Co-authors of Why Does Patriarchy Persist? (Polity, 2018) Carol Gillian and Naomi Snider are asked, "What is patriarchy?"
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| Read their full interview here. |
According to Gillian, patriarchy is an age-old structure that has been near universal, and yet there is an incoherence at its core because in reality men can’t have selves without relationships and women can’t have relationships without a self.
According to Snider, breaking this gender binary continues to have real consequences: sensitive men are ridiculed as weak or passive, not “real men”, while woman who assert their own needs and desires—or refuse to serve as objects for the needs and desires of others—are labeled aggressive or selfish, so-called “nasty women".
Given its toxicity, how then do we smash the patriarchy?
As a culture, patriarchy exists as a set of rules and values, codes and scripts that specify how men and women should act and be in the world. However, patriarchy does not simply exist out there as something concrete and external, to be smashed and destroyed. Patriarchy also exists internally, shaping how we think and feel, how we perceive and judge ourselves, our desires, our relationships and the world we live in.
Patriarchy persists because it shames this resistance, rendering it unfeminine in its expression of anger, or unmanly in its expression of tenderness and care. In order to move out of patriarchy, we can join and provide resonance for these voices of healthy resistance. We can challenge the frameworks and scripts that make selflessness a requisite of femininity. We can challenge the idea that emotional stoicism is what it takes to be a real man.
We agree with them that the move out of patriarchy is a path of cultivation rather than destruction—the forging of healthy democratic relationships in which all voices are responded to, not necessarily with agreement, but with respect.
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