The End of Empire: What is "heteropatriarchy"?
heteropatriarchy:
Heteropatriarchy ensures male right of access to women. Women’s relations - personal, professional, social, economic - are defined by the ideology that woman is for man. Heteropatriarchy is men dominating and de-skilling women in any of a number of forms, from outright attach…
Words, ugh. So glad that you focus on pointing out the fact that there are inequalities between the sexes but don’t actually work towards improving the attitudes of others towards feminists or women in general.
Go ahead and call me a kyriarchal misogynist patriarchal scumbag. Keep complaining.
First of all, these terms are tools to help theorize and understand structures of power. They’re a way of understanding the world based on a perspective that acknowledges not only empirical facts like the inequalities you mention, but also paints a picture of systems of power and how they work.
It’s not PR. It’s not about improving the image of one group in the eyes of another. I don’t think any great theorist, be it Marx or Mill, described their theories to improve anyone’s image.
It sounds like you’re upset because you feel like feminists, or women, or whoever, are complaining. Is that what you’re saying? Feminists should stop working on describing and understanding structures of power that affect them and start working on their image? That’s pretty condescending and shallow. It’s also lacks any form of substantive critique.
It would be different if you had said stop theorizing and start acting or doing things in society that help advance women’s place in society. Although, I’d say in any good social movement, theory and action are inextricably tied.
I can understand that it feels threatening. I’m sure any group with an ideology is threatening to someone, whether it’s the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street protesters, Marxists, Libertarians, Jihadist, Satanists or Conservationists… It’s one thing to attack their character, and another to critique their ideology or address how they are perceived by other groups in society.
(via ostricatfairyshloof)
