On Power, Privilege, and Patriarchy...
I consider this a pseudo sequel to my previous post from earlier this month.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024924066
I don't hate tooting my own horn, I'm an egotistical ass who requires people on the internet to like him for validation, hey, at least I'm honest, dammit. 
But that is neither here nor there, my previous post was more personal than political, this one will be more political, though I will still use personal anecdotes because, hey, its my experience and my post, so that's all I can write about anyways, outside of my opinions.
First things first, I'm a straight, white, cis male, or, to put it more bluntly, at least in America, I'm a part of the privileged class.
Here's the issue that I think some people don't seem to recognize, being part of a privileged CLASS doesn't guarantee any personal privilege outside of that class, if you were born poor, chances are(again, in the United States), you are going to die poor, class mobility is damn near static for everyone in this country, being born white gives a slight advantage, but it only goes so far.
This is the point, the privilege exists, and you do benefit from it, but stop thinking of it as a crutch of blame, its not, unless you personally perpetuate the privilege you aren't responsible for it on a personal level. So stop being defensive. This goes for both white and male privilege. Here, I'll give an example in my own life of how I personally benefitted from male privilege, but I certainly wasn't a policy maker of it.
Just a note, I didn't know all the details till after I left the job in question. When I was working at Wal-Mart, floor associates were complaining because newly hired cashiers were getting paid one dollar more an hour than the rest of us, on average. It must have slipped, because we are NOT allowed to talk about our wages to each other, mostly because its fucking Wal-Mart. Anyways, when it got out, we complained as one voice, and I guess to quell our discontent, our store decided to raise everyone's wages, all at once.
I know that my raise was 50 cents, woo hoo! 
However, later, after I left Wal-Mart I found out that all the guys in the store were given higher raises than all the women, sometimes as high as 25 cents or more, one of the many reasons Wal-Mart was sued later. This was over 10 years ago now, and I doubt Wal-Mart changed that much, hence why I still don't shop there. So this is an example of privilege that most men probably aren't aware of mostly because they don't talk about wage disparity with coworkers, and their employers don't get caught, Wal-Mart just happens to be more brazen about it.
This is the issue with privilege, it can be subtle, in many cases it has to be, in order for those organizations and companies that perpetuate it to not have the federal government come down on them like a ton of bricks, when the SCOTUS doesn't get in the way.
Privilege for males is only perpetuated in a patriarchal system, however, it is not an organized system in the same sense that capitalism is. Its more insidious, and its true power is in the culture, and the foundation for it starts at home, in how we are raised as children.
Its the enforcement of certain ideas about gender that are perpetuated in everything from what your parents teach to the media around us. For example, parents and authority figures giving excuses for male aggressiveness, while quashing it in females. It doesn't have to be the obvious "enforcement of gender roles". It can be things as subtle as teaching girls to be demure, or submissive, to wait for a man. Or teaching boys to pursue the things and people they want.
The biggest issue with gender roles aren't the roles themselves, its not allowing children and adults to be themselves. Individuality takes a back seat to what society expects of us due to our genders. As adults, as parents, guardians, older siblings, teachers, etc. we should be guides for kids to discover themselves, not set arbitrary limits on them due to prejudices and backwards ideas on gender roles.
The issues within the culture are manifest in politics, the law and economics, such as the economic privilege I benefited from above, but that is only a symptom of the disease of Patriarchy, not the source of it. Same for political advantages, female politicians do face tougher scrutiny in many areas than men do, particularly as they get older. In legal context, domestic abuse and rape are two horribly underreported crimes that both men and women underreport, if for different reasons but all because of our patriarchal culture.
MRAs will now go on a rant on how family court favors women, etc. etc. and, even though I rarely see evidence for this, IF such cases do take place, its more likely due to the prejudice that women are better at rearing children than men, which is an idea perpetuated by patriarchy. So in a sense, privilege is a double edged sword, but only in some cases.
This doesn't discount anything, we are not playing a zero sum game of who gets the most blame, or the most privileges, and there are losers on the other end, that's not how equality works. We are, and I think successfully, attempting to destroy the patriarchy through both legal and political methods, but the most effective way to destroy it, in my opinion, is in the home, and in how children are raised.
If children are taught to value themselves and others as individuals, that what we label the "masculine" and the "feminine" are both of equal value that all have within us. That we should respect ourselves, and respect the rights of others, perhaps that would lay a foundation for the destruction of patriarchal structures that exist in our society.
The good news is that there is strong evidence that patriarchy is dying, at least in some areas, and most of all I think culturally. I think the biggest manifestation of this, and a great example of how movements feed into each other are the advances of the LGBT political movement. Patriarchy perpetuates two things, one that the masculine is superior to the feminine, and two that these are static and should only manifest in their respective born sexes. LGBT people, just by being out, challenge this very notion, this foundation, in a sense conservatives are absolutely right that LGBT civil rights are going to destroy the fabric of our civilization, and they are going to replace it with something fabulous! Sorry, couldn't help myself.
Feminism feeds into the system as well, helping to change paradigms and how we think of gender roles and emphasize the equality of the sexes. I do think the next big movement will be transgender rights, and that might be the final nail in the coffin for patriarchy as a significant cultural force. While I mention the LGBT movement above, for many transgender, the strides haven't been quite as large, and acceptance is not nearly as widespread. Civil rights movements, all of them, feed off and build off the others, not taking away from any individual component, but adding to the tapestry that is our society and ultimately strengthening it.
If I have to lose what privileges I have so everyone has an equal shot, so be it, I would welcome that day.
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