'Commonly held beliefs in 2023, such as unfair gender based pay structures, "stranger danger", "innocent mothers and abusive fathers", "false rape allegations are vanishingly rare", and more, are actually proven outdated or just plain wrong by facts and figures.'
Sociologist Sylvia Walby, one of the most commonly cited founders of the sociological idea, has composed six overlapping structures that define patriarchy and that take different forms in different cultures and different times:
The household: women are more likely to have their labour expropriated by their husbands such as through housework and raising children;
Paid work: women are likely to be paid less and face exclusion from paid work;
The state: women are unlikely to have formal power and representation;
Violence: women are more prone to being abused;
Sexuality: women's sexuality is more likely to be treated negatively; and,
Culture: representation of women in media, and popular culture is "within a patriarchal gaze".
Prior to the generalised Feminist acceptance and use of the word patriarchy, the nearest equivalent would have been sexism or male chauvinism - words that are less about systemic definitions, and more easily understood on the basis that examples may be measured as rising and falling in number whilst systemic changes may be unseen or even moving in a different direction.
For example, recent research challenges the notion that has sprung up from the truth, that in the context of violence, "women are more prone to being abused". In fact, in the USA and the UK it has been shown that of all the various cohabiting couplings, gay men initiate and suffer from the LOWEST levels of domestic violence, whereas bisexual women and lesbians suffer/commit the highest levels.
In heterosexual partnerships, the figures are remarkably near equal: it is true that among the cases where violence is just one way, women are predominantly the victims. But, in cases where violence was inflicted by/on both parties, over 70% of those incidents were initiated by women.
When you stop focusing on the domestic setting and talk about risk to life and limb of individuals in the public domain - women are comparatively safe, being 6x less likely to be violently assaulted or killed by someone not known to them, as a man - particularly it is young men between the ages of 18 and 30 who are at the highest risk of actual bodily harm.
Coincidentally, this same group of men has very nearly the highest rate of suicide of any 12 year demographic spread - only beaten by the next demographic up - men aged 30-42.
The ways that society is structured, and attitudes regarding it, evolve over time; in a manner that means that there is a high degree of "lag" between perceptions and reality. Commonly held beliefs in 2023, such as unfair gender based pay structures, "stranger danger", "innocent mothers and abusive fathers", "false rape allegations are vanishingly rare", and more, are actually proven outdated or just plain wrong by facts and figures.
Take the one aspect of those beliefs that I know best, following six years of researching it, since becoming a victim of the same: "False rape allegations are vanishingly rare". I have seen this exact phrase used by several police chiefs, many politicians, appointed spokespeople, "commissioners", Charity leaders, Guardian and BBC journalists, CEOs, and lawyers, and then, unsurprisingly, echoed by a wider public.
Some police chiefs and lawyers, I suspect, do now know better, but they DARE not challenge the orthodoxy that still perpetuates this falsehood.
When I put the following crunch facts to online people, associates, sister, more distant family, and friends who believe they are feminists, they don't like them (but do not seek to investigate?).
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) reports that in 2021, there were 98,000 rape victims in the UK - a reliable researched figure (that only Men's rights activists reject as too high).
The CSEW also says that 14.5% of these went to the police.
This survey has been run annually for over 35 years and the NOS ranks it as methodologically sound, with a very large sample size, that makes it fall well within their top ranking of being reliable within plus or minus 1% margin of error. Rape Crisis and Women's Aid always used to put these figures prominently in their literature.
What this all means is that it is hard to argue against the notion that 14,210 women rape victims took their cases to the police.
The police/CPS only took 6,800 cases from that year to prosecution, which suggests that over half these women were let down, their rapists got away with it - either because the police felt they were not telling the truth, or that their accounts did not add up to a case that the CPS felt more likely to succeed than not. Many of the cases the CPS did take forward were found not guilty, and there is room for argument that many real cases were rejected and many false accusations pursued to trial, some to conviction. The detective training on how to discern a real rape victim from a liar is worse than useless.
But, scandalous though that does sound, the maths suddenly looks much more interesting when you find that the police recorded 68,000 female rape accusations, not 14,210.
The clear conclusion from this rather simple maths sum is that well over 52,000 of those claims did NOT come from actual rape victims.
Whenever facts are posted on social media as researched truths - if they are no such thing - it is almost universally true that fact checkers, irate non believers, others, someone will come back with an expose of that posted research as false.
I have put these facts to a large number of people now and, without fail, Feminists, (who perpetuate the notion of patriarchy) shout things along the lines of “NO”, "these are not true", "you made these up", "it's just 2%, the research says.."
But, none of them have challenged the figures with any analysis whatsoever, - because they can't. These are publicly available figures from the most trusted source in the UK.
One person I have put these figures to is arguably the nation's most highly regarded and experienced statistician, Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter. We had an email exchange on the topic and, strangely enough, he has been possibly the only person outside my campaigning or victims support group associates who didn't argue with the data.
Spiegelhalter saw the obvious conclusion from the maths straight away and was shocked to the point of saying: "Blimey, further research is surely needed here". (There is a cliché that all decent research leads to the announced need for more!).
So, both he and I (and a small group of others) know that, far from false rape allegations to police being vanishingly rare, they are astonishingly far more common than genuine ones.
How does this refute the notion of patriarchy being a real and present system for male advantage in UK society? Well, maybe it only refutes an aspect of it, but the way that the myths associated with proponents of the patriarchy notion are still spread all over us like a blanket of manure is exemplified here. It does real damage, sometimes fatally, to men and their families' lives.
My argument is that the system described by some as “the patriarchy” has changed since the 1980s to the point where it is far from a universal and accepted label for the state of our systems and institutions. These organisations are far more ready to trot out myths such as "false rape allegations are vanishingly rare", and no one is batting an eyelid towards the 500,000 men (over the last 12 years) whose lives have been ruined by the aiding and abetting, plus ignorant propagandising, that they have happily put out.
I would also add that there is a very understandable reason why Feminists fight hard to preserve this myth - and employ the BBC, Guardian, Independent, and all those institutions I mentioned previously - to reinforce this mythology, built like a fortress on the sand of multiple lies.
If this truth were to be accepted by police and lawyers, judges and politicians, members of the general public, the effect on those 14,200-plus actual rape victims who might go to the police next year will be to send many of them scuttling for the shelter of silence for fear of being labelled and dismissed as false accusers. I am one of many who do not want that.
Back before the Jimmy Savile scandal unlocked the door and police were told to "believe" the alleged "victim", the CSEW revealed that only 6% of 100,000 annual rape victims went to the police. That number has risen steadily ever since, and could be as high as 15% this year. Also back in 2009, the police received only 12,000 reports of rape - so only 6,000, half of them, were false accusations. That number has risen by a factor of 5 in the following 12 years.
The reality has to come through somehow, sometime. Police need to learn that they can behave intelligently, investigate properly, and make fewer mistakes, thus encouraging more people to have faith in them. And, so to the other tenets regarding patriarchy:
The household: women are more likely to have their labour expropriated by their husbands such as through housework and raising children
This has the sound of a sentence uttered in the era of stereotypical 1960s marriages. Now, mixed income and mixed childcare arrangements in the UK indicate this to be a prime example of possible lag between reality and perception.
Paid work: women are likely to be paid less and face exclusion from paid work
The equal pay act says no. And, we now have the wonderful situation where equality in the Wimbledon tennis player stakes, for instance, has gone the other way. Women now collect an average 45% more per hour on court than men do.
The state: women are unlikely to have formal power and representation
I was pondering this issue as I listened to Mishal Hussain and Katya Adler host the Today programme, interviewing women ministers and women spokespeople on every topic imaginable. The last two female prime ministers may show an over keenness to defeat this idea.
Violence: women are more prone to being abused
Well – that 's just simply and anachronistically wrong; men are the least likely to admit to being abused, by a long way – but the rate at which they suffer it is equal to that of women.
Sexuality: women's sexuality is more likely to be treated negatively
Oh boy – how I wish the law and society at large would accept that women can be the initiators and aggressors in all forms of sexual activity. As it is, so many seem keen to retain bogus ideas about having no agency, and amazing privileges concerning the right to say no after the event and make men pay heavily for any kind of regret sex.
Culture: representation of women in media, and popular culture is "within a patriarchal gaze"
Historically, I'd say this is definitely true – but I am arguing that things have changed, not that this patriarchal gaze never existed. In education, music, literature, poetry, painting, photography and many more areas, the much more general sense of equality is now palpable. Yes, there are still some chauvinist pigs around but guess what – there are also many men suffering from quota and dogma based discrimination.
So, I would conclude that of course sexism exists, and of course horrible people (male and female) abuse and distort things and can get backing in doing so from their pack of social media savvy “gender wolves”. And, I understand that men can adopt Feminist stances – when they seek that sort of popularity - but these men who refuse to even look at the extensive list of men's issues worry me.
The women that I admire the most are those who understand that the priority problems we all face are, really, not gender focused; and that the notion of the patriarchy should be disappearing under the weight of demand for a sustainable planet, an end to dogma and witch hunt clickbait, and a fair shake at family life for those that want it. (Without fakers of news getting in the way.) The reality of the world out there is that it is getting even harder to change people's minds with facts. The weight of perceived history and the lag in the understanding of what progress we have made has massive inertia. Evidence deniers are lauded, even by politicians, and many doing so ARE politicians. People have vested interests, organisations have funding dependencies, everyone has prejudices and beliefs that do not stand up to scrutiny, and NO one likes being proven wrong in a belief they have held for years.
Promoting the idea that some of these “male constructs”, such as Patriarchy, are to be accepted as “the reality” without question, though – that gets my goat.
By Patrick Graham
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