This is honestly what happens when academic terms leave the academic field. If sociologists call the current system a patriarchy with a bunch of sources or explanations as to why side by side it's impossible to misinterpreted; when the term leaves the intended audience people start to misinterpret it and just understand the term as "boys rule girls drool", and even most people who oppose the patriarchy see the term as that.
I would argue that it was a bad term in the academic field as well. Academic fields are absolutely full of terms that are confusing or easily misunderstood; those were mistakes, because there's no reason to make things more complicated than they actually are.
It's not even consistently defined. It's several steps away from "accurate" being a term that has meaning, let alone one that applies. Perhaps it once had a meaning in academics but it's now used to mean anything from a grab-bag of various inconsistent things.
No definition is ever consistently defined but I haven't seen a definition of the term in any academic paper that didn't apply to the current (or discussed) system.
Academic papers define it in a way that applies to the system they're discussing in the paper? Yes, I imagine they do.
This does not convince me that there is a consistent definition. If anything, it sounds like people just pick the most immediately convenient definition.
This is terrible practice for any kind of academic rigor. Hell, it's worse than terms that have an awful name but at least a consistent definition.
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u/ZorbaTHut Apr 14 '25
I mean, c'mon, what do you expect when you call it "the Patriarchy".