Patriarchy

Most people out there would misunderstand the word patriarchy. They take it to mean: fatherly-rule or “through rule of the son from the father”.

In-fact more than 200 years ago they constructed a new word matriarchy to counter this “sexism”. This new word meant passing of rights through mother’s side.

While societies have been greatly sexist and favoring unfavorable and prejudiced practices for quite long patriarchy actually meant “family rule” and not “male member rule”.

This confusion arises because of misunderstanding of 2 close and interconnected languages. Greek and Latin.

In Latin patria meant related to father but in Greek patria meant related to family.

Probably they were synonymous in those times. And probably now too. But changing the language is a superficial and hypocritical stance at that. There is one Odia news-daily which writes girlstudent-boystudent instead of the opposite (and explicitly states why it does so). But its really superficial. It does not want to or make an effort to find and tackle the real problems.

So when you are patriotic are you so because you lay allegiance to your family (and the likes) or to the male relatives (and the likes)?

Patria now is a fatherland or a family-land?

Morphing language to suit one’s orientations is only immature. Delving deeper and accepting the realities for what they really are is a much more involved and honest task.