“…we all participate in something larger than ourselves,
something we did not create but that we now have the power to affect through
the choices we make about how to participate.”, writes Allan G. Johnson in “Patriarchy the System”. This perspective really helped me decipher how people choose to correlate their individual acts within a larger system. Like Audrey Lorde explains, systems of oppression all meld together and while we each feel the affects of oppression differently and on a very personal level we have to understand the separation and the closeness that we have to our larger society. We need to know ourselves in the larger context and know how we choose to participate even if the problems feel so daunting.

I was reading an article the other day, unfortunately I don’t remember where and by who, but the topic was on how we have others take accountability for sexual assault and rape cases. A father was saying in an interview that he would hate to have his 17 year old son’s life be clouded by something harmful he did when he was younger. The writer of the article talked about how that is not a bad thing. If society stops acting like men of any age doesn’t understand what it means to be non-consensual and we changed the larger scope of what being accountable looks like in these situations, there would be less victim-blaming and a belief in women when they say that they have been in these harmful situations. All of this is to say that we need think about where and how they situations arise and are continue to happen under the larger scope of our society. What subtle and non so subtle messaging has people feel like the woman is to blame in these situations. With this we can find solutions like in school education on these issues and a better understanding of how to problem solve without victim blaming and painting the story as a boy just not understanding what he was doing.

Without resistance and a want to educate ourselves in the ways in which our society operates we allow, even if personally we live comfortably, other individuals to be oppressed. Although like Johnson writes, even though when speaking about the patriarchy men often think that women are only thinking about women’s rights, patriarchy also directly affects and harms men in many ways even if in it’s nature is trying to uplift and protect men. This shows through in examples like toxic masculinity and homophobia. Another example is that in society we usually deem women as natural caretakers even if biologically there is no evidence to show that we are better parents and nurses than men are. Women in court with custody cases are more likely to win over the father because of these gender based roles that society continues to promote and have people fall under.

These are all complicated issues and things I’m just learning and forming my opinions about with actual research behind me but I believe that society is ever changing and while we have a lot of work to do, with the addition of social media and more platforms for people of all backgrounds these are conversations that are being more well addressed today than ever before, at least in my context as I know it living in America.