(Full disclosure: I'm a white male) Statistics overwhelmingly document sexual violence (and all violence, by the way) as male behavior and historical record shows that the ideological and individual defenses of it is also overwhelmingly male. Your sentence is non-sequitur in this context.
The patriarchy is white, male, and oppresses members of other groups (black men, white women, etc.) Can women sexually harass other women? Absolutely. Is there a huge societal problem where women value other women based solely on their appearance and ability to please men, reducing their opportunities for education, employment, earning, and general success? No. White men hold the cards in US society, and it's the case wherever you look: JDs and MBAs granted, PhDs granted, wages earned, wealth accumulated, income from small and large businesses, statehouses, Congress, the presidency, the board room, Hollywood, etc. etc. etc. You really just can't equate one woman sexually harassing another with an entire institution putting bricks on the heads of half its population from birth.
> And yet you grouped all races together for some reason.
Oh you mean when I said "male behavior" instead of "white male behavior".
Social issues in the US are complicated. Can black men benefit from the patriarchy, do they have some privilege because they're male, even though they're black? Yes. Do white women have some privilege solely because they are white? Yes. Are black men or white women part of the patriarchy? No. The patriarchy is a white, male institution that oppresses anyone that isn't.
White women can be racist against minorities, but they can't be sexist against men. Black men can be sexist towards women, but they can't be racist against minorities. This is because racism and sexism are cultural and institutional. They can be rude, they can be discriminatory, but they can't bring cultural and institutional pressures to bear on members of the oppressing group. That power is reserved solely for members of the oppressing group.
> woman behavior...
Sexual harassment is almost entirely male behavior, white, black, etc. It's up to men to stop it. Women have no obligation here. The incidence of women sexually harassing each other is so low, it has practically no social consequences. Therefore, it's not a societal problem we have to fix, and this suggestion is a strawman.
Harasser implies male. Male does not imply harasser.
If you want to talk about the people that decide to harass, use "harassers". Harassers have an obligation to stop.
If you want to talk about how society influences people, use "society". Everyone influences what is seen as acceptable.
Men do not have special control over other men. Saying the fix is "up to men" is inaccurate no matter what you mean. It's either insulting by implying that all men are harassers, or it's insulting by implying that women have no power in shaping society.
So if you want to talk about how men have somewhat more obligation in shaping behavior because of power structures, that sounds like a very interesting conversation. If you want to tell me women have no power/responsibility at all, that's just obnoxious.
> Harasser implies male. Male does not imply harasser.
Sexual harassment is a problem in the male community. It is perpetrated almost entirely by males. Women have no responsibility to solve male problems. Our behavior is in no way their fault.
> Everyone influences what is seen as acceptable.
No, in our society the patriarchy has decided what is acceptable. In the 18th and 19th centuries, we had laws governing women's dress so they physically couldn't do male labor. We also prohibited them from standing up in stage coaches. There's a long list. You can say, "that's the past", but it's our societal history, like it or not. FWIW, it persists to this day, with different dress codes for male and female high school students, and with men allowed to be shirtless and not women.
> Men do not have special control over other men. Saying the fix is "up to men" is inaccurate no matter what you mean.
I'm not saying men have special control over other men. I'm saying women have no obligation to solve a behavior problem in the male community, especially when they're the victims of that behavior. And if we eliminate women, we're left with... men.
> It's either insulting by implying that all men are harassers
This is a non sequitur, and a strawman. Just because I don't personally harass women doesn't mean I don't have an obligation to stand up to my peers when they do. People are often the best advocates inside their own communities, so for my white male peers, my voice, for better or worse, carries more weight than that of people of color or women. Look up Tim Wise some time.
> or it's insulting by implying that women have no power in shaping society.
Women do have power, but if it were sufficient, there wouldn't be a wage gap. There would be 220 congresswomen instead of 84, and 51 women senators instead of 20. There wouldn't be a war on their reproductive rights. Women fought for 150 years for the right to vote. American male slaves got the right to vote before women did. Marital rape wasn't considered a crime until the 1980s. Women were passed over as estate executors in favor of distant male relatives for decades.
> If you want to tell me women have no power/responsibility at all, that's just obnoxious.
Women fight harassment, sexism, misogyny, and disadvantage every day, even if they're not aware of it. Women pay more for health care. They pay higher mortgage rates and they pay more for cars. They get paid less at work. They're less likely to be hired and less likely to be promoted. When they take initiative in the workplace, they're likely to be penalized, as women are still evaluated on the basis of "likeability". They're basically the sole victims of sexual harassment, and outside the prison system (where the perpetrators of rape are still overwhelmingly male), they're far, far more likely to be the victims of rape. I'm struggling to come up with an area where women have it better than men, and I really can't come up with one.
And after taking stock of all the shit women deal with every day, I think it's wildly, shamefully entitled to argue that on top of all of it, they still have more obligations. To their credit, many women do work hard against sexism, even when it's not their job. But that's their choice, and you don't get to decide for them.