“patriarchy” in this context means something other than you think, I.e. it means a system that upholds gender roles that benefit a (majority male) ruler class, e.g. by encouraging worker class men to go to war for their benefit, worker class women to be caretakers, and so on.
The counterpart to this definition of “patriarchy” is a society with no stratified gender roles, not “matriarchy”.
This is exactly why its such a bad word to use to describe this, it automatically puts people on the defensive and needs to be explained to people that it doesn’t mean what the word means (rule of the fathers).
Everybody living in this world should be aware that words have context and don’t always literally mean what their parts mean. And even then “patriarchy” is one of the more literal ones: it comes from “pater”/father in the same vein as “paternalistic”, with the same connotation of overbearing-yet-out-of-touch.
So just from word meaning that clearly doesn’t mean all men, and obviously it also doesn’t refer to literal fathers either.
“patriarchy” in this context means something other than you think, I.e. it means a system that upholds gender roles that benefit a (majority male) ruler class, e.g. by encouraging worker class men to go to war for their benefit, worker class women to be caretakers, and so on.
The counterpart to this definition of “patriarchy” is a society with no stratified gender roles, not “matriarchy”.
This is exactly why its such a bad word to use to describe this, it automatically puts people on the defensive and needs to be explained to people that it doesn’t mean what the word means (rule of the fathers).
No, that’s the reactionary propaganda doing that.
Everybody living in this world should be aware that words have context and don’t always literally mean what their parts mean. And even then “patriarchy” is one of the more literal ones: it comes from “pater”/father in the same vein as “paternalistic”, with the same connotation of overbearing-yet-out-of-touch.
So just from word meaning that clearly doesn’t mean all men, and obviously it also doesn’t refer to literal fathers either.
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