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The Patriarchy:
The Patriarchy:
Patriarchy is a social and political system of oppression in which men, masculinity, and traditionally male roles hold primary power, authority, and privilege over women, non-binary people, and anyone who does not conform to norms of dominant (toxic) masculinity. It operates through institutions such as: government, law and justice system, religion, and the ideal cisheteronormative family. There are many cultural narratives, and everyday practices that collectively replicate and uphold male dominance/leadership and normalize gender roles. The direct effects of patriarchy include the inequitable distribution of power and resources between cisgender males and AFAB and feminine presenting people. Our political representation favors men, there are large gender/sex-based pay gaps, and limited access to leadership roles for non-men. The patriarchy also causes social expectations that prescribe rigid gender roles that confine women to caregiving and domestic labor while simultaneously rewarding men for dominance, independence, and emotional restriction. Patriarchy directly affects bodily autonomy (often AFAB) through the policing of women’s and queer people’s sexuality, reproductive choices, and access to safety. It also produces cultural norms that marginalize LGBTQIA2S+ identities, stigmatize non-traditional relationship structures, and frame masculinity and heterosexuality as the default standards.
Sexism refers to discrimination and oppression that arise specifically from the biological sex a person is assigned at birth. Sexism presents itself as a core construct and system of oppression working for the colonialism, patriarchy, cisheteronormativity, white supremacy, and religious nationalism. It shapes how society views and treat people based on the physical realities of their bodies, especially regarding reproduction organs and genitalia. Because pregnancy, childbirth, and reproductive vulnerability have historically been used as tools of control, sexism is closely tied to systems that limit bodily autonomy, such as rape, forced pregnancy, denial of reproductive care, and other forms of reproductive abuse. These patterns of harm are rooted in patriarchal beliefs that people assigned female at birth should be controlled, protected, or used in ways that serve male power or societal expectations.
Misogyny, while rooted in oppression based on assigned sex, it is different because it is a gender-based devaluation, hatred, or mistreatment of people who are perceived as women or express femininity, including many gender-queer and nonbinary people. Misogyny is about punishing or policing those who embody, express, or are associated with femininity, regardless of their biological sex, often due to toxic-masculine beliefs that are rooted in grabbing at social power by oppressing and harming others. Misogyny functions as the emotional, cultural, and violent enforcement arm of patriarchy; it reinforces the idea that femininity is inferior and that people who are “read” as women should be controlled or subordinated.
The workforce didn't fully accept women until 1945 (world war 2), and are still facing disproportionate wages to their male counterparts without adequate protections against sexual assault, sexual harassment, general sexism in the workplace, no protections for pregnancy and medical leave, and generally hire AFAB people and women based on their appearance and attractiveness rather than their capability, experience, and ethics.
Cisgender and Heteronormativity:
Cisgender and Heteronormativity:
Heteronormativity is the assumption that heterosexuality (straight) and traditional male/female gender roles are the normal, natural/pure, and preferred way under colonialism and patriarchy for people to behave and socially form relationships. It treats other sexual orientations and gender expressions as less or non legitimate.
Cultural narratives in media, religion, and law romanticize heterosexual monogamous couples as the foundation of society, making patriarchal norms appear natural or inevitable rather than socially constructed. It shapes laws, institutions, media, and family expectations in ways that privilege heterosexual, gender-conforming people (cisgender) while marginalizing those who do not fit those norms. Both heteronormativity and socially prescribed monogamy are deeply embedded in the patriarchy, the system of oppression that concentrates social and economic power among men who are able to achieve socially ideal relationships and rely on replicating gender hierarchies to maintain that power. Patriarchy has historically depended on heterosexual, monogamous family structures to reinforce conventional gender roles. These norms police sexuality, especially women’s sexuality, by presenting heterosexual, monogamous marriage as the only legitimate site of sexual expression or pleasure. This requires women’s social value to rely on her status of purity, presentation, loyalty, and family stability. This structure marginalizes queer and non-monogamous identities, which disrupt patriarchal gender expectations and intimacy structures. When these structures are not being upheld people often find that they are able to express their feelings most genuinely without fear that identity or self-expression may define your social status.
Socially Prescribed Monogamy:
Socially Prescribed Monogamy:
The cultural expectation of monogamy, is the expectation people should form exclusive romantic and sexual partnerships, usually one man and one woman, often for life. While many individuals choose monogamy for personal reasons, its social prescription highlights how strongly monogamous relationships are enforced as the morally superior or “correct” way to structure intimacy, overshadowing or stigmatizing alternatives such as polyamorous and open relationships. No matter how you choose to interact with other people, healthy relationships are built with informed consent, intentional intimacy, care for each other and greater community.
Bell Hooks Discusses the Patriarchy
Bell Hooks Discusses the Patriarchy
bell hooks: Understanding Patriarchy | Autonomies.pdfSystems of Oppression: Built through the continued societal uplifting of the social constructs that protect and empower the oppression and the discriminatory and violent practices associated with them.
Oppression is a way of keeping specific people- defined often by social constructs- that lower social status, lateral policing of identity and behaviors- based on a desired appearance or behaviors, creates inequities that create a skewed social dynamics and impact all people. Whether or not we believe it, there are identities we carry that we may never know due to our ability to feel safe in expressing those identities freely in our current society/community. That pressure to behave and express your identities in a certain way, is part of the oppressionary systems themselves. We may feel pressured in participating in specific systems in order to keep or gain social power; sometimes our identities make it so that we fit more 'in' or 'out' of the system even with our expression of self being true. That doesn't make the identity we hold inherently bad or good, but instead that society has assigned attributes and experiences to those identities without our consent or space for personal definitions of identity. We all hold identities that oppress us, but the way in which we participate in oppression of others, defines the true motivations of a person when it comes to their identities and their appearance.
Are ways in which we have structured our society to cater to a specific kind of format for us to run on; even-though, it may be an unspoken and interpretable format per se.
Are ways in which we have structured our society to cater to a specific kind of format for us to run on; even-though, it may be an unspoken and interpretable format per se.
First we must understand what kind of systems we are looking at?
Patriarchy has been founded on the preconceived notion to sex differences at birth and assumed placement in breeding or procreation for future generations, and the assumed placement of a labor source or provider. While this notion has been getting very old by this time, we have let it up hold several households and leave many spending years in emotional aguish over their true wants and the systems' need to stay alive. If men are home bodies who take care of the young, as their female partner have a larger corporate jobs that provide for the family you are actively breaking this norm. However, don't misguide your sense of praise for breaking away from the norm. The praise goes to those who also teach their children not to rely on a specific sex or gender to provide for emotional needs etc. There is a lot in this world that caters to the male ideology, but in many ways it dis-serves the male population the most by inappropriate expectations and emotional strangulation. This does not negate that the tole the Patriarchy has put on AFAB people and/or women is unattainable by most, and has caused death, abuse, and manipulation in the name of gender superiority. Sexual domination has always been apart of this historical fantasy, but the patriarchy uses this assumed domination to abuse and silence women all the time. Rape and abuse culture is an egregious act and it's important that we take the energy to deal with our biggest predators in the community.
However our systems journey does not lead us just to Patriarchal Systems, but also Racist Systems that further upheld the white male agenda for power and profits. We saw this throughout the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Fugitive Slave Laws, Emancipation Proclamation, and Jim Crow Laws that have only evolved in their ability to access black communities and gerrymander their counties. Racism has many different ways of manifesting itself in the psychology of white individuals. Racism is something every white person faces, because our environment inherently works for us. It makes sure that we are safe; instead of fearing us and therefore endangering us. Racism and Slavery gave white men with power the ability to control and manipulate the ways in which voting and many other forms of freedom were withheld. Black Communities have faced the most extreme of attacks in our nation's history. It's our job as people today to combat our learned racism and other social systems, so that people can be in this place of freedom with the feeling of actually feeling safe, protected, and free to do so as they please (with reason).
Consent in All Spaces is a mechanism we can use to focus on how we would want to be treated in any given situation. We know that being forced to do anything is uncomfortable, and when it comes to sexual encounters there is a high tendency for people to abuse their position in the exchange of pleasure. This is not only a crime, but a tendency high enough that 1 in 4 people Assigned Female At Birth, or represent femininity, are sexually abused before the age of 18. This is not to take away from the ways that males are also victims of sexual assault.
Talking about consent is important and there are plenty of ways to make is a sexy experience. We should always discuss our sexual preferences in terms of sexual acts, before we engage in sexual acts with someone new. It's important to discuss STD/STI status and make sure that this is a person you are comfortable with. Continuous consent is also important, and if you aren't feeling a situation don't feel compelled to continue. Make sure to have good communication with the people you are engaging with, this can be even in non-sexual spaces. Consent can revolve around many different areas in life such as, medical procedures, touching (hugging/kissing), discussion of personal information or triggering information, etc.
Historically in societies under colonization, the way you were raised, the color of your sheets, the job you had (or weren't allowed to have), and the life you were allowed to lead as a whole, was all determined by your sex. Sex, as a form of identity, has often taken the name of gender as well; however, gender is a construct that relies on assigning itself to your assigned-at-birth-sex. Now this can get tricky to understand, but it's often easiest when we fully separate sexual (sex-assigned-at-birth) and gender (how one expresses oneself) identities. That doesn't mean that the two groups don't heavily overlap, it just means that they are inherently separate and are applied differently to our lives. To live life in any physical body comes with a lot of nuances and differences in that experience in comparison to others, and to flatten that experience based on an incorrectly held societal definition of a biological sex binary, does no service to the truth of human diversity.
The constructs of gender impact both AMAB and AFAB people in society via enforcement via patriarchy, but there is a need to highlight not just the historic rates of violence against AFAB people across society but to particularly hold space for the context of the weaponization of our own reproductive system against us in the context of sexual assault, pregnancy, and access to reproductive healthcare.
Expanding on Lateral Violence Between the Sexes Under Patriarchy:
Expanding on Lateral Violence Between the Sexes Under Patriarchy:
Society creates these gender roles for us to play into, and with enforcement via the power structures inherent to colonial, patriarchal capitalism. While we frequently discuss the harms of men and cis-hetero individuals in general under patriarchy, both AFAB folks and many groups within LGBTQIA2S+ circles who are seen by many to be 'queering' from 'traditional values' (Christian heteronormative monogamy), are often active participants as reinforcers of the harms of gender roles, against both AFAB and AMAB individuals.
This can look like 'toxic masculinity' and 'toxic femininity' in action, with people acting out patterns of gendered behavior against each other; for example, a transmasculine individual recreating harmful toxic masculine dynamics such as refusing to participate with household tasks that have a feminine association under patriarchy, such as cooking or cleaning, or a woman attempting to gain power in a space by playing into standard femininity to appeal to existing male-dominated power structures or by attempting to recreate those power structures by acting as a "girlboss", which actually usually ends up modeling 'authority' off of toxic masculine behaviors such as domination and aggression. As a further example, transfeminine people can sometimes tend to lean into either toxic feminine or masculine behaviors as a way to attempt to reclaim power under patriarchy that is stripped from them when they reject their masculine assigned gender at birth. Some cishet men will also perform femininity in order to gain appeal/power with women/in queer spaces for personal or particularly sexual gain. On the flipside, many men like to use the way that we all can tend to play into patriarchy in these ways as justification for the continuation of it, and even as a inlet for them to blame non-men and queer individuals for its existence in the first place.
There is more research being done to finish this page, please be patient with us.
There is more research being done to finish this page, please be patient with us.
If you would like to help us write about commonly silenced areas or personal experiences you may have with these topics, contact us at thisisactivism2023@gmail.com or fill out our Comments page. We want our website to be a continuous growth of knowledge to share with each other in a positive way. There are so many things we don't talk about and we should!
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