From Fidelbogen's The Counter Feminist:
What do the feminists really mean by the term "patriarchy"? When this word rolls off a feminist tongue, what does it specifically refer to? Is it possible to discover what they are talking about in terms of the utmost clarity, simplicity, and above all usability, and reduce it to a formula that will smack the nail bang on the head every time?
What do the feminists really mean by the term "patriarchy"? When this word rolls off a feminist tongue, what does it specifically refer to? Is it possible to discover what they are talking about in terms of the utmost clarity, simplicity, and above all usability, and reduce it to a formula that will smack the nail bang on the head every time?

Understand, that we wish to unpack the occulted lexical thread of signification which the word patriarchy carries throughout ALL examples of feminist rhetoric. When THEY talk about patriarchy, THEY assuredly mean something particular, something consistent, something examinable, something that would manifest their devices if it were brought to light. From the highest towers of the academy to the lowest reaches of the pop-feminist gutter, they all talk about "patriarchy", and in their varied accents they are all referring to the same thing. It is to this thing specifically that we direct our enquiry, in order that we may know it and name it and decode feminist speech by the light of it.

Here is the secret: When feminists speak of patriarchy, all they are really talking about is male power. It's just that simple. All of their circumlocutions dance endlessly and evasively around this -- that patriarchy is exactly synonymous with male power, neither more nor less than male power, and that in all cases the terms patriarchy and male power may be interchanged with a negligible adulteration of meaning.

Try the experiment yourself. Take any piece of feminist writing where the word patriarchy occurs; replace this word with male power; see if it makes any fundamental difference. Also, see if it throws an unexpectedly revealing light upon the matter, yielding a sense and consistency superior to the original version.

If you wish, replace the word patriarchy with the simple word "men", and it will yield much the same result. I know that many feminists have denied that patriarchy equals "men", but think for a minute: is not bare existence in itself a form of power? Tell me who has more male power: a man who exists, or a man who doesn't?

No feminist understanding of "patriarchy" makes any ultimate sense if you divorce this word from the idea of male power. If you aren't talking about male power in some way then you are wasting your time talking about patriarchy in any way whatsoever. Let that thought be your femspeak decoder template.

Feminist answer experts, seeking to confuse the issue, might reply that patriarchy is male power plus something else. Maybe so. But if you subtracted the male power part, the "something else" part wouldn't stand up any better than an empty gunny-sack, whereas the "male power" part -- even by itself -- would remain fully serviceable within the calculus of meaning.

Every feminist analysis that I'm aware of (for example, that of John Stoltenberg) does no better than make "something else" to be a form of male will-to-power emanating from the allegedly "constructed" nature of maleness in the first place. But this is a completely circular explanation that will never boost the discussion beyond square one, so we might as well scrap it. Besides, the whole mess boils down to male power anyway, so that in the end all you are really saying is that patriarchy is male power plus male power.

So in the end, you can't go far wrong if you simply set "patriarchy" equal to "male power". You'll go further wrong if you select any other option.

It follows that any feminist who talks about "ending" patriarchy or abating it in some way, is also talking about ending or abating male power in some way.

So what does male power mean? It means: any power of any kind which any male citizen might happen to possess.

And exactly what is this thing called...power? That is a very good and very important question.

In the realm of human affairs, as near as we can make it, power is a substance compounded of two ingredients: IDENTITY, and AGENCY.

Identity means the sum of all factors, both mental and physical, which identify you as a discrete center of conscious awareness in contradistinction to other such discrete centers.

Agency means your capacity to either effect or prevent change through the exercise of your volition.

Let that sink in. Take a break for a few minutes, if you want to. Get away from the computer. Go outside , look at the clouds, listen to the birds, enjoy the fresh air.

Very well, you are back. Let's recapitulate.

Patriarchy is a feminist code word for male power. Male power means any power of any kind which any male citizen might happen to posess, and power specifically means identity plus agency. So in practice, the feminist keyword patriarchy maps to the identity and agency of any male citizen.

Gentle reader, you as a person posess identity and agency. In other words, you posess power. You mightn't think you have enough of it, but you do have some. And so long as you have some, you have freedom. Again, possibly not enough for your liking...but some. And some is always enough to get you started - enough to leaven the dough, you might say. Be glad of it, and work intelligently with it.

Let's see how feminism enters the picture. Feminism is an anti-male hate movement, and it is perfectly natural that when you hate something you will seek to deprive it of power - the more the better. We have equated power with identity and agency, and so have the feminist ideologues - although not necessarily in the same terms. Still, they have copped the base mechanics that we've outlined here. They know it instinctively.

In order to undermine male power, the women's movement over the years has set afoot a variety of actions, both large and small, tending to vitiate the identity and agency of men. Indeed, nearly everything which feminism has accomplished has made some contribution to this overall effect.

This "campaign" has cut a gradual, descending swath from the macrocosm to the microcosm, from the political to the personal - striving always toward a finer granularity of control, a greater concision of shades and subtleties in the realm of daily life.

Dry alterations to the fabric of law and the outward form of institutions didn't satisfy them for long -- they thirsted for the essential juice of life, and in particular, the life juice of anything male which crossed their path. The last thing they wanted was a workplace or a world filled with insouciant, free-spirited, self-esteeming men and boys. Something had to be done to correct male joie de vivre and male autonomy.

Men were to be subjugated, but if they didn't know this, and if they didn't act like they knew it, then the whole thing would be pointless. It was necessary, then, for the reach of matriarchy to become omni-locational and all-pervading - like the ideological presence of a totalitarian social order.

So, it was and continues to be important to the feminist effort that every possible shred of male identity or agency be appended to the shadow of ideology in some manner. ANY speck of uncolonized male space or male autonomy constitutes a bit of turf still in the grip of patriarchal power. Or at any rate, that's how they see it.

Case in point: what is a "sensitive male"? For starters, it is a sexist concept in precisely the same way and to the same degree that "good negro" is a racist concept. This is a VERY exact paralell. If somebody employs the term "sensitive male", or worse, calls you one, then you ought to feel seriously offended.

Beyond that, a sensitive male is simply an emotional puppet whose strings are available for any woman to pull, whenever and wherever. In short, a man curiously lacking in power; a man of abbreviated identity and agency.

Sometimes they will rate you on whether you "know how to cry". Reason being, that if you know how to cry then it follows that you can be made to cry. That's what they are really looking for in the long run. And here's an extra thought that occurred to me: how would you like to be told that "it's okay to cry" by the very same person who made you want to cry in the first place? You'd be damned if you'd give them the satisfaction, wouldn't you?

These examples are given because in my opinion they implode the circumference of male power about as far as it can be pushed, at least in the daily realm of social interplay. Even to a point where the drive for control reaches straight into a man's inner world, breaching a barrier which civil propriety forbids should be violated.

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall." Know therefore that your coolness, aloofness, guardedness, your methodological skepticism, or even your native lack of response to certain stimuli which others might find compelling, are all vital elements of your identity. Your agency. Your autonomy. Your....manhood. In other words, your male power.

Oh, very well then, call it patriarchy!

Ha! And you thought that "patriarchy" was just a one-size-fits-all guilt-o-matic gizmo designed to put men eternally on the defensive while giving women a carte blanche moral advantage in any given situation!

Well it is that indeed. But as you can see now, it goes deeper....
It has relented a bit these days, but ten years ago the clamour for "sensitive New Age guys" was deafening. Women were tired of dealing with "macho" men and wanted someone softer and gentler. Even today, a lot of women complain that their men "aren't sensitive enough." This would seem straightforward enough: men should work at becoming more sensitive. But should they?
Before we all run off to teach ourselves "sensitivity," perhaps we should ask what does "sensitive" mean anyway? On the face of it, it should mean "someone who is more open to what is going on around them," "someone who feels their emotions more acutely." In this sense, women don't want sensitive men at all. A sensitive man would feel women's barbs and cruel jokes. A sensitive and courageous man would try to escape his soul-crushing job for more rewarding work that paid less. Women absolutely don't want this. They want a "sensitive" man who will still tolerate the abuse that they dish out without complaining or even realizing that it is abuse, and they want a man who will continue to do meaningless work to bring home a paycheque without complaining about it.
So you think that women bring home the paycheque now and so they don't need men to work hard at meaningless jobs to make more money? Don't fool yourself. Although women do "bring home bacon" these days, they also want a fallback position. I've lost count of my female friends who, when pregnant for the first time, were "trying to decide whether to keep working or become a full-time mother." I have always doubted that their husbands had any meaningful input into that decision. A truly sensitive man would be right in there saying, "Hey, maybe I want to be the one at home looking after the baby!" This is the last thing women want. Women want to make their life choices, then have hubby pick up whatever is left over. What that means, in practical terms, is that most women are looking for a man who is willing to do tough work to bring home the bacon, if that's what she says she needs. So, the "breadwinner" of yesteryear isn't gone—he's just in the back pocket, to be brought out if the need arises.
Neither does it pay for men to be sensitive where quality of life is concerned. Women spend most of their waking hours trying to improve their quality of life. Bath shops, clothing shops, makeup, vacations, decorating.... Feminists claim that women work hard on their appearance, smell, and environment in order to please men. This is laughable. Women do these things in order to please themselves. A man can tell a woman over and over that the dresses she has look just fine, but she will go out and buy a new one anyway. Men don't much care about fashion, makeup, and whether the bath smells like gardenias. As much as this speaks to women's motivations, it also speaks to men's motivations. Why don't men care about fashion, appearance, and sweet-smelling bath water? They don't care simply because it wouldn't work. Two people, each obsessed with their own quality of life would not get along, and women know this. A man who takes a satisfying but low-paying job, spends his money on luxuries for himself, and enjoys his environment is not a catch because he's "probably gay." Women want men who are willing to live and work in less-than-ideal conditions, men who are willing to spend their money on luxuries for women. Or, these days, men who will spend the money they make for the common good, so that women can spend the money they make on themselves. You know: "What's mine is mine; what's yours is ours." A man who values a pleasant, low-stress, high-quality life over "success" is not valued by a woman precisely because she cannot use him to improve her quality of life.
So, after all of this, why do women still demand "sensitive" men? The answer is that when women say this, they don't mean "sensitive" in the general sense. They don't want a man who is sensitive to his own situation and his own feelings the way women are sensitive to their environment and feelings. What they want is a man who is more sensitive to his woman's feelings. Women still want men who, when asked how they feel, are dumb as posts. Women still want men who are calm and unflappable. What a woman really wants when she talks about "sensitivity" is a man who can discover what she wants and then, having done that, goes back to being a traditional knight in shining armour by ignoring what he may want and making her wishes come true.
As such, the concept of the "sensitive New Age guy" was invented by women for women. The wonder is that everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Men are trying to figure out how to be more "sensitive," succeeding in becoming more sensitive, then wondering why everything hurts more. To add to the confusion, psychotherapists are 100% behind this new "sensitivity" and tout it as the only road to happiness. Nobody, it seems, has asked who this "sensitivity" would benefit, and, finding that it benefits only women, has asked why men would bother adopting it. "Being more sensitive" is not the road to happiness for most men; it is only the road to peace with their mates.
The punch line is that women act as though they agree with this. Several men's Web sites I've visited lament that women claim to want "sensitive" guys but then end up going out with jerks who abuse them. At first this female behaviour seems inconsistent, but it's far from it. Above all, a woman wants a man she can manipulate into doing all of the crappy, soul-crushing, mind-numbing, tough work in life so that she can do the stuff that involves love, warmth, and caring. Obviously, a truly sensitive man with self-respect wouldn't put himself through that, so he's not useful. What is left are the following:
• the sensitive but noble man, willing to make a conscious sacrifice for love. These too are few and far between, as all well-adjusted people are. Furthermore, such a man would rightly demand sacrifice in return from his mate, so he comes at a high price. As much as women say they want a man like this, it takes a special woman to match his generosity, so he's often tried on for size and then dumped.
• the whiner, who has over-sensitized himself and now realizes that life as a man is pretty damned meaningless. Women tend to try him out from time to time because he looks a bit like the "sensitive but noble" type, but then get tired of the constant complaints.
• the macho man, who to varying degrees isn't too aware of how he feels but just wants to get on with the job. These guys range all the way from church-going traditionalists to the bad boys who beat up their girlfriends from time to time or cheat. Women know that these guys aren't sensitive, but at least they're easy to manipulate and she gets what she wants: the resources and freedom to improve her own life.
• the committed feminist, who has managed the trick of being sensitive to his partner's needs while at the same time being totally blind to his own. This is what women say they want when they say "sensitive man." The problem with these men is that their occasional preachiness and holier-than-thou attitude can become irritating. Nonetheless, they can still be easily manipulated (sometimes too easily to maintain interest) and so they make good husbands.
So, out of the four types outlined above, only the last two are both commonplace and husband material, and—no surprise—the macho bad boy is in the club. The moral of this tale is that more than the much vaunted "sensitivity" what a woman really wants is someone who can stuff his feelings and do what needs to be done... so that she doesn't have to do it. Women value security over sensitivity, where "security" means the feeling that a man would go to his death to protect her, or slowly kill himself in a lousy job to keep her comfortable. That sort of thing is still worth much more than "sensitivity," no matter how much women whine about the latter.
If much of the advice on this site seems crusty and hard-edged, it's because I used to be a SNAG myself until I wised up. I'm writing here for the kind of man who has been through all of this and is beginning to suspect that something is not right. To this man I say, "If you're wondering how to become 'sensitive' in the right way to please women, if you've tried but can't seem to get it right, then you're probably already too sensitive and should stop trying." To other men, who are still deep into being SNAGs and thus find this advice offensive, or for other men who are scratching their heads over this wondering what it's all about, don't worry—this essay isn't for you anyway.