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You say, “ Patriarchy was conceived of as the underlying structure which facilitated men’s oppression of women; “a system characterized by power, dominance, hierarchy and competition, a system that [could not] be reformed but only ripped out root and branch.”[8] (my emphasis)”.

The thing about the problem with no name as described here is that 1) it has no particular connection with men or women; and 2) is a staple of political theory at least since Hobbes. It is simply a description of the way the world has responded to the state of nature. So Patriarchy looks like a category error, a conflation, in which a very general and accurate insight, that does indeed lack a name, has been infused with sexual politics and named and hence transformed into a concept that is potent but junk.

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Sure. I'm quoting bell hooks there.

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“Egalitarianism: The doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.”

Perhaps equal before the law (disputable), but no one is equal to anyone else (and not even to himself on some days/later years). No one has equal opportunities either. What we ought to have is liberty (the minimization of proactive impositions).

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Yes, there's a further essay coming up on this

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May 24, 2023Liked by Paula Wright

From a libertarian perspective, Jan Lester is the cutting edge philosopher who has explained what liberty is. https://philpapers.org/rec/INDNLA

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