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Comment by agateform | Hacker News Reader

>But I agree that men generally don't mind Bob with his hourly cracks about women (and maybe gays).

I'm male and certainly mind very much! I tend to find people that make cracks about woman not very smart. I also can't stand misandry which goes completely unnoticed by society.

>That's why men swear up and down that they've never seen sexism in their workplaces. Because we simply can't see it. (And our society is sexist, so sexism is kind of like air.) Hard to imagine that silly ol' Bob is doing anything so impressive as "reinforcing patriarchy."

The feminist patriarchy concept is also sexist. It implies that just by being a men one is in a more powerful and advantageous position. For a more detailed explanation please look at this video http://youtu.be/JHkGZvC0z4I

Note. Criticism of feminism is not necessarily anti-woman or anti-womans rights.

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I strongly disagree that the notion of patriarchy is inherently biased. It's a reasonably neutral description of a social system. For example, the Patriarch of Constantinople apparently likes the term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch_of_Constantinople

Also, patriarchy doesn't imply that all men have incredible power, any more than institutionalized slavery meant that all white people had incredible power. Patriarchy also misuses men who step outside their role in the system, in the same way that white anti-slavery and anti-segregation activists were treated poorly.

It's true that critique of feminism is not necessarily anti-woman. Many feminists sometimes critique parts of feminism. However, when some guy turns up and turns a discussion of an actual woman's actual bad experience into a discussion of how oppressed he is by feminism, I'm still going to make some assumptions.

Sorry for the large reply but please bear with me.

>Also, patriarchy doesn't imply that all men have incredible power, any more than institutionalized slavery meant that all white people had incredible power. Patriarchy also misuses men who step outside their role in the system, in the same way that white anti-slavery and anti-segregation activists were treated poorly.

You are comparing patriarchy to slavery which implies that husbands have incredible power as slave lords of their wifes and that husbands are evil.

Even if you look at the past, by comparing husbands to slave lords you are forgetting that husbands where required to work to provide, care of wife and children, be legally accountable if their wifes committed a crime for their entire lives all by them selves. Wifes also had much more rights then slaves.

Although there are differences between how man and woman suffers in a patriarchy, its safe to say that in a traditionalist patriarchy both man and woman are less free.

I think instead of assuming that woman has it worse all the time we should take in consideration all gender and sex issues. You can look at my recent post for some examples of mens issues https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3768116

Please watch the Girl Writes What videos that I linked. While I don't agree with everything she says her videos are quite insightful.

>It's true that critique of feminism is not necessarily anti-woman. Many feminists sometimes critique parts of feminism. However, when some guy turns up and turns a discussion of an actual woman's actual bad experience into a discussion of how oppressed he is by feminism, I'm still going to make some assumptions.

This is the right time and place to discuss misandry since misandry and misogyny often happens in such discussions and is not out of topic.

You are making assumptions because I'm "some guy" how is that not sexist? How is comparing husbands to slave lords not sexist? Why do you despise and distrust your own sex?

In a previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3745578 you mentioned that only extremist feminists are sexist. I'm still not convinced that feminists are generally not sexist.

I don't agree that because there is misogyny we should forgive/turn a blind eye to misandry.

Please note that my posts are sincere and I'm open to different ideas and opinions.

I'm not saying that sexism is a one-way issue, and I agree that a patriarchal system acts to oppress more than just women. However, I am saying that turning up in a discussion of a particular incident and saying BUT WHAT ABOUT MEEEEEEE is dubious behavior, and smacks of privilege. It also seems to miss the millennia of oppression of women and the ongoing effects from that.

And for the record, I'm not making assumptions because you're just some guy. I'm happy to make assumptions about any privileged person who derails a discussion like this.

> It implies that just by being a men one is in a more powerful and advantageous position.

All other things being equal, yes, a man is in a more powerful and advantageous position.

Obviously there are lots of individual women who are more powerful than individual men, and there are classes of women who are more powerful than other classes of men, but in general there are many advantages that men have that women do not. These advantages are a direct result of broad societal structures and cultural norms.

Yes, there are advantages that, in general, women have and men do not, but when you look at them they are almost always the result of sexist, patriarchal norms - e.g. the ideas that men are strong so they should never show weakness, strength is best displayed through through dominance, women are fragile and need men to take care of them, women are naturally better with children, etc. These problems are all tied up with each other.

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