Oh boy! The exact person I made this addition to ward off!
Well, first of all, I am a transfeminist. I would define the patriarchy as a social system which exists to control gender/sex relations, for the benefit of cisgender, heterosexual men– although it can’t be understood without the context of other social systems (like white supremacy and capitalism). These systems work together as the kyriarchy to preserve the power and wealth of a few at the cost of the many. On my blog, I’ve written extensively how I believe men are negatively impacted by the patriarchy on a deep and intrinsic level, and that I believe that the patriarchy cannot be properly unworked unless we acknowledge this aspect. “Common feminist claims” do not mean every feminist makes those claims as you understand them.
Yes, I would say in general woman perpetrators are not seen as “real” perpetrators, and men/boys are not seen as “real” victims. I focused on penetration because I feel its fundamental to why being forced-to-penetrate is especially ignored, despite it being the most common form of rape experienced by cis men. Men/boys being sodomized is more easily seen as an act of violation– even if it frequently mocked and seen as demeaning– because being penetrated is seen as inherently dominating. Its easier to convince people, especially feminist-minded people, that a boy who was sodomized is a victim than it is to convince them a boy who was forced to penetrate is. Penetration is seen as being something which always takes, even if being “taken from” is seen as demeaning. And this is entirely because penetration is inherently gendered in the patriarchal view: to penetrate is to be male (& the patriarchy views the only “true” men, deserving of value, as those who perform dominant manhood effectively) and to be penetrated is to be female. So forced-to-penetrate rape is the form of sexual assault to men most easily written off because it flies in the face of how the patriarchy views sexual power dynamics.
I don’t see what me not mentioning her being convicted has to do with anything? I clearly find this woman disgusting and think its horrific that she was able to force her victim to pay child support when she groomed him. We agree entirely on this point. There's no point to bringing this up except that you want me to be supporting this woman when clearly am not. You assume I think “women are the real victims” because you are opposed to any analysis of gender that points to the patriarchy instead of women. In that way, you are actually very similar to the feminists who call me and MRA for saying that the patriarchy should not be synonymous with “men,” especially individual men.
I later elaborated in this post:
In the case of a man being seen as a victim of being forced-to-penetrate, its more beneficial to paint the woman as an object for the pursuing young boy, and then paint any arguments that he is a victim as being unreasonable and irresponsible. In this case, the woman is objectified but in a way that benefits her because it benefits the patriarchy first and foremost. Similarly, the patriarchy only cares about cis male victims when it is beneficial to itself (as a part of kyriarchy which is fundamentally concerned w material power/wealth and control to maintain that power/wealth), and that "care" is extremely superficial.
I very, very frequently talk about the view of women as perpetual victims is
the way that privileged women (specifically white & cis but in this case, also woman predators) are able to get away with violence, and
that this is the result of misogyny. Women are perpetual victims because they are seen as property, something that exists only to be protected, like sheep. White women have power via victimhood because the white-patriarchy needs them to produce white children, which is why Black women don't have access to that victimhood. (Additionally, the idea that women don't want sex/aren't as horny/invested in sex as men is why more focus is put on a young boy's "choice" in being groomed than the grown woman's choice to groom him. That's also misogyny).
I think the way we use “privilege” has a lot of flaws, perhaps the biggest being that it’s extremely vague and is applied to a lot of different situations. You could apply “privilege” to what happened with this woman, but I think its far better to call it benevolent misogyny (which avoids implying that “female privilege” as a mirror for “male privilege” is a thing– and, for the record, I have a lot of issues with how “male privilege” is used by cisfeminism, and I don’t think “female privilege” as a term would cause anything but problems). On a very individual level, she was privileged here, but not because The System Loves Women And Hates Men. It’s because of misogyny, which comes from the patriarchy.
I actually do use “misandry” to describe this situation– also “antimasculism.” I think either one of these words is useful when discussing how the patriarchy negatively affects men & those perceived as men. I would love to be able to say “this is the result of misandry” and have people understand that I mean “this is the result of patriarchal gender roles & how they affect men.” But because of people like you, using that word immediately makes people go on defense mode and assume I am blaming women for the workings of the patriarchy, so I have to use imperfect phrases like “toxic masculinity” to try and get my message out there. Thanks a lot.
TL;DR: we fundamentally agree that what happened in this case is bad and that the woman got away with it because of gender dyanmics. But you have piss-poor interpretation of those dynamics, and would rather ignore the way cis men can benefit from the patriarchy so you can blame women. You essentially take the shittiest of feminist perspectives– the surface level, pop-feminist “patriarchy is when people don’t like women and like men” that I have major issues with– and swap it around and act like you’ve done something. All you do is make it 10000x harder for us to properly deal with misandry, because you make it all about “women get favored in child custody cases!!” (which, btw, is also a product of misogyny) instead of how the patriarchy wants men to suffer. The only solution to all this gender suffering is cis men, cis women, trans people, and everyone outside or in-between working together, combined anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-oppressive action. You can't get there unless you stop blaming women and start blaming the patriarchy (neither can feminists get there unless they do the same with men!)
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