Anti-feminists would tend to view it as a conspiracy, or no longer existing ("women can vote, so it's all OK now, right?"). Sadly this sort of attitude/meme does exist....
What you described is a conspiracy. Of course feminists don't describe their own conspiracy theories as conspiracy theories, they want them to appear legitimate.
Patriarchy as it is commonly understood in feminist circles is more nuanced than your straw-man. It's bottom-up, not top-down. You'd have to stretch the definition of "conspiracy" awfully far to cover an emergent property of a set of principles and societal norms.
Ultimately patriarchy as a social force and concept is totally provable has statistical and philosophical evidence that shows it exists. Every basic women's studies or feminist book goes over this to some extent.
>totally provable has statistical and philosophical evidence that shows it exists.
Except that alternative explanations are dismissed. If the "evidence" supports many possible conclusions, then it is not proof of a single specific conclusion like "patriarchy".
It seems like you are saying that is there is indeed a real conspiracy of institutions created and/or controlled by men, in which case I totally agree. We have well documented cases, historically and in the present, of institutions and systems that are dominated by men.
> Except that alternative explanations are dismissed. If the "evidence" supports many possible conclusions, then it is not proof of a single specific conclusion like "patriarchy".
I've yet to see convincing alternative explanations. All of the evidence points to existence of patriarchy as a social institution.
It seems like you are deliberately choosing to respond with non-sequiturs and strawmen because you don't want to have an honest conversation.
>I've yet to see convincing alternative explanations. All of the evidence points to existence of patriarchy as a social institution.
Just as creationists view all evidence as pointing to the existence of god. If you start with a conclusion, and twist everything to suit that end, you can't reasonably expect people who didn't start with the same bias to agree with your conclusions.
Regardless of the existence of the patriarchy as a phenomena - and there are many critics of the theory, from the right and the left -, it makes no sense to dismiss it as a conspiracy theory.