Anyone who has paid any attention to the feminist movement over the past ten years or so will have heard the complaints against the supposed patriarchy. According to many vocal feminists, any men who oppose their views are patriarchal bigots who simply hate women and whose only aim is to further the supposed control that men as a group have over society and the female sex.
A few weeks ago, the former Irish President, Mary McAleese, wrote a piece for The Tablet, in which she described the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church as “bog-standard patriarchal, patronising and prone to tokenism”.
The way the word “patriarchal” is used today by feminists, one would be inclined to accept it as a kind of insult. It is certainly given a negative connotation. In its popular usage, the word describes a controlling and misogynistic man who believes himself to be superior to women in every way. However, this is not at all what the word means.
In reality, a patriarch is a male head of a family or clan (often of advanced age). The word is of course deriver from the Latin “pater”, or “father”. So yes, Pope Leo XIV is a patriarch; this is subtly hinted at in the title “Holy Father”. Nevertheless, one must accept someone’s speech for what it really means, so I can only assume that McAleese meant the word in its more negative connotation, and that she believes Pope Leo to be a misogynist in some sense of the word. This brings us to the crux of the issue: what exactly do feminists want from a man?
We constantly see feminists complaining about the many evils of men. Men (and especially those who lean towards the political Right), they suggest, are constantly objectifying and degrading women, and value them as little more than birthing vessels. Furthermore, the lack of responsibility many men take in raising children is one of the most-used talking points for the pro-abortion movement. Men who act in the above manner are, according to feminists, patriarchal misogynists, on account of their lack of interest in the effect of their actions on women.
There are some valid points here. It is a serious problem when men are abandoning their children in large numbers, and it is inherently wrong for men to take advantage of their natural physical power to abuse women, or reduce their value to the mere possession of their sexual organs. In the opinion of many feminists, a man must take responsibility when a woman conceives his child. I could not agree more. It is a well-known fact at this point that, as children grow into adolescence and young adulthood, the lack of a father in the home produces higher rates of crime and violence. We as a society should absolutely encourage men to take responsibility as the heads of their households.
But once again the feminists come up in arms against men. While they argue that men should take responsibility in their families, they cannot abide a man performing his role of being a masculine father, who loves and protects his wife and children, and takes seriously his position of head of the family. This man, also, is a toxic bigoted misogynistic patriarch.
And so we see the problem. It seems that, no matter what side a man takes – whether he uses and abuses women, or acts responsibly and upholds chivalrous morals concerning the treatment of women – he will be labelled an “agent of the patriarchy”.
One can only conclude from this that the feminists who use this word in this fashion do not actually want men to do anything. In the feminist fantasy world, men cannot take a leading role, but nor can they abandon their post. Instead, they must stand silently in the background, apparently to make way for their female superiors.
Even healthy and good leadership, such as that of a devoted father in a family, cannot be accepted by feminism. Ultimately, no male leadership of any kind is tolerable, on account of it being “oppressive” to women. What we can conclude from this is that this kind of feminism is not aiming to dismantle a patriarchy – rather, it wishes to build a matriarchy, in which men are pushed into obscurity for the sake of so-called “equality”.
Contrary to what the Mary McAleeses of the world might say, there is nothing wrong with being a patriarch. Leading a family as a man is a sacred duty, and one that must be taken very seriously. If all men shouldered that burden, and were treated with the respect that the discharge of that heavy duty merits, the world would be a much better place, and one in which women are treated with much greater dignity than they often are today.
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Patrick Vincent writes from Dublin
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