This is a comment by Zek J. Evets on the post “The Retributive Nature of ‘Girl Power’“.
Ehh… I’m inclined to disagree that there’s one social label which governs everything, because if that were true, Henry Louis Gates Jr. wouldn’t be stopped outside his house, would he? Rich People of Color wouldn’t still face structural racism, would they? Shoot if money was the only thing that mattered, many of my fellow Jews would have long since seen an end to anti-Semitism.
Seems to me the proper term is “kyriarchy” if you want to describe the intersectionality of power as it is practiced. But if you want to describe it based on gender, then patriarchy is probably an accurate reflection of the faces in power — though not their sympathies, obviously.
But I do somewhat agree with Anthony that patriarchy is too vague a word to be useful, and it implies that men benefit even when they’re lower-class or part of an ethnic/religious minority. Certainly Black men do not benefit from “patriarchy”, as we’ve seen lately. That said, it can’t be an oligarchy either because that presupposes that power remains in the same hands over time, which it does not as we’ve seen from the dynamics of gobalization and the spread of technology.
Personally, I feel that power is circumstantial—gained by fortune or conquest, or other methods, and lost far more easily. But the people in power do share similar traits; they just aren’t socio-cultural labels. They’re similar because they’re all in power, and proponents of controlling those who are not.
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But I do somewhat agree with Anthony that patriarchy is too vague a word to be useful, and it implies that men benefit even when they’re lower-class or part of an ethnic/religious minority.
With the way some people use the word its no surprise that people pick up that implication. Its like you take a man with a lot of other characteristics (race, sexual orientation, disabilities, etc…) and at the end of the day there are people that will still pretend that his male privilege is the only thing worth talking about. You get this in situations where people will try to surgially remove gender from a situation where intersectionality occurs.
Look at the recent murder of Trayvon Martin. Are we really going to pretend that his gender had nothing to do with it? (On the other hand when some people talk about things that happen to black women they make sure to bring up the gender and the race.)
Look at education. Boys are behind girls in nearly every metric yet folks still try to act like its not a problem that boys face but boys of color face (and yes white boys are being outperformed by white girls).
Its like people simply don’t want to come out and say that males can be harmed because they are male, or that they may want to actively deny it.
The fact that some other guy somewher in the world has power has no bearing on the dad that cries himself to sleep on Father’s Day because he is being kept from contacting his children, you know, those little folks that made him a father in the first place.
“Look at education. Boys are behind girls in nearly every metric yet folks still try to act like its not a problem that boys face but boys of color face (and yes white boys are being outperformed by white girls).”
Excellent comment. I have been trying to make this point for months. I am hoping that the Treyvon Martin case draws attention to not only the race disparity but the gender disparity in more and more areas.