Why I Use the Word Patriarchy
Dear Sisters and Friends,
If you have been reading my current blog, or earlier versions, you probably have noticed that I regularly use the term ‘patriarchy’ (or ‘patriarchal world culture’).
For a while, I hesitated.
I didn’t want to offend men – many of whom have been my greatest supporters.
I was worried about losing clients.
Some trailblazing women I deeply respect – like Riane Eisler or Scilla Elworthy, don’t like the term for similar reasons.
I get it.
I’ve gotten some angry reactions too, one I especially remember for its ferocity which came in response to a podcast blog. I checked in with my millennial son and asked him if I was being insensitive to men. His reply “Patriarchy is the right word Mom, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
When the movie Barbie came out, I felt relieved that the word had gone mainstream. As Elizabeth Lesser observed (see my substack 10/12/23) in appreciating the movie in spite of some ambivalence , ‘Patriarchy’ was used about 10 times and inspired a CNN male anchor to ask ‘what is patriarchy and how do we dismantle it?’.
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So, what exactly is patriarchy (or a patriarchal world culture)?
Most simply, it is “rule of the father” or the traditional family model. (See wikipedia.)
More profoundly, it is a worldview of domination and control, as opposed to partnership and collaboration, that is driven by a sense of needing to be better than and own more than. It is ‘power over’ versus ‘power with’. It is greed as opposed to living together creatively and interdependently on this planet with each other and with nature.
It is about a one-up, one-down way of thinking.
Since it is ultimately born by male supremacy, which is global, it shows up in just about all social and economic systems. I love a line I heard from Gloria Steinem that she heard from a friend — “I have been married to both a Marxist and a fascist but neither of them took out the garbage.”
In the capitalism-gone-haywire version we have in the U.S. now (and have exported around the globe), it is about rabid individualism, an incessant race to the top, winning at all costs, and a celebration of the few white men, all but one living in this country, who own 40% of the planet’s resources (and have a huge carbon footprint threatening all of us).
You can see its swagger when Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase struts across the stage, or when Elon Musk tells his advertisers to go “f**k themselves”.
It is win-lose. Not win-win.
It is rapacious. It is predatory. At its worst, it is rape culture.
How a society constructs the roles and relations between the female and male halves of humanity affects everything: Our values, our institutions, families - whether it’s authoritarian or democratic, economics, what kind of work is valued, politics, religion . . .
Riane Eisler, The “Dominator Trance”
What so many people still don’t realize is that patriarchy hasn’t been around forever
In Lesser’s view, the best line in the Barbie movie came at the very end where ‘Ruth’, (the character based on the real creator of the doll), says “What can be made can be unmade”.
Patriarchy is the social system that has been in place for thousands of years, but for only a small nanosecond of the total amount of time humans have been on earth.
Before patriarchy, there was no war.
Indeed, for 99% of human history, experts tell us that women and men have lived in partnership, and that patriarchy is more of a “modern” invention, designed for production, not intimate connection, relationship or joy.
A colleague jokingly said the other day something like ‘perhaps the patriarchy is just this little experiment that we’re all now realizing didn’t quite work out and now we’re coming back to wholeness. . .’ (see this Substack, 10/26/23)
I use the word patriarchy because I think calling things what they are is important. With just about every organizational consulting job I have had where the client and system are trying to resolve conflict and move toward positive collaborative change, I start with an assessment of the ‘what is’. I typically use an anonymous questionnaire, and then live facilitation, always providing participants cover for the things that are difficult to say out loud. People will say to me privately “oh, you can’t say this’, “they will never say that’. But bit by bit, I support everyone in creating a clear view of their collective, current reality. That’s when positive change starts to happen.
Awareness works.
Following the climate conversation recently, I have been amazed at humanity’s rising global awareness turning rapidly into action. For decades, the fact that burning fossil fuels was warming our planet in very scary ways was obfuscated with all kinds of disinformation. But now, while the same actors like ExonMobil still push the fake news, there seems to be a broad understanding that fossil fuels are the problem and we need to stop burning them now. Punto.
The same can be true of calling out patriarchy clearly. Like fossil fuels, its time is up.
Patriarchy is at the root of a system of hubris that puts humanity above all other life on the planet -- men over women, white people over black and brown people, rich people over poor people, heteronormative people over the gender fluid.
There is no doubt that patriarchy has been hard on men and all humans for different reasons. (See “How Patriarchy Hurts Men Too.’)
But in my experience if you tell a group of us women that things have been hard on men, we’ll start taking care of them instead of keeping the focus on ourselves.
We need to worry far less about offending men than what the system of patriarchy is doing to us, our children, and the planet that they depend on. Many men want us to do this too.
Women uniquely understand how patriarchy has impacted nature because patriarchy has done the the same to us.
Waking up from what Eisler calls ‘the dominator trance’ is difficult.
It is hard to be a woman in a patriarchal world culture.
And we have the power to change it.
Patriarchy will die when women are no longer complicit with it.
Learning collaborative negotiation and conflict skills and leading the way is key to this transition.
Thanks for tuning in,
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Invitation to reflect . .
Do you use the word ‘patriarchy’? Why or why not?
How does the system of patriarchy impact how we negotiate and resolve disputes?
Can you see a world emerging on the horizon where there is true gender equality and humans living in harmony with nature?
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