tappedout

tappedout:

Egalitarians for real equality.: patriarchy

do-it-to-julia:

Just an article I wrote for the school paper about the concept of patriarchy. This issue is our gender-themed issue so I got kind of excited.

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My sociology textbook defines patriarchy as “a place…

In response, I’d like to retroactively add a caveat to my previous writing. And that is that i barely and rarely consider myself a feminist, and when I feel the most like I am it is as a result of there being no better choice in terms of fighting for equality. Now, I’ve seen, and I’ve heard, and I’ve been on your side before, so don’t try and tell me to “get off [my] high horse,” or that “[my] labels are fucking stupid,” because they aren’t mine, I didn’t come up with them, I just use them because that’s all we have. I’m not one to come up with new, convoluted ways to refer to something that already has a name. Once again, i think that’s just another ridiculous reason to disregard a perfectly valid political movement.

First off, your first point fails to derail mine, and this is how: as I said before; it necessarily follows that a culture that supports certain human characteristics and then attributes those characteristics to a single gender, class, or race IS catering to that gender, class or race. There is no question about it. Now, the debate comes in deciding whether this culture is an example of that phenomenon. You can argue all you want about whether or not men constitute that gender or not. Personally, I believe “patriarchal” values do indeed offer quite a few positive stereotypes about women, but not, i believe, ones that will allow women to do the most good in the world. Even the interpretation of a feminist woman from that viewpoint is not a positive one. 

Another misconception that you seem to hold is that feminists are exclusively feminist. That, I’m afraid, is not overwhelmingly true. I’m sure that the powerful feminists, the ones that form lobbies, hold rallies, or gain money through this political movement, much like all individuals that gain money and power through a political movement, are the most extreme and purist of us all. As far as actual feminists that I’ve met personally, though, the calloused man-hating persona is not at all present. Rather, an honest character with a sincere frustration for the exclusivity of masculinity shines through. 

As for your point about evolution…you had none. You basically just repeated my point back at me in different words, besides that part at the end where you accused me of not acknowledging history as a historical fact ( a history, I will have you recall, that i throughly encapsulated, hence, acknowledging it) and wrote:

We’re recognizing that history is not an overall picture of oppressed women simply because of patriarchal gender roles, but rather a system of living that needed to be used in a less technologically advanced world. 

Which is a sentence that I can only assume would be simplified thusly:

History is not completely a picture of women oppressed exclusively as a result of “patriarchal gender roles”, but, instead, a needed social construct in a world lacking technology. 

The only thing I can say to that is that history is neither a picture, nor a “system of living,” but a culmination of all past events. I can only assume that the personal belief you were attempting to convey went more like this:

Women weren’t always oppressed only as a direct result of the patriarchy, they were also oppressed because they needed to be “back then.”

And I’m afraid I cannot fully understand or back up that point, as it is so clearly false, my mind simply rejects it. 

Also: to clarify a most basic political tenant to you before we move on: you seem to be under the impression that feminists are not helping women because they are drawing attention to women’s “oppression,” and are therefore, and here’s where I lose you, creating oppressed women? You do remember what society we live in, right? You do realize that without first establishing the fact that women’s rights is still an issue, the basis of their argument, if you will, that people like you will fail to understand their claims? By drawing women’s attention to gender stereotypes and political hurdles, feminists are not creating oppressed women, they’re creating informed women. Women who will, hopefully, keep laws like Virginia’s forced ultrasound decision from spreading throughout the nation. 

Since my last response was merely a rebuttal on the part of the feminist agenda in order to correct misconceptions, I’ll try to be clearer on my own point of view on the subject.

Personally, I feel as if the masculinity-worshiping affects all of us. Somewhere along back in time, some insecure men must have felt the need to inflict a view of masculinity on the entirety of the male population, and in so doing have inflicted it on all of us. I feel as if all submissive people are equally affected, no matter their gender, in regards to this. Our society is equally hateful towards submissive, non-stereotypical men, as it is towards women in general. The dr. pepper ad is a great, recent example of this. Clearly, if you are not a man (and in this society, despite lots of backlash, that means you must have a penis)  then you’re out of the club, and you’re only a man if you also dress in camo, drive through the jungle in an off-road vehicle, and drink manly things (or at least, if you like watching movies about these sorts of things). 

So yes, I see your point about submissive men, and I understand your consternation, but at the same time women count for 51% of the population, submissive men do not. There is reason to fight for women, just as there is reason to fight for men who dislike how the interplay between their personalities and their gender has affected their lives in the social realm. Feminism, as you can see, has gathered steam and power despite it’s unpopularity ensconced in a mostly conservative america, and men that feel that both viewpoints are lacking will form (and have formed) a new group to fight for them similarly. 

And I know I won’t change your mind about feminism, because hell, you’ve already dedicated a blog to hating it bald-facedly, but my original intention was to express my frustration on the part of feminism at the seemingly unending stream of “logical” explanations as to why women’s rights aren’t an issue. How women’s objectification and characterization is simply a product of innate drives on the part of humans as a whole, when, as modern citizens of this globe, we know clearly that it is not.

And I will say that yes, I do believe that this society, “patriarchal” or not, does cater to men: heterosexual men. Otherwise you’d see just as many scantily clad men in movies as you see women, women in ads would cheat on and lie to their spouses just as often as men in ads do, hell, women would be the first chosen to speak in politics on the polemic of abortion legality in the united states, instead of their bigoted fathers, husbands and brothers. And on the other side, if this society did not cater so openly and completely to heterosexual men, and unequivocally mistrust, undermine, and even hate women and all that is considered feminine, it wouldn’t invoke mockery for a man to wear a skirt or a dress, to like to shop, to be submissive.

But at the same time as I believe all that, and wish that somehow the human race could exist without creating some sort of social construct that puts one demographic ahead of another, my grasp of human history leaves me little doubt that we will all be sincerely underwhelmed. This is why I so emphatically insist on feminism’s being an experiment, on it’s importance as a political movement to teach and inform the human race of the nature of society, rather than to provide a complete and irreprochable projection of the ideal society.  

( I know, I know, TL;DR…amirite? I literally spent 2 hours writing this…and there are still grammar mistakes…)