Patriarchy and Weight

Are you saying this patriarchy makes my butt look big?

The more I think about it, I'm convinced that unspoken assumptions are the main problem in discussing gender issues. The term "patriarchy" irks me because I feel it has so many built in assumptions. And not for everybody, I know -- that's part of the problem. Joe thinks it includes assumptions 1, 3 and 5-9; Susie includes 3-7 and 10. No wonder it's hard to communicate.

Your last post (which was great by the way) really clarified this for me. You wrote: "is there one united force that's to blame for all the inequities? Or are there many sources, influences and factors, which when combined create one overall event: the oppression of women (and the underestimation of men)."

Or take it even further: maybe there's not even one overall event? Maybe U.S. society has a very complex mix of advantages and disadvantages for men and women, which is different for given individuals and greatly affected by the cross-winds of class, ethnicity, geography and urbanization, as well as social trends and economic realities.

It soothes our brains to reduce huge messy complexities to simple ideologies, on both the left and right ("oppression of women", "traditional family values"), but I think these labels are slogans that don't describe reality well.

Is there really one "event" or status for women in the U.S. today that accurately encompasses Mormon fundamentalists, Manhattanites, Nazarenes in Alabama, movie stars in Hollywood and Cubans in Miami?

After all of our progress, after suffrage, women's liberation, changes in sexual harassment laws and now female majority law schools, if after all of that we lump America in with societies where women can't drive or go to school, doesn't that discourage reform and tell us change is hopeless?