This week, one of our outside reading assignments has been weighing heavily on my mind: Allan G. Johnson's Patriarchy, the System. From the moment I first read that article, I felt that this was directed to me, because it immediately confronted a concern I face every time I walk into my Intro to Women's Studies class and go through society as a whole: "Our system is based upon oppressive patriarchy, or male dominance. I am a male. Therefore, at some point I'll be blamed for something in our system."

It doesn't exactly help that I'm not just male. I'm also white, christian, middle class, heterosexual, and of Anglo-Saxon ancestry; the last group that oppressed my demographic was lead by a guy named Caesar. When I am having a disagreement with them, some feminists I know(very few, actually) will make the characterization that because of my demographic, I and 'my people' alone are to blame for the perpetuation of this system. I naturally find this deeply insulting, as to place the blame solely on my portion of society is to imply that I am intentionally promoting it. To make the contention that one group is responsible invokes imagery one might see in a film about a sinister secret society: a shadowy group of men gathered around a table on the top floor of a skyscraper, planning their next devious move to oppress women, disenfranchise minorities, and take over the world/fire a laser at the moon/finally kill Superman once and for all.

In Johnson's article, however, this issue is confronted from a much more academic and sociological perspective. In short, the basic premise of patriarchy's continuation is good, decent people playing by the only set of rules they know. This would explain much about how almost everyone can be 'for equality' while still disagreeing on the most fundamental of gender issues and roles. It's not that people are necessarily lying about being for equality, it's that they are stuck in their perceptions of how society should be, accepting the premise without accepting the implications of applying it.

For example, I feel very strongly about the importance that men and women get paid and hired/promoted equally based on their performance and qualifications. However, I believe that I would still be somewhat uncomfortable if I was married to a woman who was paid significantly more than me, or had a significantly higher position than me relative to our professions.(in spite of the fact that I grew up in a household where that very situation took place) In spite of my intellectual stance on equality, and the fact that I would generally accept that being common in society, on a psychological level I would feel that I was somehow 'less of a man' were that my situation, out of a conditioned distaste for submission or inferiority to anyone; "weakness." In light of this, I believe that patriarchy as a system has much more to do with societal norms than it does with the person's opinions on equality. To place the blame on one group or way of thinking is to fundamentally ignore that we ourselves tacitly play a role in the very system we despise.