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My first post here, let me know if am doing something wrong.
Motte, bailey and patriarchy
I have noticed that when feminists talk about the patriarchy they often commit the motte-and-bailey fallacy. Before I continue it is important to note that as far as I know there is no generally accepted definition of patriarchy and how the word is used differs widely even among academics and "experts".
The motte part is a patriarchy theory as used in anthropology and sociology. This part is usually solid and you can use it as evidence that patriarchy is a real thing. Arguments for patriarchy from anthropology and sociology are:
The bailey part is a patriarchy theory as used in feminism. This part is much more speculative and authors rarely try to prove it. Arguments for patriarchy from feminism are:
How feminists typically use the motte and bailey fallacy: They make a claim of the bailey type, for instance "men are the majority of homeless because patriarchy hurts men too". When the opponent attacks the bailey and argues that no such patriarchy exists, the feminist will retreat to the motte and reply with "of course patriarchy is real, do you deny that wives take husbands names, do you deny that we still call ourselves 'mankind'?"
The important part of course is that arguments in the bailey part have no direct causal connection to arguments in the motte part.
This is generalized conspiracy theory prevalent on the left and that for various reasons endorsed and spread without closer examination. You have two groups: one is oppressor and the other one is oppressed. Oppressors have control over some special property and they use their power to deny oppressed people access to this property. They then create a system that perpetuates and entrenches this dynamic into the future keeping the oppressed people where they are.
So for feminists you obviously have men as oppressors and women as oppressed. Men use their male privilege to oppress women. They also perpetuate the whole system called patriarchy for the future. The same goes for workers/bourgeoisie/capitalism or "normal people"/queer people/cisheteronormativity and so on.
As with all conspiracies, there is grain of truth to it. Even the most stupid ones - like chemtrails - have some useful nugget somewhere down there, like for instance Operation LAC where US governments literally secretly sprayed dangerous chemicals over US soil in order to study if this is viable military technology. That is your Motte, and then Bailey is whatever you want it to be.
This is perverse logic. I am not a group just because I happened to be born with a penis. Is this what they call identity politics?
If you want to understand Identity Politics, then it is best to go to the source of Black feminist group named The Combahee River Collective and how they defined it in their 1977 manifesto
This is the true birthplace of the concept of intersectionality, The Combahee River Collective was a group of black women many of them were lesbians. They connected their identity to oppression, and posited that until the least privileged are free (black, queer women), nobody is free. Of course the identity politics in this sense is abhorrent as it automatically assigns value judgement to immutable characteristics such as sex, race etc. The way to get around this is to introduce systemic thinking. You are a man and even if you do not directly and consciously engage in oppression, you nevertheless have access to male privilege and you implicitly and unwittingly perpetuate the system of power - The Patriarchy (or White Supremacy or Capitalism etc.) - that oppresses people. You will never be able to tap into the lived experience of oppressed people, you will always lack this way of knowing, but you can be an ally and center these marginalized identities whenever possible. To center here it means literally, they imagine identities being on the margin of the circle while privileged people are in the center. Marginalized people have better view of the situation having the outside view, you have to shrink the circle and introduce margins into the conversation. You will see these concept in DEI training explaining it all to you. As Di Angelo says:
It is lifelong work until patriarchy/capitalism/white supremacy/whatever is dismantled completely. But before then you have to give power to the marginalized so that the society can reorient itself in right direction under their expert guidance to dismantle oppression. Once that goal is achieved, the marginalized will abolish themselves as they will no longer need the power and we all end up in utopia.
That is the one minute summary of generalized dialectical conspiracy theory, their weltanschaung and ideas behind that worldview. It really is quite simple if you look at it. For sure at least in the way to identify who is the victim and who is to blame for everything as with many other conspiracy theories. Similarly to those there is also a huge rabbit hole to lose yourself for a lifetime, but the general gist stays the same despite complicated sounding jargon and the rest of it.
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