Patriarchy gets a bad rap

Patriarchy and patriarchal world culture is blamed for everything that’s wrong in our world right now.

Climate change? Patriarchy.

Child trafficking? Patriarchy.

War? Patriarchy.

Bad traffic? Patriarchy.

But that’s like saying everything is Dad’s fault.

That’s like saying dads everywhere are inherently bad.

Here’s the deal. It’s not patriarchy.

It’s misogyny.

I’m a word slut, so we’re going to take a little dive into the dictionary.

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, patriarchy is “​​social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line.”

In the last 20 years, patriarchy has come to mean the systems by which men have and retain power to the disadvantage of other groups, especially women and children.

Here’s where I might get skewered.

I don’t think a system where the father is the leader of the family, or men are the leaders of the government is inherently bad. I think it could actually be quite good. (How this could be good is a whole other conversation.)

EXCEPT our culture for the last several thousand years or so has had a thing against women, to put it mildly.

To put it bluntly, western civilization has for an EXTREMELY long time mistrusted, devalued, been afraid of and come to hate women.

This is misogyny.

Back to Merriam Webster! The definition of misogyny is “hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against women.” I would go further to say it’s the hatred of the “feminine” in any person or form it shows up.

Sound familiar?

When men are raised in a culture that is misogynistic, they will, even with their best intentions still have some level of bias against women. If you’d like to go more into this, philosopher Kate Manne’s book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny unpacks this well. Confession - I’ve checked it out from the library and skimmed it but haven’t read the full thing yet. Anyone want to read it with me?

And for the men who don’t have the best intentions, our culture gives permission to and absolution for the worst violence against women.

And for women? It gets in us too.

So many (all?) women in our culture have a deeply ingrained internalized dislike of themselves. A sense that there’s just something wrong with them. No matter how successful they are. How pretty they are. How skinny they are. How smart they are. It doesn’t matter. There’s always going to be some reason to dislike themselves.

And, sadly, this often infects our relationships with other women, especially in the work place. There’s competition. Gossip. Back biting. Minimizing. Women can tear each other down and apart.

And, even if we stop doing this to other women, we often still do this to ourselves.

So, I blame misogyny.
If it were just patriarchy, women wouldn’t hurt other women. Women wouldn’t hurt themselves.

The problem is much deeper than “men being in leadership positions.”

The problem is a world that for millennia has hated women.

What to do?

I don’t know about you, but when I think about this, I feel angry. Very angry. Then, sad. And then, defiant. Usually.

There are many things that need to change, many steps that need to be taken. And the first step, at least for me, is always feeling my feels. What to do next, comes more clearly after that.

Moving my body is my favorite way to feel my feels. Some call it dancing. But you don’t have to, if that’s sticky for you.

INVITATION

Put on some music. Let your body express your feelings. Swamp* it out. This could look like punching, stomping, screaming, crying, shaking, gyrating, undulating… Always end with something empowering. Here’s a playlist that I like that works particularly well for this mood. Extra credit if you do it with a friend.

*Sometimes our challenging feels get us stuck in the swamp - a murky, muddy, sticky place where it’s hard to move. Mama Gena coined the phrase “Swamping.” If you don’t know her, she’s awesome.