What many misunderstand about the patriarchy is in thinking its an agreed, secret, organised system of ensuring male dominance. That perspective is so easy to refute, this refutation gets equated with the non-existence of the patriarchy itself.

But the patriarchy is simply an unagreed, mostly transparent and organic coincidence of male dominance. There is no mysterious cabal of men saying let's pay men more than women, but men are paid more than women anyway. Likewise there has never been a female US president, or chess world champion, or F1 champion, which does not actually point to talent but to inequality.

You might say the patriarchy is not a diagnosis, but a symptom.

The facts of male advantage in society are irrefutable, and if you consider that they permeate every sphere from public to private, social to corporate, across age and culture for many thousands of years, it doesn't hold water to claim this symptom doesn't exist.

It's just not a conspiracy theory, that's all.