy-five years or so, the ratio was probably 10 to 1 favoring men, probably more like 100 to 1 in fields like medicine, mathematics, engineering. To see whether men have been substantial losers in this new reality you have to ask: has all else remained the same? That is: has the undergraduate/graduate student body not increased at all in the past 75 years? Are the actual numbers of men going to school, as opposed to the ratio of men to women, gone down substantially? It's like saying: the ratio of black voters in Mississippi compared to white voters has gone from 1 to 10,000 to more like 1 to 1. In fact, we may reach a point in the not too distant future where "minority" voters in places like Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina actually exceed the white voter rolls. Does this mean white people in Mississippi are now losing their right to vote? That there is an organized conspiracy to knock white people off the rolls unjustly? That some form of "reverse racism" ("race chivalry" is at work here? Personally, I doubt it.
I read your OP on the ACA, and some of the responses. Most of what I'd have to say was said in a number of the responding posts, which you evidently found not convincing. Why aren't men and men's health issues more prominant in the ACA? Well, why isn't Massachusetts mentioned more often in the Voting Rights Act? This required, among other things, that certain states--such as Texas, South Carolina, Misssissippi--had to clear any changes to their voting laws with the US Justice Dept. So--does this mean people of color have never been discriminated against in Massachusetts? Or simply that the overwhelming problem to be addressed by the law was that there was a history of institutionalized racial discimination in those states that simply wasn't as major an issue in Massachusetts and Oregon? There has been a long and dismal history of women's health issues being ignored or minimized by the health care system and the health insurance industry in this country. So the ACA attempts to address that. Not at all difficult to understand, and bravo to President Obama for recognizing the problems.
Thanks for the links on the various male survivor issues. You don't need to urge me to get involved--I've probably done more work on issues of rape and sexual assault--including male on male rape, female on male rape, female on female rape -- than ninety-nine percent of the people you or I are likely to meet on anything like a day to day basis. I'm not as involved as I used to be, and no doubt could have done more, but I'm quite proud of the work I've done, and think I've helped some folks, including some male survivors whose accounts I still can remember quite vividly.
Again, you seem to feel that male survivor issues aren't being addressed in nearly the same strength as women/girl issues, but miss entirely the point I was making. The reason rape has become a political issue at all has nothing to do with "chivalry"--however vaguely defined. It's because tens of thousands of women in the late 1960s and 1970s decided enough was enough, and began to get active. They formed volunteer rape crisis centers in every major city in the country. They organized forums, demonstrations, they began pushing for legislation. Nothing, NOTHING was handed to them on a silver platter. And to the extent that male issues are discussed at all today, it's almost entirely because of the work done by those pioneering and courageous women (and some few men).
So, why aren't more men involved? And why are you, specifically, waiting for women to do this work for you?
Find out about the laws in your state. Organize your own progressive men's group to stop rape in prison. Contact your lawmakers, start petitions, do some fundraising. If you really care about this issue, DO SOMETHING beyond posting on DU.
It's very easy to blame women for all the world's problems--people have been doing it since the myth of Adam and Eve. It's less easy to get involved, get engaged, not to mention to get exposed to the backlash anyone organizing or advocating for social change is bound to encounter.
People of color, along with some sympathetic whites, pushed until the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were passed. People with disabilities, along with some sympathetic TABs (Temporarily Able Bodied) pushed until the ADA was passed. Women, along with (a very very few men) pushed until rape crisis centers were established and the VAWA was passed.
If male rape, specifically prison rape, is your issue, what are you waiting for?
As it pertains to these issues, I see five groups, with some overlap.
1) feminists for whom men's victimization and hardship threatens to dilute social attention. "But but... Privilege! Patriarchy!"
2) conservatives for whom "being a man" means being at the top of the social order. Being a victim is irreconcilable with their perceived place in the world.
3) people whose relationship with feminism is based on the percieved need to protect women. "Porn is like child abuse".
4) people who believe they have been victimized by a biased legal system.
5) people for whom "equality", (not "equality for me" actually means something. They consider it a goal worth pursuing.
Group 5 doesn't have any significant constituency, and group 4 are hardened in their conservative views.
Raising awareness is the best I can do. Prior to 2011, the basic facts weren't only in dispute, but in fact were ban-worthy offenses. Rape can't be declining! Men aren't more often victims! IPV isn't reciprocal! The truth was disruptive, but it was still truth.
My advocacy in real life is directed in ways that, in this culture, stand some small hope of progress. No one gives a shit that men die young or get disproportionate sentences, or fail in school. It's all their own fault, or will undoubtedly be rationalized in that way. Rape isn't the only kind of victimization that people experience.
As to the point in your other post about colleges recruiting men? It's illegal it is a title IX violation. That they try do it in a surreptitious way isn't surprising however, because women apply to colleges in which men aren't scarce.
So this imbalance may level out... because more men improves the college experience for women and thus gives a college a competitive advantage, but it's an uphill battle, given the profusion of scholarships available for women and not men.
"In its present form -- as a secular cult that should call itself the Sisters of Perpetual Grievance -- feminism is far more a part of the problem than part of the solution. It clings to women’s wrongs and turns women’s rights into narcissistic entitlement. It is far too easily prone to bashing men while painting women as insultingly helpless and downplaying their human capacity for cruelty."
seems to me uncomfortably close to what Rush Limbaugh et. al say about racism and the current American civil rights movement. Essentially a) racism is dead and we all live in a glorious "post racial society" and b) current civil rights activism is basically a scam to provide civil rights leaders with a cause and a cushy job. That sure, Martin Luther King (and maybe even Malcolm X) had a point, but TODAY'S activists are essentially just a lot of whiners, clinging to their "oppression." Besides, what about black on black crime?
And I wonder what the writer's example of a woman's "narcissistic entitlement" might be? Reproducive choice? Police departments that actually investigate rape, rather than toss rape kits unopened into warehouses? As if there still aren't plenty of issues that feminists are confronting that have nothing to do with narcissism.
Sorry, but I'll believe the patriarchy is dead when it becomes impossible for any legislature in this nation to get away with passing a "rape insurance" law. Or mandate vaginal probes to anyone seeking an abortion. Just to cite two of the more obvious examples of what to me is a culture of male domination over women's bodies that seems very much alive.
Has progress been made? Sure. But just as with racism (and class, and GLBT rights) we still have a hell of a long way to go before we start popping champaigne corks and dancing on the system's grave.
