In her article ‘Understanding Patriarchy,’ Bell Hooks observes that ‘men do not use the word ‘patriarchy’ in everyday life. Most men never even think about patriarchy – what it means, how it is created or what sustains it. And that’s a big problem. It’s a bit like having a Ferrari and not knowing what makes it go and then more importantly not understand how to drive it. Most men’s understanding of patriarchy is through feminists, which for many men immediately put it into the ‘them’ basket.

The #metoo movement has brought the relationships between men and women even more into focus. Especially when there is money and power involved. Now, no one would disagree that money and power go hand in hand. The most important issue that the #metoo movement has brought about is a clearer social demand that men change. But in order to do that, men need to understand how we need to change and why. And part of that is to know our evolution to where we are now. Few men realize that being male comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. But men need to understand that this is not simply the result of our biology.

No what if I told you that much of being male is similar to what code of football you subscribe to. Let me explain. Imagine organizing a football competition. But you haven’t stipulated if its league or union. So on the day, a league team arrives to play against a union team. Imagine the confusion, frustration and irritation that both sides are going to experience when they, misguidedly, attempt to play.

What’s this got to do with men and masculinity, you ask? A lot more than you think. In our community sporting teams are about little tribes, whose rules are reinforced and protected. We identify with them and most of the time we don’t cross the line to the other side.

Now our tribe is based on a game called “Patriarchy”. It’s rules are that we are:

• TERRITORIAL
• HIERARCHICAL
• ACQUISITIONAL
• COMPETITIVE

If you don’t play by these rules you’re out. The problem is that the game has been played so long, 10,000 years in fact, that everyone has just accepted that this is how we are and that these rules are the basis for everything from business to governments. More importantly over the 10,000 years anyone who didn’t play by the rules got eliminated or subjugated. In other words you didn’t get a great share of the winnings. And as with all tribes there was always an ‘us’ vs ‘them. Generally this works, provided everyone goes along with the big plan.

But 200 years ago women went hang on ‘I don’t like the game.’ Ah, but you have to play, if you don’t you get arrested, ridiculed, tortured and possibly killed. Imagine coming home and you child says to you that the school is forcing me to play league when I want to play basketball. I bet as parent you’d have a few stern words to say to the Head?

It is also important to understand that patriarchy is different to masculinity. Masculinity is the individual and social expression of gender, while patriarchy is the prevailing ideological belief system that shapes a boy to man and organises social and cultural systems. It’s the rules of the game. But guess what? Even in Football rules have changed in the game.

Ideology is that which makes up one’s beliefs, aspirations, expectations and motivations. It is a collection of conscious and unconscious ideas that provide a vision in which people, governments and groups operate in a collective way. It tribalism, i.e ‘the Boys Club’ . Good examples are political groups, religious organisations, unions and any other group wherein people think that what they believe constitutes the truth.