this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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You should check out bell hooks sometime, she talks a lot about that! It's a misunderstanding a lot of people have that comes from hot takes.
from Understanding Patriarchy
And this here highlights a core issue, the poor choice of language used to communicate the ideas.
Patriarchy and toxic masculinity, for example, are horrible terms for non academic conversations. The academics should have realized this long ago, and made a concerted effort to change the language into more gender neutral ones. The fact that not only has this not happened, but there is pushback on such suggestions, sort of proves the bias that does exist in this space.
Their poor choice of labels can only be expected to lead to the type of "man bad/woman good" thought process. Because outside of very specific academic circles, that's exactly how those terms are read. When you read "toxic masculinity" you see "bad/broken men". When you read "patriarchy" you read "men in control", both terms are tailor made to lead directly to 'blame men' ideologies.
For a movement that, at one point, seemed very aware of & intent on changing language that reenforces old gender roles... they also seem to be fine creating and perpetuating language that actively reenforces those roles, when its men who's roles are being reenforced.
I think a lot of feminists, hooks included, were pretty fed up with the academy. Their problem was that white upper class women were setting the terms of what feminism was in a way that excluded women of color who had also worked for many generations without being recognized. She was a supporter of using the term kyriarchy, which is more neutral and includes all structures of oppression.
That being said, I don't think we need an academic interpretation to say fuck the patriarchy. It's empowering! And for men too. We don't need to wait for the correct wording to fight against it. We can be awesome allies and good to each other, because we know the systems of oppression we're all fighting against.
Archiarchy.