Are you a threat to the Patriarchy?

I never post on here as everyone always seems so much more knowledgeable than me. However, yes I hope I am a threat. I have always held feminist view points and always been vocal about them.
I am a LP raising my son a feminist, earn my own living and have never relied on a man for anything. I choose to remain single as I prefer it and couldn't care less that others think my life choice as strange. Many of my married friends express their envy of my independence.

Since ds started school last year he'll often come home trotting out sexist viewpoints he's heard at school and every day I'll have to explain that no there's no such thing as girls/ boys activities etc, just activities that anyone can do. So yes, I challenge the everyday sexism he is exposed to. It's an uphill battle for sure but one that I am more than prepared to fight.
I also challenge sexist comments from adults wherever I encounter them.
I am grateful my own father who is almost 70 has always believed in equalism as I like to call it. Always did his share of childcare/housework and fought to be at my birth in the early 70's.
Feel like I'm rambling now but my point is, yes I like to believe I am a threat by choosing how I live my life and refusing to accept the limitations society would like to place on me.

Interesting cailin. I hope so.

Hard to judge, of course, when your back is firmly turned .

I hope so. I do my best whenever I can, in little everyday things.

But you know, even before I understood anything about feminism and the patriarchy I was seen as "scary". It always made me think of that quote about being called a feminist whenever you did or say anything that distinguishes you from a doormat.

But doesn't the fact that you have to ignore it and plough your own furrow mean that you are in fact a threat? What I mean is, by ignoring it, you are threatening it because a big part of patriarchy is controlling women and dictating to them. You are fighting against that.

Fideline, I'm not sure it's possible to ignore patriarchy, is it? (happy to be corrected here). What I mean is, if you live in a patriarchal society then in order to participate in society you can't really ignore it - what do you think?

Well, I mean in the sense that if one is reacting against it, one is still being dictated to by it.

I increasingly try to ignore it and plough my own furrow/ dictate my own terms/ insert similar cliche.

Maybe I am just depressed by the seeming lack of progress in more than two decades of adulthood, in terms of things like the pornification of culture, the pinkification of small girls etc.

Fideline, I'm not sure it's possible to ignore patriarchy, is it? (happy to be corrected here). What I mean is, if you live in a patriarchal society then in order to participate in society you can't really ignore it - what do you think?

Yes, I am a threat to patriarchy. As is everyone else on this thread. I am so surprised people have said no. Simply by being aware of patriarchy you are a threat. One comment challenged is a threat. One woman supported, one situation made slightly less shitty for a woman, is a threat. There is no need for placards and marches. What we need is a 50% of the population realising they're worth something. And that's done with a smile, a hand up, an acknowledgement of achievement and suffering, simple eye contact that tells the "good girl" that it's ok for her to speak up, that you're on her side. I am a threat because I love the women in my life and I will back them up come hell or high water.

I think I'd rather ignore the patriarchy then threaten it.

I think I might be a little, in the same way as AmberTheCat. I was told by my line manager at work recently that they would like DH to go back to working full time, and me to fit my working hours around him, instead of our current arrangement where we both work part time, and share everything equally.

You must be. The patriarchy isn't as strong as it once was and that's happened (surely?) because of people challenging the methods by which it's enforced. It's a slow evolution - and let's face it, that's always likely as it's new generations, really, where you grow new ideas rather than fundamentally changing the attitudes of individual people - and each one of us might feel so tiny in terms of our threat... Tinier still, when the real effects of that threat are enacted.

But it's you that did that. Take some credit!

Not a threat

a minor irritant, at most.

I do get the eye roll treatment quite a bit

I think I am, especially with colleagues the same levels I am. People tend to watch how they speak around me, and hopefully this carries over to other conversations. It's not much, but it might be a start?

I don't know, really. I'm not particularly activist, but the way I live my life could be seen as a threat to patriarchy (sharing work and childcare equally with my partner, earning more than he does, negotiating several different types of flexible working patterns to enable me to continue working at a relatively senior level while also bringing up children).

I'm not reticent about pointing out sexist language or behaviour when I see it, and am encouraging my daughters to notice and challenge this too.

No I am not strident aggressive or manhating. Though to be fair it is friends that I sometimes pick it up on. Gently and quietly. Just correcting an odd word or two from time to time. They take it fine.
Probably the situations in which I do it are not the same as other peoples'.

Oh, god, I do hope so. I have been an active feminist for more than 40 years, and I work for a charity in the US that focuses on social justice issues affecting primarily women and children. I have to go about it in a politic way, however, which increasingly is harder for me to do. The older I get the angrier I get.

Crotchmaven, I wouldn't be able to pay my mortgage because I wouldn't have a job. It's not that I encounter sexism directly from colleagues, but there is a visible glass ceiling and I do encounter some shocking sexist behaviour from external contacts where sometimes challenging the behaviour directly "would not make business sense". I can moan about it with colleagues and receive a sympathetic hearing, but the perpetrators do not hear the extent of my anger

I think they would just switch off

I can only change things from the inside so I definitely want to stay on the inside. But I notice that women are speaking up more. And that's really good.

I suppose I think I could spend my entire working life identifying for my male colleagues the depths of misogyny in the world. They think everything is fine and there are just fewer women in my world than men because we, oh, like being at home or aren't quite as clever as them or something. I could spend my life helping them see the world I live in and I would get shut down. So I don't - I restrict my interventions to moments of egregious misunderstanding or misrepresentation.

I get a good hearing though, interestingly, from my colleague who is of a different ethnicity to me and whose ethnicity happens to be particularly "undesirable". I won't say exactly where he's from but it goes along with lots of stereotypes. He "gets it" with regard to women much more than the others. He was brought up in the UK in a very establishment environment and he knows what it is to be "other". He knows he's never going to be the alpha male so he's free to think and to listen.

setting how do you find that goes..."confront and debate" ?

more often than not, it gets classed as strident, aggressive and manhating in my experience

perhaps that's just me

No. I confront and debate.
Threatening doesnt win anything.

I hope I am, in my own quiet way. I work for a women's organisation which seeks to change sexist attitudes, and is definitely a threat to patriarchy. In my personal life, I try to speak up about feminism and to challenge things which I think are sexist (and have definitely done some consciousness raising amongst my friends), and I am trying to bring my DC up to be aware of inequality and why it is wrong (I will do much more of this as they get older). I am still, sadly, and despite my work, wary sometimes of being as outspoken as I would like to be.

All these individual small acts of speaking out, of standing up for other women, of explaining why we think something is misogynistic and wrong, help in the struggle against patriarchy. Many people simply don't consider the issues (for example, surrounding prostitution), but agree with a staunch feminist viewpoint when they hear it.