There is no patriarchy in the US

Feminism has been a very good thing, historically. US women have gained rights they deserved and were long denied. But at the center of what is called "movement feminism" today (as opposed from the simpler "equity feminism") is dismantling the patriarchy. In the US today, there is no patriarchy. There are some ways that women are treated badly that I would very much like to remedy, but they are not central defining aspects of our culture, and "patriarchy" is not a helpful concept. Nor do I take the opposite position that men are oppressed. It's a complicated picture, with each sex having advantages in some respects and disadvantages in others.

Past societies and many non-Western nations today had (and have) sufficiently rigid gender roles and discrimination against women that "patriarchy" seems an appropriate term. The Saudi Arabian women who need a male guardian at every stage of life and are unable to legally drive are living in a society with institutionalized male power. The requirement in many Islamic societies that women cover up seems profoundly unfair, as it puts on women the responsibility for helping men to control their own sexuality. In some places women who sleep with men who their brothers or fathers do not approve of are killed, and this is thought to be just. I find those aspects of these other societies appalling.

Compared to other times and places, there's no doubt that in the US today women are in a very good position. But that of course doesn't mean that there is not remaining injustice.

I argued in <this post> that the greater male tendency to violence is unfortunate but cannot be considered part of a system that oppresses women.

I'm about to list some ways that women have it better than men. I'm reluctant to do that, because it divides the world into "us" and "them". But "patriarchy" rests on the assumption that we are divided into "us" and "them" on account of gender and/or sex, so debunking it requires addressing it on its own terms.

Women are the majority of the electorate. No one harasses women or prevents them from voting on account of their sex. In a very important sense, they already have dominant political power. It is no accident that there are no longer any laws that discriminate against women, while it is only young men who must register for the draft.

All occupations are open to qualifying women. While the US Marines traditionally have stringent standards for strength and physical fitness that few women could meet, lower standards have been devised specifically for women.

Men who want jobs working with young children face serious discrimination. They get little sympathy, and even less in recent years as they are all assumed to be potential child molesters.

Aside from an innate male tendency towards violence, there are other natural differences between the sexes. Women live longer than men. Only women bear children. Some women find pregnancy, childbirth and nursing positive life experiences, ones that are not available to men. No woman is required to go through those things if she doesn't want to, but it is an option she can exercise. A single woman who really wants a child can almost always arrange to have one if she starts when she is young, while this option is closed to single men of modest means. Women have a decided advantage in child custody disputes -- as they should, if shared custody is impossible. But as a result a woman knows that with near certainty she will have her child in her life until he or she becomes an adult. A man is far less certain of that. It is certain that he will have a legal obligation to pay for the support of such a child.

A man who wants to find a friend to talk about his feelings with is likely to have far more trouble doing so than a woman. Male friends are unlikely to support his feelings that are traditionally more associated with women than men.

It is open season for anyone to make jokes at the expense of men and make fun of them. Similar jibes directed at women are no longer acceptable.

On the other side? When relevant adjustments are made, the pay gap is on the order of 7%. This is not fair, but not exactly evidence for major league oppression.

The main complaint is men putting women down (or keeping them down) in ways that are hard to quantify or legislate. Part of the problem is that the beliefs supporting that are also held by many women. Studies show that when asked to rate the quality of an academic paper with nothing changed but the sex of the author, men will rate the female-authored paper as less worthy -- but so will women.

Let's return to the crucial fact that women are the majority of the electorate and not in any way discouraged from voting. Why don't women vote for politicians and policies that will reduce bad behavior against them? Obviously, a great many women don't share the perspective and goals of movement feminism. It is suggested that these women are still under the sway of false beliefs and need education about how much they suffer. While I agree in most respects with that analysis for the long run, in the short run it is condescending. More white women voted for Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton. There could hardly be more persuasive evidence that a great many women at the very least do not rank gender equity issues (let alone dismantling the patriarchy) as very important if they voted in such numbers for the pussy-grabbing man over the feminist woman.

Here's how I see the situation: There are quite a few women along with quite a few men who have a vision of society that is not quite the thoroughly equal one that movement feminists envision. I doubt many would support actual pussy-grabbing, but there seems to be some tolerance for men being sexually assertive. There also may be some tolerance or even desire for men to be in positions of power. Perhaps the natural biological differences play into their thinking and account to some extent for why some differences seem acceptable. Instead of calling it "pro-patriarchy", let's call it "tolerance for some measure of inequality".

Let's frame the movement feminist position as "no tolerance for any vestige of inequality".

It seems that many men and women favor "some inequality", while many men and women favor "no inequality". Perhaps men are a bigger proportion of the first group than the second, but the differences are not dramatic enough to frame it as a men versus women issue. This is not patriarchy! Women and men who favor more equality are in the position of trying to win the hearts and minds of those women and men who accept or favor a more unequal situation.

Sometimes the notion of patriarchy is expanded to include capitalism, the theory being that if women's values dominated society, it would not include capitalism. I see no evidence of that. Women can be just as acquisitive and greedy as men, and many participate eagerly in today's capitalist system. So perhaps they are under the sway of patriarchal values? It's a big stretch with no evidence. I'm with Elizabeth Warren that capitalism is fundamentally the best economic system, and it needs to be fixed by increased regulation and progressive taxation, not replaced. Sometimes patriarchy is thought to subsume "competitiveness". There's some tendency to toss any aspect of society a feminist finds unpleasant into the "patriarchy" bin. It already had no merit when it asserted nothing but direct oppression of women, but with more added it becomes hopelessly vague and unhelpful to clear thought. It reminds me of the old Communist idea that "come the revolution, all problems will disappear".

In many respects, I'm among those who would like to convince the "some inequality" faction that they should tolerate less inequality. I would very much like to reduce male physical and sexual violence. Wolf whistles make me wince. But I would much rather address those issues directly on those terms rather than subsuming them under the fundamentally incorrect idea of "patriarchy".

I have a hunch that the concept is not just incorrect but unhelpful if your goal is to change the behavior of men. There's more promise in getting men to behave better with a message that is simply (for instance), "stop being so violent because it's ultimately bad for everyone." If you add, "We live in a patriarchy, you are part of an oppressor class, and you should stop oppressing women", I predict your results will be worse.

I understand that many US women feel oppressed on account of their sex. This post does not in any way diminish those real, lived experiences. But neither does personal experience qualify a person specially to diagnose the overall structure of the society we live in. Some men also sincerely feel oppressed on account of their sex. Other people who feel oppressed include the short, the scrawny, the fat, the unintelligent, believers in atheist communities, atheists in believer communities, and just about any ethnic minority. They don't get their own "-archy" designations.