It is important to recognize the patriarchy as a system and not an individual indentity because it is a system, it was created to oppress a specific group of people while simultaneously powering another group. A man doesn’t have the patriarchy as a part of his identity, but his actions or words can portray that he supports the patriarchy as a patriarchist.

Lorde does an amazing job explaining that we as humans all have things that either oppress us or give us some sort of privilege, however they’re not things that can be seperated, which perfectly explains intersectionality. She’s a black lesbian mother, poet, feminist, and more “Any attack against black people is a lesbian and gay issue… Any attack against lesbians and gays is a black issue… There is no hiearchy.” This ties back greatly to the example of all humans being cakes instead of salads because everything that makes us up, whether it oppresses or gives us privilege mixes in and becomes one form: our self.

The structural level addressed for the example in the text of a man raping a woman dives into the fact that first, before we ask why we should also inspect what kind of society that man grew up in. “From wife beating jokes to the routine inclusion of sexual coercion and violence in mainstream movies… what kind of society would produce so much male anger and pathology” (Johnson 28). Then we touch upon the institutional aspect of the patriarchy, for example women in porn are portrayed as very submissive, easy to control and sometimes violently exploited but our Constitution allows people to produce and distribute these things for profit and ‘enjoyment’. Women are expected to be a very specific way because of the patriarchy, they should know how to cook, be a caregiver, have the trending body type of the decade, easy to dominate etc etc. The institutional aspect of the patriarchy portrays this through media, in magazines, movies, tv shows we constantly see the depictions of how society expects women to be whether that’s super sexual or mind bafflingly innocent, there’s a model. This then effects the interpersonal level because men speak about women differently and treat them differently than other men. They do ‘favors’ for women (holding doors open, the ‘ladies first’ mentality, paying the bill) and usually expect some favor back as a reward. On the other side of the spectrum some men look down on women, they belittle and berate them, because they don’t believe a woman could do what a man can do. I believe the interpersonal and personal elvels always merge together, especially in this context.