2Patriarchy, the System An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us “When you say patriarchy,” a man complained from the rear of the audience, “I know what you really mean—me!” A lot of peo- ple hear “men” whenever someone says “patriarchy,” so that criticism 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 is 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 blameindividual men for patriarchy simply because they are men.Some of the time, men feel defensive because they identify with patriarchy and its values and do not want to face the consequences these produce or the prospect of giving up male privilege. But defensiveness can also reflect a com- mon confusion about the difference between patriarchy as a kind of society and the people who participate in it. If we are ever going to work towardreal change, it is a confusion we will have to clear up. To do this, we have to begin by realizing that we are 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 hap- pen in the world and if the bad thing is something big, it is 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 act out hostility to- ward them . There is poverty and class oppression because people in the upper classes are greedy, heartless, and cruel. Patriarchy, the System 27 The flip side of this individualistic model of guilt and blame is that race, gender, and class oppression are actually not oppression at all but merely the sum of individual failings on the part of people of color, women, and people living in poverty, 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 some- thing larger than ourselves or any collection of us. On some level, most people are familiar with the idea that social life involves usin something larger than ourselves, but few seem to know what to do with that idea. Blaming everything on ‘the system’ strikes a deep chord in many people,1 but it also touches on a basic misunderstanding of social life, because blaming the system (presumably society) for our problems doesn’t take the next step to understanding what that might mean. What exactly is a system and how could it run our lives? Do we have anything to do with shaping it, and if so, how? How 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 privilege, women’s oppression, and the hierarchical, control-obsessed worldin which everyone’s lives are embedded?Without asking such questions, not only can we not understand gender fully, but we also avoid taking responsibility either for ourselves or for patriar- chy. Instead, ‘the system’ serves as a vague, unarticulated catch-all, a dumping ground for social problems, a scapegoat that can never be held to account and that, for all the power we think it has, cannot talk back or actually do anything. A powerful example of this is found in the work of Sam Keen and Robert Bly, whose influential books on gender were part of the mythopoetic men’s movement, which attracted a wide following, especiallyduring the 1990s. Although the movement is less visible than it was, Bly’s and Keen’s books con- tinue to enjoy brisk sales, and the views of gender inequality they expressed are still widely used to reject feminism and defend male privilege. Both Keen and Bly blame much of men’s misery on industrialization and urbanization.2 The solutions they offer, however, amount to little more than personal transformation and adaptation without changing society itself. The system is invoked in contradictory ways. On the one hand, it is portrayed as a formidable source of all our woes, a great monster that “runs us all.” On the other hand, it is ignored as something we think we do not have to include in a solution. But we cannot have it both ways. If society is a powerful force in social life, as it surely is, then we have to understand it and how we are connected to it. To do this, we have to change how we think about it, because how we think affects the kinds of questions we ask, and the questions we ask in turn shape the kinds of answers and solutions we come up with. If we see patriarchy as nothing more than men’s and women’s individ- ual personalities, motivations, and behavior, then it won’t occur to us to ask about larger contexts—such as institutions like the family, religion, and the 28 What Is This Thing Called Patriarchy? economy—and how people’s lives are shaped in relation to them. From an indi- vidualistic perspective,for example, we might ask why a particular man raped, harassed, or beat a particular woman. We would not ask, however, what kind of society would promote persistent patterns of such behavior in everyday life, from wife-beating jokes to the routine inclusion of sexual coercion and vio- lence in mainstream movies. We would be quick to explain rape and battery as the acts of sick or angry men, but without taking 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 would be unlikely to ask how gender violence might serve other more normalized ends such as masculine control and domination and the proving of manhood. We might ask why a man would like pornography that objectifies, exploits, and promotes violence against women, or debate whether the Constitution protects an indi- vidual’s right to produce and distribute it. But it would be hard to stir up inter- est 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. In short, the tendency in this patriarchal society is to ignore and take for granted what we can least afford to overlook in trying to understand