When someone mentions “the patriarchy” many people seem to conjure an image in their mind of men dominating women. This is certainly what I thought when I first heard people talking about this term maybe ten or fifteen years ago. Patriarchy, in this view, is a system where men sit at the top of wealth and power hierarchies while hoarding all sorts of benefits and privileges. Meanwhile, women are relegated to second class citizenship, prohibited from rising through the ranks of wealth and power hierarchies. The idea seems to be that, under patriarchy, men do not suffer or struggle while women are crushed under the weight of oppression. But then the men who hear this think “but wait, my life sucks. This can’t possibly be true!”
Patriarchy is actually quite a bit more nuanced than this. As Bell Hooks said, “Patriarchy has no gender.” Indeed, patriarchy is likely the cause of many of the struggles that men suffer. Not least of which is the male loneliness epidemic.
The problem with patriarchy is that male culture is butting up against new realities. But what does this mean? What is male culture and what are these new realities? And why is patriarchy also bad for men?
Male Culture
Male culture is observed in displays of masculinity. Like pretty much every kind of culture, an important aspect of it are the various signals – the virtue signaling, if you will – of being within that culture. Within groups of men, signals such as clothing style can also be a part of it, though often more about what not to wear than what to wear – no dresses and high-heels, no “girly” colors like pink, no makeup, and so on. Other kinds of signals exist as well, such as courage, feats of physical strength, stoicism, assertiveness (and even aggressiveness), confidence, leadership and taking charge, accumulation of resources and wealth, independence and rugged individuality, being tall and muscular, and so on.
One thing a lot of men are afraid of is having people think they are feminine (which is usually seen as the opposite of or lack of the things discussed above), with being gay seen as about the most feminine thing a man can do. Second only to being male-to-female transgender, which is likely why trans issues almost always center on male-to-female transgender people and not female-to-male transgender people. The former is seen by many men as the worst affront to masculinity possible.
Some level of these traits – assertiveness, leadership, stoicism, courage, confidence, and so on – are positive, but taken too far (and paired with more negative aspects, like homophobia, transphobia, and the misogyny of denigrating anything that does not fit into these traits) and this becomes what is known as toxic masculinity.
These types of traits, so the manosphere asserts, are traditionally masculine, and for much of human history, the argument seems to go, these traits worked. The problem with modern society then, according to this view, is that masculine traits are being denigrated and this is causing issues for men in particular and society in general. Men, therefore, should not have to change with our rapidly changing world. Instead, society needs to be brought back to some nonexistent golden age when men could be men.
The New Realities
Probably the biggest new social reality to come to the fore in the past half century or so is the recognition that women are full people, too, worthy of rights and respect, and the subsequent realization that typical feminine cultural signals are not worse or less than traditional masculine cultural signals. More recently, recognizing that gay people and transgender people exist and are full people worthy of rights and respect as well. This has thrown a wrench into both the idea that traditionally masculine traits are inherently “better” than traditionally feminine traits, and that there is a one-size-fits-all way that men must behave.
And frankly, we now live in a world where these idealized “masculine men” are just no longer necessary (assuming they ever were). And a nontrivial portion of women have come to the realization that those are not the kind of men they want. Some men seem to have perceived this change and, while still holding onto toxic views of masculinity, have taken on the “nice guy” or simp persona in order to try tricking women, though they tend to get frustrated when women see through this façade. This has even lead some men (and in particular, sexist men) to prefer the sycophancy of AI girlfriends over someone who might challenge them.
Something else that has amplified this cultural realization is, broadly speaking, globalization, and in particular the internet. People have come to discover that there are other ways of signaling masculinity (and femininity) in other cultures than just the one’s they were brought up within.
One reaction to these realizations has been to try abolishing things like sex and gender binaries altogether. At least insofar as to say that there is nothing inherent or biological about these traits. While there is no strict binary that is absent any crossover, there is almost certainly a distribution of preferences, dispositions, and traits, with the averages being separate, but with a lot of overlap. If this was not the case, then why, for instance, what would it even mean to “feel like” or “identify as” the sex opposite one’s natal sex?
The other reaction has been to try forcing everyone back into the strict and hierarchical binary (i.e., the notion that there are two sexes and one is superior to the other). This is observed, for instance, with the so-called manosphere and men’s rights advocates, as well as with the “trad wife” phenomenon. The election of Donald Trump and the rise of rightwing politics in general is likely at least in part an attempt at forcing the hierarchical binary back onto society. What I mean by the hierarchical binary is the idea that men ought to abide by the traditionally masculine traits and women ought to abide by traditionally feminine traits, and that this is normal, natural, and necessary. Feminism, or anything not adhering to this strict dichotomy, is therefore abnormal, unnatural, and contingent.
The hierarchical aspect is that it is not just a binary of coequals, although this is often the sales pitch. It is also that, since society has been constructed in such a way as to reward traditionally masculine behavior, men are deemed superior. Traits like courage, often manifesting as risk-taking; stoicism, where showing emotions is weakness; aggressiveness, confidence, independence, and taking charge, where someone is supposed to take what they want in a zero-sum game against everyone else who are assumed to be behaving similarly, rather than working cooperatively; accumulation of resources and wealth, where getting rich and buying material objects is a measure of someone’s value.
Then if the system is designed to reward traditionally masculine behaviors, does that mean that men have it easy? Not exactly.
Men and the Patriarchy
Patriarchy does not place all men into the top ranks of the hierarchy. It puts some men there. Men who, in order to preserve their position, tell other men that being a man is about being assholes to all women and to any other men who are at the same position or lower in the hierarchy of power. This awards these men with the feeling of power without actually having to give them any real power. To act domineering toward women, attempting to denigrate them into submission, is the placebo effect of power, where if they act like assholes to women and to other men at the same level on the hierarchy or lower, then they are “winning” in the great competition of life. This instills in men a crab mentality that ensures that few of them will ever reach the ranks of real financial and political power. It is a strategy of divide and conquer. A distraction psyop to ensure that there is always an enemy who is not one of the real elites. It demands of men: Fight amongst yourselves so that you do not focus on us.
But, of course, within this ideology one must pay deference to their own superiors. Empathy is a sin until you’re supposed to empathize with the wealthy and powerful. Besides, they can dangle fleetingly rare cases of upward mobility in front of people to sell you on the myth that you’re not poor and powerless, you’re just a temporarily embarrassed billionaire. It is a marketing gimmick where the pitch is: Buy what I’m selling and you, too, could become a powerful billionaire surrounded by beautiful and submissive women, but if you fail, that’s your own fault.
This is why the rich are intent on not just selling you the fantasy that you could get rich, but also that they were once just like you. They were once just a regular guy, but through grit and determination they became a billionaire. Few will attribute their success to luck, such as being born to the right family (nepotism), or in the right place and time, or just so happening to make the right connection (where networking is the real reason rich people go to elite colleges, because their curricula are no better than a community college), or numerous other attributes that have nothing to do with merit or determination. No, it has to be that dogged adherence to the typically masculine traits discussed above is the winning formula. Doubling down on the problem is the only viable solution.
The sales pitch convinces men that they should want what the rich and powerful have, but that men can only get it by following them. The powerful do not actually want you to be powerful, but they will gladly sell you the fantasy of being powerful at a premium. A fantasy meant to make other men feel good and so ignore their problems, or blame someone else for them.
Thus, by acting “masculine” according to this prescribed orthodoxy, men are, in effect, emasculating themselves. They open their little beaks and hope that those with real wealth and political power will keep vomiting small morsels of this power fantasy into them. But when men act this way – arrogant, violent, misogynistic, asocial – all it does is fuel the male loneliness epidemic and distract them away from those who are actually causing it, namely, the very people selling them this fantasy.
Think about it. What arrogant asshole would want to be friends with another arrogant asshole? If all other men are competition for resources (and for women), then they are merely points of aggression that must be neutralized or dominated. What fully actualized woman would want to submit herself to a power-tripping misogynist living in a fantasy world? If all a man wants is a servile vagina, then they either must find a woman already like that – and women like that are rare – or attempt to coerce or manipulate someone into such a state. The same men who will talk a big game about the benefits of facing challenges shy away from a woman who might challenge them.
The manosphere is a cult geared toward victimizing men in order to convince them to victimize women – if men can feel like they have ownership over women, then they will be blinded to the fact that they barely even own themselves – all in the name of enriching the few powerful men at the top. Yet, even the podcast bro evangelists of this noxious ideology are mere middle managers, making a quick buck while still beholden to those with real wealth and power. It all makes a sort of pyramid-like structure, a pyramid scheme, if you will.
A bizarre and contradictory aspect of this fantasy is that the failures experienced by men are both their own fault, but also the fault of everyone else – women in particular, but also other “weaker” men, like gay people or leftists or immigrants or whoever else. If you hustle and grind you’ll become successful, goes the sales pitch, but also all these other people are conspiring against you and that’s why you can’t get ahead, and you should hate them for perpetrating this crime against you. This is meant to keep you doing what they tell you and buying what they’re selling while hating everyone else but the few wealthy and powerful men at the top.
This has proved an effective strategy. A popular quote is: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they’re being fooled” which is often attributed to Mark Twain, but may be a paraphrase of something else he said. But, as with all quotes and aphorisms, it pithily states a sort of wisdom most people already know. However, for men who wish to exhibit traditionally masculine traits it can be even worse, because getting fooled is viewed as a sign of weakness (i.e., femininity). It means, in this way of thinking, that someone was too stupid and weak-willed to see something for what it really is. But perhaps worse than that it means that someone has willingly submitted themselves to someone else. That someone has been penetrated by the will of someone else, had ideas ejaculated into them, impregnating them with an ideology. They are a bottom in an ideosexual relationship, a position traditional masculinity views as being meant for women and weaker men. Thus, admitting to being taken in by someone else’s bullshit does not just mean someone admits to being wrong, it means they must admit that they’ve been emasculated.
It’s easier to proudly wallow in toxicity than to humbly admit to being wrong, even if doing so rips the world apart. And so, the ideology is self-sustaining.
Concluding Remarks
Although in other posts I’ve discussed things like “male privilege” I have not given much thought to the idea of patriarchy. To me, the concept of patriarchy was just a fancy way of talking about male privilege, so I never looked into it or gave it much credence. My thought, as I said as the beginning, was always that my life, and the life of a lot of other men around me, isn’t so great, so the idea that I’m “privileged” is just absurd.
Women are obviously getting the shortest end of the stick in patriarchy, but, as is often the case, it’s realizing that men like me are also victims of patriarchy that the concept really sunk in. It’s not that I thought the world was an even playing field for everyone, but the simplified idea I had in my head that patriarchy meant there was an even playing field for all men, which sat above the even playing field for all women (which it’s not, but that’s a whole topic unto itself), led me to thinking the idea couldn’t possibly be right. I pictured something like:
Where instead it’s something more like:
It’s sad and embarrassing, yet not surprising, to have to admit that I only discovered what the patriarchy is, and concluded that it is real, when I realized that it’s also affecting me in a negative way. Hopefully you, too, can consider this after reading this post, because it’s better late than never.