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Why no one knows what patriarchy is?
We’ve spent 200 years “fighting patriarchy”—but do we even know what it is? Feminism has reshaped laws, workplaces, and homes, yet the word itself remains slippery. Ask ten people, and you’ll get ten answers: Male dominance. Systemic oppression. A relic of outdated gender roles. All true, but none complete.
Here’s the problem: We treat patriarchy like a villain, when it’s really a tool—one that requires two hands to wield. A knife doesn’t choose to cut bread or flesh; it depends who holds it. Patriarchy works the same way. It’s not just men seizing power, but women ceding it. Not force, but collaboration.
To understand why, strip it down to its primal roots. Imagine a man, a woman, and a child standing before a dark cave in a snowstorm. Someone must enter first, risking wolves or worse. Who volunteers? Who consents? The answer reveals the machinery of patriarchy: not oppression, but a deal struck over millennia.
Men lead because someone must. Women follow because survival demands it. And just like that—without grand conspiracy or moral judgment—the system perpetuates itself. The cave doesn’t care who enters first. But we do.
What is the patriarchy? It’s when the man who goes first into the cave.
