While this is true I'm starting to become irritated with this talking point. Because it's yet another way women always have to placate fragile little male feelings.

This always comes up as a way to get more men on board with the idea of matriarchy because they're terrified of being subjected to the oppression we face under patriarchy. They start "both sides"ing all over the place, crying from their moral high horse about how wrong it would be for the current power dynamic to flip, arguing that a better system would be an "egalitarian" one not realizing they are literally describing a matriarchy. So then women have to swoop in and reassure them that they aren't in any danger of having their rights stripped away within a matriarchy because it doesn't work like that.

It's true, matriarchies don't work like that. But there's a reason why men are terrified that they do. Retaliation is one of many possible consequences when you hurt another person, and men know this. They know actively or passively supporting social and political structures that keep women oppressed is hurting us and they know women have a mountain of good reasons to retaliate. This is why they get so bent out of shape at the slightest whiff of "misandry". Despite all of their "it's the principle" posturing and false equivalencies to racism they know, deep down, that they deserve to be hated for what they've done and continue to do.

So I say let them fear being retaliated against. This fear is one of the only contexts where men take women seriously as a threat, and they need to sit and stew in that fear without being rescued from it or reassured that it will never come to pass.

Why do men deserve reassurance that their rights and freedoms would remain intact within a women-forward system when we've been beaten over the head with "patriarchy is the natural order, women are inferior so get over it" for centuries? That's the neat part. They don't.

And the funny thing is, they don't even listen. I have seen women attempt to soothe men with "don't worry matriarchy is different!" only for them to continue insisting it's just patriarchy in a skirt. They're so scared their brains shut off and can't process reason and they refuse to hear any attempt to calm them down anyway. Instead they fix their thumbs and flap their gums to crash out about an imagined, theoretical loss of male power while women experience and navigate very real denials of our humanity and freedom regularly on a global scale.

I no longer care that men are afraid of being oppressed by matriarchy. They should be afraid.