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Patriarchy: D’oh!

Patriarchy D’oh!

This is the first post in the greenpill theory series, this post shows why ‘Patriarchy’ can not explain the traditional gender relationships, and the double standards that exist.
Feminists claim that aspects of gender are explained by a nebulous ‘Patriarchy’ which oppresses women and privileges men. However this does not explain why so many double standards and so much sexism benefits women and harms men.

Patriarchy is a myth

Patriarchy is a classic motte-and-bailey fallacy. In it’s worst form it is a conspiracy theory that blames men for women’s problems.
For example:
Under patriarchy, no woman is safe to live her life, or to love, or to mother children. Under patriarchy, every woman is a victim, past, present and future. Under patriarchy, every woman’s daughter is a victim, past, present and future. Under patriarchy, every woman’s son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.

– Andrea Dworkin

the superstructure of patriarchy was by no means confined to economics or the law, but permeated to the furthest reaches of the culture, infiltrating and informing the domestic and erotic.
Patriarchy is a totalitarian system.

– Olivia Laing (source)

Even in it’s ‘motte’ form it implies it’s all men’s fault, and women are mostly the victims.
In fact traditional gender roles are mostly or entirely enforced by women, from “slut shaming”, to men being expected to work outside the home, to the double standard about male rape victims. All of these standards are mostly enforced by women, especially feminists.
Feminist theory claims the ways in which men are hurt by traditional gender roles is “The Patriarchy backfiring”, a form of collective victim-blaming that casts the Patriarchy as both a puissant conspriacy that has enslaved half of humanity for thousands of years and simultaneausly so clumsy that it accidentally genitally mutilates, conscripts, and legalises abuse of its conspirators. Like if the Devil was Homer Simpson.
Patrriarchy theory makes in an unfalsifiable claim: if women are hurt by society, that’s the Patriarchy, if men are hurt that’s the clumsy Patriarchy backfiring.
Men claim an inalienable right to penetrate women during sex, and that this is one of the tools of patriarchy.

– Andrea Dworkin

The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys.

– Bell Hooks

Peace in patriarchy is war against women.

– Maria Mies

There is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women’s bodies by men. The woman’s body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected.

– Adrienne Rich

Patriarchy is a system of male dominance, rooted in the ethos of war which legitimates violence, sanctified by religious symbols, in which men dominate women through the control of female sexuality.
…
Patriarchy is most commonly understood as a form of social organization in which cultural and institutional beliefs and patterns accept, support, and reproduce the domination of women.

– Carol P. Christ

In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent.

– Catherine MacKinnon

The Patriarchy is seen as a boogieman to blame everything on
The power exercised by men, day to day, in life is power that is institutionalised. It is protected by law. It is protected by religion and religious practice. It is protected by universities, which are strongholds of male supremacy. It is protected by a police force.

– Andrea Dworkin

Patriarchy: The systematic domination of women by men in some or all of society’s spheres and institutions.

– Karl Thompson

Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.

– Camille Paglia

There are many puzzles regarding modern human gender and sex roles.’The Patriarchy’ does not explain the traditional gender relationships, and the double standards that exist.
For example:
  • The double standard over sex: while male sexuality is interpreted in the most predatory way possible, female rape is invariably reported in neutral or positive terms as “having a sexual relationship”. Some examples:
    • Anti-rape poster distributed on campus by the Coastal Carolina University
  • The double standard over genital mutilation: female genital mutilation is considered a horrific atrocity, while male genital mutilation is legal and even promoted; often by the same organization:
    • Poster distributed in Uganda promoting male genital mutilation, with funding from the W.H.O
    Poster distributed in Africa by the W.H.O, calling female genital mutilation a violation of human rights

  • Despite the fact that men are over twice as likely to be victimized by strangers as women, initiatives to protect victims are aimed at helping women not men.
    • More men are victims of violence from strangers than women, but initiatives exclude men from protection
  • Men die younger and have significantly lower health than women, yet 3 times as much money is spent on gender specific health services for women than men.
  • 70% of non-reciprocal domestic violence is female-on-male, yet society only seems to care about the reverse.
    • The stock image for domestic violence is invariably a man beating a woman, despite the reverse being twice as common
While feminism tries to explain all these double standards with the ‘Patriarchy’, this seems contrived to blame men given how frequently gender standards hurt men or benefit women.

The Patriarchy is the only oppressive regime in history which makes the oppressors work in more dangerous jobs, die sooner, commit suicide more often, get longer prison sentences, and be more of the homeless then the oppressed class

– anonymous
If the Patriarchy exists, it must be the most incompetent conspiracy in history.
At worst Patriarchy is a conspiracy theory as absurd and sinister as the “Jewish Conspiracy”, at best it is a contrived rationalization of anti-male prejudice that simply doesn’t match the real world.
Men are treated overwhelmingly worse by numerous metrics
An alternative paradigm has emerged – the ‘red pill’. Unfortunately this simply rationalizes the status quo by declaring it as “natural” using dubious pseudoscience or circular arguments.
This series of articles presents the Green Pill, an answer for all these puzzles. By the end of this journey you will never see gender, sex, men or women in the same way again.
Along the way we will take in:
  • Why skirts go up and down in sympathy with the stock market
  • Why Queen Victoria didn’t believe in lesbians (or why she did)
  • Why the ancient Greeks thought male homosexuality was noble, while in the 19th Century it merited the death penalty
  • Why in Northern Thailand men used to surgically put bells in their penises
  • Why the Edwardians referred to women’s legs as limbs
  • Why in the 19th Century ‘ladies’ used to use bathing machines to avoid even a glimpse of ankles, while working class women would routinely work topless and bath nude.
  • Why prostitution in the UK was legal until 1886 – but only in poor towns
There is a lot to unlearn, so this series is a long read, however the green pill is simple in concept. See part 2 The Sex War for the answers to these questions and more.

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