“patriarchy” in this context means something other than you think, I.e. it means a system that upholds gender roles that benefit a (majority male) ruler class, e.g. by encouraging worker class men to go to war for their benefit, worker class women to be caretakers, and so on.

The counterpart to this definition of “patriarchy” is a society with no stratified gender roles, not “matriarchy”.

Honestly, 'patriarchy' is a terrible term that leads to so much confusion. Too many people use it as 'blame men' and forget that it's supposed to be about men being culturally cast as perfect leaders and therefore punished for not meeting those impossible standards.

I have high hopes that the spreading acceptance of transfolk will start to break down the weird gender roles we've got, and maybe we can talk about some of this stuff more directly.

Men =/= the patriarchy. Tell a friend.

I never advocated for a matriarchy. People will continue to be shitty to eachother but the deconstruction of gender based discrimination and violence would benefit us all. In order to do that we must recognize that what holds us back from this is patriarchy.

I think you're quite correct in this analysis as well. Historically, women have often had to depend on a husband for financial security and to be this instrument of protection. This archetype of the provider and protector husband is still baked into our patriarchal culture and leads women who don't deconstruct this attitude to treat their male partners as you describe, and men in straight marriages to feel this burden alone. I've seen it often lead to insecurity and self doubt among husbands who feel they can't live up to this impossible expectation, who also for the reasons widely discussed in this thread don't feel able to express this insecurity and doubt, or are punished for doing so because it goes against their culturally-prescribed gender role of the strong male protector.

That's like saying the road is the cause of all car crashes.

The road is the context in which all (mostly all) crashes occur, its contours or grading maybe contributed to the crash, but it almost never would be the sole cause.

Most people who just wave their hands and say "patriarchy" are parrots who just know they get a cracker when they say the line. It's resulted in trash discourse.

It's resulted in people just tuning out when they hear the word, too.

Kinda sucks, because it's a really useful foundation to talk about society through a certain lens. It'd be hard to talk about traffic if I didn't understand what a road was.

But, I admit, many people who pipe up with "patriarchy" don't really want to talk any farther, and that does make dealing with those people pretty frustrating. Like if a cop showed up at every crash and excitedly pointed out the existence of a road and then left.

It's just the broad description of the gender roles/hierarchy present in our society. Being aware of them and how they negatively impact gender interaction seems fairly useful to me. Usually it's helpful to understand the current structure of something and how that's causing problems to make any meaningful and positive changes.