(Jan 28 2025, 12:23 PM)Clover I think part of the thing is is that many people, men and women included, still do not believe that we live in a patriarchy. Or, that they believe the system which we call a patriarchy exists, but they refuse to call it such or accept that it is an unnatural authoritarian hierarchical structure that places men on top, and instead liken it to something "natural" and "just the way it is."
Yes, but men refuse to acknowledge the patriarchy because they want to keep benefiting from it. When men call the patriarchy "natural" and "just the way it is", it's because they like it that way. When women do it, it's because they genuinely believe that they don't deserve anything better and that men cannot change for the better, or that it's cruel to make them. It's giving up, rather than rubbing hands at the potential exploitation and entitlement. Certainly both sides are also usually motivated by general human fear of change and the adaptation to the cultural mainstream and current hierarchies, but that's on top of these motivations. Certainly a man isn't going to be invested in letting go of free bangmaids and servitude, whereas women who are told they don't deserve and can't have anything better are obviously working within severe limitations. They might be personally invested in their chains and feel superior because their chains are shinier than other women's, but that's different from men wanting to place and keep women chained to exploit them in the first place.
Quote:some women do not want to dismantle oppressive systems, because the idea (false notion) that they could somehow get power in these oppressive systems is alluring.
My point is that power is impossible for women under patriarchy. What women see as power is really just a male protection racket. Madonnas being appreciated over wh*res isn't power - it's just women being subjected to male violence less than other disobedient women by signaling their loyalty to the male cause and distracting men with more suitable, less cooperative victims. Now, do these women feel a superiority complex over lesser women? Yes. But that's not power. Exploiting women is never done for women's benefit, it's done for men, and as such enabling male exploitation of women cannot be a road to power for women.
It reminds me of people saying that women held real power by "controlling" men behind the scenes. That's not power. That's just women making do with what they've got in order to gain the approval and subsequent protection from male violence. Women climbing the social ladder from "Completely inferior targets of rape and violence" to "Good women who know their place and should only be raped and beaten by the man who owns her" is not power, even if it gets sold to women as power. And again it's important to remember that none of these women are spared male violence - their political alignment (aka parroting men) forbids them from truly holding their ground that rape and violence are universally bad. And that means they're always an acceptable target for it.
When we hear of extreme cases like black or Jewish Nazis, it's obvious that they're self-hating and trying to cope within a supremacist system. No-one thinks they're power-hungry. But for women we apply different standards where the patriarchy suddenly becomes a viable way for women to achieve power. Why? Is it because the patriarchy is such an everyday obligatory part of every woman's life that it's possible to somehow exploit it for female benefit? But that only explains further why so many women get more efficiently brainwashed into doing the patriarchy's bidding even to their own detriment, rather than explaining it as a thirst for power via paradoxically powerless means.
Let's be real: no woman in existence would support any self-destructive dehumanising and disempowering misogynistic idea if she wasn't born into a world where misogyny was normal and treated as common sense. This is something that every woman, even the shittiest, most narcissistic, short-sighted one, has to contend with. No woman gets to opt out of being inferior under the patriarchy, and they all know it. Even the most perfect, idealised tradwife knows she's one misstep away from being a wh*re and b*tch. Even the most passing butch TIF is one terrifying, erm I mean, â"dysphoria inducing"â misstep away from being discovered by her "bros" and being treated the same way. Playing the patriarchy's game to prove you're not as bad as other women does not mean you get to opt out of the patriarchy's contempt of women, and every single woman feels this fear to her core. Even if they fool themselves into thinking they're somehow "winning" the patriarchy, they're always fully aware that they need to keep their head down and know their place as women in a man's world.
I refuse to debate two obvious facts: 1. the patriarchy exists 2. and that's a bad thing
