So what you are essentially advocating for is that white men continue to control the narrative and everyone else sits down and shuts up (like they used to in the 1950s) and just accepts their plight and hopes that someday perhaps it might improve through the sudden benevolence of the oppressors — even though in a dominance hierarchy like our patriarchal social system, which is based in “might makes right” and “I got mine” that is never, ever going to happen. Women had to fight for 100 years to get the right to vote. If they hadn’t demanded it loudly and persistently, who knows if or when they would have been treated as full citizens.
The Danes don’t need to complain because their culture is actually doing the things that are needed structurally to have that not be required. When the US starts implementing the same structures, there will be no need to keep complaining.
First of all, most discrimination and marginalization of demographics with less social power is not being done consciously. It’s coming out of the subconscious and the dynamics of living in a dominance-based hierarchy, where a relatively few elites (white men are only 31% of the population but still the bulk of power and privilege), and everyone else is somewhere lower down the pyramid. White men have 8 times as much political power as black women, not simply because there are more of them, or they are inherently smarter and savvier. It’s because we’ve always had a system in this country where black women as a demographic are the very bottom of the pecking order and white men as a demographic are closer to the top.Until very recently, there were many overt structural systems to keep it that way put into place by the very white men who didn’t want to lose their spot in the hierarchy.
This is not necessarily due to malice, however. In a dominance-based hierarchy (which is what a patriarchal system truly is) everyone is trying to either hang on to their spot or to rise to a better one. It’s a zero-sum dynamic where in order for someone to win, someone else has to lose.There is no voluntary sharing of power or privilege. It’s a win/lose paradigm and for those most bought into this social system, conceding anything to someone else means that you have lost something. If it happens to be wrested away, through superior effort or force, or some kind of other circumstance, it’s usually given somewhat grudgingly. In many cases, however, the resistance continues on for decades afterward.
Not only are those with more historic access to power unlikely to be willing to just give something to someone else because it may disturb their interests, but due to the elements of stratification that are inherent in a dominance-based hierarchy they undoubtedly don’t see why they should have to concede anything to someone “weaker.” A dominance hierarchy is a might makes right system. No one in such a system is going to just voluntarily cede some of their authority or privilege to someone who hasn’t taken it from them by force or by exerting concerted pressure over time.
You can’t say that the dominance-hierarchy of patriarchy doesn’t matter, when it’s the ocean that we all swim in and it affects every aspect of our culture. Pretending that isn’t actually the case isn’t going to help or improve anything.
