radical feminism

I am a radical feminist and I'm proud of it. I contend that to be a woman on this planet and to refuse to recognize that patriarchy is an oppressive force is ridiculous. If you don't understand, you need to get educated. Ignorance is no excuse at this point.

When reading about radical feminism, I encounter a lot of "radical feminism is not man-hating" and while I agree that one can be a rad fem and not hate men (I certainly don't hate them...I wouldn't mind shaking the shit out of most of them, tho ;), I wonder at this:

"Radical feminism opposes patriarchy, not men. To equate radical feminism to man-hating is to assume that patriarchy and men are inseparable, philosophically and politically."-found on about.com

I need someone to explain to me how patriarchy and men are separable. I'm missing this point. You cannot have patriarchy without men. Or males, if you disagree that they've matured to the point of being able to be referred to as men. Let me repeat myself, though.

You cannot have patriarchy without men.

Which means that patriarchy and men are inseparable. Duh.

(What is patriarchy? Read here to get a very elementary idea of it. I linked above, but...)

Okay, so we've, hopefully, established that without men, there is no patriarchy. Therefore, patriarchy and men are inseparable. Therefore, whoever wrote that blurb at about.com failed to make a good argument for why radical feminism doesn't inherently equal hatred of men. Not one to leave anyone hanging, I'll take a stab at it.

Patriarchy basically means that the men run things. In a patriarchal society, men hold most of the positions of power and control the economy. I'm not going to go into it further because there is so much in the world (you're on the internet, after all) about this, I trust you have enough sense to look it up.

Now, when radical feminists say that they don't hate men, they are pandering, because if someone is going to assume that you hate men simply because you can see what's right in front of you and you decide you don't like it, that person is a hyper-sensitive, hyper-emotional idiot. I have very little patience for that. Why do we need to state that we don't hate men simply because we state that men are oppressing us? It's ridiculous.

I think the sentiment that's being (poorly) expressed is that radical feminists don't want to kill off all the men on the planet. Many of us have sons and husbands and fathers and we like them. I think people are afraid of the potential for rad fems to hate men (or any women to hate men, really) because they recognize that men do a lot of fucked up shit. We live in a society that teaches us that if you sin, you should be punished. If the sin is heinous enough, you should be punished by death. That's patriarchy for you! So, I think lots of people are afraid that the rules of patriarchy will bite the harbingers of patriarchy (ie men) in the ass.

Unfortunately, women are very forgiving folks. Too forgiving. And, there are enough laws in place that most men are safe from us. (Not sure how safe y'all are from each other, though. You're constantly starting military conflicts and killing each other. What's that about?) Plus, patriarchy is so damaging that many women are unwitting participants in it. We've become our own worst enemies.

So, no. A radical feminist doesn't inherently hate men. But if she does, who can blame her?