By Raymond Cuttill
“The Patriarchy is truly dying,” says Mike the Therapist in a Tweet.
My problem is, I canât find it. I keep asking feminists for a phone number for it, but they never reply. The thing is, I donât seem to remember ever oppressing women or even wanting to, but I keep getting told I have. Iâm part of the Patriarchy, apparently. I would have thought I would know. Apparently, I can get women to do what I want. Iâm 70. I was a young man in the 1960s/70s. So if I could get women to do what I want that means Iâve been dating Raquel Welch, voluptuous star of âOne Million Years B.C. (1966)â and âFantastic Voyage (1966)â, since the 1960s and weâre very happy together. Now, in reality Raquel Welch has never heard of me and even some of the girls I went to school with turned me down. So, what Iâd like to do is talk about the Patriarchy and the relationship between men and women as I see it and then later come to some of the specific points from Mike the Therapist.
When I went out in the 1960s with a woman you bought two of everything. If we wanted coffee you bought two coffees. Dinner – you bought two dinners. Dances – you bought two dance tickets. She was never expected to pay a penny for anything. Sometimes when you arranged a date she stood you up. At least once I went to a dance with someone and paid for our tickets. Once inside she âspotted some friendsâ and I never saw her again all night.
You hoped to get more dates and that would maybe lead to kissing and cuddling. That didnât necessarily lead to sex. Things were changing around then. The pill was starting to come in. However, most were still getting married.
As a young man I was unclear on how to get girls and what they wanted. My friend and I decided it was a case of numbers. If weâd asked one girl in the street if she wanted coffee and she didnât perhaps we should ask ten girls. It turns out if you ask ten girls if they wanted coffee none of them had to say yes. I didnât understand then that they had criteria which we were failing.
Around this time a young woman I knew decided not to wear a bra under her T shirt. This was a bold move in those days. It was clear it wasnât for my or anyone elseâs benefit. She was getting ready for a date with her boyfriend.
So as you can see Iâve never lived in a world where women didnât have agency. Iâve seen a woman who claimed to want a family with someone but later and later really meant never and the relationship, which was clearly on a false foundation, ended when she ran out of excuses. Back in the 60s somebody ran some paternity tests and found that by blood type at least 10%, possibly as high as 30%, of children were not conceived by the supposed father. I just saw a YouTube video about someone whoâd been married, happily he thought, for 33 years. He had two daughters and one son. One day they did a DNA test to look at their ancestry. Turns out the two daughters werenât his.
It shouldnât be necessary to say this but before I go any further I would like to point out that at no point have I said that men are angels and never lie or cheat. If I say dogs have tails I have not said that cats donât have tails. I havenât even mentioned cats. Thereâs no need to mention men because there are women all over the media pointing out anything they donât like about men.
So where does all this come from? Well, Iâm interested in Psychology and have been for 40 years, and Iâm particularly interested in Evolutionary Psychology that looks at why we are the way we are.
We seem to have arrived here because as a species we are weak. We are weaker than chimpanzees, our nearest evolutionary relative. I know of no-one, apart from Tarzan in old movies, who could, unarmed and single-handedly, fight a lion. The solution to that is to group into large numbers. We can spot and raise the alarm or even fight as a group if needed.
Thereâs a number called Dunbarâs Number from a British anthropologist. He suggests, although some dispute it, that around 150 is the right number for a tribe, and in order to maintain social relationships with all those people we need a large brain. At some point we seem to have separated the hunters and gatherers; the hunters being men and the gatherers being women. This world work quite well if you have a stable village to work out of.
This seems to leave women with a problem. If the men bring back a kill they might favor the prettiest women when handing out the meat. They might also only protect the prettiest women when threatened. The solution to this is monogamy. This assures the man that the children his partner has are his. She might be ready to die for her children and he might too, but not if thereâs doubts that theyâre his.
Essentially, this is a deal and all deals can be broken. Either can cheat. Either can take a chance that they wonât be found out. For the woman, she can have sex with someone she thinks is better than her husband. If she gets away with it, she still gets help from the husband, but thereâs a chance sheâll lose his support if she doesn’t, and that could be catastrophic. Hence some people cheat and some people donât.
Women still want support. There was a woman on TikTok recently celebrating her new boyfriend because âhe buys me anything I wantâ. Alimony still exists, and in some cases she can ask for more for no other reason than she used to live with him. There have been cases where she spent her half of the divorce settlement and then says she needs more alimony, as if women are still dependent on men whenever it suits them.
In fact itâs safe to say that by promising the man sheâll have his kids, she effectively creates the Patriarchy, a situation in which the man, chosen by her, has to look after her. Now this does give him power, but only in ways that suit her. Whenever it suits her she may cheat or leave him. In fact, itâs impossible to see the human race as the success it is without womenâs choice being involved throughout.
It is a success at 8 Billion. Success, of course, brings other problems. I wonder if there was 8 billion tigers and 3000 humans, would the tigers not eat the last 3000 humans?
All females of all species choose the best mate they can, and that includes women. They demand more of males, and then choose the best of them. The stronger or faster or cleverer men were chosen by women, and so had children. The weaker, slower, stupider ones did not. Generally that means we get a better species. Given our rather weak position in the outside world we had to do that. It is inconceivable that we would have got here without women choosing the best men and men striving to meet their demands. Women remain drivers of the human race, even if itâs back seat drivers.
Now letâs look at Mike the Therapists Tweets –
âThe Patriarchy is truly dying. It really is.
It is more noticeable in some circles. In others, it is still glowing with dying embers.
Here is where I as a therapist see it all the time. With men under 40.
They are whining and scratching their heads to figure out why women wonât date them, have sex with them, or marry them. In social media meetings, they claim it is unfair. Their fathers, older brothers, uncles, grandfathers didnât have to do much and women did their bidding.â
Iâd say women still want to date, have sex and even get married at times. As for âwomen doing their biddingâ I donât see that happening unless she wants to please him.
âThose days have been over for a decade. Here is the new reality.
Women do not owe men anything. Nothing.â
It depends. Weâve built lots and invented lots so maybe a thank you would be good. Conversely, this also means men donât owe women anything. Women, however, have not stopped asking for things, even when now, they could get them for themselves.
â2: Even if youâre nice to them, shower them with kindness, buy them gifts, speak softly and tenderly, they do not have to do what you want.â
Women still complain if he doesnât pay for dinner. No one has to do what anyone wants but itâs a reasonable expectation that a relationship is a two-way exchange of love and support. Perhaps itâs about time women showered men with kindness and gifts.ï»ż
âTreating someone nice is the bare minimum we should do for every human.
3. Women never have to have sex with you. Ever. Not if you buy them dinner. Not if you date them for two months and not yell at them. Not even if you marry them. You have no right to sex. Ever.â
Treating someone nice is the bare minimum whether men or women. Perhaps you should tell women that. You may not have a right to sex but again, itâs a reasonable expectation if youâre in a relationship. Honesty would be nice too, but there are liars on both sides.
â4. Women are allowed to remain single and never have men in their lives.â
MGTOW are doing the same to women but it does seem women mostly want men in their lives. The fact that MGTOW is called misogynistic is a testament to womenâs expectations. Some donât like it if men turn them down.
â5. Women can sniff out someone who is being nice to them to get something they want. They wonât put up with disingenuous friendships with men any longer.â
Itâs a pity more men canât do the same to women.
âThis attitude that says âHey, I tried being nice and you still wonât date meâ doesnât work any more.â
This is the gap between womenâs claims and the reality. Women say âI want someone kind and someone who listens,â but then the âNazi gorilla on a motorbikeâ turns up and sheâs off with him because the kind guy somehow doesnât âdo it for her.â Women donât seem to know what they want, and it does confuse men.
â6. Women are humans, equal in all ways to men. They work harder at being humans than most men. From now on, they expect men to work just as hard at being decent human.â
âEqual in all waysâ is a bit of a joke. Equal rights are fine but donât say everybody, men or women, can run the 100M as fast as Usain Bolt. Women need to work harder as being âhumansâ because some seem totally happy with a hostile attitude to men, which men do not deserve. Men are being quite patient with women, but some have given up on finding a reasonable women.
As for Mike being a therapist, I cannot see this judgmental attitude as being good. For someone whoâs supposed to have empathy, it sounds like heâs a little short. Iâd be surprised if this attitude doesnât bleed through, not just to men, but to all clients. Heâd probably claim otherwise, but I would wonder if heâs actually short on clients.
Iâll finish this off by saying I am a menâs rights activist who finds the addresses of conferences and talks have to be hidden to the last minute. I can barely talk about International Menâs Day without someone attacking it. Many, both online and offline, claim men donât need rights or have sufficient because this imaginary Patriarchy is busy oppressing women. Ever since I read in a Feminist book that it âmight be an ideaâ that boys were sexually abused to take them down a peg or two, Iâve tried to point out that these Feminist ideas have nothing to do with helping women and a lot to do with hating men. We havenât had it for 50 years, but one day we may have a real conversation between and about the sexes⊠but I doubt Mike the Therapist is capable of that.
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