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.