Jun 28 JDN 2459030

It’s really mainly a coincidence that I am writing this post on Father’s Day; working at home and almost never going out due to the pandemic, I have become unmoored from the normal passage of time. It’s a wonder I can remember it’s Sunday. But it is at least a bit ironic, since the word “patriarchy” comes from the Latin word pater meaning “father”.

A great deal of feminist discourse references “The Patriarchy”: Examples are included as links in this sentence from a variety of different sources.

This is a problem, because “The Patriarchy” plainly does not exist.

Am I saying that patriarchy doesn’t exist? Of course not. Patriarchy plainly exists. What I’m saying is that there is no one single source “The Patriarchy“.

China and Japan are both extremely patriarchial societies. They have fought wars with one another dozens of times. Saudi Arabia and Iran are both extremely patriarchal. They hate each other and have likewise fought numerous wars.

Indeed, nearly every human society is to some degree patriarchal; and yet, somehow we seem to be in conflict with one another quite frequently. If patriarchy all stemmed from some common source “The Patriarchy”, such a result would be baffling: If we’re all following the same ruler, how can we fight each other so much? Whoever is running this conspiracy is doing a really awful job!

Yes, there are common elements between the various forms of patriarchy in different societies—otherwise, we wouldn’t recognize them all as patriarchy. But there are also substantial differences. Nearly all societies regulate how women must dress, but precisely what women are expected to wear varies a great deal. Nearly all societies put more men in positions of power than women, but the degree to which this is true runs a wide gamut.

Patriarchy is like authoritarianism, or fanaticism, or corruption; yes, obviously authoritarianism, fanaticism, and corruption exist, and are important forces in the world. But there are no such things as “The Authoritarianism”, “The Fanaticism”, or “The Corruption”. There is no single unified source of these things. Indeed, authoritarians are often at each other’s throats, fanatics fight with other fanatics all the time, and those who are corrupt have no qualms about exploiting others who are corrupt.

Is this important? Perhaps it’s just a provocative turn of phrase, and I’m being overly pedantic.

But I do think it’s important, for the following reasons.

Many feminists who use the phrase “The Patriarchy” really do seem to think that all patriarchial ideas, beliefs, norms, attitudes, and behaviors stem from some common root, as the following quotes attest:

I’m not angry because I hate men. I’m not even angry at men. I’m angry at the system that, for the lack of a better term, most people refer to as the patriarchy.

~Anne Theriaut, The Good Men Project

Remember in “Terminator 2” how the bad terminator kept getting smashed and shattered and ripped apart, but it didn’t matter? He just kept re-emerging, rising from the ashes, as an unstoppable force. Now imagine that terminator is a vessel to keep power, wealth and status in the hands of men — that’s the patriarchy. It can feel indestructible, coming back ever stronger despite seemingly endless efforts to smash it.

~Maya Salam, The New York Times

If you imagine that there is such a thing as “The Patriarchy”, it gives you the sense that you have just one enemy to fight. It makes the world simple and comprehensible. There’s a lot of psychological appeal in that kind of worldview. But it also makes you miss a great deal of the real complexity and nuance in the world. You have reified the concept.

Such a simplistic worldview might motivate you to fight harder against patriarchy, which would be a good thing. But then again, it could actually sap your motivation, by making it seem like you have a single implacable enemy that controls the entire world and has throughout history. If there is such a thing as “The Patriarchy”, then its power must be tremendous; perhaps we have weakened its hold upon the world, but could we ever hope to completely defeat it? (I made a similar point in an old post about how acknowledging progress is vital in order to make more progress.)

Moreover, thinking that all patriarchy stems from the same source could cause you to misdiagnose problems and fail to notice solutions that would otherwise be readily available. If you go around thinking that any disparity between how men and women are treated must be the result of some global phenomenon called “The Patriarchy”, you may not think to try simple fixes like blinded auditions or revising or eliminating student evaluations. You may assume that sexism is around ever corner when often the real causes are nepotism and network effects.

Slate Star Codex made a similar point about racism in an excellent post called “Murderism”. If your view of the world is that all bad things (or even all bad things in a broad class like “racism” or “sexism”) must stem from the same source, you will be unable to analyze the real nuances of what causes problems and thus be powerless to fix them.

Yes, of course patriarchy exists; and it’s important. But it comes in many different kinds, and many difference degrees, and policies that amelioriate it in some contexts may be ineffective—or even counterproductive—in others. This is why I say that it’s dangerous to use a phrase like “The Patriarchy”—for patriarchy isn’t a thing, it’s many things.