do you believe in the patriarchy?

(just love the way she presents 'single mothers' and 'benefits' ((no such thing as a mother's allowance by the way)) as if they were totally synonymous re: all single mothers are on benefits. have we got to the bit about how it is undeniable apparently that two parent heterosexual families are better than any other kind?)

deja vu.

swallowed - I totally understand what you are saying and understand your frustrations. But it is posters like you, beach and nyac who have taught me so much. Some of us do listen and learn on here.

is she starting on single mothers again?

can someone please advise me to hide the thread. i don't think i can bear to hear someone claiming to be a feminist bashing single mothers YET again.

Agreed Hothead. And as someone else posted in FWR, radfeminism is much more a lesbian movement than a heterosexual one - so I always find that accusation bizarre

thank you vashti. it is frustrating and i simply do not have the energy or inclination to disseminate 3 years of hard acquired knowledge to people who don't even want to improve their understanding because all they're interested in is misusing something to back up their agenda. i don't care how arrogant that sounds.

i accept that someone who studied maths knows a hell of a lot more about maths than me and my googling some article about maths by someone with a social agenda to spin things to people who don't know better and then arguing with the mathematician would be ridiculous.

spinning what the mathematician who'd spent years studying maths said to try and make out he was saying something against the basics of maths and i knew better than him would be rude and utterly twattish frankly.

but anyway. back to the bullshit evo-psych garble and misquoting of posters to try and undermine the idea that there is a patriarchy and feminism has a real fight to fight. cos that's obviously very worthy stuff.

Him - I actually know single parents who say they think it is easier to be a single parent, but get jumped on if they dare to voice this.

Workers in China are oppressed by us. But for many factory workers working in factories is a much better choice than the alternative.

SAHM/Careers - This is only a contradiction if you think it should be the woman who stays at home. If we had true womens liberation, measures to recognise the value of bringing up children would advantage both sexes

No-one said oppression was a simple subject to understand, Himalaya. It spans off at different angles, and it's not until you lift the corner of the blanket of oppression, that you begin to see just how much you're being covered; With regards to women in China, they may not "feel" oppressed, but it doesn't mean they're not. It simply means, that for whatever reason, their oppression is not as clear to them.

In practice I just don't think the rationale of female oppression 'works' for many feminist issues in modern society, in that while it is clear there is a problem it is not clear who the oppressor is, or that the mechanism is oppression (= "exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner").

I am thinking of the recent breastfeeding thread, all the threads on WOHM/SAHM issues, single parenthood etc... but I am sure there are others.

e.g. People say it is oppressive/unjust that it is harder to be single parent than a couple. But you could equally say that it is oppressive that it is harder for one person to lift a heavy rock than for two people. It can be argued that society should provide support for single parents, which goes beyond legally enforcing the responsibility of the absent parent to support their child (and I would support that) but there are lots of different levels where that support could be pegged. There is no one level that is obviously the one that ?eliminates oppression? ? it is a question of balancing welfare with not creating perverse incentives that would mean that whatever contribution a father makes is taken out of a mothers allowance.

Similarly with all the career vs SAHMotherhood stuff. People say it is oppressive that society does not recognized the contribution that parents make in bringing up the next generation. But in practice while you can give support to parents whatever policies that you choose will tend to either make it relatively more attractive to be a SAHP or to go to work, relatively disadvantaging SAHMs or WOHMs. Policies that appear to be pro-women like longer maternity leave can end up disadvantaging them by setting couples (in nice non-oppressive relationships) into roles that it is hard to get out of without taking a big drop in family income. There isn?t an obvious non-oppressive solution. Which means maybe the problem isn?t oppression but something a bit more complex.

People say that factory workers in China are oppressed by us rich consumers in the west, but if you ask young women factory workers in China how they feel they are mainly excited by the opportunity to leave the village, and earn money. There are things that they want but it is not for us to ?stop oppressing them? .

These kinds of discussions about women?s economic position don?t fit well into the ?oppression? framework of patriarchy, but they are I think are still important.

It's interesting that some people continually discuss a poster, even when she isn't actively discussing the thread. A bit dehumanising, isn't it?

I definitely believe in the patriarchy. Just because you, personally, don't feel oppressed by a concept, doesn't mean it isn't routinely oppressing the majority of people affected by the system.

I am at a loss as to understand what is contentious here. There is an argument that there is a social, political and economic inequality of women and men. Evidence would be a. social valuing of men's roles b. most people in positions of political power and influence are men and c. most poor people are female. This would then be called a patriarchy.

There are also other systems of oppression. Some people are oppressed by more than one system and some some people belong to groups that systemically oppress more than one other group. If you belong to a group that is oppressed by more than one system, your experiences are not going to be simply a cominantion of the two systems, but will form a new type of oppression.

The argument then would be can we understand that intersection purely by considering it and without understanding the two general systems of oppression as well. I would say no. If somebody is, for example, disabled and a woman, they will experience social, economic and physical barriers to space. While that experience is unique, it also draws on a set of ideas about disability and a separate set of ideas about women - how they are responsible for avoiding crime so shouldn't be in certain places at certain times without a chaperone etc. To try and explain that intersection without also looking at a broader understanding of the patriarchal system is to create a whole load of extra work for the people trying to make sense of that intersection and to ignore the intersection is to diminish our understanding of the patriarchy as a whole, and the oppression of disabled people as a whole.

The concepts of patriarchy and intersectionality are not mutually exclusive ideas.

As for all the stuff about people mentioning their degrees, I think that is valid in a situation where there have been numerous threads over a very long time period where people speculate on social - environmental interactions and the relationship between the two concepts as if we are all sitting around in some kind of Geography undergraduate seminar, but they phrase those speculations as if they are some kind of undisputed fact that has the weight of the majority of the scientific community behind it. To dispute it by pointing out very basic facts just leads into a huge derailment of every thread it rears its head on. People have been pushed into saying 'I have a degree in X' because the suggestion is that by not talking about some tangential society/nature debate they are ignorant of the topic.

why are you singling out a poster who isn't even here ES? it's incredibly rude.

no one has ever denied women are oppressed in other ways than by gender. what is argued though is that whatever other groups they are a part of that are oppressed they will always find themselves worse off than the men in that group.

so feminism is relevant to every woman regardless of other groups she belongs to.

Ooh, here's quite a good definition of patriarchy.

gray.intrasun.tcnj.edu/Coming%20of%20Age/a_basic_definition_of_patriarchy.htm

Patriarchal social structures are:

1.  Male dominated<span class="line-through">which doesn't mean that all men are powerful or all women are powerless</span>only that the most powerful roles in most sectors of society are held predominantly by men, and the least powerful roles are held predominantly by women

2.  Organized around an obsession with control, with men elevated in the social structure because of their presumed ability to exert control (whether rationally or through violence or the threat of violence) and women devalued for their supposed lack of control--women are assumed to need men's supervision, protection, or control

3.  Male identified:  aspects of society and personal attributes that are highly valued are associated with men, while devalued attributes and social activities are associated with women.  There is a sense of threat to the social structure of patriarchies when these gendered associations are destabilized--and the response in patriarchy is to increase the level of control, often by exerting control over women (as well as groups who are devalued by virtue of race, ethnicity, sexuality, or class). 

4.  Male centered:  It is taken for granted that the center of attention is the natural place for men and boys, and that women should occupy the margins.  Public attention is focused on men.  (To test this, take a look at any daily newspaper; what do you find on the front page about men?  about women?)

Based on Johnson's book 'The Gender Knot'. Which I haven't read, although I might now. Has anybody else read it?

Hothead - certainly more more money and status then being a Chicana femininst for example.

To clarify, I don't think patriarchy is lie, it's just not the full picture (and yes,I'll agree with Hmm, that it sometimes distorts the true pciture of inequality), nor the totality of what we need to fight against.

If it were all about patriarchy, then we'd all be equal amongst ourselves as women, but we're not, as the pulling out of academic qualifications upthread made all too clear...

I only came across womanism today, not heard of it before.

EBL - Woman's movement =/= rad fems. Also, if you look into Womanism, you'll have an insight into why for some women of colour, they found feminsim lacking. As I said upthread, there are critques out there, of all schools of feminism and it's worth looking into.

Dittany having left was mentioned on another thread... Wishing she was back and there was a massive flounce thread. Oh well, obviously she's just name changed and no one realised.

EatsBrainsAndLeaves Mon 11-Jun-12 14:21:07
bejeezus - dittany is nyac

Oh really...????!!! I thought that was the worst kept secret on MN.

I'm very much with GothAnneGeddes on the whole thing, and thats why I think patriarchy is a big lie. It fails to recognise problems and its used to distort inequalities in other areas. I do think rad feminism as a movement has a vested interest in promoting it, rather than looking at things in more detail.

EBL, I was not mentioning kyriarchy in relation to what about men... I was mentioning it in relation to other factors oppress women apart from men on the basis of sex...