What’s to be done about the patriarchy?

[Jazzicatz]

Hello all, as a revolutionary feminist I am really interested in how we as feminists should enact change to overthrow our oppressors. I have read a lot of Lenin on what is to be done about class struggle. Do you think we could ever overthrow patriarchy and if so, how?

Hi, daily lurker, very occasional poster here.

I've been thinking about this A LOT for some time now.

I'm very interested in the 4B movement and it's occured to me that women could end patriarchy by simply... stepping aside from it. Not every revolution / change of the guard is violent, and in fact, the most successful revolutions are non violent and are more likely to have non violent outcomes (Erica Chenoweth - great Ted talk on this).

Now that we can enter professions, earn money, have our own bank accounts, own property and have the same legal recognition as men, I think it's possible.

The one thing that would hold us back from ending patriarchy though is our fertility. Because when we are pregnant, give birth, and are postpartum, we are at our most vulnerable physically, emotionally, and financially. If we can avoid this vulnerability then we could end patriarchy.

If women refused to marry men and refused to bear their children then we don't enter that vulnerability.

Women who want children could cohabit with women friends. We could find other women who we like enough to live with and have our children in households headed by women. We could support each other and may even provide better support than many men currently do for many women.

Now, this only works if pregnancy is achieved via sperm donation banks, and this brings me to the biggest flaw in my theory.

The most vulnerable aspect for women is our fertility. We are vulnerable when we give birth, and we are vulnerable because we care so much for the welfare of our children. This can be used as leverage to get women to stay in bad relationships, in family courts, in divorce.

An extremely radical idea would be this. What if the law were changed so that men had absolutely no legal rights to any of their offspring? Then women could arrange their affairs with children to not be beholden to men. I think the flipside of this would have to be that men have no financial responsibility for their offspring either.

If men had on legal rights to their offspring they'd have to be pretty damn careful who they impregnated. Don't choose a woman who might not want much more to do with you sir, you may never see her again.

Okay, these thoughts are milling about and have been in my head for some time. The 4B movement I think started this and is very interesting, as those women are living their lives and can continue to do so without reference to men in a way women have not been able to do for... ever? It gives me a glimpse of how it could be to end patriarchy by stepping away from it.

I’ve also been thinking about this a lot too and have decided to decenter men as much as possible.

I am mindful to seek out women’s content (podcasts, books, YouTube) over men’s. Other than that I have started women’s-only WhatsApp groups for my hobbies. I would like to only deal with women-founded businesses so I really need to find a lady handyman!

I aim to not deal with men unless I absolutely have to for work.

I'm also very single with a capital S.

There’s a story about a troop of baboons (garbage dump troop, if anyone wants to google) with particularly aggressive males, who all feasted from a rubbish tip, not allowing the females and the lesser males to join them.

They got food poisoning and died, leaving a very peaceful and more matriarchal troop of baboons, which remained peaceful for many years.

Perhaps something like this could be arranged for human males? (Half joking)

Have all women short lists to get women into powerful positions where they can activate change
Free childcare
Flexible working
Ban violent and degrading porn
Six months compulsory paternal leave
Socialise boys to be responsible, respectful and considerate human beings
Eliminate the objectification of women in the media
Fine organisations who don't have equal pay or gender parity
Have better trained police and police on the beat to deal with sexual harassment and ensure women's safety
On the spot fines for sexual harassment
Swift justice and long sentencing for VAWAG
Teach girls to expect respect

I lived in a commune with two other women (and a bloke) when my kids were younger (none of the other women had kids or was ever going to have kids.
I found the other women very oppressive, much more so than the man.
Its difficult for adults to put children first in the way a parent does if they are not the parents.
I think 'the patriarchy' for want of a better term is as much in our minds, men and women and Im not sure how we will ever get out of it, not that we should not try.
I think ending neoliberal capitalism could go a long way in ending oppressive norms in society as a start.

I dont think the left will ever end the oppression of women on its own though.

The left struggles against rules as they are seen as oppressive so the left will always refuse to accept limits on male sexuality and realistically, liberation and even safety for women will only come when men accept limits on their sexuality.

If women refused to marry men and refused to bear their children then we don't enter that vulnerability.

The vast majority of women wouldn't do that though, as they want to have children and don't want to stay single for their whole lives.

Is the 4B movement the Korean women's movement?
Could you elaborate on it at all?

Women need to build alternative structures that don't disadvantage other women. There's more to this than 'just hire women'; it involves a deliberate change in attitude, and consciousness raising.
I've said this elsewhere; women are not encouraged to mature, and we also need to learn to disagree without rancour.

yes, it originated in South Korea because the misogyny and sexual harassment / assault there is so rife and awful

4B is the eschewing of the following 4 things which all start with a "B" sound in Korean language:

1. No dating men
2. No marriage to men
3. No bearing children
4. No having sex with men

As South Korean women can now be educated, have jobs, buy their own property, they no longer need to marry men to ensure their survival. As South Korean men drenched in violent online porn are increasingly horrible to women, the women have had enough.

The other interesting thing about the 4B movement is it's able to spread because of the internet. Prior to the internet women had small real life groups, mostly centered around their children. Now, we can all join together in places like this and discuss what's happening in our lives. And when we do that, we learn of the commonality of our experiences with men.

Women could still do it, but only via using donated sperm from a sperm bank. Otherwise, you end up tied to a man for 18+ years.

Women could still have children and do so either alone or preferably with other women. Living together as friends, supporting each other.

I often wonder why more women don't do that. It's really hard as a single person to buy property in much of the world now, why do women not make good friends they'd be happy to live with and buy property together?

So, end the patriarchy and replace it with…a matriarchy? As a woman, I’ve had my fair share of oppression, but I’m not sure how going from one extreme to the other will help. Plus the legal changes you’ve mentioned will never happen, and in fairness, why should they? We’d be aghast at men for petitioning or even entertaining the blanket removal of all of our rights in a particular area. Its balance we need, not bouncing from extreme to extreme.

This has always boggled my mind why more women don't live together share households children ect seems such a obvious win win.

All of the above reflections represent the exact same process many older women have already been through. It seems pertinent that 'feminism' is still saying the same sorts of things....and that nothing much seems to have changed.

I've come to the conclusion that once we've gone beyond equal civil rights in law ( which, in the West, we now have) most everything else comes down to differences in culture, personality, choice and so on - and are based on individual circumstances.

There are two sexes. Women are the sex that become pregnant and give birth - and as a consequence tend to have most direct involvement with small children and babies. I cannot see this changing anytime soon. Personally not keen at all on transhmanist visions of the future in which babies are incubated in factories and brought up entirely by the state.

Males tend to be bigger and stronger.....this is why we have sex segregated sports - so that women and girls can have a more equal playing field in which to excel and be the best of their sex.

Such biological realities do to some extent determine our potentials and our options. The job of good government is to create as level a playing field as possible, whilst accommodating differences as much as is practicable.

why should those legal changes be considered? to allow women to have full independent control of the lives

when men have legal control of their offspring they can restrict the movement of women and have continued ongoing access to women, for abusive relationships that means no real exit for women until children reach the age of 18

I agree, it's a radical idea and I agree that men would not stand for it, in fact, the mere mention of it would have a great many men and women vehemently opposing it

I mean it more as a thought experiment tbh, in the way that if women were to really just step away from patriarchy it would only work if all births were the result of sperm bank donations, or if men no longer had access to controlling women through legal control of the children we bear

we can't just step away from the patriarchy if we bear children with men and the men know those children are theirs, because then we are tied to those men for 18 years

That's an inherently negative and rather depressing view of men and the potential of male female relationships - granted, though, it is obviously the experience of some women.

It might seem rather philosophical, but none of us are really independent: we all exist in a web of inter-related need.

I don't associate only men with the patriarchy. Patriarchy to me is a system composed of structural inequality that would still exist even if women lived in female only communes. It's like thinking having an allotment means you no longer live in a capitalist society.

The only way to overthrow patriarchy, in my opinion, is to have equality of the sexes. That means manifesting socioeconomic changes that bring about structural change.

People have tried that. I did that as a young single parent; but inevitably there comes a desire, certainly in male/female relationships to create a family and set up some kind of home and family unit. You could still do that within the context of a larger community, though. Such communities do exist.

You can never have true equality ( which is purely conceptual and idealistic) whilst we exist in a human bodily form.

I honestly think we've come pretty much as far as we can, in the West, when it comes to 'equality'. Even in countries with fantastic, cheap state provided childcare ( such as Denmark) - women, generally, tend still to make different choices to men.

Women defer to men because men become violent if we don't.

Would it be all women co-operating and being supportive or would you end up with an alpha female being as dominating as any man? I've lived with a small group of women and yes there are advantages but to be honest that was after divorce and when I remarried it was great living with someone I loved rather than people I generally got on with. However supportive the other women were they were never as committed to my children as their father was.

Of course not all men make good fathers but then I don't suppose all women make good housemates.

Well I don't defer to the men in my life, DH and sons, and they have never been violent.

It is great that we can make choices if we want to? I always worked when my children were young, my choice, I have friends who chose not to work outside the home, their choice. I don't like the idea of being told what to do, you can't date men, you can't have sex with men, you can only have children with a sperm donor. None of those would be my choice and living in a commune would be my idea of hell.

That's a very sad inditement and I don't believe equality is impossible to achieve. Equality doesn't mean that we all act the same and make the same choices, equality means we've moved beyond the structural oppression of the patriarchy.

@Iwasafool Its great that the men you know are safe but this thread isn't about your household, its about a structural problem.

Google 'women killed for saying 'no'. Look at the Tickle vs Giggle case in Australia - women are no longer able to meet without a man being present and lesbian groups that exclude men are now unlawful.