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Notes -
I like your take, we always have to dig deeply into accepted ideas to see how much myth-making. It's something I will 'lean-into' over the next while to see where I land.
However, I was already aware that females contribute a good portion of partner violence - although of course, tending to be less serious harm than male on female violence. I was also aware that key males had been written out of the suffragette story.
I also don't view it as man beating wife with stick through human history. The past is a different country as they say, so it's mistaken to project the modern idea of agency blindly onto previous eras Obviously women have always had agency and our history is shared, there must have always been accommodation of needs in the shared goal of child rearing and woman have been honoured and had certain priviliges over different cultures etc, depending on class. However, and bearing in mind I'm no historian and I shudder to think how little I know of it, but I'd say it's a given that among human hierarchies, women would tend to be lower than men in terms of power. The church asserts this explicitly, and clearly there wasn't even a thought to consider women as distinct entities legally until modern times. So I suspect that while revisionism against some of the myth-making of feminism may be due, it's not going to upend it to the point of there is 'no thing there'.
Feminism fits within a modern liberal view of freedom and opportunity. Here I think it's clear that there was a patriarchy, as evidenced by the efforts required for women to do things that men had always done-get a degree, occupy professional positions of power, own things, receive benefits as single parents etc. Now most women probably didn't object to this world, it was the water they swam in, but for some women it was a grave injustice under the modern liberal terms taking root. Now that doesn't subsume women to some powerless servitude but it is pretty inarguable as a real patriarchy.
I have also observed patriarchy first-hand, though as an outsider, when living in Japan. Again many women have power, many are happy with the status quo, but the hierarchy is plain to see. I'm given to understand that effectively the wife sits underneath her sons in the power structure side of things (though probably worth checking) and language itself reified this in the honorifics etc used when addressing then. Men have a mixed position there, often as salarymen that might only see there children on weekends, and of course are wedded to their own work heirarchies, but equally, are clearly top-dogs as far as society goes. Again this is under the lens of modern liberal values. Japan is a very civil society and there are many great things about it. And if course it's changing. But if you're a young woman wanting to progress professionally in male-dominated fields, you're going to put up with a lot of unjust shit, by virtue of being a woman.
Anyway I take your broader point and I have gone on too long. One of my first posts here was complaining about long posts and here I am....
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