Understanding patriarchy is to understand the control system set up to keep specific groups or classes on top and others below the totting pole. However, we also have to understand what role we are playing in this fight to debunk patriarchy—or defending it. “Are you on the right side of history,” is a question we should all ask ourselves. Realizing your contributions to the structure of oppression against race, class, and even gender is a step that we all have to self-reflect and understand what we have to do differently. In case of gender pigeonholing, men have to recognize their actions and verbiage that contributed to the restriction, mistreatment, and violation of women’s humanistic rights to prevail in a country “free for all.” To reconcile and recondition the minds of men and women, we have to come to an understanding of what concepts and key terms to make sense of what patriarchy is and how we can reject gender stereotypes.
Oppression is a term that helps shape the ideology of patriarchy. The reason tyranny serves as an excellent explanation of the word is that oppression is a means to isolate, restrict, prohibit, suppress, and abuse a specific group from progressing like the groups that are benefiting from the term. According to Allan Johnson’s Patriarchy, The System:
to have “power over” and to be willing to use it are considered masculine and acceptable, but to restrain from utilizing that power is to show weakness—or to be feminine.
Tyranny is considered normal in our rehabilitating society which places the blame on men from some women because of the social life model that has been in place since biblical times when God says in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good for a man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
What is normal? Is it normal seeing a woman subjected to “flesh” or is it normal having a woman second fiddle to a man? Normal being the typical, expected standard created by society—in other words traditional. To break the normality of gender stereotypes and roles, we must come to grips that patriarchy is kind of culturally constructed around specific kinds of social affairs and concepts. Like Johnson once said:
If people grow up and live in a tyrannical environment, they will most likely accept the behavior and adapt.
However, currently, in today’s landscape, America is economically structured where it now takes more than one set of income to create financial stability in a household which has brought forth women to step in the workforce and gain financial independence. The flawed economic structure of today has created a way for women to prosper without having to settle being “a wife at home.” The change in the economic structure still leaves a question as to why women are used as a “Plan B” when the going gets robust rather than making them a priority.
According to Johnson’s emphasis on patriarchy in the article Patriarchy, The System, I believe that the purpose of his words was to explain in great detail why patriarchy is a catalyst to our oppressive nature in America and how we can identify and create changes in our daily actions and disclosure with the opposite sex. For instance, when Jonah Gokova stated in Challenging Men to Reject Gender Stereotypes article, he highlights an opportunistic state of mind where men see sex as an opportunity to dominate or conquer our love interest rather than as an opportunity to communicate respectively with our bodies. I believe Gokova’s statement is relevant mainly because we look at women more so as an obstacle to get through rather than a human being with feelings and emotions which is why a majority of men treat women unequal to themselves. Men have been subconsciously trained to stick their chests out, be strong, and to show little to no emotion which perhaps places a strain on most relationships due to the power struggle of men not wanting to show vulnerability or weakness because it will give a woman an advantage over their insecurities and concerns. Nearly, all men can stand tribulation, but if you want to assess a man’s character, give him power.
