Chinese patriarchy; women and power.

[Bo1Bo1Sha3]

The status of women in dynastic China was very low, but unlike many patriarchal societies, in Confucian society women held authority over her male offspring only second to her husband.
In traditional Chinese patriarch clan system, the priority of men and elders made womensubordinate to men and their family, but after Confucius (B.C. 551 – B.C. 479) gave a high positionto filial piety, the women having offspring enjoy the higher place and stronger power than their sonsand daughters. In a family does not have male elders, a mother will have a high position and evenbecome the head of a family. [2]
(The Ideal Confucian Mode for “Mother-in-law Being loving and Daughter-in-law Being Filial Pious” in Traditional China Chen Shuhui 1,)
Chinese patriarchy has historically had the backing of the state. Patricide and matricide were punishable by being killed in incredibly gruesome ways designed to stretch out the agony as long as possible; merely striking one's parents would be punished by bamboo caning requiring no witnesses. There is a seemingly paradoxical status of Chinese women being kept as property during dynastic times yet there being so many women who became powerful in Chinese history, because Chinese society's structuring around filial piety gave opportunities for women to find themselves in power often, even being monarchs or leading an entire fleet of pirates.
After a war, people are sometimes even more eager to punish turncoats or quislings than enemy occupiers, but I have not yet come across hearing women who occupy positions of power in a sexist society and who hold misogynistic views being described in this manner as benefitting from adjacency to patriarchy. There are many stories of domineering female relatives or mother in laws who abuse their daughters in these kinds of cultures, even today I am familiar with women in Chinese society holding regressive views, because reform or increased rights to other women undermine their own power over men and women alike.

Do women view women who oppress other women for their own gain or manipulate the system to put themselves on top in oppressive societies as being "Uncle Toms" or "House Negroes"?

I would like to hear people's insights into this matter.

[mishkin]

As far as I know, they don't have any biological handicap that prevents them from being cruel to other women, evil, or clever and ambitious enough to succeed in any field or society, no matter how patriarchal and oppressive it may be.

I don't think any woman expects solidarity or empathy from all her fellow females, and most of them are aware that any woman can have such misogynist attitudes as other men. I am almost sure they know you can be a woman and a horrible person.

[alhoon]

I would agree with Mishkin here, although in a less smart-### way.

I don't know what women in China do, to be honest, but the vast majority of Western women I spoke with, don't rely on "female solidarity" even if they vaguely believe in it. Thus, they don't consider women that are either old-fashioned (or even misogynistic) as "gender traitors". They consider them bad mothers in law or horrible persons, but I have yet to hear a female friend of mine complain that her mother-in-law or boss is betraying her gender obligations because they don't believe there are any such obligations.