Well first of all, I'm not really a feminist in the way you imagine. I'm a social scientist whose beliefs about our social system and its issues from that perspective just happen to overlap with a lot of feminist theory. But the same is true for most organizations who study culture, gender, and violence. For example, the American Psychology Association issued new guidelines for working with men and boys in 2019. The initiative was led by a man and it spent 13 years going over 40 years of research - most of it done by men. They reached a conclusion that you would like to dismiss because it's "feminist" but has literally nothing to do with feminism - it has to do with social and psychological reality. Traditional patriarchal masculine norms are harmful to men - and to everyone else.
Imagining that feminism is some sort of evil cabal so you don't have to interface with the very real issues that women and girls (and boys and men) face in a patriarchal system is a ploy - it's a cop out. We all have internalized patriarchy to some greater or lesser extent because it's the ocean we were raised in and the water we swim in every day. J.K. Rowling hates trans people because she has deeply internalized beliefs about what men are "naturally like" - an extremely patriarchal view, as well as a belief in a gender binary, where someone can only be one or the other. It's completely patriarchal.
I'll say for the 23rd time, patriarchy is a social system. It doesn't mean men, or that men are bad. It's a dominance hierarchy system based in Might Makes Right and the maintenance of traditional power via any means necessary. There is an important gender component, but it's hardly the only aspect. Mostly, it's a pyramid of power where a small number of elites benefit at everyone else's expense and a system of social stratifications with rich, white, able-bodied, Christian men at the top. That's eroded some in the past few decades, but there's still a system of elites benefiting off every one else and seeking to "keep them in their place" so that they can stay in power.
Abuse of women is more personal in this system. Most women are raped, or otherwise harmed by people they know and should be able to trust. Controlling "your woman" is a core element of patriarchy, but men and boys are harmed by this system as well, in more than just psychological ways. A lot of violence against men is impersonal — it’s bar fights, and gang wars, and muggings, and the like, but it still stems from masculine norms that demand men be aggressive, dominant, and in control. There is some personal domination and physical bullying, but it’s typically a less personal dynamic. Writing more about this part sometime soon.
Because it's a dominance hierarchy system, it's not really all that surprising that white women have focused primarily on their own needs. It's not right or OK, but it's not exactly a surprise given the deeply entrenched social stratification that we've all got all around us. The US wasn't desegregated until 1964. It's not very reasonable to assume that feminists should have seen Black women as their equals at that time or in the decades after that — because we live in a social system that prioritizes and demands social stratification — that’s why it’s a dominance hierarchy.
Again, not right but also the social reality in a patriarchy. Most feminist organizations are now trying to do better with that, and while that aspect is important, it doesn't have any real relevance to the fact that worldwide, including in most Western countries, women are still subject to a lot of routine violence and sexual violence in particular - primarily at the hands of men (often men in their own families). Again, this is not because men are poor human beings - it's because of social indoctrination into a dominance hierarchy system that swept the world about 6-8 thousand years ago - infecting most, but not all societies.
Feminists don't hate men or wish them ill. That too is a red herring to deflect from having to grapple with them pointing out that patriarchy as a social system is bad - for everyone.
"Feminists, it seems, are complex enough to maintain healthy positive relationships with their fathers, sons, husbands, partners and male friends, while maintaining a critical attitude towards ongoing gender inequality. Thank you, science."
Again, I'm not coming at this as a feminist. I'm coming at it as a social scientist. Patriarchy is not a synonym for men. It's a social system that we all participate in to some degree. All bullying, whether it's done by boys or it's done by girls is a function of living in a patriarchal dominance hierarchy system - something that I talked about repeatedly in the OP. If you'd actually read and paid attention to what I said instead of reflexively reacting based on preconceived notions, we wouldn't have needed to have this conversation.
To begin, there are no societies that fit entirely at one end or the other of this scale, and there are variations in how each one organizes itself, but each part of the continuum has core values in common. In addition, partnership doesn’t just mean cooperation. Clearly, drug cartels and other dominance-based organizations also employ cooperation at times. What we’re talking about here is much more nuanced than that.
As we will see by looking at each of these four, the United States is quite squarely on the domination end of the spectrum, even though we are not as clearly draconian as say, Iran. Although the Nordic countries are not as far along the partnership spectrum as they are sometimes portrayed, they still provide a snapshot of what a significant move toward partnership might look like in the modern age.
The research for this was done in conjunction with the Cornell Industrial Relations School, which is not exactly a feminist organization.
