One of the foundational principles of patriarchy is ownership of women. Sometimes this manifests as hatred and abuse. Sometimes it manifests as care and protection. In both cases, the thing that is absent is an acknowledgment of agency. A failure to think of women as beings...

...who can make decisions. The abusive patriarch says women are stupid and therefore must not be allowed to do what they want. The protective patriarch says women are too valuable and need to be monitored because to not do so would cause them harm. The abuser offers a prison...

...and the protector offers shelter. In both cases, the doors and windows are closed and will not open if the woman wills it. They will open when the patriarch wills it. The abuser won't let the woman out. The protector will, but he will only allow women to take well-guarded...

...roads that lead to well-guarded spaces and then back to the shelter. Another thing that both the abuser and the protector do is control what the woman is seen doing. Under the abuser's system, the woman is seen indoors all the time and so that becomes the definition of a...

...normal woman. This allows for vilification and further abuse of women who don't stay indoors. This system allows for the woman on the road to become a target because she is not normal. Under the protector's system, the woman is seen going out but never treading roads that...

...the protector does not allow her to walk. This system allows for the woman on some roads to be treated as respectable but makes it taboo for those same women to choose another road, thus creating a space where women can be pitted against each other - good woman vs bad woman.

Agency isn't hard to understand. It is hard to accept however because we all grow up under the influence of either the abuser system or the protector system. If you are anything like the young man who just messaged me to complain about feminists, all you need to do is ask...

...yourself this - "This thing that I want imposed on women, would I be happy to have it imposed on me?" That's it. Because if your answer is no, you don't respect women. You think of them as lesser beings than you, no matter how benevolent the language you couch your disdain in.