Updated FAQ on Patriarchy

The post FAQ: Isn’t “the Patriarchy” just some conspiracy theory that blames all men, even decent men, for women’s woes? has been edited and modified to include material on the concept of “kyriarchy” and to clarify other issues which were not as well expressed as they could have been back in 2007.

If you have a quote from the Patriarchy FAQ somewhere on your hard drive that you like to use, it might be a good idea to check whether it’s still there before using it again.

Comments are closed on this post so that any relevant discussion can take place on the FAQ post itself.

Feminism Friday – Feminism 101: “Sexism is a Matter of Opinion”

By Melissa McEwan (Crossposted from Shakesville, where it is part of Liss’s ongoing Feminism 101 series)

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There’s a very common misperception that sexism is subjective—that any given incident identified by one person as sexist could be identified by another as not sexist, and either both of them are right, because the whole thing is just a matter of opinion anyway, or the latter is right, because if it’s not equally obvious to everyone, it can’t be sexist. It’s this conventional wisdom about the subjectivity of sexism that underlies the ubiquitous “I don’t see it” rejoinder, particularly recurrent in discussions of expressed sexism against women, on which this post will be focused.*

Sexism is, in fact, not subjective. What’s subjective are individual reactions to sexism, but sexism itself can be objectively determined. (I’ll come back to that in a moment.) Individual reactions to sexism will, naturally, be as vast and varied as the individuals who react—but because there are men, or women, who aren’t offended by something, or don’t find it sexist, doesn’t mean it isn’t. One can always find someone who refuses to be offended by something: That Michelle Malkin wrote In Defense of Internment doesn’t American government-built concentration camps any less objectively offensive or wrong.

So: Toss out the idea that there must be unanimous consent, or even majority agreement, that something is sexist for it to be determined as such. In fact, toss out the idea that sexism is determined by subjective opinion altogether.

FAQ: what do you mean by “Not my Nigel”? (feminist abbreviations/jargon)

Like any other field of debate and controversy, a lot of issues and positions in feminism end up being discussed so often that they are abbreviated for convenience into acronyms, initialisms and shorthand phrases that make up a jargon.

• “Not my Nigel” is shorthand for a common defensive reaction of many women to feminist observations and explanations of widespread sexist activity and sexist motivations, which is that while certainly some other men are oppressively sexist, their particular partners/sons/fathers/brothers couldn’t possibly be part of the problem.
  • i.e. “Not my Nigel! He’d never do anything like that”

  or more invidiously

  • “well sure, my Nigel says/does that but he doesn’t mean any harm by it”.

  (The feminist response is that truly one has no idea what sexist activities one’s Nigel engages in when performing manliness to impress other men (you think all those gropers and harassers tell their wives/mothers/sisters what they do?) and that not meaning any harm because “boys will be boys” is exactly the root of the problem.)

Below are a few common abbreviations/jargon terms. There’s a more formal academic list of terms at Feminist Lexicon, and you may find some of the differences/distinctions between their entries and this list instructive (for more on differences/distinctions see the Feminisms FAQ).

Glossary

| A-G | H-N | O-P | Q-Z |

FAQ: Isn’t "the Patriarchy" just some conspiracy theory that blames all men, even decent men, for women’s woes?

Last Updated: 2009-11-03

Patriarchy: one of the most misunderstood critical-theory concepts ever, often wilfully misunderstood. Patriarchy is one form of social stratification via a power/dominance hierarchy – an ancient and ongoing social system based on traditions of elitism (a ranking of inferiorities) and its privileges. Societies can be (and usually are) patriarchal, oligarchal and plutocratic all at the same time, complicated by current and/or legacy features of sectarianism, imperialism and colonialism, so the gender hierarchy is only one source of social disparity. Because of the limited capacity of the word “patriarchy” to describe the full operation of intersecting oppressions, some now prefer to use the word “kyriarchy” instead, but it is not yet in common use.

Kyriarchy – a neologism coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and derived from the Greek words for “lord” or “master” (kyrios) and “to rule or dominate” (archein) which seeks to redefine the analytic category of patriarchy in terms of multiplicative intersecting structures of domination…Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression.

Patriarchy – Literally means the rule of the father and is generally understood within feminist discourses in a dualistic sense as asserting the domination of all men over all women in equal terms. The theoretical adequacy of patriarchy has been challenged because, for instance, black men to not have control over white wo/men and some women (slave/mistresses) have power over subaltern women and men (slaves).

- Glossary, Wisdom Ways, Orbis Books New York 2001

Historically, patriarchy operates through the disproportionate (sometimes exclusive) conferring of leadership status (and formal titles indicating that status) on men, a tradition characterised by casting all women as naturally unsuited to lead men, no matter what talents and expertise they might possess (unless there are exceptional circumstances resulting from intersections with other social hierarchies conferring high status that gives rare women political authority e.g. the royal lineage of Elizabeth I, or the divine claim to authority of Joan of Arc). This view of women normalises the restriction of women’s opportunities and choices throughout the whole of society via strict gender expectations which constrain individualist expressions.

Some societies are more patriarchal than others, but patriarchal social traditions are universal in human societies, taking the physical strength disparity between the sexes as signs of a general female inferiority, a “natural order” that indicates women are meant to be subordinate.

Not all men are Patriarchs.