On international women’s day I was talking with my wife and realised there is no Patriarchy.

Hear me out:

The patriarchy is the idea that men hold all the power, and this has a bunch of limiting downstream effects.

This is an insidious idea, that causes a lot of harm. Let’s dig into why.

Marx had a lot of controversial ideas. One of his foundations is that politics always revolves around the struggle between groups.

Before Marx there were political movements around ideas: naturalists, luddites etc. But in those movements people would be convinced by an idea, and take action on behalf of it.

Marx threw that notion out the window and said that political groups was something you were. Workers against owners. Women against men. Etc.

You couldn’t join the workers in Marx world view. You either were one, or you were an enemy.

Now if we look at the patriarchy, the insidious nature ops out: there’s no group called men.

This is equivalent to saying “the blonds have all the power”. Even if it is technically true, it doesn’t explain anything.

The reasons men held all power are varied and historical: Originally men could fight, women couldn’t. So men were citizens and women were not.

Later on men could work heavy, lucrative, jobs while women could not.

For the longest time women would go through a seriously dangerous child bearing process, so they were much likelier to die.

It’s wonderful that we’ve outgrown the reasons to limit the competence pool by sex.

And because humans tend to change their traditions slowly it’s taking time for women to come to the fore. So there’s good reason to celebrate female leaders and innovators to speed up the meritocratic process.

But we can leave the Patriarchy behind us. It is just a political rallying cry. A way to create enemies where before there were just bad ideas.