While I agree with the general argument, I think "patriarchy" as we usually understand it is just a political weapon wielded by both its supporters and its detractors. As a social construct, it's a lot more complex than anyone wants to admit.
The unstated and false assumption is that in a "patriarchy" women have no meaningful roles. My late wife, who was much more the historian than I, long argued that this was never truly the case. Even in societies where leadership was male-dominated, women played huge roles. Of course, often the men at the top took the credit for what women did, but then they also took the credit for what other men did. And to be fair, there are women who would do the same if given the chance. That's just a human thing.
But in life generally, matters were never so neat. My father was descended from a long line of farmers. We tend to think of the farm--or at least farms of a not-so-long-ago era, as a "patriarchal" place with well-defined gender roles. But according to him, one of his great-grandmothers, a petite woman, was very much the commander. She had several big, strong sons who, even as were grown men, submitted unquestioningly to her authority. She would look up to meet their eyes and issue no-nonsense commands, to which they would reply, "Yes, Mom! Yes, Mom!" much to the amusement of others in the community.
And then there was my grandmother (dad's mother), who by her own account had a reputation as a tomboy. When the hired hands weren't doing a job right, she'd get out there and show them how it was done. Relatives used to tell my grandfather that he shouldn't let her do that, because she was a woman and might hurt herself, but hey, she knew the job better than some of those men, so he never told her to stop.
So again, patriarchy, whatever it was, was never as black-and-white either its supporters or its detractors want to believe. There were, of course, inequalities and injustices, but blanket condemnations of women as weak or flighty or of men as aggressive and barbaric (as some of the commenters here have suggested) are way off-base. Today, we need to recognize the fundamental equality of women and men. Men and women aren't identical in all respects, no more than individuals are. There are obviously physical and mental differences between us. But those differences should be viewed as valuable components of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. (Women and men are "two wings of a bird," as Baha'is say, and a bird can't fly if only one wing is strong.)
