Participants in the International Women's Day March in Los Angeles, California on March 5, 2017. Credit: Ronen Tivony/PA Images
The call to topple patriarchy might once have been seen as a fringe feminist fantasy but it has increasingly gained mainstream cachet. At the UN, the Executive Director of UN Women is calling for it. Emmy-award winning producer of Trans/Parent, Jill Soloway is calling for it. Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan has called out patriarchy more than once and is credited with “kicking patriarchy in the gut” in his film Dangal. The Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau has called for all men to be feminists.
How do we square the amplification of these calls with the resurgence of strongmen (and a growing number of strongwomen), with elections giving us ethnic nationalists and patriarchs like Trump, Erdogan, Duterte, and many others? Insecure, bullying autocrats are nothing new, but what is new is their growing appeal in democracies. Also new is their conversion of traditional social conservatism into a much coarser unfiltered misogyny. Is this patriarchy’s last gasp? Or is it now dealing out an increasingly vicious and vindictive comeuppance?
