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There is a certain beauty to some definitions of Rectangle. The one I am singling out is
Why? this was the definition listed in my high school Geometry textbook. I remember it because the wording was a little peculiar. But, later I came to enjoy it. This is the kind of subtlety only a math nerd could appreciate.
I began to appreciate it once I learned how feminist theory defined patriarchy. The wording (doubtless there are many) I recall is, "a system of gender roles which is harmful to men and women" or some such. Some might say that this definition smuggles in a claim: that gender roles are harmful. That's not quite correct. You see, a non-harmful system of gender roles would simply not be Patriarchy as a matter of definition.
The reason I wrote this post was because of the earlier discussion that "Rape is about power, not sex." I was reminded of many past times I've heard rape defined this way. You might say that this definition smuggles in a claim: that men are motivated by power (or some such). But that is not quite correct. You see, a man who is motivated by sex is simply not committing rape as a matter of definition.
My textbook used the phrase, "at least one right angle," like Wikipedia uses a right angle. This is critical to leave the reader mentally itching, to leave him thinking that maybe a rectangle contains a mix of angles -- some right, and some not.
Behold! The full force of a theorem (not a definition)! So there is no doubt in the mind that there could ever be a parallelogram with mixed angles. This relation between the angles cannot be expressed with mere definitions.
Much later, I learned a name for this: The virtue of precision. Definitions should be as small as necessary.
What other imprecise definitions smuggle unproven claims?
I think you are misremembering. According to the Women's UN Report Network, "Patriarchal (adj.) describes a general structure in which men have power over women. Society (n.) is the entirety of relations of a community. A patriarchal society consists of a male-dominated power structure throughout organized society and in individual relationships." Similarly, Geek Feminism Wiki says, "Patriarchy is a term used in feminism to describe the system of gender-based hierarchy in society which assigns most power to men, and assigns higher value to men, maleness, and 'masculine traits'."
Hence, feminism does not include harm as part of the definition. It defines patriarchy as a particular system of social relations, but describes it as harmful to men and women.
This is a trick.
You can similarly say that Marx merely describes capitalism as a particular organization of relationships of labor and capital and then describes it as harmful.
But then it says nothing of how he has contructed this descriptive worldview, not in isolation, but to serve a preordained normative framework. Hence the peculiar specifics around the value of labor that don't make sense in isolation to a reasonable observer, but necessarily imply the moral judgements down the line. This is what OP describes as smuggling. And it is fallacious.
I don't want to single out Marxism and Feminism (which is directly inspired by Marxism in this particular way) as all ideologies do this to some degree. But the idea that there is any non normative full theory of society and the humanities is one of the most annoying and persistent lies there is.
It is not impossible to extract descriptive theories in the humanities, but feminism is not one of those endeavors and never has been.
But capitalism IS a particular organization of relationships of labor and capital. Marx did not invent the concept of capitalism; his contribution, for better or worse, was a particular critique of capitalism, as well as claims re its historical relationship to other forms of economic organization.
Similarly, feminism did not create the concept of patriarchal societies. There are plenty of societies which "assign[] most power to men, and assign[] higher value to men, maleness, and 'masculine traits'." And it is transparently obvious that norms about what roles in society are proper for men and women have changed in the US over the decades -- how many female doctors and male nurses were there in the US in 1950 -- so that one does not have to be a feminist to believe that the US was more patriarchal in 1950 than today. So, clearly, the concept of patriarchy is not unique to feminism.
I always feel like an broken record saying this, but this entirely depends on what one means by 'patriarchy'. It's a word that's been used, misused and abused to death. Based on what else you said, I understand what you said to mean that 'patriarchy' as the feminists describe has always existed, feminists merely created the descriptive theory (that is, merely described what already existed). Although this is undercut by 'the concept of patriarchy is not unique to feminism', which is true in the strict sense, but the feminist theory of patriarchy, which is what you are describing, is unique to feminism.
The term 'patriarchy' to describe social structures was first used by Max Weber in his posthumously published The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1947), in which he provides an extremely narrow definition of patriarchy, basically describing a system of household organisation and inheritance - almost a synonym for 'patrilineal'. This was purely descriptive, and contains none of the connotations and normative judgements implicit in the feminist definition. The term 'patriarchy' specifically was introduced into the feminist lexicon by Kate Millet in Sexual Politics in 1970, though the general idea if not in name existed in feminism before then.
I disagree with you when you say "feminism did not create the concept of patriarchal societies", because the feminist conception of patriarchy does not and did not exist, and is purely a product of feminist historical revisionism (that is, a myth) constructed to support their political project. To be specific, I am referring to the feminist understanding of the relationship of the sexes as being one of where men oppress women. In other words, that "the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation on the part of man toward woman." I have written extensively about this in the past on the old subreddit and elsewhere, but just to highlight two really quite prominent examples of this myth-making:
We have known for quite a long time that there is gender parity in domestic violence (and rape too for that matter) but this has been suppressed in large part by feminist activism and feminist theory. Many historical claims about domestic violence similarly turn out to myths, for example the oft repeated claim that men used to be able to beat their wives with impunity is a myth, and appears to originate William Blackstone's 18th Century Commentaries on the Laws of England in which he claims (via a unspecified colleague as a source) that men used to be able to do just that - before adding that this had changed under the enlightened reign of Charles II, obviously having a political motivation to describe the pre-Restoration era (and thus Cromwell's rule) as savage and barbarous compared to the present. Decrying how your outgroup treats women poorly to make them look bad and yourself good is a tactic as old as time.
The issue of women's suffrage is far more complicated than as present by feminists or 'common knowledge' generally. It was never an issue of men against women, or men oppressing women. In fact, for much of the history of the suffragette movement, men were actually more progressive on the issue than women themselves were, and the anti-suffragette movement was led by women and was far more popular than the suffragette movement until well into the 20th century. The early suffragettes hilariously often stated that they didn't want women to vote on the issue of their own suffrage for this very reason. The anti-suffragettes had some interesting arguments, and far stronger than the strawmen arguments they are often presented as having. To summarise their arguments extremely briefly (the link provides more detail), they saw their role (as women) in society as unique, distinct and different to that of men, but their role was no less important, influential or yes, powerful as that of men.
The issue of women's suffrage in some sense encapsulates the issue with historical judgements about the relationship between men and women history. The playbook is something like: identify something that we highly value in our present society and ideology (the right to vote), compare the historical society to our present society in this regard (women didn't have the right to vote), then condemn the historical society for failing to live up to our modern morals and sensibilities (women couldn't vote because men were oppressing women - evil). There is very little attempt to address the past on its own terms, that there might be practical and understandable, if not good, reasons for the way the things operated in the past. This is particularly true of the sexes. Women have never been oppressed en masse as described in feminist patriarchy theory. Men and women simply valued different things in the past and had different roles - maleness was highly valued in male roles, and femaleness was highly valued in female roles, one was not necessarily better than the other. The history of the sexes has always been primarily one of cooperation and yes, affection. This obviously comes with the caveat that yes, you can find specific instances of where both women and men have suffered injustices, but this not part of a universal and timeless 'patriarchy'.
Well, again, I see that as descriptive, rather than definitional. The basic argument of feminism is that the cultures and structures which have been traditionally been seen as normal are actually oppressive.
But, again, these are normative arguments, not definitional. You and feminists seem to agree on what gender norms and structures existed in the past, but you disagree re whether they were oppressive
The feminist definition of patriarchy includes oppression as a core part of it. Patriarchy isn't just 'more men in political office', it's a society of, for and by men that oppresses women (for the record, the feminist view is that 'more men in political office' necessarily results in the oppression of women).
I disagree with the feminists quite a lot with what gender norms and structures exist in the past. The feminist says that the female role was one of submission that had no power. I say no, the female role actually did have wield significant power and influence, and their own form of status.
Again, I believe that the claim is that patriarchal structures are inherently oppressive, not that oppression is part of the definition. That was the core contribution of feminism: "Hey, you know this structure you social scientists have been talking about forever. Here is something you have not realized before: It is terribly flawed."
As I said in another thread, the most robust concise definition I've seen is from Sylvia Walby in Theorising Patriarchy (1989): "a series of social structures, and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women."
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It is not. Not unless you're a Marxian. I would argue capitalism has more to do with fractional reserve banking than it does labor.
Marx's particular conceptualization of capitalism is pretty explicitly novel and cooked for his normative bias.
Nobody would dispute that the Dutch invented a novel and influential organization in the joint stock corporation that would define the organization of society during the industrial revolution, but that's not what Marx says capitalism is.
He says it's a mode of production based on private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of the labor force. That's the definition. And that places a certain value to labor and already casts the roles in our moral play. If you accept this definition it's impossible to not end up with the capitalists as evil or at least in need of elimination.
Similarly, patriarchy is not this wishy washy idea that masculinity is valued more of that men hold most of the power. No, what you find in the scholarship is a system of social structures and practices, in which men govern, oppress and exploit women. And exploit and oppress are the operating words here.
I suppose you could rescue patriarchy as a concept by using the anthropological definition. But that's like using Mises' definition of capitalism. It's not what we're talking about here.
There's already been talk further up in the thread about all the things that feminists are misguided about regarding the traditional societies they would call patriarchal. On that topic I would say that I too happen to disagree with the idea that masculinity was "valued more" in the past, rather masculinity and femininity were both respected in their own distinct way, and men and women had their own corresponding and complementary forms of power and influence.
However, another very big part of the reason why feminists can come to the conclusion that societies were "oppressive" towards women is because of some very extreme selectivity on their part. They hyper-focus on any perceived male privileges and ignore the very real female privileges and male responsibilities that existed, obscuring the tradeoffs inherent in traditional gender roles. In the societies that feminists claim fit their ideas of "patriarchy", there's plenty of commonly found social norms and structures that contradict the "gendered oppression of women" hypothesis, but are conveniently left out from the definition of patriarchy.
These elements of traditional societies that feminists ignore (e.g. their protectiveness towards women and tendency to assign men responsibility for ensuring female wellbeing) are massively important parts of their social organisation, and I strongly suspect that the exclusion of these inconvenient elements from their definition of "patriarchy" is deliberately done so that the definition fits the preordained framework that feminists already have in mind. When confronted about it, they might occasionally acknowledge the existence of these female privileges and male responsibilities, but then will subsequently attempt to rationalise it away with baroque, unintuitive and unfalsifiable "benevolent sexism"-type word games which paint attitudes and norms that favour women as merely being side effects of patriarchy so as to maintain the idea that the foundational elements of patriarchy are that of male power and privilege. Again, their ideology and beliefs inform their definitions.
As you have already noted, the feminist definition of patriarchy isn't separable from their moral judgements surrounding it - all these moral judgements are baked straight into the DNA of feminist theory. Oppression of women is fundamental to the feminist conceptualisation of gender relations, and all of their definitions and theory bend to accommodate this idea as much as possible through misconceptions, half-truths and some very skewed and selective framing.
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