I believe it is important to recognize patriarchy as a system in order to properly funny understand and address its root causes. To place an individual or a group as the sole cause of patriarchal oppression is to limit ourselves in also making them the key to the solution. But these individuals were not created in a vacuum, they are a product of society, just as we all are. If we are all products of the same society, then we all participate in the same system that has wrought these individuals we deem to be the cause of all evil. But as Johnson illustrates, that thinking is paradoxical. Some people may benefit from the system more than others, or participate in it to some greater degree, but the system could not survive if we did not all in some way support its existence.

We are all shaped by the society in which we exist, we shape our identities around its edicts and are reflections of it. But societies are made of a collective of individuals, and thus the individual also shapes society. In this it is important to recognize patriarchy as a societal system to recognize our ability to change it. Some of us passively participate in the system, which in turn does nothing to change it. If we examine the ways in which we passively are participating it, we can then actively work to promote change in those same situations.

I think Johnson does a great job of demonstrating the ways in which it his harmful to misattribute blame within the system. While some people may be the main beneficiaries of the system, they may be as passive in their participation in it as those that are oppressed. Are they more to blame than anyone else? In misplacing our blame we are alleviating ourselves of responsibility. This may feel good, as none of us want to feel that we are taking part in our own oppression or the oppression of others. If we deny that we take any part in these systems we are blinding ourselves to the ways in which we can affect change. In a way we are actually denying ourselves power and strength. The greatest benefit would come from us all actively working towards change and taking responsibility to shape the society in which we live. While no individual is the cause, individuals can maybe be the solution.

I believe that the structures of our culture, the ideals we hold of what is “true”, “right”, or “normal” are largely what shapes our personal thought. We measure ourselves and others against these ideals, the ways in which we conform or don’t, shaping our identities and opinions. Thus these cultural structures have conditioned our interpersonal behaviors, conditioned us whether through our perceived status or privilege or unconscious bias. We then shape our institutions to reflect and uphold the ideals of our society, and by proxy ourselves. As institutions are the governing rules by which we live by, there is in some way the greatest opportunity to effect systemic change at this level, hoping it will trickle down to interpersonal and personal levels and then become established upon a cultural or structural level, but I think our struggles with civil rights have shown how long and fraught this road can be.