Honing in on "Patriarchy"

Usage

"England is under the rule of a patriarchy." ~ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own 1929.

Nate: "I don't think the cleaners are cleaning the floor."

Jade: "There are no cleaners."

Nate: "Then why do we put the chairs on the tables?"

Jade: "The patriarchy." ~ Ted Lasso, Season 3, Episode 11.

It's become a thing for me, I've never really seen an episode of the Twilight Zone, maybe a couple, but it is the bizarre and disorienting feeling that everyone uses "patriarchy" like they know what it means, what it is referring to and how it works. I however have only the vaguest impression, and an incoherent and unintelligible one at that. 

"When people say '...because Patriarchy...' I don't know what the fuck they are talking about." was what I said to a female friend, and probably because of how I said it, this lead to an unproductive conversation, featuring a variation of "it's not my job to educate you." Albeit changed to be on behalf of all women.

To be clear, I believe in sexism, I believe in inequality. I'm not in denial, nor pro these things. It's just specific terms of art that I struggle with mentally. Like I have a problem with "reactionary" because it basically requires an assertion instead of an argument - it assumes that our notions are proved to be progressive (as in, will accomplish progress). "Patriarchy" is like that, because we can be talking about an actual something, and then someone basically uses "patriarchy" in the sense of "yeah well, the reason this is a problem in the first place is because of might Vectron." 

Every now and then, I get this pang of suspicion that I have not done the obvious and just google it, which pre-Gemini would bring up wikipedia, and post Gemini I scroll past Gemini as it burns fossil fuels to generate some summary whether I want it to or not, that I cannot trust and find the wikipedia page.

I fucking hate this term, because, now some 10 years later, I still have no fucking idea what people are talking about when they invoke "Patriarchy".

Let me give you my working starting point:

Patriarchy, by usage, can mean 1 of 2 things, and potentially both simultaneously:

1. A passive description of the status quo, where several if not most, metrics favour men.

2. A conspiracy theory.

By "both simultaneously" I am referring to the rhetorical strategy - Motte and Bailey, which is when you argue as if the Patriarchy is a conspiracy theory (men meeting in the back of a pub or on the golf course or strip club and plotting ways to stop women from achieving equality) if questioned though if that is what you mean, you retreat to the much easier to defend definition of Patriarchy which is the statistical reality of the status quo.

Now when I say "easier" I mean that in the context of conversations taking place in the 21st century in a Wealthy Democracy like Australia. If it was 1960 or 1970 I'd be like "oh yeah, you are referring to all the meetings we have in the back of a pub or on a golf course or strip club where moustached men basically trash women together." But now we are talking about pay gaps arising in a legal context where sex-based discrimination is illegal.

The trouble with the easily defended status quo, is that the statements appealing to Patriarchy as an explanation, leave us with nothing to do, it is like making an appeal to "rainfall" as in "because rainfall" and then elsewhere coming out with calls to action like "let's smash rainfall." 

My sense is, the greater one attempts to seek clarity on what people mean by Patriarchy, the more it will be asserted to mean it describes a kind of passive statistical picture - truisms - most CEOs are men, most Political representatives are men etc. So a large part of the problem is I think arising from the word "Patriarchy" itself, because "-archy" as a suffix implies a system of governance or rule, eg Monarchy or Oligarchy. 

Oligarchy might be a good example, because we have historical formal oligarchies like one that is close to my heart - the Republic of Genova where there's noble families that basically ran a city state for a handful of centuries. Then there is an informal oligarchy that some use to describe the US state, particularly the legislative branches, where wealthy campaign donors exist, and some 60% of legislation that passes aligns with donor interests, as compared to a minority of legislation that passes reflecting key campaign promises to the voting public.

Even so, it is relatively easy to explain how this informal oligarchy is operating, but if you take a phenomena like the unadjusted gender pay gap, often in my experience used as a synonym for Patriarchy, it is not easy to explain how the phenomena arises. It is certainly not clear whether the phenomena is invoked as an example of an emergent phenomena or some kind of intelligent design.

Economics' Intelligibility Crisis

I hold a bachelors degree in Economics, a social science and have done so for probably more than a decade now. Not only do I hold a qualification, it's a field I'm interested in since both before and after my studies. 

Only yesterday I learned from finance Youtuber Patrick Boyle that strictly speaking the term "inflation" should only apply to a loss of purchasing power as a direct result of increasing the money supply. I've seen many economists as a result, perhaps even most, misuse or mischaracterise the cost of living crises experienced around the world as due to inflation.

I make this technical error myself, because inflation tends to be invoked in conjunction with the Consumer Price Index, which will indicate inflation even without it being caused by an increased money supply diminishing purchasing power.

If the general public, and even economists don't understand what inflation means, this can result in for example the world wide ousting of democratic incumbents in 2024. Including equal and opposite oustings like the UK Conservative Party's historic loss in 2024, and Trump's ordinary victory in 2024. 

Perhaps for the economically illiterate, every time the news invokes "inflation" it is as frustrating for them as "Patriarchy" is for me. What the fuck are you talking about "inflation"?

The spikes in cost of living experienced worldwide since 2022 were driven not generally by increased money supply or quantitative easing, but instead by supply chain disruptions and companies simply putting prices up to increase their profit margins. 

But the news says "inflation, inflation, inflation" and central banks increase interest rates. Leading to my impression of Australian newspaper mastheads in 2024 - Interest rates high because inflation, interest rates not coming down because inflation isn't [Shakes fist].

Anyway, in contrast to "Patriarchy" inflation is a) not economics 101, b) I can point you to Mark Blyth's presentation on his book "Inflation - A Guide for Users and Losers" to give anyone who might exclaim in frustration "I don't know what the fuck they are talking about" by way of explanation and finally c) I'm actually pretty happy to have a crack at explaining inflation to my friends myself, though I don't have a basketball analogy for inflation.

Feminism 101

So I ask a feminist friend "what do you mean by Patriarchy?" they get angry and tell me it's not their job to educate me. I give it a google, skip Gemini and get to wikipedia - because a) Wikipedia is pretty good. and b) Wikipedia is also a good indicator of how obvious something is.

For example, if you want to know what "Ad Hominem" is:

Often currently this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than the substance of the argument itself. ~ From Wikipedia "Ad hominem"

That's enough for me to get it, but someone can read on for pretty simple examples. Simples.

Now for Patriarchy:

Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of authority are primarily held by men. The term patriarchy is used both in anthropology to describe a family or clan controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males, and in feminist theory to describe a broader social structure in which men as a group dominate society.[1][2][3]~ From Wikipedia "Patriarchy"

In which sense is Jade from Ted Lasso using "Patriarchy" to explain to Nate why they put the chairs up on the table even though nobody cleans the floors? Anthropological or in feminist theory - common sense says feminist theory. 

I can use my quick google of Patriarchy to then understand what this joke means by substituting "positions of authority are primarily held by men" in for "Patriarchy" in which case, either the character is offering as a serious explanation that this particular procedure in this particular restaurant exists because men primarily hold the positions of authority in society - like the Executive, Administrative and Judicial branches of Government, editorial positions in media, and are the predominant owners of property. And not the specific individual that dictates how things are done in that one restaurant.

I mean sure "Patriarchy" explains it, the same as "Economy" explains it.

In which case, Patriarchy is often misused much like inflation is in economics.

But understanding what people are talking about when they invoke Patriarchy is not simply clarified by that first sentence. We then establish that anthropologists use "Patriarchy" in a very concrete way to describe actual formal systems of control, and feminist theory uses "Patriarchy" to describe something very abstract which is...well I don't know. Not from this at least because "broader social structure in which men as a group" becomes the "it's merely a commentary on contemporary mores" part where Elaine's next question naturally is "but what is the comment?"

Now Sociology 101 probably needs to cover "what is a social structure?" and "what is a social system?" so I'm going to go there, and to be fair, if I was looking up "Ad hominem" because someone had dismissed me as simply "being ad hominem" and I'd googled it, I might need to look up what a "fallacy" is. Wikipedia links the word "fallacious" on the Ad Hominem page, but I need to go look up "social structure"

In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals.[1] Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings, or purposes. Examples of social structure include family, religion, law, economy, and class.

Again, wikipedia is pretty good. This tells me, that if we are invoking a social structure, then we are by default referring to something ambiguous.

So now I have enough common sense to assume from context that most invocations of "Patriarchy" are not in an anthropological context, but feminist theory context, and so the natural question becomes "of this broader social structure, are we talking 'emergent from' or 'determinant of'?" Or both and which bits apply to what is under discussion?

Back to the Patriarchy page:

Sociobiologists compare human gender roles to sexed behavior in other primates and argue that gender inequality originates from genetic and reproductive differences between men and women. Patriarchal ideology explains and rationalizes patriarchy by attributing gender inequality to inherent natural differences between men and women, divine commandment, or other fixed structures.[4] Social constructionists sociologists tend to disagree with biological explanations of patriarchy and contend that socialization processes are primarily responsible for establishing gender roles[5], they further argue that gender roles and gender inequity are instruments of power and have become social norms to maintain control over women.

On the one hand, this explains a lot, but more immediately it establishes that "Patriarchy" is contentious? controversial? I'm not sure what the right word would be, what we can see though is that different approaches disagree as to the nature of the social system, and perhaps even if it's a social system. 

For me, I also don't understand what an "instrument of power" is. I could take a guess, and probably name examples across the spectrum from abstract to concrete. Concrete instrument of power: a handgun, abstract instrument of power: vocabulary.

Wikipedia doesn't have a page, so I googled it, Gemini was loading and I just went to sociology.instute:

The three key instruments of power—coercive, compensatory, and conditioned—represent distinct strategies to exercise control. Each of these relies on specific methods, ranging from threats and rewards to persuasion and education. These instruments not only shape individual behavior but also structure institutional relationships and societal hierarchies.

So while I'm here and it's giving brief friendly sociology 101 blurbs, I'll grab the definitions of coercive (pretty obvious), compensatory and conditioned. Starting with coercive:

Coercive power, also called condign power, relies on the use of threats, intimidation, or physical force to gain compliance. This form of power is direct and often aggressive, aiming to control behaviour by instilling fear of punishment or harm. It is frequently observed in authoritarian regimes, disciplinary institutions, and law enforcement mechanisms.

Then compensatory:

Compensatory power, on the other hand, relies on the promise of rewards to elicit desired behaviours. This approach incentivizes compliance by appealing to people’s self-interest, offering tangible or intangible benefits in return.

And conditioned:

Conditioned power is the most subtle and sophisticated instrument of power. It operates by shaping attitudes, beliefs, and values through education, persuasion, and cultural conditioning. Rather than using force or rewards, conditioned power changes how people think, aligning their behaviour with desired norms and expectations.

Okay, so now I'm up to speed on "Social constructionists sociologists tend to disagree with biological explanations of patriarchy and contend that socialization processes are primarily responsible for establishing gender roles[5], they further argue that gender roles and gender inequity are instruments of power and have become social norms to maintain control over women."

Though, I don't know how to categorize "gender inequity" as any of the three main types of instruments of power. It's not obvious to me, as a reader/listener whether "gender roles" are the product of the instrumentation of Patriarchy, or the instruments of power employed by the Patriarchy or both, in the Orwell 1984 sense of "power is the means and the ends" sense, but that's probably for feminism 102.

So let's finish off the wikipedia introductory text with it's last paragraph:

 Historically, patriarchy has manifested itself in the social, legal, political, religious, and economic organization of a range of different cultures.[6] Most contemporary societies are, in practice, patriarchal, unless the criteria of complete exclusion of women in authority is applied.[7][8]

This is for me and my subjective experience at least, the most concrete section of the introduction. Firstly, the last sentence introduces a new variability - a definition of Patriarchy with a "complete exclusion" criteria, so Qing dynasty China is patriarchal even under the implicit rule of Dowager Empress Cixi, The Hawaiian Kingdom is patriarchal under Queen regent Liliʻuokalani, the Yoruba in Africa were patriarchal even under queen regent Orompeto, Tudor England is patriarchal even during the reigns of Mary I and Elizabeth I, and contemporarily the UK is patriarchal even with Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, Teresa May and Liz Truss. Germany is patriarchal even with former Chancellor Angela Merkle, the United States is Patriarchal even with AOC serving as a senator.

On this side I would be in agreement that common sense should eliminate the criteria of complete exclusion of women in authority. To me that strikes me as being like "there's not nothing in the fridge, because there's racks and drawers in there." and arguing it down to anything that isn't a void/vacuum containing no matter or energy does not constitute the fridge having "nothing" in it.

But the first sentence. At first blush it is a straight forward read, easily understood. It means there have been laws saying women can't own property or can't vote and that is a manifestation of patriarchy, there have been campaigns saying women can't be trusted with the nuclear code because of their period and that is a manifestation of patriarchy, there is scripture that says a woman ate forbidden fruit and was cursed with reproduction and that is a manifestation of patriarchy, there's economies where something painted by a man is worth more money than something sewn by a woman and that is a manifestation of patriarchy. 

The two things again are that there's a lot of overlap between social, legal, political, religious and economical systems. The political and legal and economic are often interdependent systems and religious was the (if I'm learning any sociology 101) structure in which many of those systems historically existed.

But if we take legal and economical manifestations, we may find societies where women cannot legally own property. So woman's husband dies, the estate goes to her husband's brother. But if we have a society like the Mexica (Aztec to most westerners) women could own property, but it is still patriarchal as a society due to the manifestations of patriarchy elsewhere.

With the second thing being that Patriarchy can "manifest" tying us back to the essential question of is Patriarchy emergent or determinant or both? 

I guess I would already conclude, that nothing from reviewing the Wikipedia article on Patriarchy contradicts my working impression of 2 definitions - inert status quo or conspiracy theory. "Patriarchy" may well be feminism 101, but it would a) carry a prerequisite of having completed sociology 101 and possibly further, b) it is not "a google away" from being well understood.

I remember my art teacher Mrs. G handing me back an essay I'd written, probably my artist statement where I'd just used the word "simply" as an adjective and though the context is forever lost to me, it had been circled in red pen and annotated with "nothing simple about it" which is great feedback and it applies to the word "Patriarchy" this is not a simple concept to invoke:

"Taylor Swift tickets are really in demand."

"When you say 'demand' I don't know what the fuck you are talking about."

"Oh, I guess I mean people want to purchase tickets to her concert, like it will increase their pleasure if they are able to attend and this motivates them to try and purchase a ticket. That's what demand usually means, and I guess relative to tickets to see a Boney M reunion concert, there are more people who want Taylor Swift concert tickets, so they are really in demand."

I contend, someone just cannot do that with "Patriarchy" it is not analogous to a fellow social science 101 concept like "demand" in economics. It's not even analogous to an advanced economic concept like "Say's Law" where supply creates its own demand which were I to invoke in the form of "...because Say's Law..." again a) I'd be happy to explain it to you and b) you are a quick google away from understanding what Say's Law is. c) there's a good chance most economists haven't heard of Say's Law or cannot recall it and won't apply it, d) wretched as economics is, it is my experience that most economists when discussing economics will concede all the problems economics has - like why unemployment is understated, why GDP is not a great measure of human progress and flourishing etc.

A quick google of Patriarchy gives the impression of a vague, nebulous, contentious concept where there is nothing simple about it.

Sociology's Intelligibility Crisis

The most important part of the above interview, that I feel is a very important interview, is where Chomsky talks about monosyllabic truisms. Mono means "one" and "syllabic" means "in syllables" so the words "one" "in" "at" "bin" "get" are all monosyllabic. It is of course an exaggeration, even when Chomsky, a famous linguist, stresses that you can "literally" express "these" ideas in monosyllables.

Examples like "it's perfectly true that most scientists are male." "It's perfectly true that women have had a hard time breaking into the sciences." "It's perfectly true that there are institutional factors making it hard for women in sciences. etc."

From your subjective experience it might be completely intuitive that these truisms are sufficient to become incensed, to politicize you, to radicalize you.

One of the stories in Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary is a recollection of someone who had a teacher failing their school work, because they were failing to conform to her expectations of femininity. That story incensed my sensibilities. It was an enraging read. My sensibilities are that the work should be graded on its substance, and a teacher was trying to leverage her legitimate role of grading schoolwork for evidence of comprehension, to try and socialize a child. 

The story in its telling makes its own argument, I care. Many invocations of Patriarchy though, will not distress my sensibilities, they will instead invoke "so what?" 

If someone asks the question: "Why hasn't a woman run a sub 10sec 100m sprint?" and the response is given "because the Patriarchy promotes and exults sports that men excel in, not women." This is not outrageous to me, this is a "okay, so what?" moment, Patriarchy here is too vague and nebulous a social structure or system to care about, this is not teacher is abusing her power, this is the economy, biology, psychology. 

These are examples, of what could constitute people mean by the word "Patriarchy" when they invoke it. Indeed whenever I question use or mention of Patriarchy, the most intelligible responses I get are illusions to specific examples of sex and/or gender disparities. 

For example, the Baiji is a critically endanged/possibly extinct species of River Dolphin, by contrast the Aberdeen Angus breed of cattle is globally designated at "least concern" for extinction. It is perfectly true to note the disparity, and a moral consensus could likely be reached that we don't want fresh water dolphins to disappear from Chinese river systems, and we overproduce Angus beef and could stand to lose some beef cattle. 

But it is almost banal to point out that a domesticated species that humans eat have grown numerous due to social structures like the economy, and Baiji a wild species that humans eat are possibly extinct because of social structures like the economy. So what? A major contributing factor was Mao's "Great Leap Forward" to the Baiji being depleted. Patriarchy then, covers everything from Maoist totalitarian command economies,  thru to Sri Lanken and Icelandic democracy.

This is not very informative though, and positing some social superstructure that "manifests" in the form of anywhere a disparity can be observed is not helpful.

Many parallels have been drawn between religion and postmodernism, perhaps notably Johnathan Haidt and Jon McWhorter. I just want to make a useful analogy.

There's a term called "Igtheism" that I would apply to myself, though in practice I would use "Atheism" because far more people know what it means and it conveys enough to be confident we both know essentially where I stand.

Igtheism is a contraction of "Ignosticism" and specifically it means "god is incomprehensible/unintelligible." in practice for me, it means if you tell me you are a Christian, I don't know what you mean and hopefully I can simply point to the phenomena of theologians on Youtube since September 11 arguing for a very abstract philosophical god, and like, Trump's evangelical Christian base particularly as manifested in Paula White and her calling for intervention from Angels in Africa. "Christian" refers to everything from someone who equates "God" with the phenomena of consciousness thru to people who believe a bearded man sits in the sky, especially when we take a historical perspective. 

These can set up frustrating cul de sacs of unintelligible language like "Patriarchy" and "Christianity" where people simultaneously assert that "nobody" and "everybody" does this and not that.

"No Christian believes in Heaven as a gated community in the clouds where Ben Franklin is playing Hendrix at Air Hockey, Christians believe the afterlife to be unity with God, and hell to be estrangement from God." It's a) helpful to actually know what you believe but b) a mischaracterization that all Christians are homogenous, or at least all true Christians are homogenous.

So this is a little aside to shore up my perspective that "Patriarchy" by usage, refers to the status quo (monosyllabic truisms) or a conspiracy theory, or both simultaneously.

If you just do nothing, do human societies emerge as Patriarchies? or are positive actions required to be taken to impose a patriarchy on a society? 

By usage, the "conspiracy theory" form usually leads to a common sense inference that men are doing Patriarchy. However, the example from Genderqueer is one where a woman is participating in Patriarchy right? Abusing power to enforce gender roles, clearly oppressive and I'm aware there is a term for this phenomena which is "internalized misogyny" at which point, we are talking about a super structure that is very very difficult to understand.

A good example of emergent behaviour though being the reality TV series "Survivor" I'm not going to invest in a rewatch, but my recollection is that in its very first season it was fairly clear what was intended in the design of the series was that contestants would compete for immunity challenges and then based on the challenge or interpersonal interactions they would individually decide who they would vote to be eliminated at tribal council after host Jeff Probst facilitated some questions. I think simplicity demands that the producers thought that challenges + tribal council + vote would create sufficient drama to make the show a hit.

In the first season, Rich and two other contestants didn't break any rules, they just did something contrary to the intended design, or intended scope of the design - they coordinated their votes. This lead to dramatic betrayal but Rich won. I'm confident that you can go back and watch the post "tribe merger" and the non-Rich tribe being disoriented that vote coordination is going on. 

Then flash forward two or three seasons, and there's an emergent behaviour - a "meta" to survivor, contestants arrive and very quickly negotiate alliances and sub alliances pledging to take one another to the final two, before forming a voting block of four. So with an American context you could quickly see a kind of Arabic Bedouin culture spontaneously emerge:

Bedouin apothegm is "I am against my brother, my brother and I are against my cousin, my cousin and I are against the stranger" sometimes quoted as "I and my brother are against my cousin, I and my cousin are against the stranger."

Did contestant Rich orchestrate a social system to parasitise all future generations of Survivor? or did it just evolve via natural selection of the rules of the show? I can't read the minds of the producers of Survivor to know what their intent was. I can infer from the challenges voting blocks posed to editors, that the producers never intended it to become a thing. They have certainly since shown a penchant for interfering to create drama, and then produced 180 more seasons after I stopped watching any series two decades ago. 

A similar potential phenomena renders Patriarchy unintelligible at worst, banal at best. Saying that "historically patriarchy manifests" is potentially like saying "historically it has rained, and it continues to do so."

Back to the Wiki Before I Give Up

So not a quick google away. Now I had done more copying and pasting paragraphs of text just from the Wikipedia article, for the sections of "Social Theories" and sub-section "Feminist Theories" 

After investing quite some effort into breaking down and writing out my own process of trying to apprehend Patriarchy, the quality of the wikipedia article itself devolved into what felt like just hate-reading. 

These would be my quick and dirty observations: 

The first is that these sections convey the unintelligible nature of "Patriarchy" because they cannot describe Patriarchy directly, but hone in on specific "manifestations" if you will, that are further diminished by the sources being Not In Our Genes (1984), The Menopause Industry (1994) and Theorising Patriarchy (1989) all of which are fine, because they could be landmark works, but when compared to the Wikipedia article on "Natural Selection" though it includes references by Aristotle, Charles Darwin and Malthus, it's actually hard to find references used to substantiate claims in the article about mechanisms that are older than 2008. 

This is the second thing, because after this section I recalled that what I was really interested in was some experiment that convinced most people that Patriarchy is a thing, whatever that thing may be, that they are referring to. An analogy to "The Peppered Moth" but for Patriarchy, rather than natural selection. What happened to the peppered moth isn't a lab based experiment either, just an observation of moths adapting when their habitat changed colour, so their wing colours basically turned from white with black spots to black with white spots within very few generations.

I suspect most people would just point to "the pay gap" as a documented phenomenon, but that just puts me right back to where I started - it doesn't explain what Patriarchy is. Is it intelligent design like creationism, or is it natural selection like evolution?

 The most concrete thing in this whole section is Sylvia Walby's checklist for Patriarchy that seems to describe a broad social system:

Sociologist Sylvia Walby has composed six overlapping structures that define patriarchy and that take different forms in different cultures and different times:[2]

1. The household: women are more likely to have their labor expropriated by their husbands such as through housework and raising children
2. Paid work: women are likely to be paid less and face exclusion from paid work
3. The state: women are unlikely to have formal power and representation
4. Violence: women are more prone to being abused
5. Sexuality: women's sexuality is more likely to be treated negatively
6. Culture: representation of women in different cultural contexts 

This though, I'm going to assume on common sense, works the same as "Historically Patriarchy has manifested..." in so far as, you don't need all six but any one of these criteria to be met to declare Patriarchy.

I gave up breaking down the wikipedia article at this point, because the Social Theories section is borderline incoherent, and there is still "Biological Theories", "Evolutionary Biology" and "Psychoanalytic Theories"

The article begins to have problems like "[who?]" "[citation needed]" and "[further explanation needed]" and there is very little action on it's corresponding "Talk" page.

Why Am I Talking About Richard Dawkins?

I like "The Selfish Gene" but like most people, I have been over Richard Dawkins for multiple decades now. I'm not pleased to read an article that puts me in mind of "The God Delusion" which though an important book at the time of its release, I do not view as more valuable than Bertrand Russell's much shorter "Why I Am Not A Christian" much of which was reiterated by Dawkins, almost wholesale in his book.

But in the God Delusion, Dawkins introduced an idea of "Sky Hooks" vs "Cranes" as a basketball fan, "The Sky Hook" is Kareem Abdul Jabbar's signature move, and so ingrained is this use of the term "Sky Hook" that I still find Dawkins' terminology confusing. 

As I understand it, a "sky hook" as I understand it, is a non-explanation, because it is a hook that just magically comes down from the sky, whereas a crane you can trace the hook back to the ground, to terra firma and it explains how it can lift something up.

Now I don't want to get into helicopters, but helicopters are cranes, not sky hooks.

But using the truism definition of Patriarchy, that things are unequal in men's favour we can expand and contract and substitute a statement.

"The gender pay gap exists because the patriarchy does not value women's work as much as men." I wrote this, I'm not actually quoting anyone, I just hope it strikes people as sufficiently cogent and cromulent.

becomes: "The gender pay gap exists because things are unequal in men's favour, women's work is not worth as much as men's."

Which we can now contract via substitution:

"The patriarchy exists because the patriarchy does patriarchy."

It may not be a perfect demonstration, but at least to me, it illustrates how frustrated I get when Patriarchy is invoked. I feel gaslit that people act as if everyone knows what Patriarchy means, and it produces statements to the effect of: "Wind is caused by wind blowing wind around."

The Rarest of Conversations

Very occassionaly something like the gender pay-gap can actually be spoken about. I can discuss with another human being whether we are talking about the adjusted or unadjusted pay gap, and from whence the pay gap arises, how it comes about and how it functions and what can be done.

But that's about the extent of it, and, I'm not sure I've ever had that conversation with a woman. 

I'm going to give another example, of a conversation that is difficult to have, because of the usage of Patriarchy.

Going back to the women's 100m world record which has been held by Flo-Jo since the late 1980s, stands at just a bit under 10.5 seconds. Usain Bolt holds the men's record, set much more recently at just a tad over 9.5 seconds meaning he beats Flo-Jo by over 10m. 190 men have run sub 10 second 100m since it was first done in 1968. Right this is a record measured in hundredth's of a second, and it can be hard to perceive the signifigant distances between first and last place with the difference of time being less than a second.

At which point, there's an interesting argument to be had as to why so much attention is lavished on the 100m sprint. It is certainly my perception that the Olympic 100m sprint champion is generally given more esteem than the 200m winner unless they are the same person. 

Of course, all the sex differences can be explained by biology, to broadly conclude that on average men are faster runners than women, even though I personally will never run as fast as the top 141 women of all time. 

Steven Fry on QI offered an explanation though, that men dominate sports because men invented most sports and they are specifically designed to make men look impressive.

Okay, so now hypothetically we are having an interesting conversation about the Patriarchy. We can sit back and think about establishing equality, not through equalizing prize money, salaries, air-time/media coverage etc. which they debate with WNBA and AFLW (maybe). 

But equalizing two sports, like put in a sport alongside the 100m sprint that women tend to excel at and not men.

Now these sports already exist on that narrow criteria. I'm thinking predominantly gymnastics, where women tend to excel men. What we can immediately see though, is that while women may hypothetically or in reality outperform men in gymnastics, gymnastics does not outperform track and field.

Part of it may be, that gymnastics have this subjective component. Competition is not direct, like a running race or team sport, but indirect where one goes to the beam, the pommel horse, the floor routine etc. and performs for judges who then score your routine, and then it is averaged and tallied and ranked.

But what if we just designed a new sport where it could be "run" race style but rewarded women's greater statistical flexibility as gymnastics does? I'm picturing a race through some kind of jungle gym...

I'll put a pin in this idle speculation to point out what is rare about conversations along this line - they are somewhat actionable. There's something to do, a unifying sense of purpose operating on the hypothesis that mens sports out-earns women's sports with very few exceptions because sports are designed for men's bodies. 

I suspect these conversations are rare, because they carry an inherent risk that it might reveal that it has very little to do with social systems or structures at all, or at least those systems and structures are really efficient.

Which is to say, that to celebrate a sport dominated by women equal to the 100m sprint, may require a massive energy input that just isn't expended by the Patriarchy. 

Feels like time to just 

Conclude

Use whatever words you like. I hope to make my case that invocations of "Patriarchy" are confusing, but everyone acts like its obvious what is meant and furthermore, what needs doing.

I am not going to police language, at least not directly. I intend to grant Patriarchy for the sake of argument, and then ask, to me, the crucial question "How efficient is the Patriarchy?"