The conversation on Hera Teleia took a swerve to an analysis of patriarchal systems. My short answer can be found here.

One thing that almost never gets discussed when people invoke “patriarchy” is that patriarchal societies do not simply divide the world into privileged men and subordinate women. They establish hierarchies among men as well as between men and women, and plenty of men have historically occupied positions of very little power, wealth, or status. A patriarchal order may privilege certain men, but it does not follow that it privileges all men equally— or even that every man occupies a higher social position than every woman. (Ask Latinos about the fear of the chancla.)

Nor does the word patriarchy by itself tell us whether every feature of a particular social order is good or bad. There are patriarchal cultures in which women are subjected to restrictions, coercion, and violence that I have no interest in defending. One can point to contemporary examples in Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of India and the Middle East without much difficulty. But condemning those abuses does not require pretending that everything associated with patriarchal family organization is therefore abusive, or that the only thing such systems ever gave men was power over women.

What gets left out of the discussion is obligation.

Traditional patriarchal authority was frequently conditional upon an enormous burden of responsibility. The man recognized as head of a household was not simply handed a collection of privileges and told to enjoy himself. He was expected to provide for the family, protect its members, preserve its property and reputation, settle disputes, assist relatives, cultivate alliances, exercise hospitality, and create opportunities for the next generation. Authority and responsibility were supposed to travel together.

That ideal was certainly violated. Human beings violate their ideals in every social system. But the existence of bad patriarchs no more tells us what patriarchal ethics demanded than the existence of corrupt judges tells us what justice demands.

At its best, the patriarch was expected to subordinate a considerable portion of his individual desires to the welfare of people who depended upon him. Men worked themselves into the ground providing for families. They took dangerous jobs. They crossed oceans and borders, sometimes going alone into countries where they knew neither the people nor the language, established themselves, sent money home, brought relatives over, and created opportunities their children and grandchildren would never otherwise have possessed. Sometimes the price of fulfilling that role was their comfort, their health, and even their lives.

That is privilege of a sort. But it is privilege inseparable from duty.

And that distinction matters because the alternative to patriarchal responsibility is not necessarily egalitarian responsibility. Sometimes the alternative is simply irresponsibility.

A society can dismantle traditional authority without successfully transferring the obligations that accompanied it. The result is not automatically liberation. It can instead mean the deadbeat father who disappears and leaves a woman raising children while holding down multiple jobs. It can mean the man who remains physically present while his partner carries the financial, domestic, and parental burdens. It can mean a sexual culture in which intimacy has been severed from obligation, and people are encouraged to regard one another as temporary sources of gratification. It can mean having fewer mechanisms of familial and communal shame capable of compelling an irresponsible man to straighten himself out.

The older model also understood wealth differently. Prosperity was not merely something an individual accumulated for his private consumption. Status brought expectations of generosity. A successful person was expected to perform favors, distribute resources, help relatives, cultivate friendships and alliances, support neighbors, and use his position to advance the fortunes of the larger kinship group. The flourishing of the family across generations mattered more than satisfying every passing desire of the individual.

There are obvious dangers in that model. Family authority can become domination. Discipline can become cruelty. Concern for reputation can conceal abuse. Loyalty can become enforced silence. Women can be denied autonomy in the name of their supposed protection. Children can be crushed beneath expectations they had no role in choosing. None of that should be romanticized.

But neither should the virtues embedded in the model be erased merely because they developed within patriarchal societies: loyalty, sacrifice, provision, protection, discipline, hospitality, intergenerational responsibility, care for dependents, stewardship of inherited resources, and the conviction that acquiring authority increases rather than diminishes one’s obligations to other people.

Perhaps that is the distinction our arguments about patriarchy most desperately need.

Power without responsibility is tyranny. Responsibility without power is exploitation. Authority worthy of respect binds the two together.

If we are going to criticize traditional systems— and there is plenty in them worth criticizing —we should at least understand what they expected of the people to whom they granted authority. Otherwise “patriarchy” stops functioning as a useful description of complicated social arrangements and becomes merely a synonym for “men having things too good.”

History is considerably messier than that.

I like the inscription AI added to this image: Family Strengthens the World.