In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Is patriarchy dead?

Guest Blogger

 

This is a guest post by Whitney. Whitney is a law student, and was involved with a short independent film about the trauma and misconceptions of date rape. 

 

Hanna Rosin wrote yesterday that the patriarchy is dead. And yet, in the world I live in, the patriarchy is far from dead.

The patriarchy is not dead until we have an equal rights amendment to the constitution. The patriarchy is not dead while paternalism lives, requiring only men to register for the draft. The patriarchy is not dead when Congress is less than 20% women. It’s not dead as long as men lawmakers still make it really difficult for women to choose what happens to their bodies. The patriarchy is not dead when my professor reserves a tone ripe with condescension for me and not for my male colleagues. The patriarchy is not dead as long as the pay gap is real. The patriarchy is not dead while parents still blame their daughter and her slutty clothes instead of the rapist. It’s definitely not dead while the rapist still beats the legal system. The patriarchy is not dead when this happens. Or this happens. Or this. It’s not dead while I am still sexually harassed in the workplace. It’s definitely not dead when I am shouted at on the street like a piece of meat. In the world I live in, the patriarchy is alive and kicking.

60 thoughts on Is patriarchy dead?

  1. I think she wants to say that patriarchy isn’t as bad as it used to be? But to say that it’s dead is more sensational. And she gets to claim independence from those strident feminists.

    It’s easier to say “Look how far we’ve come!” when you ignore how far you still have left to go.

  2. The one that the professor wrote: for the sake of science, I will happily [violent fantasy redacted by moderator team].

    Then we shall analyze what kind of damage he feels was dealt. We need more qualitative research!!

    1. I remember the article he wrote, and it is pure asshattery. That said, pretty we just covered violent fantasies like a week ago.

      We need a giraffe here.

      [thank you for sending a giraffe alert ~ moderator team]

      1. Willemina, thanks for catching that violent fantasy in karak’s comment. I have some thoughts on where we need to move to as a community on this, so I’ll take that to #spillover.

        1. No problemo, I caught it on my third 15 minute break all temps are required to take under the sooper seekrit “Fight the Man” clause of our contracts and it bugged me till I got home.

          Now the missing “sure” in my first post is going to bug me as well.

        2. I assumed I’d be giraffed, but the fact is, the man pretty much literally said people should do experiments on humans to re-evaluate the trauma on unconscious rape. I think it’s worthwhile to point out the implications of that, and suggest that he drink his own medicine.

          On the other hand, NMB (not my blog) so I’ll watch myself a bit better.

          1. Karak, I understood and appreciate your rhetorical intent. However, potentially triggering language is still potentially triggering language, and we’re working on improving the commenting space here for everyone, so that’s why it was redacted.

  4. I wrote a thing on this for the Powder Room on Jezebel.

    This is my main issue:

    …wait, what? So let me get this straight, Ms. Rosin. You’re a white, educated, middle to upper class, straight, cisgender woman lecturing other women in your exact same position in society? And from that you’re concluding shit isn’t really so bad? Do you realise how that comes off?

    1. Intersectional she ain’t.

      I did also get the giggles when she attributed male unemployment to lost aspects of patriarchy.

  5. As one of the less-fortunate dudes Rosin is apparently so concerned about, I would appreciate it if she used her talents to fight an enemy that actually harms men (homophobia, racism, ableism, classism, transphobia, etc).

    [Regarding the comments on Rosin’s article:] The more I see people imply that “male privilege” (which is what nearly everyone means by “patriarchy”) means “literally every single man has literally every single advantage over literally every single woman”, the more I wonder if those people are being wholly dishonest. It’s just so asinine. They can’t be serious.

    Incidentally, I see the Penny Arcade guys are still proud to lead the way toward an even smugger and less compassionate geek culture. It’s too bad we can’t dismiss Jerry and Mike as lonely and unsuccessful. That would make it so easy for us.

      1. It’s like he thinks I’m a moron.

        He understands that the merchandise was creating a hostile atmosphere, but he regrets pulling it? He regrets making it and he regrets pulling it? o.O “I regret pulling the merchandise” is a weird and borderline illiterate way of saying he regrets the way PA responded to the push-back against the dickwolves comic.

        A crowd of people (who are such huge fans of PA that they chose to attend one of Gabe’s panels) applauded Gabe when he acknowledged that the dickwolves merchandise was a hostile and juvenile response to critics? Yeah right, I understand the modern nerd too well to fall for that. On the other hand, “I regret caving to those whiny, entitled, delusional victims” is exactly the sort of sentiment Gabe’s audience (and privileged nerds in general) would applaud.

        He wants cookies because PAX has an anti-harassment policy and a ban on booth babes? Please. My standards are not that low.

        Screw up; apologize. Screw up; ask for understanding. Screw up; respond like an asshole. Screw up; shift focus. Screw up; lie. Screw up; apologize again. Where have I encountered this dynamic before? I have no patience for it.

        1. I should preemptively apologize for that last paragraph. I don’t like/trust “Gabe” or “Tycho”, and I let my rhetoric become inappropriate. Sorry.

    1. “Of course men need class hierarchies to distract from sexism problems.”

      Do you not see the ridiculousness of what you said? Suggesting that working class women don’t have to deal with working class problems *and* patriarcy problems is kind of ridiculous.

  9. Gently but firmly, pull Rosin’s head out of her ass, clean out her eyes, and she’ll be good to go. Unless that head is so ingrown as to require surgical removal…
    This area has a Mennonite community about an hour’s drive from here. Scary.

  10. Admittedly I haven’t read the whole article by Rosin. But I found it really funny that she acts all surprised that it’s women who resist the idea that the patriarchy is dead. I mean, come on? It’s women who are mostly negatively affected by the (yeah, still existing) patriarchy, so of course they would object to Rosin’s denial of it. While, I’m sure, MRAs must just love the book. I’m almost hoping Rosin’s just being disingenous, because otherwise she’s incredibly blind to gender issues.

  12. Hannah Rosin can have good things to say. I hope someone will get through to her at some point, how much harm her voice can cause when she makes it to a platform far above women like myself and uses that platform to tell everyone sexism isn’t harming women like myself and we don’t need to address it further.

    When I reported sexuall assault at the mental hospital with dissociative trauma symptoms and I was told that I was acting out “drama personality”? Was that not the same systemic sexism involved in dismissing women’s trauma and health issues as histrionics? That our culture innately dismisses fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and the host of psychosomatic physical health problems related to trauma and chronic stress that appear much higher in women as not real diseases and not problems worthy of providing social, therapeutic, or medical solutions as needed- is that not stemming from the MALE perception of women’s issues as less meaningful?

    When our culture empowered women to enter the male driven workforce in higher numbers, we accepted MEN’S pressumption that stereotypical women’s traits such as nurturing family, preparing healthy food, loving and caring for people’s emotional wellness, looking after people physical health, teaching and rearing children– are all skills that innately less worth while. We accepted the premise that mothers need to be ejected from the home to do REAL work, in order to support their families because the labor women had been already doing, and some women naturally DO want to do after bonding with a child for nine months and birthing that child- is innately not a valuable social service.

    The structure and the terms of what we accept as “good character” are often men’s terms – independent, financially capable, successful, intelligent— the strengths that dominated the male workforce have now been superimposed on women and accepted as a morally BETTER way to be.

    When women were fighting for the right to be seen as equals, we accepted man’s premise that people who are dependant caregivers, who are more nurturing than successful, who care for family in the home- aren’t equals unless they make money in the workplace. Without that they deserve poverty, starvation, or whatever abuse they succumb to to get needs met to support their children.

    Ugh. Ick. Ugh. The entire structure we’ve agreed to reinforce is bad for women’s fertility, bad for healthy pregnancy, bad for nursing and lactation. When men enter a brutal merciless workforce their fertility is easier to protect from the harms of malnutrition, strenuous stressful labor, emotional attacks on a regular basis in certain service positions.

    As women have become educated we got educated within a MALE DOMINATED ideological background and our opinions even among professionals are based in bias that come from centuries of male domination in the fields of health, psychology, family wellness, philosophy, political structures, and social behaviors.

    We can’t even see how this pervades out thinking and we have to work to undo some basic pressumptions we take as given about the way things need to be, what a good person is, what sort of rights childbearing/nursing/parenting/caregiving/cooking/nurturing people should have. The whole concept of a person being automous unto themselves is a basic american mythology that doesn’t hold up to reality on examination. We are a creation of the experiences, environments, social factors, and health factors of our childhoods, our families, our schools, our womb environments, our neighborhoods, our parents childhood environments, our grandparents childhood environments…

    We are interconnected. Our ability to HAVE a high internal axis of control ITSELF rests in variables beyond our control. Our entire personality development and ideologies rest in many factors beyond our control.

    We need more women in research to undo this but research and theoretical fields require that mothers literally stop parenting their children and pay someone else to do it in order to go to school long hours and get ahead in the way men are pressumed to be allowed to do while women stay at home and mother. I’m not sacrificing my time with my child for that! Because my child deserves more than that.

    And thus, people with a strong sense of family connectedness are weeded out of high positions and the conversations about health and family and how to run society.

    1. I want to add something, I HEARD Hana rosin has had good things to say supposedly, somewhere. I have never actually seen this happen. Unfortunately since a lot of people think do listen to her, I wish she would stop writing such awful things.

      1. What I don’t like, to be more clear, is when advocacy about how 50 hours of day care is just as good as being one on one with mom, that mothers and infants who are bonded aren’t actually bonded, or there is no such bond, or it’s a bond that definately doesn’t matter anyway, or that nursing isn’t a big deal and it doesn’t matter, or that mothers who DID have a huge life changing experience during pregnancy and birth and nursing and DO feel bonded and like being hurled into the workplace is a special kind of hell, not only for themselves but for their children—-

        When these kinds of arguments to let women who want to work interfere with arguments in favor of longer maternity leave, stronger rights for people who carry and birth children and have a bond after that they want protected, for people who nursing and feel that time with their children is precious. I am in favor of making it easy for women who want to be away from their children to do so, I’m not in favor of being forced to agree with everyone that children don’t need daily interaction with parents or someone who is standing in as a parent.

        My parents were both working parents and never around and I saw what that looks that. Some families can do it in a healthy but it means that if they aren’t around SOMEONE ELSE SHOULD BE who is loving and involved and actually cares about the kids well-being and not just because they are getting paid.

        I don’t like that I’m literally not ALLOWED to say that kind of bond matters or that it’s a different bond than what you go through creating and birthing a child in your body because it interferes with someone else’s agenda that has really fucked up my life.

        We take children from women, we create a societal structure that reinforces they aren’t doing real work if they DO want to spend time with them– these things are messed up. I think we need more integrated worlplaces that allow parents to work part time, have living wages and insurance so this is feasable, and make sure children can have parents around and available in their lives.

        But it’s hard to make that argument and fight for it when it’s literally not ok to say that children need time with their family or that pregnancy and birth/lactation DO create a special bonded situation that should require some structural protections.

    2. We need more women in research to undo this but research and theoretical fields require that mothers literally stop parenting their children and pay someone else to do it in order to go to school long hours and get ahead in the way men are pressumed to be allowed to do while women stay at home and mother.

      Hold the phone. Maybe you really do mean to say that women who work outside the home are shitty/non-“parenting” mothers, but I hope not.

      1. We certainly have different views about what children’s needs are, and I think young children need to be parented throughout the day.

        That means either they are doing the parenting or someone else is. Or they aren’t being parented during that time. Right?

        1. Meaning if the parents are doing the parenting who is doing the parenting? Is parenting an action or a noun? Policies that force women into the workforce sooner (which among poor women are largely ironically CONSERVATIVE policies) pressume that poor women’s children don’t need to be nurtured one on one but wealthy women’s children do. LOL. I think we have totally wack views about the value of caregiving and how much worth and credit we give caregiver while demanding they love and nurture children just as good as parents themselves.

          Do everything as good as I do, but my child won’t give a fuck about you and you’re meaningless! I’m the only caregiver they will attach to and all the work you do is no important! Do babies and toddlers need to be loved during the day or not? Is that love not extremely important and SHOULDN’T it be familial quality love? I don’t think women are bad for wanting to work out of the home but outsourcing caregiving, expecting parent quality care while treating the labor as meaningless to the family is pretty messed up.

          It’s situation is unique and some people aren’t as well suited to stay at home with kids whether men or women and maybe others are more nurturing with and enjoy being there for kids during the day in general. That is totally fine. I just think that parenting is a verb. The people there doing the daily work are the ones doing it.

          Anyway- this is a huge topic and if you want to get into it maybe we can continue by email at nostalgicrainbowdrop@gmail.com because I doubt we’ll get anywhere making the rounds here (or there really) but whatev. I think kids can have more than one or two parent and it takes a village and such so thinking of children as being parented by more than just the parents is not as much of an affront as you’re making it out to be.

        2. SHOULDN’T it be familial quality love?

          I actually agree with almost all of your comment, rox; I just want to say that I don’t believe that the love I bore and bear for the children I cared for when I was sitting/nannying is inferior in quality or quantity to the love they receive from any family members.

        3. If you feel so strongly about this, why are you so concerned about mothers “stopping” their parenting? While most mothers work outside the home, even more fathers do. Why aren’t you so concerned about them?

          (If I predict the answer, can I make a reputation as a psychic?)

        4. I care about other WOMEN making arguments that force me to lose my child or force me to place my child in day care at 6 weeks because I’m too poor to afford to stay with my sweet infant. I care when other people’s scramble to prove that day care is just the same STAMPS OUT my right to argue that I believe the opposite, that not only for my sake, but for my child’s sake I want to stay with my child.

          When someone else’s right to put their child in day care at 6 weeks is based on the pressumption they get to decide for all women that all children are fine in 50 hours of day care at 6 weeks old, that is part of why I felt like I couldn’t even parent my first child, not while giving them the life I want them to have. I care about the hell I went through and the hell so many people go through because the idea that helping mothers who are lactating and bonded to an infant that just came out of their body (seriously no offense when that bond doesn’t happen for some women and it doesn’t but for many of us it DOES and I want that to be protected).

          You’re pressuming that I’m out trying to trap women in the home and stuff them in kitchens or something– I just feel like the women who dominate policy have mad ethe decision to use daycare and they have the power and determine policies for the rest of us who may be wanting advocacy that is not the same advocacy about getting us into the work force and away from the children we love spending time with. Speaking of which now that women don’t cook meals for men, how much does food service pay?

          Now that people need TVdinners/quick meals or to eat out after work because everyone is working long hours, we don’t pay people to do that valuable service. My point is the work that was womens work is VALUABLE work, we should haven’t to get an elite degree to prove that valuable work that creates a healthy stable society should be well paid for and valued. Anyway, I think in these conversations I think people don’t realize what they are therefore FORCING on low income women who find it traumatic for themselves and who don’t believe it’s in their children’s interest to be in daycare for 50 hours a week as a 6 week old.

          As far as I’m concerned, being a nanny should pay the same as any other job and essentially, it should mean the mom or dad can find a job they are more suited to and someone can provide as close as possible to a family loving environment. If you DON’T want them to provide the same amount of love and parenting as you would, yeah I think that’s problematic for the kids, but humans have survived being left in the house all day while everyone was out working in some cultures (although a lot died) so I mean, that is life. It’s a balancing act of positives and negatives in the environment- I just think there is often this “If you area feminist you must agree that day care is awesome and no one woman should dare request our policies empower her to not be forced to use it before she feels her child is ready” or else you’re attacking all women. We all survive often brutal realities, I’m not trying to put women down for the choices they make to survive theirs, I just think it’s totally fair to think rearing environment matters and our thinking about nurturing and love and parental affection as a daily active force in the lives of children is to me, less healthy as a foundation for connected nurtured people. Not to mention how little we recognize the people who spend so much time with infants and small children in some of their most formative years.

        5. I think it also has huge repercussions for mothers in custody situations when we try to say that bonding and lactation after pregnancy aren’t unique and something worth protecting in the event a bond is there. That some women don’t feel it, or think their children need it is fine, but it’s not fine when want to force on a woman who just birthed a child and her husband decides to leave her and that he wants to split custody half the week with a month old lactating infant forcing his wife to disrupt that bond.

          Arguments that these bonds are meaningless really do hurt women for whome they are extremely meaningful. It also clarifies to me a lot more why feminism hasn’t been doing much to help mothers rights– why should it bother when motherhood is exactly the same as fatherhood and we not allowed to talk about ways it might be different or else we’re sexist? To be clear, a transman should have all the same protection. Pregnancy and birth and bonding and lactation ARE different ways of bonding with infants and DO often form different bonds.

          And I’m an adoptee too, Idon’t appreciate others telling me I’n not allowed to say that formy allergies and health and wellness I think I missed out on both breastmilk and the bondwith my own mother when she was ripped from me at birth by these social beliefs these bonds don’t matter and don’t deserve protection and supports.

    3. And insinuating that talking about protecting mothers bonds with their children is sexist is a FUCKED UP aspect of current “feminism” and I think it’s really hurt attempts to increase mothers rights and structural supports for mothers.

      1. I agree. Those protections and supports should be in place for mothers and others who want or need them, and the fact that they’re not is directly about the devaluation of labor and love traditionally and usually associated with women.

  13. Patriarchy is dead.
    Women are proportionally represented in, have access to, and have proportional control of politics, finances , strategic policy decisions, entertainment, technology.
    Gender related violence, unequal share of domestic work, and body image issues are passé.

    Women of all classes, races, castes and nationalities can heave a sigh of relief at the death of bleeeehdy patriarchy. Good riddance you ***!!

    On similar note, horses have learnt to fly and cauliflowers are used as latest nuclear WMDs.

    On a personal note, my brain is hovering besides me and asking Ms. Rosin what substance she consumed before making this grand statement. ( My brain would also like some of that… to escape the reality and venture into la la land.)

  14. Patriarchy is alive and well. People keep speaking up at Hanna Rosin speaking events and disagreeing with her, and the disagreers are all remarkably consistent. Clearly, these people are the last vestiges of the patriarchy oppressing Hanna Rosin. She has the right to write a troll book and go on a speaking tour and receive only praise gosh darnit! No fear, she will fix this with an article in Slate that resolves this debate once and for all.

  15. My “favorite” part was her response to those who complain that she ignores women who aren’t affluent, the ones who “take out the trash”: basically, that she’s talked to the women who empty the trash at her offices, and they all wish they had a man to take care of them so they wouldn’t have to work so hard. (Just like the old days, I’m sure, back when poor women never, ever had to work and could stay home and raise babies.)

    1. You mean this response, Donna?

      “How dare I, a rich white lady, speak about the “rest of the country”? We all report and write about people who are not living the same life as we are. It’s hard these days to be a working-class or poor white woman. It’s hard to be a poor man. It’s hard to be poor and getting harder, given the vast and growing income inequality. Who has it worse is a toss-up. Women are often underpaid, and poor white women are dying at younger ages. Men, on the other hand, are being pushed out of the economy altogether and losing their identity as fathers. All of those things are real problems, but, again, I’m not sure how blaming the patriarchy will help. The working-class patriarch is a hobbled breed these days.”

      http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/09/13/rise_of_women_blame_the_patriarchy_for_your_juice_cleanse_and_miss_the_point.html

      I pretty much always despise Rosin and her ham-fisted efforts at polemics. But this one is an all time low for her; lots of folks have it bad, even rich folks, and let’s not forget about the poor men!

      After reading all of it, it seems painfully clear that she doesn’t understand what patriarchy even means when it is discussed in the greater context of Feminism. The whole red herring as strawman working class patriarch bit she throws in their makes it quite clear she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Because patriarchy as an institutional force has next to nothing to old school working class men ruling their household kingdoms from the seats of their Lazy Boys.

      1. No, I haven’t seen that article, it was this:


        My young interrogator might be annoyed to learn that many of those women who pick up the trash yearn to bring back at least some aspects of the patriarchy. They generally appreciate their new economic independence and feel pride at holding their families together, at working and studying and doing things on their own, but sometimes they long to have a man around who would pay the bills and take care of them and make a life for them in which they could work less

        1. They generally appreciate their new economic independence

          Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, what does she think working-class women have been doing ever since time fucking immemorial?!

        2. sometimes they long to have a man around who would pay the bills and take care of them and make a life for them in which they could work less

          Uh, okay, and I’ve always wished that a long-lost relative would suddenly turn up and want to be my benefactor. So?

        3. Right? I want a wealthy alumnus of my college to endow a named chair that comes with a personal assistant for me. Does that somehow mean that classism is dead too?

        5. She really seems to think that back in the good old days, every working-class woman had a man to take care of her so she wouldn’t have to work, and could eat bon-bons all day.

        6. they long to have a man around who would pay the bills and take care of them and make a life for them in which they could work less

          And I want to be a pokemon master.

        8. Also, I deeply suspect that Ms. Rosin would shrivel in horror at the very thought of living the life of “working class” folks. What with their blue collars, and middle American lives.

          Qnd how does one even argue with a person who thinks that blue collar women who entertain rescue fantasies are embracing patriarchy? Because fantasizing about a deus ex machina as magical rescue from one’s daily drudgery does not equal a desire to bring back patriarchy (again, as if it ever went away in the first place.) It simply makes someone human to want an escape hatch,or the very least a partner to help shoulder some of the daily burdens of life.

          FFS

        9. Qnd how does one even argue with a person who thinks that blue collar women who entertain rescue fantasies are embracing patriarchy?

          By asking if blue collar men entertain those same fantasies.

  17. And patriarchy is not dead when impoverished and socially isolated women report serious abuse to the police, only to be told that they should have a cup of coffee with their abusers.

  19. Pingback: Links Round Up | ShoutOut! JMU

Comments are currently closed.