It is appalling that every form of sexual and reproductive slavery exists and that men justify this as normal and expected and blame women.
It is appalling that women are expected to give birth to these men and their children, and that this ability is held in utter contempt. It's a travesty that mothers can apparently do no right and are in a constant Catch 22.
It is appalling that women's intelligence is so widely considered nonexistent, or is held in contempt, while men steal women's creative output on every level and in every field.
It is appalling that women are expected to hold up the world in terms of domestic work and caregiving of the young, the old and the sick, and that the love and stress and work of this is dismissed as expected.
It is appalling that women have to hold up the economy with unacknowledged labor, and their paid labor is undervalued.
Yet despite all this, men then still complain that they're somehow the victim. Often pointing at wealthier and more powerful men and blaming them for everything without looking at their own contribution to the pervasive sexism and misogyny of our society.
It's not just that there's rampant misogyny, there's also rampant racism and religious prejudice, and various other forms of outgroup hate or disregard that gets trained into people.
I can say there's no excuse for misogyny or racism all day, and I certainly speak out against it if I encounter it, but it doesn't really help me solve the problem of how rampant it is.
If a boy, as he's growing up, is told every day that he must behave one way, and his sister another, and watches his father beat his mother for "misbehaving," and he himself got beat the one time he tried on his sister's dress, and in so many other ways had patriarchy essentially beat into him (even outside of a flagrantly abusive childhood, this form of indoctrination will be happening), I'm not sure I can entirely blame the boy when he becomes a man for being misogynistic. Well, maybe I can, I grew up in a culture that violently punished me for questioning gender roles and I didn't end up misogynistic. Then again, I don't think I can "take credit" for not being a misogynist as an adult, questioning assumptions about gender just seemed obvious to me and I was always confused about the rigidity.
Blame or no, what I want is to overcome the indoctrination and help more people not be misogynists or racists or whatever. I'm not sure how.
I constantly waffle between "all people share responsibility in creating a just society" and "there are thought leaders that are responsible for leading people to just societies." I think back to slavery - is it reasonable to expect every single non-slaveholder to be an abolitionist? I want every single person to be an abolitionist, but I'm still not sure if it's a reasonable expectation.
As a fellow anarchist, I tend to forget to ask simple questions like:
Who stands to benefit?
Probably not poor, misogynist men.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy
Patriarchy is grounded in the gendered axis, skewed toward elder men. Sic, patriarchs. One of men in general, regardless of age would likely be an andro-archy or some such.
You're correct in that the Western world is highly plutocratic. That is the inevitable outcome of power laws in economics, combined with wholly private ownership of the means of production without a sufficiently strong regulatory apparatus capable of thwarting the natural tendency of humankind to conspire to improve their lot at other's expense.
Just letting you know that using the right word can help you hone in on what you're trying to say. Vocab is worth investing in! Names have power!
This is essentially what anarchists have been saying about patriarchy and other -archies for a century or so, hence the name (an... archy).
The conflation of patriarchy with "men" is an example of those in power trying to identity-amalgate and shift the blame. By that I mean: the patriarchy is the hand of a few powerful men that oppresses many (men and women), and in order to protect themselves, these men lie and say "actually, all men, you are the patriarchy, the patriarchy benefits you, the patriarchy is not evil, and an attack on the patriarchy is an attack on all of you." I could take this sentence and plop it into so many ideologies. White supremacy, heterophilia, Zionism, Han Chauvinism, all ideologies that seek to uplift a very few powerful people, oppress all others, and then pick an identifying attribute to create a moat of proletariat around them to duke it out in culture wars.
Billionaires claiming the union is an attack on hardworking individuals. Reactionary white supremacists claiming Black Lives Matter is an attack on all white people. Fascist Israeli leaders claiming opposition to their slaughter of Palestinians is an attack on global Jews. The CPC claiming criticism of them is actually racism against all Han people.
But billionaires and their hardworking employees aren't the same at all. White supremacist leaders are the only ones under attack by Black Lives Matter, not random white people in suburbs. A criticism of the terrorist-funding fascist Netanyahu and his government (who is happy to send his police to beat Orthodox Jews) has nothing to do with Jewish people around the world. A criticism of the CPC has nothing to do with Han around the world (and on that note, it's becoming such that anyone with Asianic heritage is becoming "Han" by the CPC's encroaching standards). Yet each of these smaller groups claim to speak for / be one with these larger groups.
I'm sad when see fellow leftists fall into the trap of attacking class allies, but to be fair it's very hard to sit down and convince every single person scared of the big Black Lives Matter protest that we probably actually share a cause and common enemy.
I have no solutions other than personally always trying to remember who really is the source of so much suffering in the world and avoiding lashing out against class allies. This article is a great example that I feel follows the same strategy.