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by claudiawerner 2468 days ago
Although I'm not sure if what they're saying is true, it's entirely possible to be an aspect of patriarchal culture and affect both men and women. For instance, feminists argue that "toxic masculinity" is harmful to both women and men. Nevertheless, in my experience most people are averse to saying women have masculine traits; if a male is a strong leader, typically he's described as commanding, dominating, effective, strong-headed, whereas women in that position may be described as "bossy".

As such, if it is an aspect of patriarchal culture, it is more accurate to say that it is a patriarchal attitude that both men and women adopt, rather than it being something essentially "manly".

1 comments

I could agree with you, but why call this culture "patriarchal"? I'd call it "animalistic" if anything. "Patriarchal" involves male/female duality and ascribes certain features to men and women that they might not currently be comfortable having. If someone is dominating, let's just call this person "dominating", not "having male features." If we go down the rabbit hole of patriarchy, in the end sooner or later someone starts accusing men for all evil, and this is one of the greatest misunderstandings of our age.