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Comment by realjhol | Hacker News Reader

> You guys? Who do you mean by that?

Feminists.

> I use that language because these things happen on the socio-cultural level and are perpetuated indirectly through norms.

Belief in patriarchy is superstitious in nature. The patriarchy is everywhere, and nowhere. Its a global conspiracy. It is composed of powerful men and all men and all people both men and women and no-one all at once.

In this way, the patriarchy is unfalsifiable.

When speaking about the patriachy, feminists use the passive voice to tap-dance around having to make any specific claims otherwise they would be immediately falsified.

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Feminists aren't an homogeneous group.

Can I ask what feminist literature you've read about the nature of patriarchy?

Maybe Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez could be good for you. It ties together a lot of different case studies from around the world to explore the unintended harm done to women by male-as-default thinking, from medical practices to urban planning.

The book is stuffed with concrete examples.

Ahh yes, I'll run out to my local book seller right now. Except that wouldn't be necessary if your conspiracy theory held up to any scrutiny. The oppression would be unabiguous and deliberate feature of daily life. We would see as a fact in every day life, as for example, in the case of the Yazidis.

Not everything is necessarily deliberate. For example, the medical aspect that GP referred to: lots of medicines are only tested on men, not because doctors don't want to cure women, but because it's easier to show consistent and significant results in men, because their hormone levels don't change throughout the month. Tests on women are more complicated, but therefore more important, rather than less. But they're often not being tested out of laziness and because society tolerates using men as the default. Any drug that has only been tested on men should be immediately criticised for that, but that doesn't always happen yet. Though it's receiving a lot more attention now than it used to.

Or the fact that crash test dummies tend to be modelled only after men. It's easier to have one type of test dummy, and men are seen as the default. All of these things are not done out of malice, but out of laziness.

That said, there's also plenty of oppression that is actually done out of malice.

But if you want to have an informed opinion on this, yes, you should run out to your local book seller and read some relevant books on the matter. Or order them online. Or borrow them from the library.

If you refuse to inform yourself and prefer to be obstinate about this then there's no conversation to be had, I'm sorry.

I'm not talking about any conspiracy, I'm talking about emergent phenomena of our society that disadvantage people with "non-standard" bodies.

I didn't use the word conspiracy once. Nor did I present myself as a feminist.

You've put me into a neat little bucket and decided I'm not worth listening to on that basis. I don't have the time for that kind of discourse but I wish you the best and would like to again recommend you read Invisible Women. Maybe the next time you come across one of us feminists you'll be able to discuss the points they're making without discrediting them on am imaginary basis.

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