James Caruthers wrote:Aneris wrote:James Caruthers wrote:Patriarchy is whatever FTB needs it to be. It's the same as saying "the jews" or "the Illuminati."
I got that impression too, yet that wasn't enough for me. I rather like to show them and point them somewhere instead of merely repeating claims that are floating about. Now that there is some general idea about different meanings, nobody on their side can claim it was all clear and generally agreed upon, which I hope becomes apparent already in this collection (I do not think they suddenly converge when each instance is compared). I also learned that Pharyngula Wiki has no entry, but just found out that the Social Justice League controlled
RationalWiki does. It also mixes different things into each other and pretends controversy is a MRA thing. Of course, that's a guilty by association/appeal to emotion trickery. It's not unlike claiming only Nazi & Communists find Creationism or the Bible controversial. But that happens when shepherd PZ Myers and his flock gain control over a “rational†wiki.
The two most common definitions I have heard of Patriarchy, from both feminists and MRAs, define it very similarly to how conspiracy theorists define Bilderberg/Illuminati, and how racists define whatever the fuck they think jews are doing.
So on the most basic level, the patriarchy is an order of men who work together (consciously on not) to suppress the rights of women and elevate the rights of men. I think most feminists and SJWs would agree with this definition. MRAs, I have found, typically use the feminist definitions for feminist words, if they bother to use them at all.
And just like jewish conspiracy theories from the KKK, the patriarchy is supposed to have infected
absolutely everything. I've heard a few neo-nazis claim that music after a certain time period (1960s or so) was all "Jewish" and was designed to corrupt the brains of America. I have to point out how similar this racist conspiracy theory is to the feminist claim that all music not created by feminists to glorify and empower women is part of the patriarchal plot to keep women down.
They really do bugger up the whole argument with this "patriarchy doesn't have to be intentional" claim. I understand the point, but fuck, way to make your claim impossible to prove or disprove. It's a perfect out for anyone to accuse anyone else of being patriarchal, toss out some word salad to justify the accusation, and then get that person shamed or fired. The only consistent method I have observed that SJWs use to determine whether or not someone is racist or sexist is, ironically
that person's gender or skin color.
I think there is a tendency within feminism to keep feminist meanings of words nebulous. Part of the problem someone like Aron has is he thinks these words have consistently-applied definitions. The feminists whose asses he is kissing are more than happy to let him go on believing that, until they decide their victim status has expired. Then we'll suddenly be hearing about how patriarchy surrounds them every day like oxygen molecules (because some woman somewhere saw a halloween costume of a mexican salsa dancer, designed by a mexican salsa dancer, and it offended her), and anyone who asks them how that's even fucking possible will be called a rape apologist. :lol:
The parallels with radical feminists and conspiracy theorists are just overwhelming. Far too many to list. Go to some video where 9/11 truthers or New Agers are arguing in the comments with skeptics, and you'll hear the same arguments coming from the conspiracy theorist that you do from these kinds of feminists. Doubt that 9/11 was an inside job? SHEEP, I BET YOU BELIEVE EVERYTHING THE GOVERNMENT SAYS. Doubt that Atlantis was a real place? ARROGANT SCOFFER, WHY ARE YOU SO ANGRY AND BITTER? Maybe you think that music has nothing to do with jewish mind control? YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY A PAWN OF THE JEWS. Patriarchy (as described by feminism) doesn't exist or is too poorly defined to mean anything? WHY DO YOU HATE WOMEN? CLEARLY YOU ARE ANGRY AND BITTER. YOU'RE JUST A PAWN OF THE PATRIARCHY. I BET YOU BELIEVE EVERYTHING MRAS SAY. :lol:
RationalWiki is a fucking joke. "Rational" was never meant to be a code word for one side of a two-side political spectrum.
I didn't have to quote the whole thing, but it's an important post.
Nebulous definitions of words (e.g., patriarchy, feminism, sexism, misogyny, rape, apology, blame, racism, oppression, ally) indeed allow for goalpost-shifting at the equivocator's whim. It's problematic because the surface-level definitions attract good, reasonable people, most of whom are content simply to have identified themselves with the right (read: PC) side and won't probe any further. Only the minority who probe further will run into the precarious word games undergirding the whole SJ structure, a structure that threatens to collapse if enough people realize how weak its foundation is. But if by the time you glimpse beneath the surface you've already put all your chips in, you probably won't even notice all the bullshit you're swimming in, and consequently you mindlessly reinforce the structure and make it more difficult for those capable of actual critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning to call out that bullshit.
Caruthers also points to a major flaw in the SJW mindset, and I'll add that it's a flaw of many other ideologies, too:
James Caruthers wrote:
And just like jewish conspiracy theories from the KKK, the patriarchy is supposed to have infected absolutely everything.
Many people (including scholars who should know better) fundamentally misunderstand how culture works. They assume that any widespread idea in a culture must be ubiquitous, playing into every interaction, decision, and thought process of every individual. This is as much an assumption about human psychology as anything, and there's no evidence for it whatsoever (FLOOSH!). The assumption certainly makes it easier to grapple with understanding culture, but only because it ignores what makes culture so complex.
I've encountered cultural historians who do this, too—Composer X lived in a time and place when/where Painter Y and Philosopher Z were exploring certain ideas in their work, and so therefore Composer X must have been influenced by Painter Y and Philosopher Z because I see some similar ideas in Composer X's work. Or: Composer X, Painter Y, and Philosopher Z were all absorbing the same cultural currents, and that explains the similarities I detect in their work. Of course, sometimes there
is enough evidence to support these kinds of claims, but often there really isn't. And even though there's probably almost always
some truth to the broader "cultural currents" idea, it's frequently overstated and used as a cop-out to reassure ourselves that we understand culture.
Assumptions about human psychology strike me as a problem common to political ideologies. When conservatives in the US insist that a stronger safety net for the needy will collapse the economy because it disincentivizes work, they're making a claim about human psychology. There happens to be a kernel of truth to it (i.e., nations with stronger safety nets tend to have slightly higher unemployment rates and lower productivity), but it's stated as some absolute truth that will inevitably lead to disaster. Another example: a liberal friend on Facebook insisted that a Republican plan to raise the maximum number of hours per week that employed high-school students could legally work would inevitably lead to significantly lower graduation rates in the state in question. No matter that data on graduation rates and child labor laws for US states are readily available and reveal no such correlation.
Sorry if this wasn't particularly coherent, but I do think that Caruthers is getting at some truth and I felt compelled to riff on it.
