What is Patriarchy?

[Asero]

So, what exactly is patriachy, theoritically?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I would say that the question is a bit too broad - or, like, can only be responded to in a relatively shallow sense unless one once to make reference to some The Dialectic of Sex weird sex-essentialist "women make babies therefore patriarchy" stuff (a premise I find thoroughly disagreeable). An imperfect comparison could be made to the question, "What is racism?" Well, what is racism when and where?

To narrow it to a more useful form, I think it might be worthwhile to ask, "What is capitalist patriarchy?" or, to borrow from bell hooks, "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy"? That way, we can look at the particular configurations of sex/gender that correspond to a particular point, rather than trying to imagine an ahistorical sex/gender that exists always and everywhere (because, to be blunt, such a thing doesn't exist).

I do think it's safe to say that patriarchy (referring from here on in to white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, but trying to save a few words) can be traced to the reconfiguration of gender in the early modern period, and the transformation of work - particularly the creation of the nuclear family around the male wage worker on one hand, and increasing specification of the domestic/women's/unwaged sphere on the other. This also dovetails nicely with colonialism, and the birth of "whiteness"/white supremacy, and the increasing "scientific" ordering of bodies - creating the white/male body as the norm from which racialized and gendered bodies are differentiated (and pathologized).

All of which is to say that patriarchy has to be understood as primarily about white men, and the techniques/forms of organization which create the "white man" as "citizen", "individual", etc. while creating the "woman" as "other" whose particular function is reproduction - both in the literal sense of "responsible for having babies" but also the whole host of activities that more broadly concern the reproduction of (in particular, the working) class - cooking, cleaning, sex, etc.

All of that said, I think it is to some degree safe to point out that white supremacy and patriarchy are currently in crisis - that the white man-citizen-individual (as a category) is faced with the prospect of destruction with the shifting composition of classes. What this "neo-patriarchy" will look like is hard to say - I certainly don't want to suggest that patriarchy is disappearing, because obviously the quantitative data speaks for itself (rape statistics, domestic violence, income gap, etc.) - but I do think things are changing in interesting ways.