The Soldiers of Patriarchy

I am a women's studies major and I am a feminist. When you are involved in these types of studies you learn not only how women are oppressed in our society, but you begin to learn how men are oppressed as well. You begin to see exactly how men are affected in our society by heteronormative social expectations, pornography, and the media as whole.

Being a man involved with these studies, I have specific insight into the world of heteronormative masculine gendered males. If you have read my blog before, then you know I am referring to what I call "the dark side of masculinity". Because I have access to this world I have begun to understand just exactly how men are affected by our current patriarchal social structure. Sometimes I'm reading or learning, and I see on my own a deeper theoretical lens of masculinity to be applied to said readings or learning.

Men. We don't sign up for this. We are born into this. That doesn't mean we have to stick with it. I sure as hell sure didn't. Once you begin to realize that you are simply a tool used for oppression, which is in fact a part of our own oppression, it is easier to quit being that tool. We are the gears who grind and turn desperately to keep the machine running. We are mindless. We just keep working so that machine doesn't fall apart. The machine is old. The machine needs replaced. We need to wake up and with the help of women, build a new machine. A machine that works for us, not a machine that we work for.

Unfortunately it's hard to get through to some men. So maybe our oppression has cons, but mostly because of social conditioning, many men feel a benefit from being a part of the dominant group. I'm assuming you have heard of male privilege. If you haven't, you should look it up. It's hard to get through to a man, and have him risk his privilege, to basically throw his "penis" into the trash can.

Men. Do we really want war? What meaningful purpose does it serve? We are the soldiers of patriarchy. Our weapons are deadly and damaging. We fight mindlessly with our weapons. Our weapons are misogynistic language and actions, pornography, rape, and objectification. These are only some of the weapons in our ridiculously over sized arsenal. We use these weapons without thought. Its what we have been trained to do.

We are the soldiers of patriarchy.

We are fighting the wrong enemy, while being issued orders from the true threat.

Lay down your arms, the war on women must stop before it destroys us all.

Because in destroying us all, only then will we have truly lost the only thing that would have been with fighting for in the first place.

Equity and true freedom.