I had an interesting conversation with a feminist on Reddit. She replied to my post about why left-wingers support feminism. In the post, I said I don’t believe in a patriarchy or toxic masculinity.
She cited examples of women being forced to marry young as a patriarchal issue. She cited women having to bear children in America without abortion rights as a patriarchal issue. She cited women being domestically abused as a patriarchal issue.
I told her women being forced to marry young was more prevalent in the past. Nowadays, forced marriages are illegal. The examples she cited don’t indicate a patriarchy, because the average man (most men) don’t have more power than the average women. For example, a man is more likely to be arrested for domestic violence even if he is the victim.
Feminists believe there is a patriarchy because they look at the men, in the top 1% or 5%. They assume all other men have very minimal issues in their lives. Most rich people will be treated better, regardless of gender.
When I disagreed with the feminist, she called me stupid and an “incel.” I remained calm and told her I’m not an “incel.” It seems like feminists want men to think in a gynocentric point of view. Anything that isn’t gynocentric seems misogynistic to them. I don’t think advocating for men’s issues and women’s issues is mutually exclusive.
Women have more purchasing power than men. That men earn more money is a reflects the reality that men work more than women. That women spend more may indicate that men earn that the money earned is on behalf of women.
But do women spend money on behalf of men or do they spend it on their own behalf. When a woman goes to do groceries, is it just for her or is it for the whole family. If women primarily spend money for themselves then that indicates they have the power, but if they spend it on behalf of their husband, then that’s just work they do for their husband.
Let’s say women do in fact only spend money on behalf of their family and not for themselves. They’re still faced with a wide variety of options at the food aisle. One thing that massively influences the choices they make here is marketing. Marketing funds the vast majority of media which in turns structures discussions in the public sphere. And all of it would then be structured to predominantly appeal to women.
All of the things I mentioned could be an accurate and prominent reflection of what happens in society. I believe we are literally over a hundred years away from having the proper scientific tools and cultural maturity to be able to conclusively determine the extend of the influence of such abstract ideas on society.
In feudal times, aristocrats were more powerful than the serfs. This was self evident from their quality of life and what aristocrats were allowed to get away with in their treatment of the serfs.
The difference in power between men and women is so small today that it is impossible to conclusively determine which is more powerful. Especially in the context of so much complex forces at play.
All this to say that income can’t be used to conclusive determine “power” especially among the middle class.
And for the second point, your assumption that “power” (based on money/income) follows a normal distribution. There’s just so much stuff wrong with it, I’ll just point to the fact that the vast majority of people that live on the street are men completely refutes your interpretation.
But for more clarification, a normal distribution (usually also called a Gaussian Distribution) has two parameters: the mean and the variance.
If you look at the high end of distribution M and you find a much greater population than at the same location of distribution M, then it could be caused by a increased mean, or by an increased variance or a certain combination of the two. If you find increased population on both the low end and then high end, then you definitely have higher variance. If you look at total income from work only, it seems that men have slightly increased mean and vastly increased variance.
My currently running hypothesis is that it’s the lack of a proper social safety net that scares men into earning as much as possible, and the competition for mating that causes them to transfer vast amounts of wealth to women as well as seek top income levels. By contrast, women have many safety net options should they fail to acquire their desired level of independent income, and so don’t have the same level of motivation to gain high income status.