a popular way to rein in people – read ‘women’ – is to tell them that they must not oppose a behaviour or way of being because it is part of the ‘culture’ or what the ‘community’ wants. Who determined that it was culture and who speaks for the community? Men and men. That is the simple answer. The more complicated answer is men and men and a system – patriarchy – that enables and protects them at the same time as it socializes women to internalize the dictates of patriarchy and to accept them as culture and as community.
