The problem here is the idea of an invisible partiarchy existing and holding back woman, a patriarchy made up by man for their own serfish and evil interest. This is what is causing such generalizations to be made about all men in general. Supposedly every man is responsible for perpetuating this invisible partiarchy through the simple act of being born a man. The patriarchy theory by deffinition places guilt on man for simply being born as man. Luckily the theory is only popular in the english world and not in continental europe.
The problem with this theory is that there are countless legal laws dicriminating against man and not a single law discriminating against woman. As for how society in general is behaving, take for examle the case of Thomas James Bell that commited suicide by setting himself on fire in front of the court that destroyed his life with anti-man laws. His case was not covered by the press, you probably never heard of him. The wikipedia entry about him has been deleted and to this day it still remains deleted. Imagine if a woman would have set herself on fire in front of a US court for anti-woman laws. The media would have exploded, in no case would they have censored the incident.
Besides considering all man guilty because of their birth, the theory also claims man can not experience discrimination because the theory says that there is this invisible system that is giving them an advantage. This is why we see feminist violently trying to shut down talks about man suicide statistics or man rights meetings, while man rights groups have never tried to shut down feminist meetings or feminist speekers.
The theory itself is flawed, it’s simply a wrong theory. It’s claims have also been disproven by countless scientifical studies, started by initial proponents of the theory themseles. And this theory is causing the generalizations made here on this forum. As long as there will be this theory, there will be generalizations about men being made.
When it comes to bhikkhuni ordination, the situation is of course reversed and laws are highly against woman. But this is not because of some evil patriachy propagated by selfish man, it is due entirely to dogmatism, same as identical rules existing in all branches of christianity, especially the orthodox christian branch. On mount athos, womans are not even allowed to step foot.
Theravada is orthodox too and it is very similar in behavior to orthodox christianity. By deffinition, such a tradition is extremelly resistant to change. This has very good positive effects, such as preserving the dhamma for 2500 years while mahayana has transformed into a new age religion that has almost nothing to do with what the historical Buddha taught. The downsides are things such as arhaic laws against womans continuing to exist.
If there is anything woman should be acusing here, that is dogmatism and not some invisible patriarchy or all kind fo funky stuff. And it is good to remember all religions, especially orthodox ones, have a very archaic attitude in general. These laws are not gona change to soon no matter how unfair they are.
Whenever we feel unfaired, this is what we need to do: Think of the smart people living in te middle ages. There were smart people then too. Imagine how they felt seeing people burning witches and vampires. They were no doubt pretty revolted against what was going on. And still, hundreds of years had to pass for something to change, they never lived to see it. Sometimes it’s good not to be too attached to things we don’t like in society cause that is only gona produce stress for us.
It’s also good to remember that these dogmatic people are just as good intented as you. Even people hunting witches and vampires thaught they are doing a good thing. Communist thought they are doing great things and many had great intentions. It’s wrong to consider them evil, hateful of woman or bad intented. This is something many often forget, as can be shown by this post above:
Most everyone/anyone who has challenged the status-quo has met with resistance from opponents and pragmatists. From those who feel they have a vested interest in maintaining the old-order and by those who remained committed to doing nothing substantive about it and, so it goes …
There is this assumption that ill-motivated man are doing this out of a desire to preserve a favorable status quo, according to patriarchy theory. In reality such ideas probably never passed their mind and their are doing it out of true conviction that it’s the good thing to do, same as woman trying to violently shut down talks about men suicide statistics or other ridiculous stuff are convinced it’s the right thing to do. Many bad things in this world happen because of wrong ideas and good intentions, not bad and selfish intentions.
