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Why men should learn from feminism and dismantle matriarchy

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Men can learn from feminism by adopting a “we can” philosophy, which acknowledges that gender is no barrier to individual capacity, says Jack O’Sullivan.

—This is article #9 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys

To realise our full potential as men, we need to get the analysis and the alliances right.

First, the analysis. A big barrier to self-realisation is anything in our heads – or in other people’s heads – which suggests that being male is a limitation rather than an aspiration. ‘We can’ should be reclaimed as the core of masculine identity. That means junking and challenging notions that we can’t … express emotions, multi-task, care for children, care for ourselves and each other, listen, be valuable people even without a job… ‘We can’ does not claim innate ability. It establishes goals and entitlements. If we’re not instantly good at something, it means that we seek help. We make sure that boys as well as girls emerge fully equipped for adulthood. We give men – as well as women – who might have missed out, both the opportunities and inspiration to catch up.

If that’s the analysis, then we should make alliances with those who also say ‘We can’. And we should challenge those who don’t. Let’s start with feminism. It has championed a philosophy that gender is no barrier to individual capacity. Women picked up this insight, historically considered to be a masculine paradigm. They ran with it and have travelled far together, outstripping men’s sense of our own possibilities. Feminism should be our inspiration.

Patriarchy hurts men

Patriarchy is our enemy because it confuses control over women and children with male self-realisation. We don’t need to control others – we need to develop our own capacities. And patriarchy gets in our way because it dictates that only women do certain things. That stops us from doing them. Patriarchy says ‘We can’t’ to men just as it tells women ‘You must’.

Feminism has done us a favour in beginning to dismantle patriarchy. But it’s left matriarchy for us to challenge. Matriarchal values – claiming that women are innately superior to men and that we are incompetent in key parts of the private and domestic arena – has messed up the heads of women and men. We have not supported equality in the public arena to then be policed and infantilised in our homes. Perhaps, in the old world, patriarchy and matriarchy somehow provided a balance, but both systems are out-dated as men and women reject gender-based power and its inevitable diminishing of the ‘other’ gender.

We’re stronger together

Then we have to talk about mending fractured relationships between different types of men. ‘We can’ requires mutual support. So, for starters, heterosexual men should dump their historic hostility to, and discomfort with, homosexuality. Straight men have a lot to learn from, and share with, our gay, bisexual and transgender counterparts, who have bravely and successfully said ‘We can’ about their contested identities.

And then there are fathers living with or separated from the mothers of their children. These fathers often act as strangers to each other. Men in ‘intact’ families provide little support for those fathering children after separation. Yet we’re all saying, ‘We can’ be good parents. The power dynamics between fathers and mothers that become so obvious after separation are all present inside ‘intact’ relationships. They are just better hidden. We need to share our understanding of these dynamics.

Lastly, there’s that word ‘We’. Too many of us lack the will to collectivise in order to create a better world for everyone. Yet, individually, we are often unable to understand and tackle the cultural pressures that we face. Together, ‘we can’.

Jack O’Sullivan is author of ‘He’s Having a Baby’, the BBC Guide to Fatherhood. You can follow him on twitter @ThinkOSullivan or read about his work on Fatherhood at his website.

—Cartoon credit: Jack O Sullivan

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

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  • Wilma

    I’ve yet to witness a patriarch who controlled a wife, daughter sister or mother. Thats a delusion that patriarchs share with feminists.

  • karen Woodall

    Whilst ever men appease feminism in a deluded belief that it is about equality the project to build a working partnership between men and men and women will fail. Men may not be able to collectivise in the same way as women, that is because they are men, not men who need to learn how to be better people from women. Women, gay men, transgender and otherwise are not more highly evolved than straight men,, all of these people are also as flawed and complicated and riddled with prejudices as each other and it is utterly foolish and futile to put everyone bar straight men on a pedestal and tell straight men to learn from them. People are people, different but equal in all of their expressions of humanity and only when we understand and respect that will we be able to build a real movement about equality. Being a heterosexual man is NOT something to be ashamed of and being gay, transgender or a woman is not a higher level of humanity.

  • Daniel Mirante

    I find this article problematic. For a start it actually buys into the ‘patriarchy’ being the problem, rather than one that sees gender roles being reinforced between men and women (and between men and men, and women and women) in a continual, reciprocal basis. The notion of patriarchy is incredibly slippery. Our society is no longer based upon patriarchial principles (with the husband/father, the breadwinner being provider and protector for his wife and children). It is based on corporate free market principles. Using these terms just reinforces the idea of men as a monolithic ‘perpetrator-aggressor-ruler’ class.

  • Nigel

    Daniel I think you hit the nail on the head. There is a world of difference between the “feminism” of those looking for equity, or those really devoted to re-describing a protected status for females post chivalry and those using a Marxist analysis in which breaking gender roles is simply a means to inaugurate the “eternal classless society”.  The result is of course a series of different ideas of ” Patriarchy” and “Masculinity”.  These are of course theoretical constructs despite the belief that they are fact. Possibly the defining feature is the absence of any consideration of of the sheer variety over time place and society with regard to gender( the socially constructed roles). Even within the materially advanced  Anglophone societies that form the core of this theoretical ( religious ?) analysis it is immediately clear that there is huge variance in gender roles across class, urban/rural, geographic, ethnicity lines. 
    The very theoretical underpinnings of “Patriarchy” are so simplistic and flimsy as to be easily brushed aside as having little actual explanatory power. 
    The only possible plausible view is that women are powerful transmitters of a false ideological consciousness to each generation. Because as a matter of fact it is women as mothers, sisters, aunts , nursery nurses , teacher and so on who take the primary role in transmission of social mores. In truth if patriarchy existed and needed to be banished all it would take would be for women to stop transmitting it to their children, pupils etc. 
    But of course the reality is so much more complex. But, for instance, if one really wanted to address homophobia it would be to impact the messages of women to boys about what is acceptable in a male. Addressing this with teenagers is far, far too late. 
    “what a waste” is a frequent comment about a gay man from women. In those three words is encapsulated a huge and wide view of “masculinity ” transmitted by women to their offspring. If women have then a powerful view of a wasted male life then they too have one of the reverse. And it is these that their sons carry with them in their heads( as do their daughters) . If society ( and gender) is a social construct the key builders are female.
    So either women are duped en masse and in variety into a false ideology that they are the main agents of transmission. Or theories of such a vast conspiracy are juvenile nonsense . Personally I go for ” cock up” rather than conspiracy. 

  • aj

    The article is very problematical . it starts by saying that feminism is a philosophy that ‘gender is no barrier to capacity’ but the opposite is the truth.
    There is a constant barrage of messages in the media that men are violent, emotionally unintelligent socially maladroit, incapable, victimisers of women and that lives of men are worth far less than that of women. Women are strong, capable,good and victims to men. The people who push this most strongly, who for example despite decade of evidence of symmetry in domestic violence deny that women can commit domestic violence describe themselves as feminists.

    We live in a society in which women do far better than men educationally but where gender specific resources are directed to benefit women. Health resources and research is devoted preferentially to women despite greater life expectancy. There are campaigns to reduce violence against women but none to reduced violence against men despite it being far more common. There are endless news reports that trivialise male deaths or do not report them at all while focussing on far fewer female deaths or even the female suffering caused by the death of their male relatives. This barely scratches the surface of the many biases and unfair treatment that men as a whole are subject to yet we should thank feminism which actively promotes this discrimination and the negative view of men and blame the embodiment of abstract maleness in society – the patriarchy.

    If feminists would agree that men and women together create society with it’s good and bad points that men and women can be good and bad and that men are frequently disadvantaged just as women can be then feminism would be fine. Instead we have the concept of patriarchy which means even when women do something which is unambiguosly negative or male disadvantage is so great as to be undeniable it is still the fault of men, of maleness of masculinity.

    Feminism is a big part of the problem. No one nowadays believes that women should not be treated equally to men unfortunately there are many who do not believe men should be treated equally to women.

    I want society to be better for young men in particular but I do not want go down the narrow sexist route of feminism demonizing denigrating and undermining the opposite sex for sectional interests. We can be better than that.

    If we want to help young men in particular we could start with a more equal number of male teachers in schools and a similar focus on boys education as that of girls, coupled to an end to endless negative male stereotypes. It will be hard because feminists campaign hard against educational and media equality.

    • Jack O’Sullivan

      Thanks for all these very interesting comments on my article. A couple of thoughts for clarification. I don’t have a ‘deficit’ perspective on men. But I do have a change perspective. We have changed our lives hugely and have huge opportunities to change them further. That’s good. I am trying to work out the direction of change that I would like to take and that, perhaps, other men might like to consider. So that we are architects of our futures and that we reach them a bit sooner, and with a bit more understanding, than might otherwise be the case.
      As my article suggests, I see a huge difference between feminism and matriarchism, which we would be wise to distinguish better for ourselves and for those around us. I think the two terms and value systems are hopelessly confused in most conversations and many people’s minds. That means we often end up alienating those who really are our allies.