The patriarchy

Patriarchy is a concept that I am having problems with, but I'm not only having problems expressing the problems, I have a problem conceptualizing the patriarchy in the first place. I haven't wanted to record my thoughts because I didn't want them to be misconstrued before they were fully formed, but I don't think I'm going to be able to avoid that possibility, because I'm never going to get this if it's just in my head.

I googled it yesterday and came across some web pages with lots of discussion. One of them was this one, from Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog. Lots of discussion here, some of which was helpful, but I think it was helpful in eliminating some things from consideration. The main gist of the arguments was that the patriarchy was a theory, and that people were either trying to find evidences that lend credence to the theory, or trying to disprove the theory.

But the inequity clearly exists. Maybe that's the problem. I have no problem with someone saying that they want to rid the world of the inequity between men and women.  But when they say they want to rid the world of the Patriarchy, that just feels like something different. Maybe it has to do with the way I see words, maybe I can't help seeing it literally.

But no, it's larger than that. Because the Patriarchy is more than just inequity. And it really seems like the Patriarchy is basically everything that's wrong with the world. And that just seems like a never ending battle. Like the Patriarchy is too big. Because in my mind, the inequities between men and women is something we can eradicate, but the Patriarchy to me seems undefeatable.

I'm jumping to a different thought because I was just looking at another part of the blog that talks about essentialism. So men and women are different, full stop. The problem comes in when people think, because women and men are different that certain inequities must exist. But then, because women and men are different, what does equality mean?