Patriarchy Explained Without the Nonsense

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. People today just love to blame the patriarchy for just about everything. Are you in a bad relationship? Patriarchy. The male loneliness epidemic. Well, you can blame the patriarchy for that. You know that pesky pay gap thing where men tend to make more than women? Patriarchy. Your DoorDash order was late? Probably the patriarchy. Here's the problem. People are throwing around the word patriarchy and they don't even know what the hell it means. And if you're not able to define the term that you're using, you can make anything sound true. So today I want to walk through this whole patriarchy thing calmly, logically, honestly. Let's talk about what it actually means. Let's talk about where the arguments are valid and let's talk about where it just completely goes off the rails. So if you're the type that appreciates science and truth more than slogans and politics, this is for you. Historically speaking, patriarchal societies have existed. This is not a controversial take. For most of recorded history, men have led governments, have owned property, have fought in wars. We men have ran the institutions in our lives. This was not due to men sitting in, you know, secret little rooms and plotting how they are going to dominate the world. This happened because of several reasons. Number 1, in pre-industrial economies, physical strength was hugely important. Also, war has shaped political power over the years, and childbirth, that limited your mobility and your risk tolerance. If our society survives by lifting heavy things and fighting in wars, then the strongest half of the population tends to basically run everything. And the strongest half of the population is men. That's not an ideology, that's not politics, that's just flat logistics and physics. So yes, historically, male-dominated systems were very common across cultures, across history. Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, indigenous societies that we see all over the world. This whole patriarchal thing is not a Western invention, not by a long shot. It was and it is a human pattern. Here's where we start arguing about this whole patriarchy thing. Even when all those original conditions disappear, that does not mean that all of the systems just naturally update. The institutions move slowly, the culture moves slowly, expectations move slowly. For example, if a company builds its promotion ladder, the means by which people rise in the hierarchy of the company, If they built that back in 1955, back when most of the workers were men, well, that structure from way back then is still gonna have major influence on today. Even if everyone consciously tries to remove bias, there is still very much a system inertia at play. So here's kind of a simple analogy to kind of paint a picture here. Let's say you got a city that was built before the advent of the automobile. That means you're gonna have very tight roadways cuz you didn't need big wide spaces. You just had horse-drawn carriages. You probably had some very tight turns and an infrastructure for Parking? That doesn't exist. So even after cars come into the picture, that system, that infrastructure within the city, very much limits mobility. Nobody is trying to punish drivers. The environment was just designed under very old assumptions. They didn't even know what the car was back then. So when people say that structural inequality exists within the society, what they're often pointing to are old structures, old leftover patterns from an old era. So those folks do in fact have a point. The problem starts when we start throwing the word patriarchy around as a catch-all solution or reason for inequality, no matter where we see the inequality. This is where things stop becoming an analysis and start becoming just an ideology, and it just devolves into silly politics. Some of the differences that we see are due to culture. Some of those differences are as a result of economics. Some of them are a result of personality differences. Some are from, yes, biology. And some, believe it or not, are because of individual choices. Reducing all of the different outcomes that we see, all all the inequalities and differences that we see to just one thing, the patriarchy, is intellectually lazy. Another major mistake that people make is assuming that if men dominate a certain field, then it must be because of some kind of power imbalance. It must be because of oppression. What that assumption does is it ignores a very large body of science that says otherwise. There are very huge differences, sex differences, difference between the genders when it comes to skill set, when it comes to interests, and when it comes to temperament. Psychologists have studied personality traits for generations now across cultures all over the world. And we do so by using models like the Big Five personality model. And one of the most consistent findings that we see across cultures all over the world is that men and women differ strongly when it comes to interests, not intelligence. The most replicated finding that we see again cross-culturally for generations now is that men have an interest in things, objects, and women tend to have an interest in people. Researchers call this the thing versus people orientation. Fields or professions like engineering, mechanics, physics, computer systems, information technology— this requires a strong interest in objects, systems, tools, abstract mechanisms. On the other hand, fields like teaching, healthcare, counseling, social work— these require a strong interest in people, social dynamics, and emotion. When people are free to choose their career with no pressure from anyone outside, we see a definite split. Men tend to gravitate towards the things, and women tend to gravitate towards the people. In fact, one of the most interesting findings in social science is something that we call the gender equality paradox. Countries with the most gender equality— Nordic countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland— they show a larger difference in career choice between men and women. In those countries, education is free, the discrimination laws are extremely strong, and opportunities to go in whatever field you want, those are widely available. So if social pressure were a driver towards pushing an individual towards a, a particular direction, career field. In other words, if we are pressuring girls to get into nursing and we're pressuring boys to work on trucks, for example, then we would expect to see more and more women in the engineering fields working on things and more men getting into healthcare, for example. But just the opposite happens in these societies. When we remove the social pressure, women gravitate even more towards the people-oriented fields and men gravitate even more towards the things. As freedom increases, Preference differences become even more visible. Construction, oil rigs, logging, electrical line work. You know, those guys way up on the lines, those are very dangerous and very physically demanding jobs, and men make up the overwhelming majority of people that do those jobs. Is that because of exclusion? Are we turning away women that are applying for these jobs, or is it because men score higher on average in physical strength, physical risk tolerance? Sensation-seeking, competitiveness, and a willingness to work in hazardous conditions. And because of this, men make up most of the workplace deaths. This is not a privileged pattern by any stretch of the imagination. Another interesting thing we see is that extreme innovators and extreme criminals both seem to be overwhelmingly men. In stats, we see the distribution being males at both ends of the extremes, both high performers and the lowest performers. That's why we see men who dominate the Nobel Prize list, for example, and most of the people in prisons. Are men. Here's the misunderstanding that fuels most arguments when it comes to this whole patriarchy thing. People see unequal outcomes and they assume some kind of bias is at play here, but unequal outcomes can be as a result of different preferences, different risk tolerances, different priorities in life, and different temperament. If one group prefers flexible hours, for example, they may cluster to certain kinds of professions, and that will in turn affect your income stats. Again, data without some type of interpretation can mislead people really easily. A reasonable position can hold two ideas at once. History did in fact include male-dominated systems that did shape our culture. Human beings do show natural differences that will influence your choices. Both of those things can and do exist simultaneously. You do not have to deny biology in order to acknowledge the culture at play, and you don't have to deny the cultural aspect in order to acknowledge the biology. Reality is not ideological. Reality is layered. The word patriarchy has become very loaded. People hear it and assume, you know, accusations and politics and blame. But if you strip away all the slogans and the bullshit, it's often pretty simple. Human beings are shaped by history. We're shaped by incentives, personality, biology, environment, and our individual choices. It is not one single force. And the better we understand that, the more we can solve real problems instead of arguing about imaginary ones, because real solutions only come from an accurate diagnosis. If you like what you're watching and you want more content like this, may I suggest give me a follow, give me a like, give me a subscribe, leave a comment down below. How many of you have heard this patriarchy stuff and what do you make of it? Thanks so much for watching. I appreciate it.