Why Patriarchy Is Not about Men
by Miki Kashtan
In response to my recent newsletter, which I named “Tenderness, Vulnerability, and Mourning as a Response to Patriarchy”, I received two comments from men that led me to choose to write this piece. In two very different ways they pointed me to the reality that the word patriarchy is used in many ways; that some of those ways lead to a lot of misunderstanding; and that, in the process, men in particular get targeted in ways I never wish they did. In this piece I hope to rectify this a little bit. I start with pointing to what I mean by patriarchy, since I don’t yet have a definition that I am fully satisfied with. Most significantly, I speak to what patriarchy does or does not have to do with men and what it has to do with all of us. I also aim to make it clear what my very deep concerns are about continuing within the patriarchal paradigm that’s been with us, at least those of us who are part of Western civilization, for about 7,000 years. And I end by what I believe every single one of us can do about it.
What Is Patriarchy?
One of the things that make it difficult to speak about patriarchy, or any other system, to a mostly North American audience, is that the capacity to see systems as distinct from the individuals that live within and are affected by them has been systematically rooted out of most people’s awareness. Instead, everything is seen as an individual issue with only individual solutions.
This is, sadly, also the reason for why the main accomplishments of the 2nd wave of feminism (about which more below) in the US, for example, have been at the individual level, such as access to more kinds of jobs and to education, or increased reproductive choice. There has been very little change in the system that I call patriarchy, nor have the individual changes been open to women who are darker skinned and/or of limited economic means.
So, what is it that I mean by patriarchy as a system? I know that I am still carefully collecting and gathering thoughts and information, because what I have to offer for now is not yet at the level of elegance and simplicity that I like to have for concepts.
Patriarchy, as I see it, is a system that encompasses a worldview, arrangements about how we live as humans with each other on this planet, implicit blueprints for what kinds of institutions we would create, and guidelines for what to do with our young to prepare them for the system itself.
The underlying principle of patriarchy, as I understand it, is separation and control. The separation is from self, other, life, and nature. The fundamental structures we have created over these millennia are based on dominance and submission, and the worldview we have inherited justifies them as necessary to overcome both our basic nature and “Nature”, seen as separate from us. We pride self-control and frown on “emotionality”; we operate, organizationally, in command and control forms; we have been treating nature as a thing to exploit, use, subdue, and, most recently, convert to commodities for sale.
Why patriarchy and not some other word? Because, at least in the European historical lineage, which later affected many other cultures through colonial contact, the shift to separation and control coincided with making paternity central. How paternity came to be central after it wasn’t for 97% of the existence of Homo Sapiens is way beyond what a blog post can address. What is important to note, though, is that once paternity becomes important, controlling women is inevitable, because only by controlling women can it be reliably known who the father is. There is an irreducible distance between the biological father and the offspring that can only be eliminated fully by imprisoning a woman and preventing any other man from having access to her. This is why patriarchal societies by necessity become societies of control and separation. We have become so habituated to this state of affairs that most of us don’t even see that it is our own creation.
Men, Women, and Patriarchy
I have observed, learned about, engaged with, and supported countless women and men in beginning and then continuing the complicated journey of liberating themselves from the horrific effects of patriarchy on all of us. Through this process – now decades long – I now know that boys are brutalized in ways that girls are not in order to prepare them for positions of domination. As bell hooks says, “Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term ‘masculinity’) is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns. He learns that his core feelings cannot be expressed if they do not conform to the acceptable behaviors sexism defines as male. Asked to give up the true self in order to realize the patriarchal ideal, boys learn self-betrayal early and are rewarded for these acts of soul murder.” (bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love)
In the end, patriarchy gives only a few men access to power in society, and most men some small access to power in relation to women, robbing all men of core aspects of their humanity. This is a raw deal of monumental proportions. I see this as the core source of violence: the physical, emotional, and spiritual brutalization of boys and men. Any man who knows me personally as a friend would testify that I hold infinite tenderness for what I see as the terrible plight of men. I hope that one or more of them will comment to illustrate the point I am making from their own lives.
Simply put, this is my deepest article of faith: no human being would ever, ever do anything harmful to another human being if they didn’t get brutalized first to the point of losing contact with their own natural generosity, kindness, care, and compassion. I share this faith with many who have studied violence and oppression, naming only Alice Miller and James Gilligan as key figures that have influenced me deeply.
What about women? This I know a bit more about through personal experience and much reading and conversation to know that our situation is complicated, too, to say the least. Because, for the most part, and with the notable exception of our children, we are not trained explicitly to be dominant in relation to others, we are robbed of freedom and power, and are “allowed” to retain much of our core human characteristics that are frowned upon and viciously ridiculed in a man.
All of us, men and women, have been trained into patriarchy, and all of us pass it on from generation to generation. Some of the most brutal forms of violence against girls (e.g. clitoridectomy; foot binding) are done by women, including their mothers; not necessarily by men.
I don’t blame men, nor see them as the problem. I don’t blame women, either. I don’t blame anyone, in the end.
Before continuing, it is vitally important to me to complexify everything I’ve said so far, because both boys and girls have other dimensions to their social location. Within a racial order such as the one in the US, for example, white girls are trained to see themselves as superior to people of color, both women and men, even as they are prepared for secondary roles as women; while boys born into racially marginalized groups are trained for subordinate positions within society while also being raised with the strictures of modern masculinity. It is impossible in a short piece like this to attend to these complexities, though not acknowledging them is entirely out of integrity for me.
I am in agonizing grief and anguish about what has been done to all of us and to our beautiful planet, and how little time it has taken to create so much destruction – 7,000 years for some effects, and only decades for others. In some parts of the world, contact with European colonizers took only decades to decimate whole populations, for example. In Hispaniola, the population declined from hundreds of thousands of inhabitants upon contact in 1492, to 14,000 in 1517 because of enslavement and redirection of resources. (See The Other Slavery by Andrés Reséndez for much more information.)
Capitalism, Patriarchy, and the Future of Humanity
I see every system of oppression as sitting on top of patriarchy as the original blueprint of relationships of dominance and submission that now affect almost all living humans on the planet and untold other species that no longer exist to even suffer at our hands. Patriarchal societies, utilizing the capacity to store dry goods that agriculture made possible, began the process of accumulation and hoarding that has reached unprecedented proportions in our times. Its latest incarnation, spiraling rapidly and dangerously out of control since we learned to use fossil fuels, is destroying more than the ecosystems within which we live. Capitalism, the system of accumulation, greed, competition, and exploitation that is now dominant on the planet, is also destroying us, its creators. If you want to grasp how, listen to Dr. Gabor Mate, Canadian-based physician from Hungary, speak about how capitalism makes us crazy.
Within this context, I want to speak to how I am affected by the idea in one of the comments that led me to write this piece. The writer urged me to embrace patriarchy as what it is; as a strategy that that exists because it meets some needs; and then to support and encourage humans in growing and learning towards more healthy ways of living. When I read this I experienced a strong wave of fear and despair. This wave helped me focus my attention on what matters to me: I want to have so much more companionship and to mobilize with others to take on the task of thinking, speaking, and acting to transform the relations of dominance and submission and the separation, control, and scarcity that are at their root. In other words: I want togetherness in overcoming the legacy and effects of patriarchy, including all its offspring: capitalism, white supremacy, child trafficking, etc.
Yes, of course patriarchy, like everything else that humans have created, is a strategy designed to attend to needs. So is murder. Just because something, perhaps, meets some needs is no reason to embrace it; it’s the people I want to embrace, not the phenomenon of patriarchy as a system. Because I don’t see that patriarchy can be accommodated and lived with peacefully any more than cancer can. Like cancer, it spreads and metastasizes. Like cancer, it has no capacity to care for the healthy cells that want to continue to live and die in peace. Like cancer, it is ultimately unsustainable. Patriarchy will end. The only question is: will we all die with it, or will we manage to free ourselves soon enough that we can peacefully put patriarchy to death and return to the task of living interdependently with the rest of the magic on this planet?
So What Can We Do?
Now I come to the question of what each of us can do, from wherever we are, to transform the conditions that sustain patriarchy. The very short answer: embrace nonviolence, and do it fully. Fully means not just the aspects of nonviolence that happen to be easy, or easier, for each of us. Because that tends to reproduce patterns of privilege and separation. Here’s just one example of how this can happen without any ill intent. For those with privilege, it’s far easier to believe in oneness for all than in challenging one’s comfort. This partial embrace of nonviolence reproduces privilege because it doesn’t challenge the source of the comfort of the privileged, nor its relationship with the hardship of the marginalized. It results, for example, in so many white people saying “All lives matter” – asserting the oneness of all, superficially – without awareness that the very act of saying this erases and dismisses the way that so many people’s lives at present don’t matter within our system. Paradoxically and painfully: denying the existence of structural difference deepens divisions.
I do not want to presume that I know the particular ways in which embracing the fullness of nonviolence could be challenging for the marginalized. Even more importantly, given where I am positioned in society, I very explicitly do not want to tell people who’ve been systematically marginalized for centuries what to do with their lives, as that in itself would be another form of continuing patterns of separation and domination, regardless of my intent.
What I do want to do is to speak to anyone, wherever you are in the world and in the society in which you live, if you are inspired and moved by the enormity of the task, and want so badly to contribute to transformation, that you are willing to take on whatever it would take as a personal commitment. To you, and only to you, I issue this invitation.
Begin by dis-identifying yourself with everything that you have been trained to think, be, and do. Examine everything that you’ve been given, so you can see what truly serves the needs of life – yours, those around you, and as far as you can see beyond; most emphatically not only yours; most emphatically not without yours being part of the picture. By everything I mean everything: how to interact with others; how to motivate yourself; how to engage with money; how to approach work; how to think about your relationship to politics; what your training has been around gender; how you respond to people different from you; how you speak to your children if you have them. It includes, once again and in a new way, celebrating and affirming what are now subjugated aspects of being human that have been associated with women, such as care, vulnerability, and attention to relationships, thereby restoring fullness to all of us. Truly everything. It’s a lifelong project, and it’s intoxicatingly liberating. Undo your socialization, if you can do it, and re-choose who you really want to be and how you really want to show up in the world, when you imagine what it might be like to be free of fear, obligation, should, must, habits, and impulses, and able to choose everything from within your values and vision. Tall order? From experience, there’s no better game in town.
In parallel, with as much gentleness towards yourself as you possibly can see, ask yourself what your sphere of influence is in the world. It may be only your family, or it may be that you are the CEO of a company, a politician, or a university professor. You are the only one who knows. Within your sphere of influence, begin to act based on your vision and values, taking the risks that you can digest and continue to move with, not more. If you are from the comfortable classes, I would add: not less, either. Risking losing what we cherish, risking losing the comforts we have become accustomed to, is liberating even if initially it feels scary and overwhelming. Because it gives us choice back.
Commit yourself to the liberation of all, starting with where you are all the way to all of life. And take whatever steps you are able to. Lest you think that parenting is only a small part, I am once again coming back to my awe at what my deceased sister Inbal focused on in her few years of creative output: parenting as social change. Some months ago, I was talking with a participant in a class; a single mother who has three children. She said that her sphere of influence was very small, only her family, and that her relationships with her children were wonderful, so she didn’t see that she could do anything. When I asked her if she was training her children to be disobedient, she got it. For as long as we are not actively training our children to be able to stand up to authority and live with the courage to speak truth with love, the basis of all nonviolence, we run the risk of passing on to the next generation the very same struggles we have inherited, and to do so in a world that’s nearer to extinction with every passing year.
What I am asking me, you, and all who are open to it to do is an all-out commitment to transformation. There are no truly revolutionary movements that I am aware of, though there are incredibly many individuals and social movements that are taking steps in the direction of a world that works for all. Whether or not the movement that you would wish to join exists, don’t wait for the “right” movement to form. I used to do this for years, without quite being aware I was. I no longer believe we have the planetary spaciousness to do that kind of waiting. I now want to act. All day. Every day. Wherever I am. With whoever is there. And learn along the way how to get more and more effective. We may still succeed.
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Image Credits: all Flickr: Top: This is what a feminist looks like. million women rise march against male violence, london, england. by Tamara Craiu (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Next: end patriarchy, by istolethetv, (CC BY 2.0). Next: the boys don’t cry by Esteban (CC BY-NC 2.0). Bottom: Women’s march, London January 2017, Three Wise Men, by Kathryn Alkins (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
20 thoughts on “Why Patriarchy Is Not about Men”
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Including by marriage, I am the father of five. I am the grandfather of seven (six of them girls) and plan on knowing seven generations in my lifetime. I consider myself to be a patriarch and hold this as one of the most important roles in my life. I did not anticipate having this responsibility and it took me a while to understand and embrace its importance. I am still working to comprehend the full extent of what this means. It includes being a holder of historical male experience, being an advocate for children of all genders, which includes providing them with emotional and material support, acceptance and challenge in equal measure, and somehow honorably occupying this mythic place that the nurturing and mysterious old hold in the minds of the young. I am far from mastery in this, but have come to recognize that it is a job to which I must rise if my family is to thrive. In some sense these people are, indeed, mine. This is not about genetics. It is about nurture. I experience the word “matriarch” landing easily on older women who fulfill a similar role. “Patriarch” and “patriarchy,” on the other hand, are almost exclusively associated with the toxic effects of domination behaviors by privileged elites (including their ancient roots). I guess it is unlikely that this word can be rescued from such a hell, but I wish a distinction between the abusive version, and the genuinely helpful and vitally important one could be made. If the term is now irredeemable as something positive then we need to find a new one, because unless we can easily and honorably name the role I am describing, I believe things are a lot less likely to get better.
Michael, This is a great question that you raise. Grandfathers and great grandfathers who are in full partnership with their families and who nurture them will always be loved and respected by those who know them. For myself, I think they deserve better than a word with “arch” or “archy” in it, which always signifies rule and power over. I wonder why any word other than grandfather is needed. The same goes for female elders. Would a child be better off with a grandmother or a matriarch? I think the latter adds too much of the flavor of fear, obedience and submission to the child’s life.
I’m intrigued to know how my comment sits with you.
David, I just wanted to let you know that you echoed exactly my thoughts here in response to Michael. Thank you.
Hello, I’m an outlier* without true NVC credentials but care about this topic deeply.. and listened in yesterday . Perhaps you’ve discussed this – but I’m so struck by the subtly of language and our limited capacities for deeply reflecting. Below is a quote I believe I transcribed from one of Marshall’s DVDs over a decade ago.. So it seems there are many awareness steps we need to get to Miki’s admonition to do no violence..
Life alienating communication both stems from and supports hierarchical and domination societies and renders a slave like mentality. Life alienating communication has deep philosophical and political roots; these views stress our innate evil and deficiency, and a need for education to control our inherently undesirable nature. We learn early to cut ourselves off from what’s going on within ourselves. The language of wrongness, “should” and “have to” is perfectly suited for this purpose: the more people are trained to think in terms of moralistic judgments that imply wrongness and badness, the more they are being trained to look outside themselves-to look to authorities-for the definition of what constitutes right, wrong, and good and bad.
Perhaps you’ve been around the block on this too- but I see tremendous hope in Reinventing Organizations and the space they create to live from higher potentials.. I ‘ve been particularly struck by this quote from Laloux..
. “ There is a dirty secret I have covered in 15 years I have spent consulting and coaching organizational leaders: life at the top of the pyramids isn’t much more fulfilling. Behind the façade and the bravado, the lives of powerful corporate leaders are ones of quiet suffering too. Their frantic activity is often a poor cover up for a deep inner sense of emptiness. The power games, the politics, and infighting and taking their toll on everybody. Both the top and the bottom, organizations are more often than not play fields for the unfulfilling pursuit of our egos, inhospitable to the deeper yearnings of our souls.(p.4)”
How can we all begin to see the damage we’re doing to ourselves and others and begin to sense a space of peace and satisfaction that isn’t driven by greed, hatred,and delusion?
I’ll leave it there for today..
* I’ve worked on Community Transformation ideas for the past quarter century- initially under the lens of W. Edwards Deming- whose mantra was understand the system.. see http://www.winonaworks.com
I live on Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis, in the Cree influenced anglicized named city/province called Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in Canada. Cree language is one of the languages spoken here and I want to contribute to this blog with a link to Michael, David, Melanie (and anyone else interested) who might be considering alternatives to kinship names and their purpose.
Here is a link: http://apihtawikosisan.com/2011/10/cree-kinship-terms/
I have found a sense of grounding consulting local indigenous people to understand what terms of kinship were/are used in their culture. Kokum and Mushum are examples.
Perhaps a word already exists with the indigenous people, where you Michael, David, Melanie each live, that with consultation, could better support kinship and the transformation of the terms you are seeking?
(and another link where extensive work collecting and preserving this Cree cultural language has been done:
http://dictionary.plainscree.atlas-ling.ca/#/help
<3 Loretta
Words can be so tricky, because of nuances of meaning, as G Michael points out with the example of “patriach”. I’m an NVC newbie/enthusiast, who next month will be training my first group of people at work in NVC. Clearly, I have much to learn.
I looked at what Dr Gabor Maté had to say about capitalism and craziness. It makes me think that there are degrees of capitalism, just as there are varying levels of socialism. Perhaps, in the light of articles like this one (http://humanprogress.org/blog/dont-demonize-capitalism-its-making-the-world-a-better-place), we need to distinguish between “capitalism” and “economic freedom”?
These examples highlight to me the need for great care and clarity in our choice and usage of words.
David, This is a great question about degrees of capitalism and socialism and it has got me going this morning, so here are my thoughts!
It has often appeared to me that neither socialism nor capitalism do well in their extreme forms, but both do best in practice when constrained by the other. The happiest countries to live in by all current measures, the Nordic countries, combine both. This is because what some so lightly call “economic freedom” has been experienced by multitudes as slavery, wage slavery, hunger, incarceration and powerlessness. If capitalism was experienced as freedom, socialism would never have been invented. Nonetheless capitalism has been incredibly successful at increasing material wealth, and not only by exploitation, but also by relatively win-win kinds of productivity, invention, “comparative advantage,” etc.
At one time I thought we just needed enough socialists in the mix to distribute the GDP generated by capitalism, to create national health systems etc., as in the Nordic model. Now, though, we are reaching the limits of where material production can take us, both ecologically (climate change, mass extinctions) and psychologically: drug addiction and depression are rampant in “rich” countries (and growing in Nordic ones too) because, I believe, capitalist values have elevated the competition for individual advantage and eroded community. Capitalist values are effective at increasing GDP and even longevity of life, but the more they rule, the more sacred they become, the more toxic they are to human interdependence, warmth, and biophilia.
Approaches like NVC prioritize empathy and discovery of people’s needs, and in capitalist countries those are increasingly needs for community, meaning, respect, mattering as more than economic units, restorative justice and love, as well as for health, housing, employment. I don’t buy everything in NVC myself but if you take it seriously as a philosophy it blows away both capitalist values, insofar as they prioritize egocentric competition, and socialist values insofar as they harbor demonization of oppressors and naïve belief that the oppressed will inevitably treat people better when they take power. The reason I work with Miki is I think she is doing a great job at expressing the potential societal effects of taking NVC seriously: i.e. taking everyone’s needs seriously.
I hadn’t considered capitalism to be an offspring of patriarchy. That perspective certainly gives a new way of thinking about capitalism. (Though I was already familiar with capitalism producing “accumulation, greed, competition, and exploitation”.)
I became familiar with Gabor Mate in a film called Zeitgeist Moving Forward, which I recommend anyone reading this comment watch (just search on YouTube for it).
As I shared with you before, I am a fan of the Zeitgeist Movement, and the Venus Project. As well as a fan of the Gift Economy possibility you describe in your book Reweaving our Human Fabric.
At some point, we need to shift to a Resource Based Economy, a Gift Economy system, or some other non-money bases system… or face the consequences of not making that shift (which we have already been experiencing those consequences).
To quote the Venus Project website (https://www.thevenusproject.com/resource-based-economy/):
Global problems faced by mankind today are impacting individuals and nations rapidly. Climate change, famine, war, epidemics of deadly diseases and environmental pollution contribute to the long list of global challenges we, as humans, need to promptly address before an eventual catastrophe swiftly becomes inevitable.
Regardless of political philosophy, religious beliefs, or social customs, all socio-economic systems ultimately depend upon natural resources, such as clean air and water, arable land, and the necessary technology and personnel to maintain a high standard of living.
Modern society has access to highly advanced technologies and can make available food, clothing, housing, medical care, a relevant educational system, and develop a limitless supply of renewable, non-contaminating energy such as geothermal, solar, wind and tidal.
It is now possible to have everyone on Earth enjoy a very high standard of living with all of the amenities that a prosperous civilization can provide. This can be accomplished through the intelligent and humane application of science and technology.
Individuals and interest groups are governed by laws that demand maximum profit where possible. These laws are inherent in the monetary system prevalent in most countries today – capitalism. The basic principles of capitalism demand exponential growth at all cost causing financial cataclysms such as the 1929s Great Depression in the United States and the recent financial crisis of 2007-08.
We are separated by borders and beliefs which make it impossible for us to arrive at relevant solutions while being divided ideologically. Most of our problems today are technical but we are still looking for solutions through political means. We need to accept that eliminating these global threats requires the employment of methodologies rather than personal opinions.
The Venus Project proposes a holistic approach with a global socio-economic system that utilizes the most current technological and scientific advances to provide the highest possible living standard for all people on Earth. The proposed system is called Resource Based Economy. The term and meaning was coined by Jacque Fresco, the founder of The Venus Project.
In a Resource Based Economy all goods and services are available to all people without the need for means of exchange such as money, credits, barter or any other means. For this to be achieved all resources must be declared as the common heritage of all Earth’s inhabitants. Equipped with the latest scientific and technological marvels mankind could reach extremely high productivity levels and create abundance of resources.
Resource Based Economy concerns itself with three main factors, namely Environmental, Technological and Human. We invite you to investigate further into these factors and discover more about The Venus Project and Resource Based Economy.
Thank-you for your work, posts and books. Inspirational to me as supports for my NVC and related thoughts and, as able, behaviours.
I read the essence of your Patriarchy post to be that humans have, with agriculture and settled communities, followed a strategy that has been realized by ‘power over’ rather than ‘power with’. As an economist, I believe that capitalism has, in spite of many positive outcomes, managed to create an incredibly cruel world for most, and one of huge ignorance for many. This has become more pronounced with ‘marketing’ in the last 100 – 150 years, and ‘neoliberalism’ in particular in the last 40-50. Those said, I do believe that I must continue to work to being the change I wish to see – being a person who thinks and acts nonviolently, and helps to create a system that is human (and life based) rather than patriarchal in the negative sense.
Blessings,
John Taylor
Although I have had these or similar insights for decades–and the benefit of coming from two matriarchal lineages–my sense is we may need another term. This is not based on my reaction–as I have long agreed–but on the reaction of men on my FB page of 10,000 members. There are some very bright men, even ope-minded ones, who wrote they were turned off at the first word, Patriarchy. I disagree with them, but I can see it. For the few men who have embraced nurturing a family or a community, this is their only word now. They’ve had to weather White Privilege (some in my case are white, some not), accusations of being sexist, racist, etc.
So, my background is somewhat in languaging,as a writer, healthcare professional, teacher and student of NLP. I doubt my skills are as well-honed as Miki’s. The only alternative I could come up with is “Ownership” as that is an almost parallel word for something that matrilineal or matriarchal societies did not consider in their “we/our” community as compared to the dominant society’s “mine: and “us/them” paradigm. This would be just as offensive and misunderstood probably, but perhaps this is just a jumping off point. Maybe there is a word in Hebrew or another language that would have less misunderstanding associated with it.
it is a pity that I have to give so much of my personal info to post this.
Thanks for what you wrote about the word “patriarchy”, Felicia. It very much chimes with my experience.
For all that I read Miki acknowledging that boys are as much victims of domination culture as girls are…
…for all that intellectually I am aware that she understands that the “pink” and “blue” flavours of controlling and programming, and cutting away parts of children’s expression and awareness (with anger, shame and violence) is done as much by female parents as by male parents, or as much by female advertising executives as male ones….
…for all that Miki explicitly says that she doesn’t blame men or anybody in the end….
… emotionally the word “patriarchy” just lands for me as blame of men, and I believe that that connotation makes it harder to reach men when we define the problem in those terms.
Let me tell you how that is from my point of view – when I read Miki choosing to name our domination system as “patriarchy” and defining its fundamental identity as stemming from men controlling women, it brings up old pain and shame for me around my gender, and the longing for acceptance, belonging, support. With that pain and shame present for me, it takes a lot of concentration to hear and give attention to the points that Miki is trying to make, and I’m someone who agrees with 99% of those points, so imagine what it would take for someone whose views and beliefs about the world were different.
There’s a second layer of cultural programming / surgery that happened for me, and maybe for many more boys of my generation growing up (I’m about 40).
The first layer is the one that Miki talks about when she says: [‘boys are brutalized in ways that girls are not in order to prepare them for positions of domination. As bell hooks says, “Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term ‘masculinity’) is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns. He learns that his core feelings cannot be expressed if they do not conform to the acceptable behaviors sexism defines as male. Asked to give up the true self in order to realize the patriarchal ideal, boys learn self-betrayal early and are rewarded for these acts of soul murder.” ‘]
The second layer is a kind of blanket expulsion from righteousness that our feminist mothers laughed at in their reactions to their old pain: all men are bastards, all men are potential rapists. etc
In a way, there’s been a kind of catch 22 for boys like me – you’re supposed to deny your vulnerability in order to be a man (or you’ll be thrown out of the tribe in one form or another), and if you succeed and you are a man (whatever that means) then you’re one of the bad guys anyway.
Etymologically, patriarchy is rule of the father, matriarchy = rule of the mother, but I grew up in the UK in the 80’s, under the rule of the Queen (who was a mother), and Margaret Thatcher (who was a mother). My Dad was kind of absent and drained from workaholism, and it was my Mum (she was a mother too 😉 ) who ran things, and called most of the shots, and performed the necessary cultural conditioning in the way she was taught by her father and mother – by shouting, by violence and the threat of violence, and through the use of guilt through the story that we were responsible for the feelings of others.
Don’t get me wrong, I accept that the “pink” flavour of our cultural conditioning is and was as bad or worse for many or more little girls growing up. In the grand scheme of things, I’m lucky to have been born who I was, to the parents I was.
I just don’t believe that the real identity of this problem and system is “patriarchy”, because it would be no better of the gender roles were reversed (and was no better or different for many people for whom these gender roles were reversed – it amounts to the same thing). I think the problem is hierarchy generally, and the surgical removal of parts of children with anger, and shame, violence and the threat of violence, which then leaves us acting out our childhood trauma for the rest of our lives like headless chickens. Until we choose to face it all, of course, or pass it on to the next generation.
And Miki, I know that you know this, and I feel confused, and discouraged, when I see that you choose to describe the problem in gendered terms – I feel a weariness, and a sadness, and an old familiar longing for belonging, connection, support, fellowship – for tribe. Maybe I’m just longing for it to be easy to feel accepted, and there’s something about “patriarchy” that I really struggle with. Maybe it’s just fear that when someone uses it, it’s a return to one of the two layers- maybe I rebel against being caught and defined externally.
And, you know, of course we live in a patriarchy, or at least a hierarchy mostly made up of men, and Jesus Christ there are a lot of blind psychopathic decisions made in the name of profit, and lust, and addiction by guys who were systematically removed from their humanity from a young age. But if we’re going to transition to something else, don’t we want to at least try to bring them along too? Defining the problem in terms of male rule doesn’t seem like a strategy that’s going to lead to co-operation and connection.
And I’m wondering what’s alive in you as you read this 😉
This is actually a response to Richard, not only or specifically to Felicia. The WordPress comment function on this website doesn’t appear to allow for nested replies.
I hear deeply the pain of experiencing what I say as somehow laying blame on men. There is so much agony that men endure as boys, and I know, from so many men I have spoken with and worked with over the years, just how incredibly vulnerable to blame and shame that leaves men (all of us, and especially men, and even more so men in positions of privilege in society).
I hear all this, and I am quite committed to continue to wrestle with this while also recognizing that there is something that continues to feel exactly true for me about the use of the word patriarchy while at the very same time i make such a distinction between the father principle and men, individually or as a group.
It is also fascinating to me to know that matriarchy is not the mirror image of patriarchy. the root “arche” in Greek has two meanings: one is “rule” as in oligarchy. The other, though, is source or origin, as in archeology, which is the study of what was earlier, closer to the origin or source.
Those brave women who study matriarchal societies, past and present, up against tremendous odds in the academic world and beyond, are absolutely certain, based on their research and much evidence that is not studied much by mainstream archeology and anthropology, that these societies were not at all ruled by women. Rather, they were revering mothering and life, and by extension the birth-giving powers of women. An indigenous woman I know told me that in some languages there is no word for men or fathers; there are only mothers and children. Everyone was cared for in these societies, according to the research that has been conducted by these researchers.
You may want to look at the article I posted recently that goes into the transition into patriarchy at much greater length, and it may perhaps give you even more sense of how much tenderness and compassion I hold for all of us at the unspeakable tragedy that has brought so much suffering to just about all of us except exceedingly few who are either still born into the few remaining matriarchal societies or into communities or families where they receive adequate care for their human hearts and bodies, especially early on in life. You can find this on the resources tab on this website.
I urge you and others to come to the “overcoming patriarchy” calls, where men and women come together to take on this extraordinary weight. There is immense beauty and depth to the explorations that happen there. You can find out about these calls starting here: https://thefearlessheart.org/overcoming-patriarchy-calls/.
Thank you for engaging with me. It will take a lot of us doing a lot of hard conversations to get fully aligned for the project of salvaging what can be saved about life and humans in particular.
Miki
I’ve enjoyed reading this article and some of the comments too. What is coming up for me is the do-ability and the scale of it. It is a vast topic. I am thinking about the law that a son gets the ownership of land and property by default in many (if not all cultures) and not the daughters. This legal act needs to be changed to equal share in all children. Coming from India – the ripple effects of patriarchy have gone over the top in both rural and urban cultures. Having to get women to be married-off to another man so parents do not have to endure the ‘burden’ is a common thing here, still prevalent.
What I also see is the need for respect and acceptance from the genders – the ying and the yang, with the physical/ biological/ chemical differences. I am thinking birthing, hunting, care, dependability on both sides and thus the need for harmony.
These days I can see change happening in the world – in the larger picture, compared to 50 years ago – ex voting rights, clothing, school education etc. However, I believe my generation- 30s – has swung on the opposite side in presenting their case for empowerment, expression and freedom. Both the sides the needs are true but the strategy isn’t. And in the middle the conflicts between them are soaring. Women’s struggle for power in their adulthood and men’s struggle for their expression comes to a point where they try to singularly act on it as if to prove it to someone and without any kindness on themselves – guided by the inner educator who lives by punishment and rewards.
At the moment all I want to say is thank you for this article. I think this is the movement I have been waiting for. I need to work on it now : )
The Patriarchy Miki outlines here is not accidental. It is self-aware and has an agenda. It has dominated our planet for at least 7,000 years. The power mongers pass their privilege down through the ages in elite bloodlines. They act behind the scenes through institutions like organized religions, central banking, and governments of every kind. They have no particular ties to nationality, and play the nations against one another like pieces on a chess board. They are skilled at controlling through the media, entertainment, and through power structures that indoctrinate us from birth, including education and religion. They infiltrate and use everything that we try to establish. They infiltrate and pervert all of our best work. They work with dark spiritual rituals and abuses. This only sounds bizarre because the truth of our spiritual nature and its continuing striving toward consciousness evolution has been intentionally obscured in favor of scientific materialism. This way, we don’t see their enduring work at a level beyond individual lifetimes. And we don’t realize the power we possess, both individually and as a united humanity. We are their tools when we play their hierarchical games, assuming our place in the pecking order and enjoying our petty privileges and tiny advantages. If we allow them to divert us with hatred and division, they win, and humanity loses.
The difference between patriarchy as a noble family responsibility and The Patriarchy as a system of control, violence and separation has been well noted here, as has the difference between toxic Capitalism and Conscious Capitalism. I think Miki points us to the inner transformation we must make in order for our social organization to become healthy.
The Austrian initiate and visionary, Rudolf Steiner, who opened for humanity the path to an educational system that frees the human Spirit to bring its unique contribution to human evolution (Waldorf Education) and the path to bring health and vitality to the soil and sustainable practices to farming (Biodynamic Agriculture) also presented a path for healthy social organization. Assuming a basic principle of human interaction is respect for the free will of every individual, and every individual as having a Divine nature, Steiner delineated a healthy threefold organization of society. This threefold order assigns the three virtues associated with free society – liberty, equality and fraternity – each to a specific sphere of social organization. Liberty should be the hallmark of the cultural sphere, encompassing the way the people in a society learn, including spiritual nurturance, education, and the arts. Liberty as its principle allows us the best chance of organizing these aspects in a way that best nurtures the human spirit. Equality must guide all interactions in the sphere of rights – in lawmaking, the justice system and correction. Fraternity is the principle needed in the sphere of Association, including economic association. Steiner saw that an understanding of the three spheres and the guidance of each of them by their proper principles would lead to a healthy social system. Inappropriate use of these principles, or misunderstanding the unique needs of each sphere of activity, even though they are virtues when applied to the appropriate sphere, leads to unwanted outcomes. For example, Equality in education would not give each individual what s/he needs to grow and thrive and to fulfill the individual’s unique mission. Fraternity (brother/sisterhood) is necessary to social and economic structure, but poorly supports lawmaking lacking Equality or education and spiritual nurturing lacking Liberty. Threefold Social Organization could work with any system, but I’d bet that it works best in small systems. Maybe we aren’t meant to organize in larger formations like the artificial nations we see today, which are too unwieldy and therefore prone to our dissociation from their processes, resulting in corruption.
I think the choice of vocabulary we have made to discuss hugely meaningful topics is now actually perpetuating the status quo that we are trying to shift out of. Patriarchy, privilege, like so many words seeking to bring about change, suggest dualism. And with dualism, separation. The opposite of patriachy is….matriarchy ???? that is just a linguistic opposite, from pater to mater. Do read some of the horrors of ancient China’s matriarchal society which had NOTHING to do with nurturing. The word privilege invokes its opposite- lack of privilege. The haves and the have nots. White….is the opposite of white coloured? Really? Scandinavian white vs mediterranean white??? And how about the olive skinned? Coloured? Or white? Or maybe the opposite of white is ‘of colour’. The debate around which came first, language or cognition, has concluded an interdependant relationship between the two. So perhaps the words patriarchy, feminism, privilege have served their purpose in causing some shift in our thinking – and that shft now needs to moult once more into a new vocabulary that keeps us moving forward rather than getting stuck, as we have now, in conversations about identifying then empathising with the most injured parties.
There is I think only one word that pulls us all together under one umbrella: power over. This is our universal pain, across all stereotypes. It’s about the hurt that all human beings inflict upon one another. The rest are strategies- hurting women, race, gender, spiritual beliefs, having money …plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
I’d love to see a language evolve now that can open up conversations about deep human pain and the creation of a power with each other, learning how to meet our needs not at the expense of the other.
You say you choose this word, over others because “the shift to separation and control coincided with making paternity central”. I don’t understand this claim:
Who made paternity central, and when? Yuval Noah-Harari, an acclaimed historian, says historians do not have sufficient data to say what was the state of affairs concerning patriarchy before the agricultural revolution, and clearly separation and control began long before that.
I find “separation and control” an ambiguous term. You can find various forms of separation and control in the animal kingdom, whether in patriarchic (baboons), matriarchic (geladas, elephants), or neutral (gorillas, rhesus, chimpanzees, rats) species.
Moreover, it is a quantitative term. It is much more logical for me to assume that separation and control increased gradually, slowly, over millions of years of evolution, than to assume it simply appeared out of thin air the moment mankind started… farming?
Dominance in the living kingdom began even before social animals evolved.
I’d love more clarity on this. I think the determined choice of a term so easy to misinterpret, so easy to drive men away from NVC (which is so dear to me), calls for more clarity.
Hi there,
I love your questions, and I plan on answering them. It may take me some time, and I want you to know in meantime that I am holding this with care.
Miki
Hi Miki
Thank you for this lovely outline of your thoughts regarding Patriarchy and Men, which is something I have been exploring from the inside through dealing with my pain and trauma, and in trying to explore and learn what it means to be a man, and how to develop a more healthy form of masculinity than the ‘toxic’ one we live under – all of us.
And I loved you quoting bell hooks’ fabulous book ‘The Will To Change’ – I wept when I read it the first time, as at last I was reading someone, and particularly a woman, describing all I had been struggling to express.
I wept again on reading your acknowledgement here too, how in our Patriarchy conditioning ‘boys are brutalized in ways that girls are not in order to prepare them for’ being a man.
My current exploration stems from a realisation that we have yet to separate our sense of men, from our sense of Patriarch, and as such we do not question ‘when so many men behave so awfully, so abusively, so violently, with such hatred – WHY do they behave so? When so many men seem to be so unhappy, unfulfilled, unable to care for themselves or others, so lost, lonely, and disconnected – what happened to them? What happened to these innocent lovely male babies such that they grew into such ‘bastards’ (As in the 80’s ‘All men are Bastards’..)
As Laura Bates states in Men Who Hate.., ‘We do not talk about male perpetrators of violence against women.. we describe them as ‘beasts’ and ‘monsters’,.. (but) we do not study them. In fact we rarely think about them at all.’ !
It is time we did start to ask the questions – Why are men so hurt? It is time to separate Man from Patriarch, and put the latter away and liberate the men.. liberate our souls from the murder that is invested upon us in this brutal system.
Senan
Yes…liberate “all” of us….”all” of our souls.