of it as we are all part of society and live within its rules. There are many male dominated institutions - patriarchy - or society sets the rules. Your brother / husband does not set the rules but lives within the rules as do women. People challenge those rules and society changes. It is clearly advantageous for men not to want change - but change is happening and that's a good thing. eats , I think you are still misunderstanding, although your point about slavery shows you are pretty much on the right lines. You are correct that individuals make up a social system, and of course, they are a way of maintaining and benefiting (or fragmenting and being oppressed by) a social practice. That's what 'social' means. That doesn't mean you can categorise every individual as 'part of the patriarchy' or 'not part of the patriarchy'. Of course removing men from our societal system is never going to happen and quite frankly, who would want to. But it would be nice if we could all live in a system where by men and women were treated equally, where the strengths and weaknesses of our different biologies were recognised but not seen as a reason to categorise and discriminate. Very utopian, I know! Cultural feminists and Radical separatists might like to think that in some way they can live outside of it. Nice idea maybe but to boil all oppression and antagonism down to biology and think you can circumvent