Androcentrism, Gynocentrism, and Patriarchy

Patriarchy is a Feminist Fear-Fantasy

A lot gets made of the term Patriarchy. 

noun: Patriarchy

1. a system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family, and descent is traced through the male line.
   

   • a system of society or government in which men hold power and women are largely excluded from it.
     

   • a society or community organized on patriarchal lines.
     

As I pored through data sets for my upcoming series on 1971, I came across the usage history of the word “patriarchy.”

It’s no coincidence that the term’s popularity began around the same time radical feminism took root in western societies, roughly 1970. According to feminism:

Patriarchy refers to a society dominated by men (i.e., society, state, and economy) characterized by systematic, institutionalized, and pervasive gender oppression. In a literal sense, patriarchy means rule by the father.

The problem with this preconceived definition is that it describes Androcentrism, not Patriarchy. A more simplistic feminist definition of patriarchy goes something like this; a social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line. Broadly: control by men of a disproportionately large share of power. 

That emphasis on power is essential. If you swapped the genders in this definition, you’d have the basic structure of feminism in the 21^st century. Ever since my days doing Pat Campbell’s radio show, I’ve discussed the logic behind the popularity of women refusing their husbands’ last names. I generally attribute this trend to women not wanting their husbands’ names as genetic markers on themselves (or their children), but from a power perspective, a Matriarchy would trace lineage through a female line. The legal dependence of husbands on their wives has been a given since the late 1990s. While that may seem crazy, regarding the financial and legal consequences of divorce (75%+ initiated by the wife) for men, you can see the dependence on wives begin to clarify. Happy wife, happy life, is an ultimatum.

But the last part is key. Control by men of a disproportionately large share of power. The great lie of the latter 20^th and 21^st centuries is that Patriarchy is still the predominant social order in western societies. While patriarchy in a conventional sense has been the first, best way to organize societies, what feminism redefined as patriarchy is actually Androcentrism. In a practical sense, Androcentrism is the tyrannizing of women by men. It is an organization of society that only considers the male experience as the legitimate one. 

In my first book, The Rational Male, I put forth the concept of the Feminine Imperative. In a nutshell, this term refers to prioritizing the female experience and female needs as the only correct interpretation of how men and women should think and act. The Feminine Imperative evolved into what we commonly call Gynocentrism today. The rise of emotionalism, Blank Slate equalism, and social constructionism as the defining frameworks of today’s social order directly result from prioritizing the female experience as the only legitimate experience. Gynocentrism is quite literally the tyrannizing of men by women. While it’s not an overt exercise of power, it is far more effective as a form of rule over the long term. 

In a Gynocentric world, anything less than complete submission to women is oppression. The deliberate misconception is that Patriarchy is Androcentrism. But patriarchy is not an Androcentric system (Feminism is Gynocentric). 

Patriarchy is balanced. A man’s responsibility is tempered with authority. Ideally, men are responsible for their women and children. Patriarchy gives men commensurate authority over them to effect that responsibility. It is this masculine authority that the radical feminism of the late 60s mischaracterized as control by men of a disproportionately large share of power. In an ideal patriarchy, male authority is proportional to the responsibilities expected of men. Patriarchy is also the most naturalistic and efficient social organization to balance the complementary natures of men and women. Men’s strengths offset women’s vulnerabilities, while men’s natures are tempered by feminine strengths. Reason and emotion find a balance in an ideal state of Patriarchy.

The world of Gilead in the Handmaiden's Tale is a fear-fantasy of Androcentrism. It is a world out of balance. It's a totalitarian society ruled by a fundamentalist regime that treats women as property and plays on women’s existential fear of having the choice of whom they will reproduce with torn away from them. The popularity of this show is rooted in reaffirming 60s feminism’s deliberate redefinition of Patriarchy. But this world-building is Androcentric, not Patriarchal. 

Gilead is a fictional society where men have 100% authority with 0% responsibility. This is the definition of tyranny. When men are doing the tyrannizing, it's Androcentrism, not Patriarchy.  When women are doing the tyrannizing, it's Gynocentrism.

In its effort to consolidate female power, Feminism's primary goal has been to conflate beneficent-but-authoritative Patriarchy with tyrannical Androcentrism. Thus, we get narratives of an unfalsifiable 'toxic masculinity' whenever men presume to exercise authority based on the male experience. Any aspect of maleness that is inconvenient to a society, by women, for women, must therefore be deemed toxic to it.

Feminism fears the authority inherent and necessary in Patriarchy.  Gynocentric tyranny needs men to accept masculine responsibility to maintain power, but it defangs men of the authority that Patriarchy pairs with responsibility.

Today, there is a similar conflation between the Red Pill and Feminism. Women and their male 'allies' would have you believe that the Red Pill is just men's version of Feminism. It's an easy dismissal, but it's based on the same feminine fear that men might be emboldened enough to presume to exercise masculine authority — even in the most beneficial way to meet the demands of masculine responsibility that a Gynocentric social order expects them to live up to.

This conflation is deliberate in an era that’s abandoning the anachronism of “feminist” in favor of the tyranny of Gynocentrism. Equating the red pill with feminism attempts to back-date the understanding of conventional masculinity into the same obsolescence as feminism. “Those red pill guys are just as deluded as feminists” is a sentiment that only confirms feminism is a failed meme. ‘Feminist,’ as an identity, is meaningless today. Feminism has become a liability to the Gynocentrism it helped to create. But conflating Red Pill with feminism also confirms another truth — a Gynocentric social framework fears the return of an actual Patriarchy that Red Pill awareness would lead men and women to.