[icebraining]

I'm rather confused by your post. I've never seen the patriarchy described as a "conspiracy", or a willful choice by men to control women, but has a social structure - perpetuated by certain social institutions - that ensure that men as a gender (not every individual, of course) maintain oppressive power over women.

Regardless of the existence of the patriarchy as a phenomena - and there are many critics of the theory, from the right and the left -, it makes no sense to dismiss it as a conspiracy theory.

[rmc]

I've never seen the patriarchy described as a "conspiracy"

Anti-feminists would tend to view it as a conspiracy, or no longer existing ("women can vote, so it's all OK now, right?"). Sadly this sort of attitude/meme does exist....

[papsosouid]

>but has a social structure - perpetuated by certain social institutions - that ensure that men as a gender (not every individual, of course) maintain oppressive power over women.

What you described is a conspiracy. Of course feminists don't describe their own conspiracy theories as conspiracy theories, they want them to appear legitimate.

[wonderzombie]

I disagree. This is necessary but not sufficient to describe a conspiracy. Conspiracies imply collusion, or some form of plan.

Patriarchy as it is commonly understood in feminist circles is more nuanced than your straw-man. It's bottom-up, not top-down. You'd have to stretch the definition of "conspiracy" awfully far to cover an emergent property of a set of principles and societal norms.

[king_jester]

Conspiracy usually means a deliberate attempt of a group to do something rather than something that occurs for systemic or institutional reasons.

Ultimately patriarchy as a social force and concept is totally provable has statistical and philosophical evidence that shows it exists. Every basic women's studies or feminist book goes over this to some extent.

[papsosouid]

Institutions do not form spontaneously, and the "systems" you refer to were also created by humans. The notion that men created systems and institutions which oppress women, but it is totally not a conspiracy because they did it by accident is not well represented in feminist academia.

>totally provable has statistical and philosophical evidence that shows it exists.

Except that alternative explanations are dismissed. If the "evidence" supports many possible conclusions, then it is not proof of a single specific conclusion like "patriarchy".

[king_jester]

> Institutions do not form spontaneously, and the "systems" you refer to were also created by humans. The notion that men created systems and institutions which oppress women, but it is totally not a conspiracy because they did it by accident is not well represented in feminist academia.

It seems like you are saying that is there is indeed a real conspiracy of institutions created and/or controlled by men, in which case I totally agree. We have well documented cases, historically and in the present, of institutions and systems that are dominated by men.

> Except that alternative explanations are dismissed. If the "evidence" supports many possible conclusions, then it is not proof of a single specific conclusion like "patriarchy".

I've yet to see convincing alternative explanations. All of the evidence points to existence of patriarchy as a social institution.

[papsosouid]

>It seems like you are saying that is there is indeed a real conspiracy of institutions created and/or controlled by men, in which case I totally agree.

It seems like you are deliberately choosing to respond with non-sequiturs and strawmen because you don't want to have an honest conversation.

>I've yet to see convincing alternative explanations. All of the evidence points to existence of patriarchy as a social institution.

Just as creationists view all evidence as pointing to the existence of god. If you start with a conclusion, and twist everything to suit that end, you can't reasonably expect people who didn't start with the same bias to agree with your conclusions.