But patriarchy isn't a synonym for men, and if men are making that "their team" when it isn't (unless they are oligarchs, etc.) and taking criticism of it personally, that's their fault and their problem for making such wrong and needless assumptions. Patriarchy is a social system that is characterized by a whole bunch of really bad things that have led to a lot of pain and inequality - for everybody. I very clearly laid out the ways that it is demonstrably harming men - and have written several stories on just that aspect alone. If men want to persist in defending the social system that is very literally killing them, that doesn't sound very bright or very productive to me.
Patriarchy has nothing to do with you, other than the ways that you've been indoctrinated into some of its norms. Unless you are mindlessly acting those out - which you aren't, because you are intentionally resisting them - WTF does it feel like shit to have what is demonstrably a very problematic social system criticized?
Women (and Blacks, and gays, and the disabled, and the non-Christians, etc.) aren't going to sit back and stop criticizing the social structure that is harming them because it hurts your feelings to hear that we don't want to be hurt any more by a violent dominance-based hierarchy system.
Yes, mainstream masculine norms that come out of patriarchal paradigms cause most of the violence and inequality in our culture, but if you aren't upholding those norms, then it's not about you. Rather than trying to get the people who have very real and legitimate grievances to not make you feel bad by pointing out their oppression and how sick they are of it, how about you spend more time in collaboration with other men to shift those mainstream masculine norms so that being "a real man" is no longer equated with domination or control of women?
"We can’t go back in time, but we can certainly strive to have more egalitarianism, less performative non-achievement-based competition, and less domination and control as a core manifestation of masculinity. It would go a lot better if more men got on board with that and stopped acting like criticizing this social system was a personal criticism of them. Maybe now that more of them know the true history of patriarchy they will."
