{"id":44543,"date":"2020-11-02T01:00:22","date_gmt":"2020-11-02T06:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=44543"},"modified":"2020-11-01T08:25:44","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T13:25:44","slug":"qotd-the-patriarchy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/11\/02\/qotd-the-patriarchy\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The Patriarchy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Since anything men utter is tainted by their place in the power hierarchy and their implicit desire to maintain that power \u2013 a homeless man at Grand Central station may be surprised, even delighted, to learn that he occupies a “privileged” position in this hierarchy \u2013 nothing a man says can be taken at face value because, consciously or unconsciously, it is imbued with patriarchal values and language. Whether they realise it or not, all men are engaged in a struggle to consolidate and extend their power, particularly over women. This is doubtless why, according to this theory, rape is considered a manifestation of male dominance \u2013 of the patriarchy \u2013 rather than an expression of sexual desire. Power is everything \u2013 which tells you something, perhaps, about the status anxiety of this theory’s most fanatical adherents.<\/p>\n

Thus it is okay to hate all men \u2013 they are all infected by the canker of patriarchy which, unlike individual thoughts and motivations, is a kind of all-powerful super-organism, a hive mind controlling its male worker bees. Men as individuals are simply tokens of something deeper \u2013 structural misogyny embedded in institutional power. If you’re a man who thinks you are not a misogynist, who in fact thinks you like women perfectly well, you are deluding yourself. For such men, their sexism is simply unconscious, just as in classical Marxism the “good” bourgeois was unconscious of the fact that he could not avoid exploiting his workers or employees, even though he might be providing them with a decent wage, good working conditions, and health and pension benefits.<\/p>\n

This analysis, given a moment’s thought, doesn’t make a lot of sense. Even if you accept that all the ills of the world are down to patriarchy and the dominance of men, you have to concede the corollary \u2013 that all the triumphs of humankind are down to the patriarchy also, from medicine and science to the highest reaches of art and culture.<\/p>\n

Women may point out that they have been excluded from these fields until now, and that’s largely true, although biology \u2013 the lack of control women have historically had over their own fertility and the greater physical strength of men \u2013 might be a far more simple and plausible explanation than the existence of a hypothetical, all-powerful super-organism. However, the very act that men hold the balance of power is proof of the existence of patriarchy, according to this belief system.<\/p>\n

Tim Lott, “Why It’s Not OK to Hate Men”, Quillette<\/em><\/a>, 2018-08-14.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since anything men utter is tainted by their place in the power hierarchy and their implicit desire to maintain that power \u2013 a homeless man at Grand Central station may be surprised, even delighted, to learn that he occupies a “privileged” position in this hierarchy \u2013 nothing a man says can be taken at face […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,28,53,41],"tags":[987,1020,42,43],"class_list":["post-44543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-feminism","tag-progressives","tag-sociology","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bAr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44543"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61268,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44543\/revisions\/61268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}