The Decline of National Patriarchy and the Rise of Global Male Supremacy

Abstract

Chapter 6 begins the task of diagnosing global injustices. It argues that we are witnessing both the decline of national systems of patriarchy and the rise of a system of global male supremacy. The chapter argues that the latter is a global systematic injustice in which (i) men are not subjected to high degrees of economic exploitation or economic marginalization by other groups in that society, while women are; (ii) women’s political voices are marginalized in world society, while men’s are centered; (iii) men are not subject to systematic violence or predation in world society, while women are; and (iv) the dominant norms of global society unjustly favor men, so that men are exalted by satisfying them and women degraded by failing to meet them; this happens both through a male-centered cultural imperialism and the effects of an ideology of gender inferiority. The chapter then shows how this system suppresses anyone’s actual or potential resistance to it and thus subjects everyone to arbitrary power.