*CONTENT WARNING: This article will cover sexual assault/rape, grooming, and suicide. If those are sensitive topics for you, please proceed with caution*

Patriarchy.

What comes to mind when the patriarchy is brought up in conversation? Maybe the image of a college professor in a woman’s studies class. Or perhaps a young, bright blue-haired college student with a she/they pin on their bag, and getting on her soapbox at dinner, much to the dismay of everyone else. To those who imagined the latter, this is for you.

What is patriarchy?

A patriarchal society is organized so that men are the dominant sex, whereas women are seated below men, and expected to be subservient to them (for all intents and purposes, trans people and those who live outside the binary are not considered, as society is still widely forces this dichotomy).

This societal structure affects everyone and everything, from institutions of law all the way down to interpersonal interactions, crime, and pay scale. In modern-day America, 1 in 6 women have experienced either a rape attempt or have been raped at least once in their lifetime. Women comprise 82% of juvenile victims, and 90% of adult victims.

Women are also on average paid less, making around 82 cents for each dollar a man makes. Women may take more time off from work because they are expected to take care of children. That expectation is so universal, in fact, that women receive pay cuts after becoming a mother, compared to men, who are more likely to receive bonus pay.

All of these phenomena are a self-fulfilling prophecy, and reinforce prejudice against women and misogyny as a whole. If women are expected to be the primary caretakers of children, they’ll be both explicitly and implicitly encouraged to fall into that role. Girls’ toys are about how to dress up and be a housewife, whereas boys’ toys are beefy military operatives and superheroes, protecting the weak. And since women are socialized to be caregivers, they’ll be more adept at it, which will then be used as evidence that women’s natural role is being a housewife.

How does it affect men?

In the ways patriarchy affects the lives of women, it affects men in the exact opposite way. Women are often expected to be cordial, subservient, and very emotional.

Inversely, men are taught to be emotionally stunted. They are often shamed for crying or expressing any other emotion than stoicism and anger. That disregard for men’s emotions leads to social isolation, which may contribute to death by suicide disproportionately more than women (see also). 

Men also choose more lethal methods, with firearms being one of the leading methods of suicide, with hanging/asphyxiation in a close second. Most suicide attempts by women are through less immediately lethal means, which—in a twisted way—can be a desperate attempt to get the attention and care they currently lack. Between the sexes, women are more often ‘survivors’ of suicide, whereas men are likely to be victims, in part because men tend to pick methods that are more violent, reflecting how isolated and dismissed men’s emotional health is.

And when it comes to being a survivor of rape or sexual violence, everyone loses. Just as women are blamed for the rapist’s actions, men’s sexual trauma is dismissed, or otherwise treated differently. If the male victim of rape does come forward with their traumatic experience as a negative, however, he is likely met with confusion or ridicule.

Society molds people, no matter who or where they are. From the jobs they work to how they think of their peers, societal institutions are an ever-present force. All of us have something to gain from dismantling oppressive systems, even if we aren’t the primary target of said systems.