Patriarchy

The point is made statistically; in contrast to males, females are born in to:

• Significantly lower pay, and lower total lifetime earnings ¹

• Lower social status ²

• Less access to social supports and programs ³

• Decreased access to education ⁴

• Reduced access to political power ⁵

• Increased rates of verbal abuse and sexualized threats of violence, on social media ⁶

• Overwhelmingly higher amounts of targeted violence ⁷

• Date rape, marital rape, and "corrective" rape ⁸

• Forced marriage ⁹

• Significantly higher rates of modern-day enslavement ¹⁰

• Ritualistic mutilation, including foot binding and genital mutilation ¹¹

• Ritualistic murder, including suttee and "honour" killings ¹²

• Modern-day witch hunts ¹³

• Being murdered at birth because they are female, and other forms of femicide ¹⁴

The observations above are based on statistical investigations. This means they are mathematically determined representations of the world as it is, and true irrespective of political interpretations. ¹⁵ In other words none of this is based on personal feelings or choices, because baby girls have no control over their lives, and human society attacks them from birth merely because they are girls. ¹⁶

Knowing these facts, and knowing also that no person chooses rape or witch hunts for themselves, we see beyond any shadow of a doubt that females suffer rampant and incessant oppression because they are females. Proportionate to this, if we claim to be concerned about the welfare of others but our analysis does not lead directly to the conclusion that women are oppressed, that's a sure sign the analysis is deeply flawed.

It's striking to realize that all statements above are plain facts, yet radical feminism is the only system of thought to recognize these oppressions as such while also working to eradicate them, instead of making reforms that maintain the system of oppression, namely: patriarchy.

Cover art from The Creation of Patriarchy, by Gerda Lerner.

Notably, while it's true that men are horribly oppressed by other men, what matters here is that men as a group do not endure sex-based oppression. ¹⁷ The oppressions listed above do not exist for males as a sex-based class; as Marilyn Frye observed:

Women are oppressed, as women. Members of certain racial and/or economic groups and classes, both the males and the females, are oppressed as members of those races and/or classes. But men are not oppressed as men. ¹⁸

Instead, the only connection men have to sex-based oppression is to stop causing it. ¹⁹

To be clear: the problem is not “man” as a biological entity, but “man” in his patriarchal social form. Proof of this is straightforward enough, as patriarchy is only a few thousand years old, and prior to the rise of patriarchy we find no evidence to suggest the world attacked females merely because they were females. ²⁰ Thus the problem is the system we are all born into, because that system grooms boys to become men whose behaviour reproduces rape, witch hunts, and the other horrors listed above.

So if the purpose of politics is to help others and in particular those who need it most, the question isn't why am I an ally to radical feminists, it's: why aren't all men their allies? The answer is because men instituted and institutionalized all of the abuses listed above, and patriarchy does not teach men to reduce male power by restraining male violence, but quite the opposite.

Moreover, radical feminism seeks to eradicate patriarchal abuses going well beyond the brief list above, and one of those abuses is porn — and while men across the political spectrum may disagree on patriarchal minutiae, if there's one thing all patriarchs agree on, it's that they love porn. ²¹

→ Next blog in this series: Pornography