Well, thanks for asking, since I am a social scientist and this is my area of expertise. You are quite right that there are many individual people, and individual men who do not demonstrably behave in ways that support this patriarchal dominance hierarchy system. I'm fortunate enough to be married to one. But, that doesn't detract from the fact that it is still a pervasive social dynamic in our culture. I know lots and lots of people who aren't racist and don't condone racism at all - and we nevertheless live in a highly racist culture in the US anyhow. And most of those people aren't evil or stupid - they are deeply entrenched in a highly stratified social system that feels only right and natural because it's the one that was largely accepted as that just a few short decades ago.
So, back to the dominance hierarchy we call patriarchy. Prior to about 5k years ago, most humans lived in largely egalitarian systems - either as hunter-gatherers who vehemently enforced that as a survival strategy or as early towns and cities that nonetheless highly valued personal autonomy.
"For much of our history, humans have valued their personal autonomy so completely that we did not tolerate anything else. Often chiefs or even kings only had theoretical power or wielded power more substantively only in their immediate vicinity. Out of sight, people continued to do what they wanted and to make decisions communally amongst themselves. In fact, there are even places where hierarchy and centralized authority did begin to arise, only to be later dismantled."
According to The Dawn of Everything, there are, however, three main components of historical autonomy:
The freedom to leave one’s community, knowing one will be welcomed in faraway lands;
The freedom to shift back and forth between social structures, depending on the time of year; and
The freedom to disobey authorities without consequence
Often the rise of agriculture has been blamed for the shift to more hierarchical social systems, but that isn't necessarily the case. Why things changed is less important (and less clear) than that they did, and this is already long enough, so let's move to that.
"But with the onset of patriarchy, not only are women controlled by men in a way that they hadn’t been before, but the strong have power over anyone who is less so and a kind of feudal system emerges. A relatively small number of elites ostensibly protect, but also control a larger number of highly stratified classes, with the most powerless and the poorest making up the widest part of the pyramid. Until 50 years ago in this country, both by law and by custom, White men were at the top of the hierarchy, White women were below them, and on it went until you get to poor Black women as the very bottom of the pyramid.
Despite the change in laws, and some upward mobility for previously bottom classes, this hierarchy is still largely in effect. The more that the pyramid flattens, with less stratification and more equality, the more some people feel that their birthright is being stolen and react accordingly. For those who believe in the hierarchy, and the zero-sum system, any gains by someone else are perceived to come at a loss to them."
A while back when Pete Buttigieg (a gay man) was running for president, a white guy in Tennessee famously complained in a public forum that this indicated that straight white men were losing their rights. What he really meant is they were losing their centrality as the de facto core citizens - something that was enshrined in US law a mere 50 years ago.
“Patriarchy is generally not an explicit ongoing effort by men to dominate women. It is a long-standing system that we are born into and participate in, mostly unconsciously.”
Not only are women to be (consciously or subconsciously) dominated, but any individuals or classes of people that are deemed to be weaker or inferior will be because it is a zero-sum system. If you don’t win, you lose, and so it’s imperative to always try to appear to be the dominant one in any interpersonal interaction. Racism is a form of patriarchy. So is homophobia. So is garden variety bullying.
Our work environments are primarily built around patriarchal dominance-based hierarchies as well, although that is beginning to change in industries that value the adaptability and agility of allowing those closest to the work to make most of the decisions in more partnership-oriented organizational structures.
"In deciding how to govern, one critical choice is between patriarchy and partnership. Patriarchy expresses the belief that it is those at the top who are responsible for the success of the organization and the well-being of its members. A measure of patriarchy is how frequently we use images of parenting to describe how bosses should manage employees in organizations. To create workplaces that provide meaning and are economically sound and strong in the marketplace, we need to face the implications of having chosen patriarchy for the governance system inside our organizations.
The governance system we have inherited and continue to sustain is based on sovereignty and a form of intimate colonialism. These are strong terms, but they are essentially accurate. We govern our organizations by valuing, above all else, consistency, control, and predictability. These become the means of dominance by which colonialism and sovereignty are enacted. It is not that we directly seek dominance, but our beliefs about getting work done have that effect. We pay a price for our top-driven, parenting, patriarchal governance system.
Block, Peter. Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest (p. 17). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.
It's really important to understand that most forms of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. are taking place subconsciously through implicit bias. There are bigots to be sure, but they are in the minority. Even people who hold conscious beliefs about equality can find themselves unintentionally acting out their biases, which were absorbed through growing up in this culture. Very little thought is actually conscious. We'd like to believe we are in charge of our actions, but mostly that isn't the case - we are being driven by our subconscious most of the time.
"Even people who value equality and want to support it may find themselves at times acting on subconscious scripts about where women belong and what they should be doing. As Manne points out, sometimes acting out is even a replacement for a conscious experience of these feelings.
Women who resist or flout gendered norms and expectations may subsequently garner suspicion and consternation, which has less to do with their challenging gendered norms per se, and more to do with their challenging entrenched norms simpliciter.
And for some people, feminism, in particular, has profoundly disrupted their sense of the social order. The hostility they display to women who disrupt or pose a threat to gendered social hierarchies, say, is compatible with their being egalitarians in the abstract. They may nevertheless perceive powerful women who do not wield their power in service of men’s interests as abrasive and threatening.
For that reason among others, a misogynist social environment may be partly the result of more or less well-intentioned people acting out of disavowed emotions or exhibiting flashes of aggression that are not consciously experienced. And indeed, such aggression may be acted out partly as a substitute for feeling it: the expression “acting out” is suggestive in this context."
Manne, Kate. Down Girl (p. 61). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
There's a lot more I could say about this, and I've written maybe 40 stories about various aspects of all this, but since this has already gotten long, I hope that my point of view is beginning to make more sense to you. And, I absolutely appreciate getting to have a real conversation. Simply having a difference of opinion is not cause for upset when it's done with respect and a good faith desire to communicate/debate. Your first reply didn't strike me as being in that vein, but subsequently they have been and I've been happy to have a dialogue with you.
