Patriarchy

Many, especially among men, make the mistake of regarding patriarchy as a personal problem that may be corrected if individuals who practice and benefit from it stop their meanness and greed. “If evil exists in the world, it’s only because there are evil people who have entered into an evil conspiracy (Allan G Johnson, Patriarchy the System: An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us. 1997).”

Allan G. Johnson argues that patriarchy should be examined as a system in whose light such social institutions as family, religion, and economy can be studied and understood. A system is a different entity from the sum total of the individuals that comprise it and acts independently from them. Individuals in a system unconsciously form their personalities and regulate their interactions in accordance with the roles that are expected from them by the system. It lives on even as individuals that make it up may change their minds about it. Such individuals are then pinpointed by the system as anomalies and abnormalities.

An individualistic perspective fails to account for such patterns of behavior as rape, sexual harassment, wife beating, macho violence, male anger, etc. it is only by understanding patriarchy – the larger encompassing system – that we can understand in what context and to what end such patterns of behavior exist and even flourish despite legislations that outlaw them.

To understand patriarchy, one needs to identify what its components are and how they are tied together to form it. “Patriarchy’s defining elements are male-dominated, male-identified, and male-centered character.” Patriarchy closely associates manhood and masculinity with humanness. It is this viewpoint that puts the control of everyone and everything in the world, including women, in the hands of men. “Patriarchal culture is about the core value of control and domination in almost every area of human existence.” In this system having power and being ready and willing to use it is a value and characteristically “masculine.” Lacking power and reluctance to use it is regarded as weak and characteristically “feminine.”

Patriarchy empowers the males and in return feeds on their desire to continue to cling on to the position of power and domination, and it lives on in this way. “By participating in patriarchy, we are of patriarchy and it is of us. Both exist through the other and neither can exist without the other.”