The Patriarchy Conspiracy Theory

It’s odd to me that the conservative right always gets tarred as a bunch of conspiracy theorists. That’s the picture in the popular imagination at least. A conspiracy theorist is a disaffected red-stater in a tinfoil hat. Now I don’t think that stereotype is odd because it’s inaccurate. Like most stereotypes, it’s there for a reason.

(I’m a thoroughgoing Southern traditionalist myself, and I ascribe to quite a few conspiracy theories. Buy me a glass of bourbon, and I’ll gladly share them with you. Right after I comb the bar for bugs and verify that you’re not with the NSA.)

My problem with that stereotype is not that it’s inaccurate but that it’s incomplete. The right has no monopoly on conspiracy theories whatsoever. Your average leftist—be he a dorm room Marxist or an LGBTQ social justice crusader—is chock full of conspiracy theories. Head to toe. And almost every major tenet of the blue-pill worldview, in fact, rests on theories so obscure, so elaborate, and so prima facie preposterous that they would make an anti-NWO infowars.com militiaman blush at the outlandishness of it all.

Take, for instance, the feminist.

Patriarchy as Fact

Okay, patriarchy is a historical fact. No two ways about that. Men, with vanishingly few exceptions at any point in history at any spot on the globe, have been the primary political movers in human societies. Men have always held the majority of positions of political authority and large-scale social influence. Men have always had the power.

But here’s the thing: patriarchy evolved in almost every society in human history for a reason. Reason being that men are better suited to be leaders and everybody benefits when they lead. There are perfectly legitimate explanations for why men are so disposed. A lot of them are basic biological facts.

It’s not a secret that men are more aggressive than women and more prone to taking risks, and it’s not a mystery why those traits allow them to excel in inherently high-stakes environments like statecraft. Men are also better at systematizing than women, as recent neurological studies bear out. We’re big picture thinkers, given to the sort of theoretical abstractions like “rule of law” that allow  societies to function smoothly.

That tendency towards the big picture spills over into masculine social networks as well, which are typically wider and shallower than the narrow and deep social networks that females prefer. The former resemble the sort of coalitional networks essential to running a tribe or a state or a nation. The latter not so much. Moreover, there’s strong evidence that men are overrepresented at the genius-level tail of the IQ bell curve, by maybe as much as a 2:1 ratio. That means there’s a larger pool of exceptionally talented men to begin with, compared to the pool of similarly talented women. More raw material for the great movers and shakers of tomorrow. Hell, there’s even evidence that testosterone predisposes individuals to fairer and more honest bargaining. Not a bad trait in a political leader.

I don’t want to drone, but this list could go on and on and on.

Some of the reasons men have always run the politics game are so obvious that it’s almost insulting when you sit down and think about it. Imagine you’re in a pre-modern society where your physical capacity to wage war is crucial to your position as a leader. Those androgens get real important, don’t they? Another thought experiment: imagine you don’t have access to state-of-the-art medical facilities or contraception. You’ve got high rates of pregnancy and of maternal mortality at childbirth. Does it make good sense to install women in positions of critical importance to the continued functioning of your tribe? Why? So she can kick the bucket nine months from now?

In other words, patriarchy is not only a historical fact but also a beneficial adaptation that allowed human societies to thrive in the first place, to flourish all over the world. Like I said, men are better suited to politics and leadership and so everyone—man, woman, child, and beast—is better off with them installed in those positions. Looking back over the historical record, of course men are going to be politically dominant in the successful societies.

Patriarchy as Conspiracy

But in come the feminists, inveterate conspiracy theorists that they are. To them, patriarchy is not universal because it’s beneficial. No! Patriarchy is universal because the whole thing is one, giant, several-hundred-thousand-year-long conspiracy to keep bitches in the kitchen. Since time immemorial, men have been rigging the game. We put the Illuminati to shame. You, sad dupe to the whole scheme that you are, might think that patriarchy is just a feature of human social organization (like burial of the dead or bodily adornment), but no! Wrong again! It’s all misogyny. Men hold leadership positions just to spite women. Men hold them out of hatred and loathing and fear. Why do men hate women? Who knows? Men throughout history have just been a bunch of hateful haters who hatingly hated their whole hatey lives.

You’ll excuse my skepticism, ranting tinfoil hat lady.

You see this feminist psychosis in action all the time. Soon the feminist starts hallucinating a hostile patriarchy everywhere. Everywhere. Its tentacles creep into every human endeavor. Marketing does not use pretty women because even women prefer to see pretty clothes on pretty models. Actually marketing is an arm of the patriarchy that browbeats average-looking women into a life of obedient servitude! The WNBA doesn’t rake in less cash than the NBA because it’s a demonstrably inferior athletic spectacle. Actually sports broadcasting is an arm of the patriarchy that marginalizes female athletes out of sheer distaste for their gender.

When the feminist’s breakfast cereal tastes funny, she suspects that patriarchy spoiled the milk.

Occam’s Razor applies here. You don’t have to multiply entities to understand these social dynamics. You don’t need a concept like “misogyny” or “sexism” to accurately describe relationships between men and women either historical or present. (You don’t need a concept like “misandry” either, you goddamn MRAs.) Those concepts add  zero explanatory power. All you need is a basic familiarity with human psychology, behavior, and physiology. With patterns of social development through time. All you need is a basic familiarity with reality. The rest of this shit can be extrapolated from there.

A Couple Closing Suggestions

So put the wildly implausible conspiracy theories down, ladies. And go ahead and pick up your Ben & Jerry’s while you’re at it. It’s going to take a pint or two to gorge away the psychic pain of realizing that you’re a miserable social pariah because that’s what you are, not because a patriarchy that inexplicably despises you made you into one.

And as for the rest of you folks: I say feel free to keep trafficking in the stereotype that the right is a bunch of gun-toting, government-fearing nutjobs. Not too far off the mark, really. At least where I come from. Just don’t forget that we don’t have a monopoly on crazy. The left has some even wilder-ass conspiracy theories all its own.

Read More: Why We Need To Fight For The Patriarchy