The End of Patriarchy

“Dead Men Don’t Rape!”

- Delilah Bon

There’s a scenario circulating Feminist Instagram and it goes like this:

1 man tells a sexist/sexual joke.

2 men laugh, believing it to be funny or harmless.

3 men fake a chuckle to fit in, despite feeling uncomfortable.

4 men stay silent, looking away or ignoring it.

Result: Not a single one speaks up.

Not all men harass, but the laughter and silence create the same hostile environment. Through these men’s participation in rituals of humiliation, they are enabling the devaluation and control of women. In this scenario, we can see how misogyny fuels male solidarity, how men are bound together by their complicity in the subjugation of women. The hatred and subjugation of women directly enforces male hierarchies and reinforces the dominance of the patriarchal social system and worldview.

The story goes on to say that 9 men go home considering themselves to be the good guys. However, how does participating in such rituals really effect men? Are they not troubled at all by their complicity in the subjugation of women, whether it’s the women they love or the strangers they pass in the street? The public reinforcement of their identity as patriarchal men must effect how they think and behave towards the women with whom they interact. It Is an alienating contribution to the social environment that we all share.

The Patriarchy is hard to see because it is inside all of us. It affects us even before we are born and then we are conditioned to it from birth. The Patriarchy is in every relationship that we have ever had and is the basic set of assumptions the we inherited from our parents and grand parents. It’s the basis for our understanding of ourselves and what feels right and comfortable. From the most basic, pink is for girls and blue is for boys, everything about us is gendered because of patriarchal culture. There must be hierarchies and they must be easy to read.

In a patriarchal social system, men hold the power and women are excluded from it.. In it, society is structured around male-dominating norms and creates a hierarchy that devalues women and keeps them in subordinate positions. At the most basic level and in every aspect of our patriarchal society, the basic understanding is that men and men’s things are important and valuable whereas all things female are not. This devaluation of women is enforced through cultural norms, education, and violence. This is a society where women are given roles and then punished if they don’t fulfill them. Women know that if they don’t tow the line, there will be repercussions, sometimes violent, always abusive, physically, psychologically, or emotionally.

How does it feel to live inside a Patriarchal system? There is always the fear of violence. Life in the US has become even more extreme with random acts of violence occurring regularly and unpredictable. You never know when the next lunatic is going to start firing into a crowd. And women have always lived under this threat to a greater or lesser degree. If you are lucky, the men in your family and clan will look out for you and protect you from violence by other men. If you are not lucky, “your” men will commit violence on you.

Misogyny, the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women, is the primary means used to control women in Patriarchy. Misogyny is outward hostility but also the feeling of shame, fear, social shunning and loss of status, Misogyny can be understood both as an attitude held by individuals and as a widespread cultural custom or system. Sometimes misogyny manifests in obvious and bold ways; other times it is more subtle. Misogyny includes the rejection of feminine qualities and contempt towards institutions, work, hobbies, or habits associated with women. It rejects any aspects of men that are seen as feminine or unmanly.

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, very effectively shows violence being used to control women. In Patriarchy, whoever is most inclined to use violence will have power over others. There are so many ways women and others have had to find a way to survive in an unjust society. Being the smaller and weaker sex in our species has made vulnerable to violence and we must always be vigilant against it. The Me Too movement facilitated a greater awareness of the commonality of sexual assault against women and how deep the rape culture is.

There’s a deep feminist rage underneath the surface of our society. We have been working so hard for so long and yet we are experiencing setback after setback. Any woman who becomes a public figure is an immediate target for hate, death and rape threats abound. When the suffragettes were fighting for the right to vote, they thought that that was the path to equality. Then the 70s feminists believed that if we had economic freedom, if we could own property, if we had the right to bodily autonomy, we would be considered equal and yet here we are, still struggling. We thought that by working in the system we would finally achieve equality. And yet it still proves elusive.

The challenge before us is that we need to fundamentally change our societal structures and values and move away from male-dominated hierarchies. Patriarchy is not inevitable, it is not biologically based, it arose through cultural transmission. A lot of scientific research shows that most prehistoric societies were egalitarian. In her book, The Creation of Patriarchy, Garda Lerner states that patriarchy as a social system arose in different parts of the world at different times. patriarchy is the result of sociological constructions that are passed down from generation to generation.

Since the basic premise of patriarchy is that men and men’s things are primary, and that belief structure is deep within all of us, we have to deprogram ourselves from patriarchy’s brainwashing. In order for our society to become more egalitarian, men must be decentered. As Soraya Chemaly writes in her Substack piece “No One Told Men”, ““Decentering” is a practice of refusal that allows women to create alternative paths to living as freely as possible from patriarchal constraints.” By decentering men, we will not only liberate ourselves, but all humans, from a rigid, hierarchical and violent system.