That doesn’t mean that every man wields power over every woman in every situation, but rather that men exert disproportionate control in societies that have long been designed to serve men’s interests and desires. Virtually every society today is, to varying degrees, patriarchal. Patriarchy is a system of institutionalized male dominance. To get started, I’ll offer some quick definitions of patriarchy and feminism. That’s why for the past two decades I have been saying, as often as I can to as many men as possible, “Feminism is not a threat to men but a gift to us.”
That’s the principle at the heart of my argument to men about patriarchy and feminism: It’s easy to do the right thing when we realize that doing our own thing-in the way we’ve been trained as men in a male-dominant society, often robotically-is not only harmful to girls and women but also not particularly good for us. The collective good and self-interest can, and often do, come together. But if we expand our horizons and consider the long-term effects of our actions, not only on others but on ourselves, then there are also many times when the two motivations lead to the same decision. When we evaluate choices strictly in terms of our immediate material self-interest-what’s going to get us what we think we want, “the bottom line” in the short term-it often feels like we have to choose between self and others.
Many choices we face, especially in the worlds of business and pleasure, seem to set these two aspects of our common human nature in competition-selflessness and selfishness, both of which are part of everyone’s nature. People who “do their own thing” are often seen as selfish. People who “do the right thing” are praised for being selfless.
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