being male doesn’t grant me access to the exclusive “patriarch’s club”

Being male may not automatically grant you access but it does HUGELY increase your chances. Run for office, study law and become a judge, work hard and become a CEO. All of these things have for centuries been male-exclusive and even now you are statistically far more likely to succeed if you are male.

That’s not the point I was trying to make though. You actually hit the nail on the head when you say

Power has always been a question of class before gender.

People framing negative elements of our culture and society as “discrimination against men” are trying to turn it into a gender issue when it is actually a cultural/societal issue.