Discussion 1

ALLAN G . JOH N SON -- ·A T NO A~~ . PATRIA , HE M. ' , ~ A THEM, OR AN _US <199-7} --- ---- . ~

-· · · d blic speaker with t hirty years of teaching ex . • I ist author, an pu Perie

A llan G. Johnson (1946-2017) was a socio og ' . . 1·t His books include The Forest and the Trees: S . ~Ce . and socia l ,nequa , y. . ocio/o

exploring issues of privilege, oppression, d I( t· Unraveling Our Patnarchal Legacy (1997). 9y as Life, Practice, and Promise (1997), and The Gen er no ·

•, A Jhen you say patriarchy," a man complained V V from the rear ofthe audience, uI know what

you really mean-me! • A lot of people hear "m~~" whenever someone says •patriarchy," so that cntl­ dsm ofmale privilege and the oppression ofwomen 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 ofgiving 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 dear 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

men want and like to dominate women and . aq%

hostility toward them. There 1s poverty and 1 · h cass

oppression because peop1e m t e upper class 1

es are greedy, heartless, and cruel. The flip side of h·

· · I f ·1 d t Isindividuahsuc mode o gm t an blame is th . a1 race, gender, and cIass oppression are actually

001 oppression at all, but merely the sum of individual failings on the part of Blacks, women, and the poor, who Jack the right stuff to compete successfully with whites, men, and others who know how to make someth ing of themselves.

What th is 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 wh at to do with that idea. Blaming everything on uthe system' strikes a deep chord in many people. But it also touches on a basic misunderstanding ofsocial 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: #Patriarchy, the System: An It, Not a He a Them or ,, edition by Allan G Johnson Used b . . ' ' an Us from The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, 3rd

· · Y perrmss1on ofTem J u · · dPe mversity Press.@2014 by Temple University. All Rights Reserve ·

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63

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

Patriarchy, the System

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 umen"). 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 corporation, for example, you know the minute you walk in the door that you've entered 0 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 who'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

64 CREAT I NG K NOWLEDGE

eople on the planet because they' of people, then whatever happened to the corpo­ P re th

supposedly do the most important t ~ ones ration would by definition also happen to them, ed by patriarchal culture. They' h1ng8 "1~ fi n re the asand vice versa. But clearly this isn't so. A corpora­ who build, the heroes who fight the strong ~- tion can go bankrupt or cease to exist altogether . d . good i:. on

eniuses, wnters an artists, the bold 11ght '1 without any of the people who work there going g ·1 b 1 · lead '1~ en the ev1 - ut a ways Intere . ers ' ev sting , anbankrupt or disappearing. Or everyone who works Even God is gendered male. --villa-1n1

d for a corporation could quit, but that wouldn't nec­ Among the many consequences f ·

. o su hessarily mean the end of the corporation, only the ages is to encourage m men a sense f c rn S o enr ~arrival of a new set of participants. We can't under­ 1 in relation to women-to be tended t tlerne. o and ••tstand a system, then, just by looking at the people care of, deferred to and supported no rnat taken

who participate in it, for it is something larger and badly they behave. In the typical ep· ter hn... . isocte o -~ has to be understood as such. television sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond f th, Even more so, we cannot understand the world t . l b ' forample, Ray Barone rou me y ehaves to ~-

and our lives in it without looking at the dynamic . th . Ward h· wife, Debra, m ways at are msensitiv ~

relationship between individual people and social . e, Sef adolescent, and downnght stupid, but by h IS~

systems. or can we understand the countless t eend of each half hour we always find out why h

details-from sexual violence to patterns of con­ s ePu up with it year after year-for some reaso h ts

versation to unequal distributions of power-that n t at' never made clear, she just loves the guy Thi· s

make up the reality of male privilege and the op­ • ssends the message that it's reasonable for a heteros

pression of women. "h ,, . 1 . exua1 man to expect to ave an mte hgent and beauti.As the accompanying figure shows, this rela­ ful woman who will love him and stay with h" .tionship has two parts. The arrow on the right side 1m10 spite of his behaving badly toward her a great dealrepresents the idea that as we participate in social of the time. systems, we are shaped as individuals. Through the

Invariably, some of what we learn through so.process of socialization, we learn how to participate in social life-from families, schools, religion, and cialization turns out not to be true and then we

the mass media, through the examples set by par­ may have to deal with that. I say 0 may• because

ents, peers, coaches, teachers, and public figures-a powerful forces encourage us to keep ourselves in

continuing stream of ideas and images of people a state of denial, to rationalize what we've learned and the world and who we are in relation to them. in order to keep it safe from scrutiny, if only to

Through all of this, we develop a sense of per­ protect our sense of who we are and ensure our sonal identity- including gender- and how this being accepted by other people, including famify positions us in relation to other people, especially and friends . In the end, the default is to adopt the in t~ of ~equalities of power. As I grew up dominant version of reality and act as though it's watching moVJes and television, for example, the the only one there is. message was dear that men are the most important

System

As we participate We make social in social systems, Systems happen. we are shaped by

socialization and by paths of least resistance.Individuals

65

In addition to socializat ion, participation in social systems shapes our behavior through paths of least resistance, a concept that refers to the con­ scious and unconscious choices we make from one moment to the next. When a man hears other men tell sex ist jokes, for example, there are many things he could do, but they vary in how much social re­ sistance they're likely to provoke. He could laugh along with them, for example, or remain silent or ignore them or object. And, of course, there are millions of other things he could do-sing, dance, go to sleep, scratch his nose, and so on. Most of these possibilities won't even occur to him, which is one of the ways that social systems limit our op­ tions. But of those that do occur to him, usually one will risk less resistance than all the rest. The path of least resistance is to go along, and unless he's willing to deal with greater resistance, that's the choice he's most likely to make.

Our daily lives consist of an endless stream of such choices as we navigate among various possi­ bilities in relation to the path of least resistance in each social situation. Most of the time, we make choices unconsciously without realizing what we're doing. It's just what seems most comfortable to us, most familiar, and safest. The more aware we are of what's going on, however, the more likely it is that we can make conscious, informed choices, and therein lies our potential to make a difference.

This brings us to the arrow on the left side of the figure, which represents the fact that human beings are the ones who make social systems happen.... Because people make systems happen, then people can also make systems happen differently. And when systems happen differently, the consequences are different as well. In other words, when people step off the path of least resistance, they have the potential not simply to change other people, but to alter the way the system itself happens . Given 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,

Patriarchy, the System

whom they may or may not know personally-may shift in a new direction that makes old paths (such as telling sexist jokes) more difficult to choose be­ cause of the increased risk of social resistance.

The model in the figure represents a basic socio­ logical view of the world at every level of human experience, from the global capitalist economy to sexual relationships. Patriarchy fits this model as a social system in which women and men partici­ pate. As such, it is more than a collection ofwomen and men and can't be understood simply by un­ derstanding them. We are not patriarchy, no more than people who believe in Allah are Islam or Ca­ nadians are Canada. Patriarchy is a kind of society organized around certain kinds of social relation­ ships and ideas that shape paths of least resistance. As individuals, we participate in it. Paradoxically, our participation both shapes our lives and gives us the opportunity to be part of changing or perpetu­ ating it. But we are not it, which means patriarchy can exist without men having Hoppressive person­ alities" or actively conspiring with one another to defend male privilege.

To demonstrate that gender privilege and op­ pression exist, we don't have to show that men are villains, that women are good-hearted victims, that women don't participate in their own oppression, or that men never oppose it. If a society is oppres­ sive, then people who grow up and live in it will tend to accept, identify with, and participate in it as «normal " and unremarkable life. That's the path of least resistance in any system. It's hard not to follow it, given how we depend on society and its rewards and punishments that hinge on going along with the status quo. When privilege and op­ pression are woven into the fabric of everyday life, we don't need to go out of our way to be overtly oppressive for a system of privilege to produce op­ pressive consequences, for, as Edmund Burke tells us, evil requires only that good people do nothing.

"The System" . . . The crucial thing to understand about patriar­ chy or any other social system is that it's something people participate in. It's an arrangement of shared understandings and relationships that connect

1

CREATING KNOWLEDGE 66

om thing larger thannother and people to on a ,

O m wa w r like pla rs who themseIves. In ' participate in a gam . Monopol ' for , ampl , con- i t oh 1 ofid a ab utthing uch as the mean­

ing of property and rent. th alu. of competition and accumulating wealth, and vanous rules about rolling dice. moving around a board, buying, sell­ ing, and developing property, collecting rents, win­ ning, and losing. It has positions-player, banker, and so on-that people occupy. It has material ele­ ments such a the board, houses and hotels, dice, property deeds, money, and •pieces" that represent each player's movements on the board. As such, the game is something we can think of as a social system whose elements cohere with a unity and wholeness that distinguish it from other games and from nongames.1 Most important, we can de­ scribe it as a system without ever talking about the personal characteristics or motivations of the in­ dividual people who actually play it at any given moment.

If we watch people play Monopoly, we notice certain routine patterns of feeling and behavior that reflect paths of least resistance inherent in the game itself. If someone lands on a property I own, for example, I collect the rent (if I happen to notice); and if they can't pay, I take their assets and force them from the game. The game encourages me to feel good about this, not necessarily because I'm greedy and merciless, but because the game is about winning, and this is what winning consists of in Monopoly. Since everyone else is also trying to win by driving me out of the game, each step I take toward winning protects me and alleviates some anxiety about landing on a property whose rent I can't pay.

Because these patterns are shaped by the game far more than by the individual players, we can find ourselves behaving in ways that might seem dis­ turbing in other situations. When I'm not playing Monopoly, I behave quite differently, even though I'm still the same person. This is why I don't play Monopoly anymore-I don't like the way it encour­ ages me to feel and behave in the name of "fun," especially toward people I care about. The reason we behave differently outside the game doesn't

lie in our personalities but in th • least resistance, which define c e.game's "

erta1n b t-'•l.th values as appropriate and expe ehav· sor

cted W tot ourselves as Monopoly players · he11 ,.. anQ

' We fe 1 'Ve the rules and goals the game defi e limit see

. . nes e(h. ence 1t as somethmg external to ' and el<t1 YY

us a d 1-'ef'1our control. n bey · 0nQ

It's important to note how rarel . . l h y it oc

people to s1mp y c ange the rules. Th cuts to ships, terms, and goals that organ. e relation

ize th · aren't presented to us as ours to judge e 8arne

or alt more attached we feel to the game and er, 'the

th closely we identify ourselves as players he Illore

, t e Ill likely we are to feel helpless in relation . 0re you're about to drive someone into ha kto It. If

n rupt you can excuse yourself by saying, "I've got C't,

to take your money, those are the rules," but only •r

1 You ignore the fact that you could choose not to pl

ayor could suggest a change in the rules. Then again . you can't imagine life without the game, you w; '.:

0 see many alternatives to doing what's expected.

If we try to explain patterns of social behavior only in terms of individual people's personalities and motives-people do greedy things, for ex­ ample, because they are greedy-then we ignore how behavior is shaped by paths of least resistance found in the systems people participate in. The "profit motive" associated with capitalism, for ex­ ample, is typically seen as a psychological motive that explains capitalism as a system: Capitalism exists because there are people who want to make a profit. But this puts the cart before the horse by avoiding the question of where wanting to make a profit comes from in the first place. We need to ask what kind of world makes such wants pos­ sible and encourages people to organize their lives

e profit around them, for although we may pursu Id as we play Monopoly or participate in reaJ-wor 't capitalism, the psychological profit motive does\

. . . h . h ·t It doesn1ongmate wit us. We aren't born wit · ost exist in many cultures and was unknown for _w IIY

· · · histoncaof human history. The profit motive 1s a nd • nera1a

developed aspect of market systems m ge be- capitalism in particular that shapes the valu:;tici• havior, and personal motives of those who P pate in it.

67

To argue that managers lay off workers, for ex­ ample, simply because managers are heartless or cruel ignores the fact that success under capitalism often depends on this kind of competitive, profit­ maximizing, "heartless" behavior. Most managers probably know in their hearts that the practice of routinely discarding people in the name of profit and expedience is hurtful and unfair. This is why they feel so bad about having to be the ones to carry it out, and protect their feelings by inventing euphemisms such as "downsizing" and "outplace­ ment." And yet they participate in a system that produces these cruel results anyway, not because of cruel personalities or malice toward workers, but because a capitalist system makes this a path of least resistance and exacts real costs from those who stray from it. . ..

In spite of all the good reasons to not use indi­ vidual models to explain social life, doing so con­ stitutes a path of least resistance because personal experience and motivation are what we know best. As a result, we tend to see something like patri­ archy as the result of poor socialization through which men learn to act dominant and masculine and women learn to act subordinate and femi­ nine. While there is certainly some truth to this, it doesn't work as an explanation of patterns like privilege and oppression. It's no better than trying to explain war as simply the result of training men to be warlike, without looking at economic systems that equip armies at huge profits and political sys­ tems that organize and hurl armies at one another. It's like trying to understand what happens during Monopoly games without ever talking about the game itselfand the kind ofsociety in which itwould exist. Of course, soldiers and Monopoly players do what they do because they've learned the rules, but this doesn't tell us much about the rules themselves and why they exist to be learned in the first place. Socialization is merely a process, a mechanism for training people to participate in social systems. Al­ though it tells us how people learn to participate, it doesn't illuminate the systems themselves. As such, it can tell us something about the how of a system like patriarchy, but very little about the what and the why. . ..

Patriarchy, the System

We can't find a way out of patriarchy or imagine something different without a clear sense of what patriarchy is and what it's got to do with us....

We need to see more clearly what patriarchy is about as a system. This includes cultural ideas about men and women, the web of relationships that structure social life, and the unequal distribu­ tion of power, rewards and resources that underlies privilege and oppression. We need to see new ways to participate by forging alternative paths of least resistance; for the system doesn't simply "run us" like hapless puppets. It may be larger than us, it may not be us, but it doesn't happen except through us. And that's where we have power to do some­ thing about it and about ourselves in relation to it.

Patriarchy . .. Patriarchy's defining elements are its male­ dominated, male-identified, male-centered, and control-obsessed character, but this is just the be­ ginning.. .. Patriarchal culture includes ideas about the nature of things, including women, men, and humanity, with manhood and masculinity most closely associated with being human and wom­ anhood and femininity relegated to the marginal position of "other." .. . It's about standards of femi­ nine beauty and masculine toughness, images of feminine vulnerability and masculine protective­ ness, of older men coupled with younger women, of elderly women alone. It's about defining women and men as opposites, about the "naturalness" of male aggression, competition, and dominance and of female caring, cooperation, and subordination. It's about the valuing of masculinity and maleness and the devaluing of femininity and femaleness. It's about the primary importance of a husband's career and the secondary status of a wife's, about child care as a priority in women's lives and its sec­ ondary importance in men's. It's about the social acceptability of anger, rage, and toughness in men but not in women, and of caring, tenderness, and vulnerability in women but not in men.

Above all, patriarchal culture is about the core value of control and domination in almost every area of human existence. From the expression of emotion to economics to the natural environment,

68 CREATING KNOWLE D GE

gaining and exercising control is a continuing goal. Because of this, the concept of power takes on a narrow definition in terms of "power over" - the ability to control others, events, resources, or one's self in spite of resistance-rather than alternatives such as the ability to cooperate, to give free ly of oneself, or to feel and act in harmony with nature. To have power over and to be prepared to use it are culturally defined as good and desirable (and char­ acteristically •masculine"), and to lack such power or to be reluctant to use it is seen as weak if not con­ temptible (and characteristically "feminine"). This is a major reason that patriarchies with the means to do so are often so quick to go to war. Studies of the (mostly) men who formulate US military strat­ egy, for example, show that it is almost impossible to lose standing by advocating an excessive use of force in international relations (such as the US re­ sponse to terrorism and the 2003 invasion of Iraq). But anyone- especially a man- who advocates re­ straint in the use of force, runs the serious risk of being perceived as less than manly and, therefore, lacking credibility. ~_,,,.,..-

The main use of any culture is to provide sym­ bols and ideas out of which to construct a sense of what is real. As such, language mirrors social real­ ity in sometimes startling ways. In contemporary usage, for example, the words crone, witch, bitch, and virgin describe women as threatening, evil, or het­ erosexually inexperienced and thus incomplete. In prepatriarchal times, however, these words evoked far d ifferent images. The crone was the old woman whose life experience gave her insight, wisdom, re­ spect, and the power to enrich people's lives. The witch was the wise-woman healer, the knower of herbs, the midwife, the link joining body, spirit, and Earth . The bitch was Artemis-Diana, goddess of the hunt, most often associated with the dogs who ac­ companied her. And the vi rgin was merely a woman who was unattached, unclaimed, and unowned by any man and therefore independent and autono­ mous. Notice how each word has been transformed from a positive cultu ral image of female power, in­ dependence, and dignity to an insult or a shadow of its former self so that few words remain to identify women in ways both positive and powerful.

Going deeper into patriarchal culture ,.. , vve find

a complex web of ideas that define realit what's considered good and desirable To / and

. ee th world through patriarchal eyes is to believ he

e t at women and men are profoundly different in th .

· h h. h . h eirbasIC natures, t at 1erarc y 1s t e only altern . atrve

to chaos, and that men were made in the image

a masculine God with whom they enjoy a speci:~ relat ionship. It is to take as obvious the idea tha there are two and only two d istinct genders; tha: patriarchal heterosexuality is "natural" and same­ sex attraction is not; that because men neither bear nor breast-feed children, they cannot feel a com­ pelling bodily connection to them; that on some level every woman, whether heterosexual or les­ bian, wants a "real man" who knows how to "take charge of things," including her; that females can't be trusted, especially when they're menstruati ng or accusing men of sexual abuse. In spite of all the media hype to the contrary, to embrace patriarchy still is to believe that . . . women are weak and men are strong, that women and child ren need men to support and protect them, all in spite of the fact that in many ways men are not the physically stron­ ger sex, that women perform a huge share of hard physical labor in many societies (often larger than men's) , that women's physical endurance tends to be greater than men's over the long haul, that women tend to be more capable of enduring pain and emotional stress . ...

To live in a patriarchal culture is to learn what's expected of men and women-to learn the rules that regulate punishment and reward based on how individuals behave and appear. These rules range from laws that require men to fight in wars not of their own choosing to customary expecta­ tions that mothers will provide child care. Or that when a woman shows sexual interest in a man or merely smiles or acts friendly, she gives up her right

1. e to say no and to control her own body. And to iv under patriarchy is to take into ourselves ways of feeling-the hostile contempt for femaleness that

· s offorms the core of misogyny and presumption thmale superiority, the ridicule men direct at o er

men who show signs of vulnerability or weakness, 5t

or the fear and insecurity that every woman mu

69

deal with when she exercises the right to move freely in the world, especially at night and by her­

self in public places. Such ideas make up the symbolic sea we swim

in and the air we breathe... . As such, they provide a taken-for-granted everyday reality, the setting for our interactions with other people that continually fashion and refashion a sense of what the world is about and who we are in relation to it. This doesn't mean that the ideas underlying patriarchy deter­ mine what we think, feel, and do, but it does mean they define what we'll have to deal with as we par­

ticipate in it. The prominent place of misogyny in patriarchal

culture, for example, doesn't mean that every man and woman consciously hates all things female. But it does mean that to the extent that we don't feel such hatred, it's in spite of paths of least resis­ tance contained in our culture. Complete freedom from such feelings and judgments is all but impos­ sible. It is certainly possible for heterosexual men to Jove women without mentally fragmenting them into breasts, buttocks, genitals, and other variously desirable parts. It is possible for women to feel good about their bodies, to not judge themselves as being too fat, to not abuse themselves to one degree or another in pursuit of impossible male-identified standards of beauty and sexual attractiveness. All of this is possible, but to live in patriarchy is to breathe in misogynist images of women as objec­ tified sexual property valued primarily for their usefulness to men. This finds its way into everyone who grows up breathing and swimming in it, and once inside of us it remains, however unaware of it we may be. So, when we hear or express sexist jokes and other forms ofmisogyny, we may not rec­ ognize it, and even if we do, we may say nothing rather than risk other people thinking we're "too sensitive" or, especially in the case of men, "not one of the guys." In either case, we are involved, if only by our silence.

The symbols and ideas that make up patriar­ chal culture are important to understand because they have such powerful effects on the structure of social life. By structure, I mean the ways privi­ lege and oppression are organized through social

Patr iarchy, the System

relationships and unequal distributions of power, rewards, opportunities, and resources. This ap­ pears in countless patterns of everyday life in family and work, religion and politics, commu­ nity and education. It is found in family divisions of labor that exempt fathers from most domes­ tic work even when both parents work outside the home and in the concentration of women in lower-level pink-collar jobs and male predomi­ nance almost everywhere else. It is in the unequal distribution of income and all that goes with it, from access to health care to the availability of lei­ sure time. It is in patterns of male violence and harassment that can turn a simple walk in the park or a typical day at work or a lovers' quarrel into a life-threatening nightmare. More than anything, the structure of patriarchy is found in the unequal distribution of power that makes male privilege possible, in patterns of male dominance in every facet of human life, from everyday conversation to global politics. By its nature, patriarchy puts issues of power, dominance, and control at the center of human existence, not only in relationships be­ tween men and women, but among men as they compete and struggle to gain status, maintain control, and protect themselves from what other men might do to them. ...

The System in Us in the System One way to see how people connect with sys­ tems is to think of us as occupying social posi­ tions that locate us in relation to people in other positions. We connect to families, for example, through positions such as "mother," "daughter," and "cousin"; to economic systems through posi­ tions such as "vice president," "secretary," or "un­ employed"; to political systems through positions such as "citizen," "registered voter," and "mayor"; to religious systems through positions such as "believer" and "clergy." How we perceive the people who occupy such positions and what we expect of them depend on cultural ideas- such as the belief that mothers are naturally better than fathers at child care. Such ideas are powerful be­ cause we use them to construct a sense of who we and other people are... .

I 70 CREATING KNOWLEDGE

From thi perspecti e, who w and other peop_le h. k wear ha a lot to do with where we are m

t in h .. I . to oc, t m and all t e pos1t1ons. were auon ·a1

ocrup in th m. e wouldn't e ist as social be1~gs if it \I ren 't for our participation in one social

tern or anoth r . . . . Take away language and alJ that it allo u to imagine and think, starting with our name . Take away all the positions that we occup and the roles that go with them-from daughter and son to occupation and nationality­ and with these all the complex ways our lives are connected to other people. Not much would be left over that we'd recognize as ourselves.

We can think of a society as a network of inter­ connected systems within systems, each made up of social positions and their relations to one another. To say, then, that I'm white, male, college educated, nondisabled, and a writer, sociologist, US citi­ zen, heterosexual, middle-aged, husband, father, grandfather, brother, and son identifies me in re­ lation to positions which are themselves related to positions in various social systems, from the entire world to the family of my birth. In another sense, the day-to-day reality of a society only exists through what people actually do as they partici­ pate in it Patriarchal culture, for example, places a high value on control and maleness. By them­ selves, these are just abstractions. But when men and women actually talk and men interrupt women more than women interrupt men, or men ignore topics introduced by women in favor of their own or in other ways control conversation, or when men use their authority to harass women in the work­ place, then the reality ofpatriarchy as a kind ofsoci­ ety and people's sense of themselves as female and male within it actually happen in a concrete way.

In this sense, like all social systems, patriarchy exists only through people's lives ... . This has two important implications for how we understand pa­ triarchy. First, to some extent people experience patriarchy as external to them. But this doesn't mean that it's a distinct and separate thing, like a house in which we live. Instead, by participating m patr1~rchy we are of patriarchy and it is of us. Both exist through the other and neither can exist

without the other. Second, patriarchy is , . h , n t starIt's an ongoing process t at s continuous! ic.

and reshaped. Since the thing we're Par( ~haPeq in is patriarchal, we tend to behave in w1CiPar1ng create a patnarc· haI worId from one rno ays that

rnentthe next. But we have some freedom to break to rules and construct everyday life in different the which means that the paths we choose to /•aYs, can do as much to change patriarchy as theto1low to perpetuate 1t.. Ycan

We're involved in patriarchy and its conseque b . 1 . . . ncesecause we occupy soc1a positions In it, Which is . k B . h . b d fi · · aIIt ta es. ecause patnarc y 1s, y e n1t1on, a syste 1

of inequality organized around gender categories rn can no more avoid being involved in it than we·:~ avoid being female or male. All men and all women are therefore involved in this oppressive system, and none us can control whether we participate, only how. 1

As Harry Brod argues, this is especially important in relation to men and male privilege:

We need to be clear that there is no such thing as giving up one's privilege to be •outside" the system. One is always in the system. The only question is whether one is pan of the system in a way which challenges or strengthens the status quo. Privilege is not something I take and which I therefore have the option of not taking. It is something that soci­ ety gives me, and unless I change the institutions which give it to me, they will continue to give it, and I will continue to have it, however noble and i egalitarian my intentions.2 f.

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1,·-i NOTES

1. Although the game analogy is useful, social systems are quite unlike a game in important ways. The rules and other understandings on which social life is based are far more complex, ambiguous, and con­ tradictory than those of a typical game and much more open to negotiation and "making it up" as we go along.

2. Harry Brod, "Work Clothes and Leisure Suits: The Class Basis and Bias of the Men's Movement," in Men's Lives, ed. Michael S. Kimmel and Michael A. Messner (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 280.