Patriarchy System

---- --·-· . - -- T' NOT A HE ---: --------EM 1______ AN ST SY fE T} Y, iPA'fR1ARCH . '_ N US (1�9rL_ - --· - --- -- -·- - - : A THEM I OR A ·- --- - . - • - . speaker with thirty years of teaching experience . lic b u p d an or, th au 1st, Allan G. Johnson (1946-2017) was a soc1olog. Forest and the Trees: Sociology . . 1 books i.nc1 u d e The exploring issues of privilege, oppression, and social 1neq ua I"ity. H·s Patn.archaI Legacy (1997). as Life, Practice, and Promise (1997), and The Gender Knot: Unraver,n9 Our "When you say patriarchy," a man complained from the rear of the audience, "I know what you really mean-me!" A lot of people hear "men" whenever someone says "patriarchy," so that criti­ cism of male privilege and the oppression of women is taken to mean that all men-each and every one of them-are oppressive people. It's enough to prompt many men to take it personally, bristling at what they often see as a way to make them feel guilty. And some women feel free to blame individ­ ual men for patriarchy simply because they're men. Some of the time, men feel defensive because they identify with patriarchy and its values and don't want to face the consequences these produce or the prospect of giving up male privilege. But defensive­ ness can also reflect a common confusion about the difference between· patriarchy as a kind of society and the people who participate in it. If we're ever going to work toward real change, it's a confusion we'll have to clear up. To do this, we have to realize that we're stuck in a model of social life that views everything as beginning and ending with individuals. Looking at things in this way, the tendency is to think that if bad things happen in the world, it's only because there are bad people who have entered into some kind of conspiracy. Racism exists, then, because white people are racist bigots who hate members of racial and ethnic minorities and want to do them harm. The oppression of women happens because dominate women and ac t out men want and like to re is pover ty and class hostility toward them. The in the u�per classes are oppression because people _ The fhp side �f this greedy, heartless, and cruel._ and blame 1s that individualistic model of gmlt a tu race, gender, and class oppression are � �ll! not oppression at all, but merely the sum of md1V1dual failings on the part of Blacks, women, and the poor, who lack the right stuff to compete successfully with whites, men, and others who know how to make something of themselves. What this kind of thinking ignores is that we are all participating in something larger than ourselves or any collection of us. On some level, most people are familiar with the idea that social life involves us in something larger than our­ selves, but few seem to know what to do with that idea. Blaming everything on "the system• strikes a deep chord in many people. But it also touches on a basic misunderstanding of social life, because blaming "the system" (presumably soci­ ety) for our problems, doesn't take the next step to understanding what that might mean. What exactly is a system, for example, and how could it run our lives? Do we have anything to do with shaping it, and if so, how? How, for example, do we participate in patriarchy, and how does that link us to the consequences? How is what we think of as "normal" life related to male privi­ lege, women's oppression, and the hierarchical, Source: MPatriarchy, the System: An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us" from The Gender Knoc-· Um:we . 1wl Legacy 3rd ' r·mg 0 ur,natnarc edition by Allan G. Johnson. Used by permission ofTemple University Prcss.<0 2014 by Temple . l.r111vcr · s1ty. . A 11 Righ ts Reserved. control-obsessed world in which everyone's lives are embedded? ... If we see patriarchy as nothing more than men's and women's individual personalities, motiva­ tions, and behavior, for example, then it prob­ ably won't even occur to us to ask about larger contexts-such as institutions like the family, re­ ligion, and the economy-and how people's lives are shaped in relation to them. From this kind of individualistic perspective, we might ask why a particular man raped, harassed, or beat a woman. We wouldn't ask, however, what kind of society would promote persistent patterns of such behav­ ior in everyday life, from wife-beating jokes to the routine inclusion of sexual coercion and violence in mainstream movies. We' d be quick to explain rape and battery as the acts of sick or angry men, but we' d rarely take seriously the question of what kind of society would produce so much male anger and pathology or direct it toward sexual violence rather than something else. We' d rarely ask how gender violence might serve other more "normal­ ized" ends such as male control and domination. We might ask why a man would like pornography that objectifies, exploits, and promotes violence against women, or debate whether the Constitu­ tion protects an individual's right to produce and distribute it. But it'd be hard to stir up interest in asking what kind of society would give violent and degrading visions of women's bodies and human sexuality such a prominent and pervasive place in its culture to begin with. ...We need to see and deal with the social roots that generate and nurture the social problems that are reflected in and manifested through the behav­ ior of individuals. We can't do this without realiz­ ing that we all participate in something larger than ourselves, something we didn't create but that we have the power to affect through the choices we make about how to participate. Some readers have objected to "participate" as a way to describe women's relation to patriar­ chy. This is based on the idea that participation is something voluntary, freely chosen, entered into as equals, and it therefore makes little sense to suggest that women can participate in their own oppression. But that is not my meaning here, nor is it a necessary interpretation of the word. To par­ ticipate is simply to have a part in what goes on, to do something (or not) and to have the choice affect the consequences, regardless of whether it is con­ scious or unconscious, coerced or not. Of course, the terms of women's participation differ dramati­ cally from those that shape men's, but it is partici­ pation, nonetheless. This concept is similar to the participation of workers in the system of capitalism. They do not participate as equals to the capitalists who employ them or on terms they would choose if they could. Nevertheless, without them, capitalism cannot function as a system that oppresses them. The importance of participation can be seen in the great variety of ways that women and working­ class people respond to oppression-all the forms that fighting back or giving in can take. To argue that women or workers do not participate is to render them powerless and irrelevant to patriar­ chy's and capitalism's past and future, for it is only as participants that people can affect anything.... The something larger we all participate in is patriarchy, which is more than a collection of in­ dividuals (such as "men"). It is a system, which means it can't be reduced to the people who par­ ticipate in it. If you go to work in .a corporaqon, for example, you know the minute you walk in the door that you've entered "something" that shapes your experience and behavior, something that isn't just you and the other people you work with. You can feel yourself stepping into a set of relationships and shared understandings about w�o's who and what's supposed to happen and why, and all of this limits you in many ways. And when you leave at the end of the day you can feel yourself released from the constraints imposed by your participation in that system. You can feel the expectations drop away and your focus shift to other systems such as family or a neighborhood bar that shape your expe­ rience in different ways. To understand a system like a corporation, we have to look at more than people like you, because all of you aren't the corporation, even though you make it run.If the corporation were just a collection people, then whatever happened to the corpo­ ration would by definiti on also happen to them, and vice versa. But clearly this isn't so. A cor pora ­ tion can go bankrupt or cease to exist altogether without any of the people who work there going bankrupt or disappearing. Or everyone who works for a corporation could quit, but that wouldn't nec­ essarily mean the end of the cor poration, only the arrival of a new set of participants. We can't under­ stand a system, then, just by looking at the people who participate in it, for it is something larger and has to be understood as such. Even more so, we cannot understand the world and our lives in it without looking at the dynamic relationship between individual people and social systems. Nor can we understand the countless details-from sexual violence to patterns of con­ versation to unequal distributions of power-that make up the reality of male privilege and the op­ pression of w omen. As_ the accompanying figure shows, this rela­ tionship has two parts. The arrow on the right side represents the idea that as we participate in social systems, we are shaped as individuals. Through the pro cess of socialization, we learn how to participate in social life-from families, schools, religion, and the mass media, through the examples set by par­ ents, peers, coaches, teachers, and p ublic figures-a continuing stream of ideas and images of people and the world and who we are in relation to them. Through a ll of this, we develop a sense of per­ sonal identity-including gender- and how this positions us in relation to other people, especially in terms of inequalities of power. As I grew up watching movies and television, for example, the message was clear that men are the most important of cause they're the. ones wh o the pI ane t be important things as dedo the most supposedly . ure. They're the strong ones a rchal cult tn a p b d e fin the g ood fight, t h heroes who fight e who bu�iId' the . ses wn. ters and a rtists, the bold leaders, and g emu ' ·i-but always interesting-villain s even the ev1 ndered m ale. Even G od i. s ge ' y consequences o f suc h mes. Among the man . . to encourag in men a sense of entitlement e ' sa ges is . n to women-to be tended to and taken in rela t10 and suppo rted no matter h ow ca re 01,, de fierred 10 . a 1 ep1s • o de of the In the typ1c badly they behave dy Loves Raymond, for ex. telev1s1. 0n s1· team Everybo ves toward hi s Barone routinely beha a mpI e , RaY . . . . D ebra , 1·n ways that are msens1t1ve, se xi st' w11,e, . downright stupid, but by the end adoI esce nt , and we always find out why she puts of each h a lf hour up with it year after year-for some reason that's never made clear, she just loves the guy. This sends the messa ge tha t it's reasonable for a heterosexual man to expect to "have" an intelligent and be auti­ ful woman who will love him and stay with him in spite of his beh a ving badly toward her a great deal of the time. Invariably, some of what we learn through so­ cializ ation turns o ut not to be true and then we may have to deal with that. I say "may" because powerful forces encourage us to keep ourselves in a state of denial, to rationalize what we've learned in order to keep it safe from scrutiny, if only to protect our sense of who we are and ensure our being accepted by other peo ple, includin family g and friends. In the end, the defa ult is to adopt the dominant version of reality and act as though it's the only one there is. peop I e On System We make social Systems happen. Individuals �s we participate in social systems, we are shaped by socialization an d by paths of least _resistance. In addition to socialization, part1c1pation in whom they may or may not know personally-may social systems shapes our behavior through paths shift in a new direction that makes old paths (such of least resistance, a concept that refers to the con­ as telling sexist jokes) more difficult to choose be­ scious and unconscious choices we make from one cause of the increased risk of social resistance. moment to the next.When a man hears other men The model in the figure represents a basic socio­ tell sexist jokes, for example, there are many things logical view of the world at every level of human he could do, but they vary in how much social re­ experience, from the global capitalist economy to sistance they're likely to provoke. He could laugh sexual relationships. Patriarchy fits this model as along with them, for example, or remain silent or a social system in which women and men partici­ ignore them or object. And, of course, there are pate. As such, it is more than a collection of women millions of other things he could do-sing, dance, and men and can't be understood simply by un­ go to sleep, scratch his nose, and so on. Most of derstanding them. We are not patriarchy, no more these possibilities won't even occur to him, which than people who believe in Allah are Islam or Ca­ is one of the ways that social systems limit our op­ nadians are Canada. Patriarchy is a kind of society tions. But of those that do occur to him, usually organized around certain kinds of social relation­ one will risk less resistance than all the rest. The ships and ideas that shape paths of least resistance. path of least resistance is to go along, and unless As individuals, we participate in it. Paradoxically, he's willing to deal with greater resistance, that's our participation both shapes our lives and gives us the opportunity to be part of changing or perpetu­ the choice he's most likely to make. Our daily lives consist of an endless stream of ating it. But we are not it, which means patriarchy such choices as we navigate among various possi­ can exist without men having "oppressive person­ alities" or actively conspiring with one another to bilities in relation to the path of least resistance in defend male privilege. each social situation. Most of the time, we make choices unconsciously without realizing what we're To demonstrate that gender privilege and op­ pression exist, we don't have to show that men are doing. It's just what seems most comfortable to us, most familiar, and safest. The more aware we are villains, that women are good-hearted victims, that of what's going on, however, the more likely it is women don't participate in their own oppression, that we can make conscious, informed choices, and or that men never oppose it. If a society is oppres­ therein lies our potential to make a difference. sive, then people who grow up and live in it will This brings us to the arrow on the left side of the tend to accept, identify with, and participate in it as "normal" and unremarkable life. That's the figure, which represents the fact that human beings path of least resistance in any system. It's hard not are the ones who make social systems happen.... Because people make systems happen, then people to follow it, given h<;>w we depend on society and can also make systems happen differently. And its rewards and punishments that hinge on going along with the status quo. When privilege and op­ when systems happen differently, the consequences pression are woven into the fabric of everyday life, are different as well. In other words, when people we don't need to go out of our way to be overtly step off the path of least resistance, they have the oppressive for a system of privilege to produce oppotential not simply to change other people, but pressive consequences, for, as Edmund Burke tells to alter the way the system itself happens. Given us, evil requires only that good people do nothing. that systems shape people's behavior, this kind of change has enormous potential. When a man ob­ jects to a sexist joke, for example, it can shake other men's perception of what's socially acceptable and what's not so that the next time they're in this kind of situation, their perception of the social environ­ ment itself-not just of other people as individuals,