The article ‘Patriarchy, the system: An it, Not a He, a Them, or an Us’ by Allan Johnson is an attempt to define the concept of patriarchy as a system propagated by both genders in the society, rather than just the conventional understanding of male dominance over women. The article point of argument is that for a given social system to exist, the individual members of that society must accept the social order by looking for avenues of least resistance and by relegating their responsibilities to the system as a whole.
This article is very significant as it assists the reader to understand how societies operate and how to correct some social ills in the society by looking at the root cause of the problem rather than focusing on isolated personalities of individual members of the society (Johnson 127). One gets to view gender violence propagated towards women in a different and deeper perspective.
The articles though assumes too much on the role of the individual person. It gives to much precedence on the mechanics of the system, forgetting that that isolated personality is the building block of that particular society. As much as the society determines most individual’s behaviors, it is the repeated actions of the individual people that shape up the social constructs.
Realities are the actual individual actions which if repeated and accepted as the norm become the social constructs.
Critical questions
Is it possible for anything to exist in isolation as a part of itself?
Do individual members realize the higher power they have over the system as a whole?
Who creates the social order that subjects the people in a society to system they do not approve of?
Terms
Society – A community of individuals who share similar characteristics.
System - A collection of interrelated segments that are integrated to form a whole.
Patriarchy – A social system that in which the male individuals dominate the female individuals.
Work cited
Johnson, Allan, G. ‘Patriarchy, the System, An It, Not a He, a Them. Or an Us’. Kirk, Gwyn and Okazawa- Rey, Margo. Women’s Lives Multicultural Perspectives (3rd Ed). New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.
