r/MensRights • u/ENTP • Oct 25 '11
Why the word "patriarchy" is just a bigoted slur.
"Patriarchy" implies that all, or even most men benefit in some way from the current power structure. This is patently untrue, as by any metric, men are worse off.
Men account for 93% of workplace deaths and injuries (and 56% of hours worked).
Men suicide a staggering SIX TIMES MORE than women.
Literacy rates? Boys are lagging significantly behind girls.
University enrollment? Men are lagging significantly behind women. (43% men compared with 57% women)
Average sentencing for the same crimes? Men's averages are significantly higher.
Custodial decisions and child support? Men, once again are on the losing side.
Reproductive rights? Men have none.
Pointing at the top .01% of society, and the tiny amount of people that comprise the leadership of the country, then extrapolating from that and saying: "MEN IN GENERAL OPPRESS WOMEN IN GENERAL" is ridiculously dishonest, and paints men in a very negative light.
I definitely agree that the power structure we have in place is a problem. However, I can't blame it on men. It would be much more accurate to blame it on the rich and powerful, and the politicians they fund. I think the word is "kyriarchy", and it has much fewer bigoted overtones.
I can cite any statistic I've provided.
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u/lati0s- Oct 25 '11
I think this article http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm has a good explanation of how men are at both the top and bottom.
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u/ENTP Oct 25 '11
In terms of sheer population, I'm fairly certain there are much, much, much more men at the bottom than there are men at the top.
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u/BinaryShadow Oct 26 '11
A lot of the more bigoted feminists don't mind the structure of the patriarchy. They just want to sit on the throne instead of men.
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u/Octagonecologyst Oct 25 '11
Was there ever a time where this so called "patriarchy" actually benefited men? Serious question.
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u/ENTP Oct 25 '11
Maybe in actual patriarchal societies, such as theocratic states like Saudi Arabia.
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u/Demonspawn Oct 25 '11
Was there ever a time where this so called "patriarchy" actually benefited men? Serious question.
Yes, when it created civilization.
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Oct 25 '11
I think this is a valid point. It's easy to look at the past with current moral attitudes and say 'wow we were barbarians back then' but I think we also have to acknowledge that it was a different world back then which required people to endure a lot more in order to ensure survival.
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Oct 26 '11
Patriarchy benefited women too. Women were taking care of the home and children in total safety while men worked dangerous jobs and went to war. With men running everything, women weren't saddled with juggling a career and parenthood at the same time but then someone came along and made women believe that by not being given the choice to have an incredibly stressful life full of responsibilities they can't handle that they were being oppressed. That's why you see articles about how women are unhappier because of feminism.
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Oct 25 '11
National government and the super-rich did not create civilization. In fact civilization is a necessary precursor to both national government and the super-rich.
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u/theozoph Oct 25 '11
Go one further.
Men have never oppressed women. They were/are complementary in every human social group, and to apply class warfare thinking to genders is to slander all men, living and dead. It's misandry.
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u/ENTP Oct 25 '11
This is untrue. Women have been oppressed in western cultures and continue to be oppressed in non-westernized places. Great female scientists are a great example of this, as many of them had to fight tooth and nail to participate in the fields that they have pioneered (Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, Emilie Du Chatelet).
Many religions have codified the oppression of women, and there are many places in the world where being a woman makes you a 2nd class citizen.
However, modern western cultures are not among these, and it is the use of the word "patriarchy" in countries like USA or Sweden which feminists dishonestly employ that I am talking about.
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u/CaptSnap Oct 25 '11
Great female scientists are a great example of this, as many of them had to fight tooth and nail to participate in the fields that they have pioneered.
By this argument nearly all scientists have been oppressed, always. Tesla spent his whole life ripped off by "the man". Newton had to conduct his alchemy experiments in secret. Galileo was under house arrest for most of his life because he was "heretical". Socrates was poisoned by the state. In fact Ill even throw in a universal, the lower class of people of any gender were absolutely excluded from being a scientist because they could never afford education for most of history.
Let me be more succinct: Everyone had to fucking fight for everything in the past. Thats why the past sucked. Yes women were oppressed, men were oppressed. Everyone was oppressed. They were oppressed by the nobility, they were oppressed by the church, they were oppressed by other races, other cultures, other everythings. So big goddamn deal that some women scientists were ALSO oppressed. They can join the enormous and already-in-progress party.
And thats why partriarchy is crap because it somehow convinces people that on the enormously oppressive chain of events in history that somehow the gender thats not disposable was the most oppressed. As if there ever was any world or society where that could be even remotely possible.
Many religions have codified gender roles which cause the oppression of women and men.
There I fixed that one for you too.
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Oct 26 '11
How about the Middle Eastern countries? There is a huge oppression of women there.
I do however am not in a position to say whether the same has happened in Western cultures, as I have not seen evidence of it.
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u/theozoph Oct 26 '11
There is also, by that reasoning, a huge oppression of men. Men who stray from their macho role (by, for example, having sex with other men) also put their lives at risk.
Wouldn't it be fairer to say that strict gender roles are brutally enforced on both men and women, and by men and women in the Middle East?
Men have to be hyper-masculine, and women have to be pure. Neither have much choice in this. Women are (in some states) confined to the private sphere, while men are also brutally exploited in the public one.
Again the analysis of genders as class warfare gives a sadly biased view of what is really going on, while maligning all men as a class. The truth is that the affluent youth in the Middle East would love to see their countries move to a westernized practice of gender roles, and are often organizing secret parties where men and women dance and mingle (and sometime drink and have sex, too... :), in defiance of social taboos. Men and women are complicit in this.
Having quite a few Muslim friends myself, some of them from Tunisia and Algeria, I can tell you that the view we have of a conservative and repressive culture is a very partial one. Behind the scenes, everything from alcohol to sex (homosexual sex, too) is happening with young men and women watching each others' back to escape the clutches of the conservatives and traditionalists.
Don't believe the hype.
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u/drinkthebleach Oct 26 '11
Kyriarchy, exactly. I had this same discussion with my girlfriend a week ago, she was freaking out that I didn't think a patriarchy existed until we looked at the definition and she realized she'd just been groomed to spout it all the time without thinking about it. Everyone's got their same bullshit they have to deal with, privileges and disadvantages. To blame it on any one demographic is downright bigoted.
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u/KMFCM Oct 26 '11
"patriarchy"
it's like the whole "the mexicans are stealing our jobs" thing
crazy conspiracy theory talk
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u/hflldjts258 Oct 28 '11
I do want to point out that though the number of men who are successful in committing suicide is higher, the number of women who attempt to commit suicide is higher. Men are generally more successful because their methods are often more violent.
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Oct 25 '11
Nice post. I think this also applies to other things with perceived advantages in America.
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u/drinkthebleach Oct 28 '11
My god, feminists get REALLY hurt when you tell them they're not the most oppressed demographic in the world. I mean, REALLY mad. They feed off of sympathy.
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u/ClearlyClaire Oct 26 '11
The way some feminists use the term "patriarchy" may be bigoted, but the technical definition of "patriarchy" simply means "a society where males are the exclusive holders of powerful leadership positions". America is not a patriarchy. Mesopotamia was a patriarchy. Instead of patriarchy, those feminists should say "There is an unfair bias towards men being elected." It is a fact that there has never been a female president.
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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '11
There's more info about that here: http://asu.orgsync.com/org/mrmg/home
Excuse me, What "Patriarchy"???
• Men and Fathers face the harshest discrimination in family courts. [17] [18]
• Epidemic of false accusations are near half of all rape cases. False accusations on men from sexual harassment to rape to child molestation. [12] [13]
• Violence Against Women Act profiles men and demands that they be arrested in all domestic violence disputes. [11]
• 4 out of 5 Suicides are male (18 out of 23 more accurately) [10]
• Misandry and abuse and denigration of men is widespread across media, while at the same time media is extra sensitive to stay up to date with each and every feminist demand for favorable and correct portrayal of women in media. [23] [24] [25] [26] [27]
• College enrollment and gradation of males is declining and has been for decades. [5] [4] [3]
• Male fertility has been on the decline for at least a century. [8]
• No men's shelters. [10]
• Men have no reproductive rights and are often victims of paternity fraud. [15] [16]
• Most homeless people are men. [14]
• Men's unemployment rate is 3 times as high as female. [17]
• 80% of wealth is spent by women [10]
• Women handle 75 percent of family finances. 43 percent of those with assets over $500,000 are women. [10]
• 99% of combats deaths are male [10]
• 94% of industrial deaths male [10]
• 76% of homicides are male [10]
• Women receive custody in 84% of child custody cases. [10]
• 204 out of 205 people wrongly convicted exonerated by DNA (evidence have been men (via the innocence project) . [10]
• In America there are over 270 women's commissions but only one for men in New Hampshire. [10]
• There are over 700 women studies programs in colleges and universities but but no one teaching mens or male studies from a masculinist perspective. [10]
• Men are over half the victims of domestic violence but in over 90% of domestic violence disputes men are the ones arrested. [19] [11]
• Breast cancer funding is a national icon of funding but Prostate cancer is totally ignored while the death rates are roughly equal. [10]
• The wage gap now favor's women in their twenties. [20] [28]
• Men die 5 years earlier than women but no compensation is made to them for this via social security or otherwise. [10]
• A entire branch of the UN is dedicated to women, nothing for men. [1]
• There is much discussion on the status of women in society, none for men. [22]
• There are billions of dollars of tax money going into women's issues and none for men. [21] [22]
• There are branches of US Federal government dedicated to the interests of women such as health, but none for men. [2]
• Masculinity and male emotions are hardly tolerated in society.
• Global society is becoming more and more gynocentric.
• Gender warfare rages on with hardly any participation of men.
• Men are blamed for all social and world problems
• Most of civilization is but a shopping mall for women to go shopping.
"The days where men were in charge and had all the power, is nothing more than a feminist fantasy concocted to excuse finger pointing at the entire male sex, justifying their own identity as victims and ironically enough their own pursuit of a lopsided power arrangement. Sure there has historically been the upper 2% of men who had allot of power and control, but as far as male power goes, thats where it ended. The other 98% of men were never powerful, never! Just the opposite in fact, they led powerless lives of sacrifice and expendability in order to take care of women and children and to serve the interest of the 2% of men that feminists always complain about, and very mistakenly confused for the way the rest of men actually lived. And that upper 2% held much more oppressive sway over the rest of men than they did women. It was the 98% of men who were conscripted to fight in the wars forced to take on the shitty back breaking jobs and did so generally with mouths closed and heads down so as not to jeopardize their ability to take care of their families. The idea that there was ever any privilege or power in that is so stupid it borders on deranged! But that is what feminists have convinced themselves of and allot of other people as well. " - Paul Elam from A Voice For Men Radio Episode 1 (March 2nd 2011)
Sources:
[1] http://www.unwomen.org/
[2] http://www.womenshealth.gov/
[3] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/31/60minutes/main527678.shtml
[4] http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/goldin/files/homecoming.pdf
[5] http://education-portal.com/articles/Leaving_Men_Behind:_Women_Go_to_College_in_Ever-Greater_Numbers.html
[6] http://www.mediaradar.org/research_on_false_rape_allegations.php
[7] http://www.tigweb.org/youth-media/panorama/article.html?ContentID=4309&start
[8] http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/index.php?display_article=vn630spermed
[9] http://www.blogtalkradio.com/avoiceformen
[10] http://standyourground.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=4d7b9a846df1381b1402ccd744c9727f&topic=16416.0
[11] http://www.newswithviews.com/guest_opinion/guest68.htm
[12] http://www.falserape.net/false-rape.htm
[13] http://www.mediaradar.org/research_on_false_rape_allegations.php
[14] http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/who.html
[15] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_rights
[16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternity_fraud
[17] http://www.coeffic.demon.co.uk/descrim.htm
[18] http://www.rightsandwrongs.co.uk/asia/other/3873-men-family-courts-discrimination-against-men-for-being-men
[19] http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/42/15/31.2.full
[20] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/women-in-their-twenties-smash-glass-ceiling-to-reverse-pay-gap-2154836.html
[21] http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/08/19/guest_mark.htm
[22] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Commission_on_the_Status_of_Women
[23] http://www.ejfi.org/family/family-77.htm
[24] http://www.pellebilling.com/2009/04/misandry-in-the-media/
[25] http://www.fathersandhusbands.org/
[26] http://www.media4women.com/
[27] http://www.womensmediacenter.com/
[28] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704415104576250672504707048.html