Patriarchy Isn’t Your Team, Bro

Stop defending a social system that harms everybody

A lot of men seem to reflexively want to defend patriarchy as if it were somehow a synonym for men. They get huffy and defensive when this social system comes under fire as if they were being personally attacked. But I’m here to tell you, dude, unless you are an oligarch, a professional athlete, a king, or a rock star, chances are that patriarchy is not actually your “team.”

Patriarchy is a dominance-based hierarchy. Sure, it’s a male-led one, but it’s still pyramid-shaped, and chances are you aren’t near the top of the pyramid. In fact, on top of some pretty retrograde ideas about women, patriarchy has most likely been hurting you too, particularly if you are an average guy. Why exactly are you defending this social system?

• Do you believe that women are naturally inferior to men, including being not as smart?
• Do you believe that the father should be the unquestioned head of every hetero family rather than being in a partnership with his wife?
• Do you believe that men have the right to control women and to “punish” them if they refuse to acquiesce? The phrase “rule of thumb” comes from the size of stick that was acceptable for a man to beat his wife with. It was OK as long as it wasn’t wider than his thumb. Does that sound fine to you?

If you don’t believe in those things, chances are that patriarchy is not your “team.” Those gender-related aspects were a part of traditional patriarchal norms, not all that long ago, but even they do not begin to cover all the other facets of patriarchy that you may not be aware of. And how can you support a team if you don’t really know what it’s all about?

Patriarchy is a social system, one that arose for the first time about 5–7k years ago. It is male-dominated, but that doesn’t mean that men always do well or flourish in it. That’s because patriarchy is not just a historically two-tiered genderized power differential, but also an entire system of social stratification and hierarchy that is established and maintained by intimidation, coercion, and sometimes even violence. At times there have been laws to maintain it as well. It’s essentially a Might Makes Right doctrine where the richest, strongest, and most powerful abuse others for their own benefit.

• Do you believe that slavery was acceptable because stronger men have the right to force disadvantaged men to do their bidding, and to suffer pain and even death if they refuse?
• Do you think it was fine to force Natives off of their land and to constantly break treaties with them because the government had the manpower and the might to make that happen?
• Do you think it’s OK to make laws keeping anyone not of the dominant religion from holding elected office?

If you don’t agree with those things, chances are that patriarchy is not your “team” because this sort of violent and unfair treatment of anyone too weak or disempowered to resist it is part and parcel of what patriarchy is all about. When the Kurgan raiders first swept into Old Europe and the ancient Hebrews first invaded Palestine a few thousand years ago, it was the most ruthless and the most authoritarian who often rose to power. This sort of bloody warrior culture supplanted ones that were more egalitarian, peaceful, cooperative, and focused on technologies of creation rather than technologies of destruction. Those are the origins of patriarchy.

• Do you believe that it’s unmasculine for men to ever cry?
• Do you think that gay men aren’t real men, or aren’t as good as straight ones?
• Do you feel that ever admitting to confusion, or to being anything less than perfectly in control of every situation is weak?
• Do you think it’s productive to settle differences by trying to intimidate the other person, including by physical violence?

If that sounds kind of excessive to you, why are you so triggered when somebody points out that patriarchy has led to a lot of discrimination, artificial hierarchy not based on merit, and that it’s incredibly damaging to the mental and emotional health of many, many men?

Not that long ago the American Psychological Association issued new guidelines for working with men and boys to address all the ways that patriarchal norms of masculinity are destructive to males.

“Though men benefit from patriarchy, they are also impinged upon by patriarchy,” says Ronald F. Levant, EdD, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron and co-editor of the APA volume “The Psychology of Men and Masculinities.”

Thirteen years in the making, they draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly.

The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors. (apa.org)

Thinking that patriarchy is about men and that you need to stand up for your “team” is really missing the boat. Yes, it’s a male-dominated social system where men hold most of the social, economic, and political power even today, but unless you are a guy who hangs out near the apex of the social pyramid, it’s really not about you, and in fact, you are just a cog in the wheel of the elites.

As I noted in my story about the historical origins of the patriarchal dominance hierarchy system, “Rather than defending patriarchy as somehow “my team” more men need to understand the realities of a social system that is steeped in blood, in authoritarian control, and in inequality — not just for women, but for anyone not able to keep themselves at the top of the hierarchy — either through accident of birth or through ruthlessness.”

Homelessness and police brutality are both functions of patriarchy because it’s a system where some people count more than others and where it’s normative to use force on those below you in the social hierarchy, in part to remind them that they are indeed beneath you.

Historically, the way that the big dogs have kept the little guy from noticing that — have kept you fighting their wars, and working in their factories for the lowest wage they can get away with paying you — is to distract you with higher social status and power over women. But that’s eroded a lot in the last 50 years and so the new strategy has been instead to blame women and to blame feminism — anything to keep your attention misdirected from where it truly belongs — on the big dogs who chew you up and spit you out for their own purposes.

For example, “The UK-based anti-extremism charity HOPE not hate released a new report on Monday that found half of the young men surveyed believe feminism ‘has gone too far and makes it harder for men to succeed.’” But the reality is actually quite different. “Despite the perceptions of young men surveyed, critics would argue that feminism has not gone far enough in the UK. The UK now ranks 21st on the World Economic Forum’s Gender Equality Index. Women in the country remain underrepresented in politics, and the gender pay gap is not narrowing.”

Women in politics in the UK actually suffer significant abuse and even threats on their lives, to the point where many were driven from seeking re-election (which I suppose was part of the point). Meanwhile, the top 1% of people hold 44% of the world’s wealth.

Subsequently, a large number of female MPs have begun to experience real-life abuse, from being screamed at on the street to having their windows smashed. During the 2017 election campaign, when one female MP was out canvassing, a man walked into her constituency office and told staff he was there to kill her. In the run-up to the December 2019 UK general election, nineteen female MPs announced that they would be stepping down from politics — a higher figure than expected. A significant number of them specifically cited abuse as part of their reason for quitting.

Bates, Laura. Men Who Hate Women (p. 177). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.

The men who do actually believe in keeping women (and a bunch of other folks) as second-class citizens and the oligarchs have you right where they want you —blaming a group of people who factually speaking, are still disadvantaged in a lot of broad-ranging ways instead of blaming them. Is that the “team” that you really want to be supporting and defending?

Unless you really do agree with most of the statements made above, unless you are an elite of some sort, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for you to keep reflexively defending a social system that has harmed you and pretty much everyone you know in a wide variety and range of ways.

The Man Box is the name for the constrained rules and norms of what it means to be “a real man” that come out of patriarchal tradition. They drive violence, bullying, and sexual harassment, but they also drive loneliness and depression in men. The more that men adhere to those norms and beliefs, the more likely they are to be depressed and even suicidal.

The Man Box is an enormously violent place, with negative repercussions for young men themselves, for young women, and for others in their lives. Men in the Man Box in the US and UK are as much as six or seven times more likely to report having perpetrated acts of online or physical bullying against male peers than men outside the Man Box. Men in the Man Box in Mexico are also three times more likely than their peers outside the Man Box to report having perpetrated sexual harassment. In the US and UK, men in the Man Box are six times more likely to report perpetrating sexual harassment.

Their bravado masks deep insecurities, depression, and frequent thoughts of suicide. Men in the Man Box in the US and UK are statistically significantly more likely to meet a screening standard for depression than men outside the Man Box.

In fact, by these metrics, even the oligarchs and other top-of-the-pyramid types are being harmed by this social system as well. They are still subject to the emotional isolation and the performative competition for place in the pecking order — it’s just that they have more power and perks to try to offset that.

Why are you being their unthinking footsoldiers in upholding and defending a a social system that is steeped in violence, authoritarianism, and artificial hierarchy just because you are a man? It’s the ultimate con — one that has you working against your own best interests and against the best interests of the larger society.

Patriarchy is a zero-sum paradigm, where if you don’t win, you lose (and in fact, somebody has to lose in order for somebody else to win), but it doesn’t have to be that way. If we work together, we can find more ways to co-create win/win scenarios, we can move away from a domination-based system (patriarchy) toward a more partnership-based one — something that will be better not just for people, but for the earth as well.

The specific ways that we can do that are too numerous and detailed to go into here, although you can find out more by clicking on the partnerism link above. But what you can do now is to stop aligning yourself with a social system that doesn’t actually serve you and to recognize that patriarchy is not, in fact, your “team” even if you are a man who has been conditioned to think that it is.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2023