Another thing worth pointing out: women are socialized to believe that conflict is unladylike. For them to avoid positions that they have an expectation of generating conflict is to fit with what the patriarchy teaches.
People have free will and many will exercise it to choose to act in a traditional manner. There is no mysterious male cabal forcing that to happen.
On a personal note, I would find it incredibly boring if men and women acted exactly the same. I recognize others may have different opinions, but I don't think anyone can say either side is "right" or "wrong".
Also, actually, there is still a cabal of men in America forcing women to behave in certain ways: The systematic, coordinated campaign against women's reproductive rights.
I also think this statement is very extreme:
> Also, actually, there is still a cabal of men in America forcing women to behave in certain ways: The systematic, coordinated campaign against women's reproductive rights.
I don't think that's a mainstream view.
Regardless the GOP is not a "cabal of men in America forcing women to behave in certain ways". Even if they believed that (I don't think all republicans do) they in no way have the authority to "force" women to do anything. Abortion is legal in the US.
Also GOP != patriarchy.
I never said GOP = patriarchy. Just that there is a "systematic, coordinated campaign against women's reproductive rights" and that certainly isn't a fringe statement. This campaign is indicative of one of the OP's definitions: "interwoven social structures that promulgate certain ideologies, doctrines, and social customs."
You're really stretching the original comment to try to make it less extreme.
A group, the large majority of are male, are trying to limit what a women can do with her body. The same thing the OP said.
1: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/upshot/gop-women-in-congre... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Women
While I can't find good figures on male/female split in the GOP, the fact that the US has overall a slightly lower than 1:1 male/female ratio [0] and the fact that women are substantially more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than the Republican while (including leanings of independents in both cases) men are about equally likely to identify as Republican as Democratic, suggests that that presumption would be wrong.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio
[1] http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-part...
You are presuming that traditional behaviour is pathological. Why? Why exactly is the nuclear family pathological? Two people in a partnership raising the children they love together using division of labour? This seems pretty rational. My mother did this. Was she a victim for doing so?
It is good to offer people the freedom to choose, but when they choose something other than what you would do not blame it on brainwashing.
The entire point of leaders is to do things that are unpopular that benefit the group. You don't need leaders to do popular things, they just happen.
Fundamentally if you want to make omelettes you're going to have to break some eggs, if your friends say breaking eggs is bad you have two choices, tell them off, or don't break eggs. Those that are willing to break eggs are allowed to be chefs.
You just have to look at all of the crazy responses to Target (a US retailer) removing the gender-specific labelling of toys (from "Girl Toys" and "Boy Toys" to just "Toys") to see how as a society we are not at a point where "we" aren't trying to impose a particular ideal (e.g. "Barbies are girl toys") on children as they grow up.
> Two people in a partnership raising the children they love together using division of labour?
This is more generic than the "nuclear family" traditionally is viewed. If it was just two people dividing up labour, then the "nuclear family" could equally have the father as the homemaker and the mother as the breadwinner. When people typically refer to the "nuclear family" they are referring to some idealized Leave It To Beaver type setup.
Is this a problem? Is the funneling people into an androgynous role any better than funneling them into traditional gender roles? If anything the current system seems more "natural" in that it's emergent behavior, whereas moving to a genderless society will require top down engineering.
Our society is free enough that regardless of the direction the masses take, people can and will step out of the role most commonly held by other people of their gender. I think we all agree that it's a good thing to have that option.
With that in mind I don't think there's anything "bad" about genders existing in society. People's free will is strong enough to live the life they want regardless of cultural nudging.
This happens in some tribal cultures: children treated as neuter until they reach a certain age, then choosing to go through an explicit ritual to "make them a man" or "make them a woman."
(These cultures aren't particularly modern otherwise; you can't choose to undertake the ritual to become a man if you are biologically a woman, and people would think you were crazy to not want to undergo the ritual. The point is more that it's possible for a culture to start doing the "treat people as agendered by default" thing with no top-down pressure.)
I suppose the real test would be to find a culture that's genderless for people who have reached sexual maturity.
Why would that be preferable to a society where people are assigned a default gender but can easily switch it later on (i.e. the present society)?
Also, while your suggestion might work for certain languages, it would be very difficult in others (e.g. in Slovenian) that use mainly gendered pronouns.
It's not about what they should prefer but about what they are more likely to prefer. We have studies that show this isn't merely a human social phenomenon [0] [1] [2]. There are gender preferences for toys and to most people it's silly to take offence at the idea that genders have different preferences. Now whether we should nurture these differences is a slightly different argument. The phrasing difference is important - and starting with something more people can understand (which color for "boys" has changed not only over time, but varies across populations) would help the discussion. If girls and boys are attracted to [type] of toy, can we nurture their interests in a different direction? The answer is "probably, yes". But that's a different debate.
The "crazy responses" you see are people irritated that a group of hyper-sensitive people who have placed a disturbing level of importance on their gender identity (and the gender identity of others) harped on about this non-issue until Target felt forced to change it to get them to shut up and leave them alone.
The constant bullying and what boils down to online smear campaigns done by these extremist self-identity-crisis groups annoys most people who don't place nearly as much importance on their (or others') racial/gender/sexual identities.
[0] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X08...
It's a non-issue in the same way that homophobia is a "non-issue" to straight white people living in suburbia.
Also, the "crazy responses" I refer to are people getting upset that Target was "encouraging boys to play with Barbies" which "goes against the Bible." Or that Target was "trying to turn people transgender." Are you saying that these people are perfectly normal and represent the way that we want to run society? Do you honestly believe that Target's actions will "turn people transgender?"
No more than I believe that by labeling the toys "boys" and "girls" Target was supporting the patriarchy and perpetuating rape culture by marketing violence-orientated toys towards boys while objectifying woman and furthering the "house wife image" by marketing girls with dress-up and doll houses.
Thank you for clarifying you meant the more extremist "crazies". There happens to be extremist viewpoints on both sides and when either political side speaks of "crazies" from the other side, I immediately think of the moderates from that side to account for political biases.
It's rare they mean the actual extremists, as you did. :) So thanks for clarifying who you were regarding as "crazy". And no, I don't agree with the extreme right either.
Mechanisms like this exist in large part to defeat a sort of social entropy that would arise if everybody made their own descisions. It is desirable to be able to have expectations about others behavior and a larger shared social game like 'Nuclear families and husband/wife'. Pretty much necessarily you're going to get something like a competing access need[0] where some people are going to be really hurt by these games because they don't want to play or can't play[1]. We only have a select few remedies to this which aren't 'destroy all the social rules and let anarchy reign', and while some people think that option would result in good outcomes I have a hard time finding faith that it would.
A position likes yours worries me massively because it seems to be something like 'systematic coercion to maintain social norms is never okay unless it's explicitly part of the law and then it's still not okay because the intent is to maintain a social norm rather than keep the peace'.
[0]: http://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/100561778176/safe-spa...
[1]: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personhood-a-game-for-two-or-m...
Seems like a fragile argument to make.
I'm not saying that we need to force people into some sort of agender roles, but the way we run society now with these ideas that there are "proper" toys for a child to play with, re-enforces the ideas that lead to people beating up their kids because "I'm not gonna raise no fag." What you seem to be saying is that we as a society throw those kids under the bus as part of some sort of "plan for stability" and because you benefit from that stability you support the plan. Am I reading that right?
No, and that's a strawman. (I never said the only option was to 'let anarchy reign'. I said that our options for remedy were not particularly spacious.)
My understanding is that direct single-person targeted interventions like that don't seem to work particularly well. (And to the extent that they 'work' they often do so by breaking people. Broken people are not desirable.) I'm not a child psychologist, but I doubt that children need to be micromanaged in their play or that such micromanagement would avoid 'raising fags'. I don't really feel qualified to comment beyond that.
EDIT: You keep silently editing your post, perhaps you should write a reply instead?
So in your view, basically patriarchy == culture? Why use a new word then?
> Also, actually, there is still a cabal of men in America forcing women to behave in certain ways: The systematic, coordinated campaign against women's reproductive rights.
You could equivalently claim that there exists a cabal of women that is forcing unborn babies to die. Populist claims are populist.
If traditional gender roles included things like women can't vote or own property, then I could see making a case for calling that patriarchy. In the west there is no such thing though.
It implies that, given its etymology, but that is not how it is defined in the literature. Tons of idiomatic words and phrases operate that way in our culture. If I were to tell you "break a leg" as you were heading out onto a theatre stage, would you imply maliciousness or benign well-wishing on my part?
From http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patriarchy
Full Definition of PATRIARCHY
social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power
Definitely not inheritance though. Children of both genders are receiving their inheritance.
Just like slavery is illegal but racism exists, gay marriage is legal but homophobia exists, there is no patriarchy but misogyny exists.
It doesn't even do that. It is an equivalent of 'God did it'.
Men get better treatment: Sexism by the patriarchy.
Whoops, findings were wrong, women are actually getting better treatment: Reverse sexism by the patriarchy.
It is like talking with a creationist.
Patriarchy implies men hold some sort of privilege whereas it's really rich people that have the privilege. If all instances of "patriarchy" were replaced with "the upper class" I think we'd have much more accurate and fair representation of reality.
As it stands I don't think you'll ever get the millions upon millions of poor men out there to see themselves as part of the patriarchy, because they hold no power in society.
There are plenty of things that men usually get to avoid because of their sex. The majority of sexual harassment, sexual violence, domestic abuse, pay discrepancies based on sex, the list goes on and on. All of that is even worse for lower class women and even worse then that for lower class women of color. What would you call those advantages besides privilege?
Even if we take what you say as facts, there are many things women get to avoid because of their sex (warning, as speculative as your list): incarceration, violent crime, stressful manual labor, less representation in higher ed, weakened paternity rights...
I think it makes a lot of sense that differences between the sexes would offer different advantages and disadvantages. I don't see any one gender having a monopoly on advantage.
Important note: that is no longer the case. It hasn't been for years. I'm just saying that this actually existed, the Patriarchy was a real thing.
Regardless, that's not how society works anymore. Trying to redefine patriarchy to "traditional gender roles" strikes me as disingenuous.
No they didn't. The money went to the sons. The daughters were kept by their husbands.
While the law was clear that the men owned the money (I agree that this situation IS patriarchy btw), rich women enjoyed access to that money and power as well.
There existed women in rich households? I think that was pretty obvious.
At the time the vast majority of men and women didn't have access to consumer credit or higher education. I think a common mistake made in these discussions is to generalize the perks some elite men had to all men. In reality most people (men and women) have always had it pretty rough.
Easier to check [1]: in 1970, 55.2 percent of graduating high school men and 48.5 percent of graduating high school women enrolled in college. Again, for men a majority, and close to half for women.
A common mistake is to forget how fast (and how slow) history can move. Certainly most people have always had it pretty rough, but my life is easier now that I can get a bank account without my husband's permission. Even one generation ago that wasn't exactly the case.
https://www.bostonfed.org/education/ledger/ledger04/sprsum/c...
> The use of consumer credit had become a fixture of everyday life. In 2000, more than 70 percent of U.S. households had at least one gener- al-purpose credit card — MasterCard, Visa, Optima, or Discover. Thirty years earlier, in 1970, the number was only 16 percent.
Your point is well taken about bank accounts though. What you say about history moving fast and slow is very interesting. In this case it seems to have moved very fast. Did you feel you had any trouble getting a bank account as a women in your generation? My wife set up most of our accounts so I can only assume it's not a problem. That is indeed a very large change for one generation.
The university enrollment data is very interesting. The data you linked to only goes to 1998 but still shows a 15% increase in enrollment.
Even more interesting how the gender ratio has changed:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_306.10.a...
1976: 53% male, 47% female = 6% difference
2012: 43% male, 57% female = 14% difference
Women dominate higher education now much more than med did in 1976.
Because it makes sense. Passing money and power to a son will help him get a "better" bride. On the other hand, a daughter from a powerful family, even with no own money, will be able to marry a rich, powerful man and improve the overall family's power.
Correction: _physical_ conflict is unladylike.
My female friends often complain about conflicts with fellow _female_ workers. There are a lot of conflicts among high-school girls, etc. They are just not physical conflicts.
Maybe that's not the best example to illustrate this but, a large portion of social norms are not arbitrary. Many reflect biology.