Do you ever think we should just embrace the patriarchy?

As PP have said, Hell No!

What would it even mean for a middle aged, single, childless woman like me to embrace the patriarchy; what would my life be like?

Rather than bending over backwards it would be better to move to the other extreme and fight. Not agitate and then wait for some fair minded men to throw us some equality crumbs, set up a standing Womans Army and take what should be ours. Of course we'd need our own parallel technology, with equipment designed for us (maybe we can revive some witchy crafts - goes in search of frog spawn...)

But more seriously I think this is what the Afghan women will have to do, take up arms, if they want their freedoms. Their men aren't going to do it for them. I understand suicide rates are very high amongst the women, they should direct that strength, anger and frustration at the Taliban.

I find the OP’s use of Afghanistan as an example here in really bad taste. I’m wondering if it’s a sick joke?

Hear, hear, @flyingbuttress43.

I treated TERFCat's post like a bad joke at first or a men's rights activist's attempt to provoke. When I realised she is apparently serious I got angry.

OP you can be a 1950's throwback if you want because you fancy an easy life of submission. But engage brain for a moment. If all us second wavers had folded up our camp chairs and crept back into our beds and pulled the covers over our heads where would life and your options be? I'm asking as someone who spent the 60s and 70s fighting for the things you can now take for granted.

You might say you were posing a hypothetical argument for the sake only of discussion, but think what the implication of that is i.e. the fact that you could semi-seriously even pose that question is a gift to the still lurking neanderthal mindset of those who believe in the superior attributes of the male sex and the intrinsic lesser value of females.

If you feel like giving up fine. You do you. But don't be surprised if your passivity bites you on the arse if you find a bloke who agrees with you.

I think the sense of hopelessness that you describe in your OP is how come we ended up with cool girl libfem in the 90s. Basically polishing a turd. Mental gymnastics of 'reclaiming' and 'subverting' the status quo ultimately fuelled by the realisation of the enormity of real social change.

Clearly we shouldn’t have bothered our pretty little heads.

I imagine most Afghani women do “embrace the patriarchy” as it’s that or die. We’re in a different place thank God, and if the genders wars have taught anything, it’s don’t cede ground/your rights, or men will trample all over you. In the words of that old banner “Don’t cry, resist!”.

ah got it. We 2nd wavers were wasting our time then 🙄

If you think we should embrace the patriarchy: fuck no

If you think the girls and women in Afghanistan have any other option than to "embrace the patriarchy" - WTF?

What is being forced upon women in Afghanistan is complete disenfranchisement, invisibility, economic dependency, physical and economic abuse, child marriage, child rape, early pregnancy, inadequate or no healthcare. I won't say a life not worth living, because where there is life, there is hope and humans have a wonderful capacity to find solace in the little things around them. But certainly a life curtailed, controlled and full of darkness.

It isn't all men vs women either. Harming women harms men and children too. Many men will be suffering from seeing the lives and rights of the women they love curtailed and made subject to arbitrary interventions by cruel and brutal authorities, and children (both boys and girls) will suffer because their mothers are not able to be equal, effective and empowered parents to them. The atmosphere of brutality and arbitrary discrimination harms everyone.

It is awful that what we can do is so limited, but we need to stand up against the misogyny and inequalities we see around us and say "This is not ok", loud and clear. Not only about the big stuff but also the little stuff.

How? Going along with means dying in childbirth, not being able to access health care? They're fighting for themselves and their children.

The power behind the throne. 🙄

I had a university friend who thought women secretly ruled the world, despite all the evidence that they are hated and mistreated (I think the Jews might want a word with him).

I heard he 'transitioned'.

Honestly, I am quite jealous of the women I personally know who live for their husbands. Their lives seem easier than mine, and they don't have never ending battles on their hands.

The problem is that you can’t pick and choose which bits to give up. I can well imagine some women would enjoy being a housewife and that’s fine if everyone is in agreement- that isn’t embracing the patriarchy, it’s an exercise of choice (and wealth).

Your friends who live for their husbands would presumably enjoy it less if they couldn’t own property, or had no rights to leave or (having left) to see their children, or to say no to sex- all things women have had to fight for and which we shouldn’t give up in exchange for an idealised notion of playing house.

I hear you.
[Hug]

@theilltemperedqueenofspacetime
Difference with me is that I don't believe patriarchy is the natural order.
I believe it was imposed on women a few thousand years ago - a long time, but not long in relation to how long homo sapiens has been on the planet. It's fundamentally unnatural.
Adult men benefit from it, but I also believe that a not insignificant majority want to be rescued from it, or at least from its excesses. Probably my own self delusion, but I'm holding on to it!

What the hell does "work with it" mean? Abandon our own hopes and aspirations to be the sidekick to a man? Return to being baby vessels with zero control over our fertility?

FUCK - and I cannot say this strongly enough - THAT

No way

Great post.

The anti-suffragists were all about being the power behind the throne, or exerting influence on the background, weren't they? Middle and upper class women who thought suffragettes and their supporters were trying to throw away the only power women could have, in pursuit of a chimera.

Also interesting attitude: I don't want/need these rights, therefore other women can't have them. Sounds very familiar!

I had already started writing my post when I went back and read yours, theilltemperedqueenofspacetime [great name!] so any similarities are unintentional but good

It's not a winnable war, it's a constant, gruelling, asymmetrical battle. There is no 'victory' - what would that even look like? Unfortunately, experience tells me that there also is no certain progress: achievement that I thought were 100% copper-fastened have been taken away in the past decade.

I never thought women would have our protection under equality legislation removed. I never thought misogyny would be cool, bro. I never though groups of men would organise online around explicit and murderous hatred of women.
I never thought the very word for our identity, woman, would be stolen.
I never thought that lesbians would be targeted not only by 'corrective rape' and murder, but also by exclusion from the groups that are supposed to be fighting for our rights.

On the other hand, I was not surprised that it was so easy to assemble a random group of blokes next door, fathers of families, good husbands, ordinary guys etc to rape an unconscious women - all the evils I have seen perpetrated against me and other women have been the acts of some 'ordinary guy'.

My strategy in the asymmetrical battle has been wariness, distance and avoidance. I have as little to do with men as is possible. My attitude is wary but polite and even amiable to men who have not given me reason to behave otherwise - but that's not the same as trust. I know from experience that while not all men are abusive, any man may be - home angel, street devil or vice versa.

Maintaining the maximum possible level of independence from men is exhausting, and I understand that aspect of the OP's post. But the opposite, 'embracing the patriarchy', would probably be equally exhausting but - statistics suggest - more dangerous.

"If there was a referendum in the Uk tomorrow to remove our freedoms, I'm sure over half of men would vote yes."

An unpredictable number of women would, too. There are plenty of women championing the removal of women's safe spaces, including some senior female politicians who are not only highly educated university graduates but whose constituencies are at least 50% female.

During the suffrage movement there was also an anti suffrage sect led by women who actively campaigned against women getting the parliamentary vote. Some of them wrote articles and travelled all over the UK giving speeches on the subject in an attempt to prevent other women from voting.

The situation of Afghan women is horrific, utterly horrific.

But I do think that in certain, desperate situations I would ‘embrace the patriarchy’. I re-watched the first episode of ‘Lost’ last night and wandered up to bed thinking that, in those circumstances, I probably would attach myself to the most powerful, competent man in the group as that would give me the best possible chances of survival.

No one has a responsibility to speak out against their own interests.

Exactly.
It's one thing to be a trad wife if you can have your own bank account if you wanted it, or are allowed to divorce and will be allowed to see your kids if you do. Etc.

I get what you’re saying OP. One of my close friends worked in Afghanistan for years, building up women and girls, supporting their education, aiding the building of professional networks. At the bottom of a bottle of wine she’s now said she wishes she hadn’t, because she helped to give those women hope and dreams and made it so much worse when all that was ripped away again.

But no, I don’t agree, I think we have to keep fighting. The only “trad wives” I’ve come across who seem actually happy are those who actually have the financial freedom that it is a genuine choice. That’s not patriarchy, that’s an individual relationship choice. Patriarchy doesn’t come with choice.

Because of the structural sexism that ErrolTheDragon was talking about.
Obviously.

The fight against women's oppression is hard, and it will never end: its not a case of fix it once and it will stay fixed.

But we have no choice but to carry on, and the situation in Afghanistan illustrates why.

I believe that patriarchy is the natural state of society, because of our differing reproductive roles, and the accompanying differences of physical power and aggressiveness. There has never been a society in which women dominate, or even have parity, Afghanistan being the extreme example.

So we're engaged in a constant firefight to mitigate the excesses of patriarchy, and the patriarchy fights back all the time.

(I see this as analogous to the problem of capitalism. It may well be the least worst economic system there is, but we still have to rein it in all the time to stop it eating both the environment and all the humans that rely on it for essential goods and the means to pay for them.)

So, on the one hand, I've embraced the patriarchy, in that I think it's inescapable.

And on the other hand...

Never give up! Never surrender!