Androcentrism, Gynocentrism, and Patriarchy
A lot gets made of the term Patriarchy
- 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 21st 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 percent+ 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 20th and 21st 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 percent authority with zero percent 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.
See more here substack.com
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
Koen Vogel
| #
I think your over-thinking this. Most men and women don’t engage in power struggles of this kind when they’re in a relationship. My wife wanted to take my last name as it signalled to her friends and family that we were tying the knot. It was all good fun and not a “win” for the patriarchy. Feminism in the 60’s played an important role in identifying social injustice, e.g. a woman who despite being competent was refused a job in favor of a man who wasn’t. It has long since gone beyond this fair, balanced, sane feminism to a whole spectrum of feminism ranging from the sane to the insane. The quarrel at the moment is not between males and females, but between feminists who have a more traditional view of women (a la JK Rowling) to the nutjobs who want to tell the women they are unhappy, despite the fact that until recently they felt happy before the nutjob told them how unhappy they needed to be. So the next move is – ironically – up to the women. Do you want to fight a patriarchy which no longer exists? Can you identify – in your immediate environment – one patriarch who for sexist reasons is ruining your life? Or are the true malefactors a combined mix of power-hungry (M/F/?) idiots who want to tell you how unhappy you are? But all will be well if you give them power and money. Unfortunately we men – the patriarchy – lost our power 30 years ago, so now are unable to help.
Reply
Howdy
| #
Koen, above, Makes a very good comment.
“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.”
It works both ways. The article is quite well veiled.
You know, It’s nice painting a picture of complementary ‘natures’, even though the Man is still claimed the stronger, the ‘breadwinner’ in the above quote (strengths vs vulnerabilities). Such a thing doesn’t really exist and is still tied to male dominance in society no matter what words one uses. Men and Women are two vehicles designed for different reasons, yet the inner workings of the so-called ego, the way one works, is not in any way tied to the gender. I find the article quite old-world thinking, and along the lines of the hero, and damsel in distress scenario.
The ‘natures’ are supposed to be shared, or balanced. Whether one or the other is this or that is irrelevant, yet if you go down the rabbit-hole you will see why things work as they do.
“Feminism fears the authority inherent and necessary in Patriarchy.”
So Patriarchy is the ‘Father-figure’. OK, but it extended into everything else, which is why the word is used as it is. Yes, it’s somewhat different now, at least on the surface, but the word remains.
Reply
Seriously
| #
‘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.’
Male = reason , female = emotion 🤣🤭😝🙄
I guess it really depends which side of the gender bias you happened to land in, these milliena past, on whether this statement works for you.🤣🤣🤣. I would wish for a next life for this one…may he be born a female in India or Iran, on the lowest societal spectrum, the racial minority, to live out this next life and remember all his hubris in the last – that would be justice. 😙
Humans, that’s all we are, ever have been. A lifeform on this planet. Every-thing-else is constructed in our giant brains, every society structure. And none of them are based on so-called logic or reason- ONLY POWER – over others. We should be beyond all antiquated ideas by now but we aren’t. We should be basing society standards on what is best for our planet and all species, not just ourselves, but we’re not. We could have a world free of strife, hunger, poverty but we refuse to believe that WE are creating all these things. That we are all the same species – that borders and continents created our belief differences, ideologies. And the ones that are the so called one world government purveyors are evil Power hungry monsters seeking only POWER, not reform, not harmony, not balance. Destroying ourselves appears to be the only objective here. Irony personified that we have no power to change that, we who see the truth.
Reply
Geraint HUghes
| #
Tracing genetic heritage through female lines is pointless because at some point, the xx’s can be crossed over a number of times and bear no resemblence to the initial x donor which started the initial matriach line. It can quite literally not be from them. It becomes meaningless, unless at each birth you track the X combinations and attribute the names relevant to each. Tracing the Y is more important, as that can be traced correctly throughout all of time with little to no problem and will always track back to the initial donor.
Reply