Do you ever think we should just embrace the patriarchy?

[TERFCat]

The videos of the medical students being told they can't continue their studies because they're women has broken my heart. Hundreds of innocent women having their dreams shattered, and for what? So that men can control us?!?

What I've taken from this, and the events of the past decade, is that our rights are fragile. Men will take every opportunity to claw them back. If there was a referendum in the Uk tomorrow to remove our freedoms, I'm sure over half of men would vote yes.

With this in mind, would it not be better for us to just embrace the patriarchy? It doesn't feel like we'll ever win the fight against it, so why don't we try to work with it?

Looking for a discussion on this.

No thank you.

So if you can't beat em join em?

No thank you indeed.

No thank you from me too.

But, let's go with it for a moment. What would embracing patriarchy look like? What would our lives be like - presumably at home a lot, dependent financially on any male partner. What if we were lesbian..or single...?

No. There are some hills we die on. This would be that hill for me if it came to it. I've had a life but there are so many young women coming behind us. We need to find a way to let them know that we are on their side and that we remember being young and how complicated it was navigating patriarchy. We need them to trust that we have their best interests at heart, just as people like JKR do.

I have daughters. I have sisters. I have friends who are women. There are women worldwide suffering under the patriarchy.

No.

In my lifetime I've had a good education, travelled freely, owned a business, played sport, owned property, had complete freedom around my relationships and having children, dressed however I've wanted, socialised wherever I've wanted.

Why oh why would I want to give that up, or not want other women to have that?

I don't want to embrace the patriarchy. I wish that all women were free to make their own choices, but they're not.

For those young women in Afghanistan, don't you think that embracing the patriarchy might be their best, and likely only, option? I don't think they'll get to continue at medical school, no matter how much they fight it sadly. They've got hard lives ahead no matter what, but accepting the patriarchy might make their situation easier at least?

Absolutely not, no. But since you asked for a discussion, I will add that I have learned - from painful experience - to pick my battles with care, specifically in professional life where I have been on the wrong side of the patriarchy so many times that it has cost me hard-won power. At work at least, I now try to play a long game so I don't take too many knocks for the sake of small victories. Sounds dramatic but really isn't.

Updating to add that Afghanistan is obviously a completely different context from the UK, but I strongly believe that all suppression of women is related.

There's a big difference between making what life you can in the awful limiting circumstances you find yourself in, and embracing it. Surely.

It's nothing to do with us. They must be left to sort themselves out.

Absolutely not, not least because reducing women's presence and input in society reduces societies as a whole. Women's contributions are important.

I could embrace the patriarchy if I thought it would be beneficial to me or my children.

But it's not.🤷‍♀️

No. If you give an inch they take a mile.

No. It doesn't work for women. Patriarchy doesn't just mean retreat into domesticity. It means no money, no power, no rights. So when whatever man is responsible for you wants sex, you put out or you get raped. And when he decides he's not that into you any more, that's you out on the street. Or relegated to wife 2, 3, whatever. Or an "accident" no one cares enough to investigate. If you are lucky, he honours his marriage commitment. If you are really lucky, you die first. If he dies first then hope to god you have a son or brother prepared to take you in.

Well they will, reluctantly, because they have no choice. And they will be miserable which is exactly what those Taliban fuckers want.

You can always tell how weak minded and cowardly men are because it’s in direct proportion to how much power they concede to women.

Strong men with integrity and a strong sense of self will empower women because they’re not afraid of any perceived threat.

Taliban cunts, on the contrary, and all the patriarchal macho men, rapists and wife beaters can’t relinquish any tiny drop of their power to women because it would hurt their fragile man-child egos too much.

The sooner the world (women and good men) call this out for what it is - pathetic ego-driven weakness - the sooner men might aspire to something higher. But it’s going to take generations. In the meantime we need to be role modelling feminism everywhere, choosing our partners carefully and raising our children to strive for gender equality.

No.
It'd be better if more men properly embraced equality and the rights of women.

What exactly are you saying here? That they should just give in? I completely realise that most will not want to step above the parapet and risk arrest, beatings, or even their lives. But are you saying they should "embrace" what is happening to them? How on earth could a thinking, feeling person do such a thing?

Nope.

Fuck. That.

Should the women in Afghanistan embrace the patriarchy?

I wouldn't say so, no.

Of course they have to exist in the place they are, if they can't leave. Unless something changes politically, I imagine most of them will look for some other life path besides medical school, and that may be the right thing for them to do where they are. Rather than bashing their heads against a wall. Plus, most people have to survive, they don't have the luxury of spending a lot of time just fighting for what they want, even if that thing should be their right.

I really don't see that that as "embracing the patriarchy" though.

No. I don't think that.

Why on earth should they embrace their oppression and their oppressors???

Who is going to have an easy life choosing that? They certainly won't. They're going to be silent slaves, breeding stock and nothing more.

They should resist with their dying breaths, as should we all, whenever patriarchy tries to take our rights and freedoms away. It can happen to us, as it has happened to other women in other countries.

What exactly would ‘embracing the patriarchy’ involve? Because I don’t believe there’s any difference between forced submission and embrace for the female medical students of Afghanistan over the Taliban. Or are you suggesting western women hand back our votes, equal rights, rescind equal pay and rape legislation, maybe stop learning to read and write?

I just don’t understand the point of your post. I also don’t think “embrace the patriarchy” is an appropriate phrase to describe a hypothetical choice for women and girls in Afghanistan.

I don't want what I'm suggesting. I just think it's becoming a more and more appealing option to me.

I've been following women's rights for about a decade. Honestly, in that time, I've seen little progress because everytime we achieve something, something else seems to be taken away from us. I mean, people cheered as a man punched a woman in the face this summer at the Olympics FFS!

It's starting to feel like we'll never win this war, and even if we did, we'd constantly have to protect our win against misogynists. This reality gets me down. The fight gets me stressed.

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.