it's hard to overstate the massive cultural impact of the Barbie movie Hi Barbie Hi Ken the film Enchanted audiences wowed critics sparked heated debates and made a truly obscene amount of money at the box office Barbie continues breaking records with over 1 billion dollars at the global box office it's an impressive cultural achievement especially considering that the film doubles as a feature-length commercial for a line of plastic dolls there was however one group who were decidedly unenthusiastic Despite all the bubbly pink fun the movie's become a target of some right-wing personalities they are preaching empowerment by making men look weak and dumb feminist diet tribe about the evils of the modern patriarchy It's a trojan horse to to teach girls daddy is really a dummy or domineering idiots It's feminist garbage and it's really about hating men And Ken is like stupid and unlikable This is an assault on not just Ken but all men If you've seen the movie you might be confused Because the Barbie script goes out of it's way to show Ken in a sympathetic light If anything the movie might be a little too sympathetic to Ken "I think I owe you an apology" "Huh?" Now it's tempting to dismiss this clearly performative outrage as just another attempt to fan the flame of the culture war But there is something really poisonous under-pinning this backlash that I do think is worth taking seriously One word in particular seem to touch a nerve "Well I haven't seen Barbie yet, but I've seen people talking about the number of times they use the word patriarchy in it" "Feminism and the patriarchy and fighting it, and all that" "And actually to call it the patriarchy in the film that phrase is used many times" "If you take a shot every time Barbie says the word 'patriarchy', you will pass out before the movie ends" "As we learned that the use of word 'patriarchy' no less than ten times in this film" "The patriarchy is a big part of this Barbie film" "The word is used endlessly in the movie even though most people even me actually has no idea that what 'patriarchy' really means" That is a truly staggering level of defensiveness especially coming from people who don't really seem to understand what the word even means while there are many legitimate criticisms of the Barbie movie's feminism or lack thereof this video essay is not going to address those questions instead we're going to use the movie as a sort of primary to help explain what patriarchy actually is what it isn't and how it ends up harming everyone including men "Watch your flank" to have any kind of productive conversation we have to get over that defensiveness that so many men feel whenever they they come across the word patriarchy "this is a real hornets nest in here" contrary to popular belief patriarchy is not a synonym for men nor is it a code word for masculinity and it certainly has nothing to do with hating men "yeah I am confused about that" General confusion about what patriarchy means is perhaps not surprising given that the word very rarely appears in popular media when the term has been used it's traditionally been as a joke to mock feminists or feminism "let's take off our brows and burn them in defiance of the misogynistic patriarchy" "you know what I think I have to meet Harvey but um maybe we can burn our underwear together later" "when the last time we had a conversation over 3 minutes it was about the patriarchal bias of the Mr Rogers show well with King Friday lording it over all the Lesser puppets what did I miss the oppressive patriarchal values that dictate our education" "good" It's only after the rise of the me too movement that we begin to see a shift in this pattern "stay out of it Courtney you stay out of it I'm dismantling the patriarchy this year and I'm not afraid to start with you" These days the word is most often written for snarky teenage characters "So you were Guided by Lon chivalry a tool of the patriarchy to extract my undying gratitude?" "mhm, you know most people just say thank you" it's meant to identify them as brash rebellious or naively idealistic though not necessarily wrong in their observations "I think marriage is just a patriarchal system designed to make women less autonomous you become your husband's property you have to bear his children you even have to take his name" hey didn't you say that prom was a a postcolonial patriarchal construct it is but we would go as a group as a form of protest hey hey ho ho patriarchy has got to go hey hey ho ho patriarchy has got to go" even in this new limited context the word is still delivered as a punch "I'm jus... I mean is that it?" and its meaning is left intentionally vague "it's called Little Women and it's about four sisters who overcome poverty and the patriarchy" "Nope, dolls" the lack of specificity guarantees that only those who are already in the know will get the joke "Down with the patriarchy" "Idiots ah" everyone else is left either bewildered or extremely threatened "why didn't Barbie tell me about patriarchy?" "Which to my understanding is where men and horses run everything" "I silver away" Sorry Ken but there are no horses involved although it does kind of make sense why he might think that.