I was introduced to the word and the concept behind it as a teen by my mentor slash “guru” and “feminist aunt” Mary Jane. She was (and still is) a brilliant and radical feminist, disguised in the muggle world as a cookie-baking mom of four kids who befriended my mother in the late 1960s through a mutual friend. I recall Mary Jane, ever the provocateur, showing up at some of my mom’s numerous and boisterous parties dressed in a maroon monk’s robe wearing a large women’s liberation medallion (the women’s symbol with a clenched fist inside the circle) hanging from her neck where one might expect to see the Christian cross on a real monk. The words she made up to convey her arguments were just as calculatingly provocative, including her term, “patriarchal pimperialism” to describe male control of women’s sexual lives and behavior.
I throw the term “patriarchy” around a lot in my blog posts and face-to-face discussions and it often feels like most people can’t even process the word, don’t even want to attempt to go there. Comments on my blog posts and Daily KOS diary, both agreeing and disagreeing with my statements, rarely include the term as if the commenter is politely censoring my politically incorrect word even if they are agreeing with all the points I built around it.
Patriarchy, and the male privilege that emanates from it, seems to still be something that people either don’t want to acknowledge, or if acknowledged, don’t want to talk about.
Defining Patriarchy
According to Allan Johnson, the author of The Gender Knot: Unraveling our Patriarchal Legacy, a society is patriarchal “to the degree that it is male-dominated, male-identified, and male-centered.” Despite, let’s call it the “old husbands’ tale”, that women really run everything behind the scenes, the reality of male dominance is clearly seen in the fact that positions of authority are generally held by men or even reserved for men only. In our secular, democratic society, male dominance is no longer official policy, women are enfranchised to vote, own property and otherwise participate fully in business ventures and the work-for-pay world. But still in virtually any venue, or by viewing any amount of media, it is quickly and abundantly clear that it’s still “a man’s world”, where the majority of the positions of authority, in every institution, are held by men.
In many parts of the world positions of political and economic authority, by official policy (backed up by the coercive authority of the state), can only be held by men. Vestiges of this complete and unmitigated patriarchy can be found even in American society in some religious denominations, including Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, and most sects within Islam that I am aware of.
Johnson says that, “Patriarchal societies are male-identified in that the core cultural ideas about what is good, desirable, preferable or normal are associated with how we think about men and masculinity”. He cites the ubiquitous example in our language of the use of the word “man” and male pronouns to encompass both men and women.
I think about our movies (one of our best ongoing sources of cultural mythology) and how we still like our heroic characters to be tough, steely loners, whether in 20th Century westerns or 21st Century sci-fi epics. Both John Wayne and Sigourney Weaver personify these qualities which are generally associated with masculinity rather than femininity. Women increasingly are rising to positions of leadership in our country, but to do so they generally need to display those characteristics of toughness traditionally associated with masculinity; think Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi.
Though things have changed a lot for the better, still in many circumstances displaying traditionally female characteristics risks rebuke. Being sensitive risks being labeled as a “wuss” (or worse) and being relational risks being “all talk”.
The third aspect that Johnson calls out is that patriarchal society is male-centered, focusing on the experience of men as the human experience. He says, “Pick up any newspaper or go to any movie theater and you’ll find stories primarily about men and what they’ve done or haven’t done or what they have to say about either”. Even many of the most successful “chick flicks”, like “Sleepless in Seattle” or “Pretty Women” are still built around a male protagonist, while movies where all the key characters are female, like “Thelma and Louise” or “Fried Green Tomatoes” generally have less broad appeal. Until recently, most medical research was done on men, with the assumption that the results would equally apply to women, which more recently is proving not always to be true. And try looking around the room the next time you are at a restaurant or in a meeting at work. Even when there is a fairly even mix of women and men around the table, in most (though not all) instances the men do more of the talking. Also notice how often when women begin to dominate a conversation, men tend to drift off.
A key point here is that patriarchy is generally not an explicit ongoing effort by men to dominate women. It is a long-standing system that we are born into and participate in, mostly unconsciously. It is like a game where we quickly learn to internalize and then stop thinking about the rules. Those “rules” are reinforced by the simplest of unconscious acts, like men and women separating into different rooms at a family gathering, or roughhousing with young male children while cooing and complimenting the looks of their female counterparts.
That patriarchal system invariably exhibits a hierarchical structure or “pecking order” (either formally set or informally agreed to) where people are ranked and slotted at different levels of the hierarchy. The hierarchy generally sorts people by type, with children and youth at the bottom, men at the top, and women and “out group” men (however that gets defined) somewhere in the middle. People tend to focus on the notable exceptions, the few women that outdo the guys at their own game, the “iron maidens”, “steal magnolias”, etc, that “claw their way to the top”. But at the top of the pyramid, almost invariably, the “alpha” males fight it out for dominance.
Dominance... that’s what it’s all about. Riane Eisler calls the patriarchal system the “dominator model”, which features “power over” (rather than “power with”) others. You fight to stay on top or you’re a loser. The sports we love are the perfect metaphor. People love the teams that routinely win, that “crush” their opponents to assert their dominance. We hate losers... part of the unwritten rules of the patriarchal paradigm.
Perhaps the darkest facet of patriarchy is that even many of the men caught up in its highly ranked structures, though perhaps unthinking beneficiaries of male privilege feel constrained and even powerless. But an acceptable escape valve in many patriarchal structures is to express frustration and anger towards those “under” your authority in the pecking order, often expressed as coercion or even violence. The perfect metaphor here is “the belt” that the archetypal angry father threatens his kids with, even if it is rarely used. In my own family of origin, and many others that I have heard about, there is generally that male family “tyrant”, that everyone feared.
While most people in a patriarchal hierarchy accept their place in the pecking order, those that do not are generally dealt with by ridicule, coercion and even violence where necessary. Men often deny the existence or at least the power of patriarchy because they do not feel a sense of freedom, a sense of real powerfulness within the system. The truth is that it constricts and restrains everyone, not just the people at the very bottom of its hierarchy. The “fathers” or “bosses” are often held too accountable for the behavior and performance of their charges, to the point that they are overwhelmed by the stress and responsibility of this control. They are expected to take great care of the people beneath them in the hierarchy and work diligently to engineer (not merely help facilitate) their charges support, comfort, safety and success.
Like any other “command and control” system, it tends too readily to corruption, alienation and lack of ownership, particularly by the people who find themselves toward the bottom of the pyramid. In my opinion, to the extent in recent years (or centuries) that our families and larger institutions have moved away from this model, these institutions have become more supportive of the continuing development of society and the human race.
Perpetuating Patriarchy
So how does a 5000 year old system of ranking and hierarchy with men inexorably at the top perpetuate itself through hundreds of generations and never get written off as archaic and crumble into the dust of history? Why was I so embarrassed in my late forties when I was deftly tossing a football with several slightly younger men (enjoying a moment of perhaps jocular camaraderie), who then threw it to my teenage son and were aghast when he threw it back to them, as it were, “like a girl”? What ancient warrior ethos had I violated in not properly training my son, an ethos that still somehow held sway somewhere in my subconscious? What gives this system its staying power, and does its longevity speak to its continuing merit?
After 54 years in this incarnation, growing up as a shy kid often afraid to fully be my self, my take is that the perpetuation of this system, which in my opinion is way past its “out date” is all about fear. Fear is one of the two great motivators in the world and the one that takes the lesser amount of courage to act upon. Its pervasiveness and power is what FDR was calling out in the height of the Great Depression when he said that there is “nothing to fear but fear itself”. I would say it comes from not being evolved enough to relax and try and understand things for what they truly are, an “unknowingness” that some scholars say is the original meaning of the word “sin”.
I believe fear is the basis of greed and materialism. We fear that there is not enough for everyone and that we must horde as much as one can for the survival of our selves and our own, however narrowly or broadly we define that group. The way that this and our other fears eat away at us also contributes by leading us to eat too much, buy too much, and otherwise attempt to medicate ourselves with tobacco, alcohol, other drugs, and excessive consumption generally to ease our fears.
Fear is also the motivator for racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and other such creations of out-groups and “others” who endanger the privilege that we mostly cannot admit that we have. And coming out of these rankings, fear motivates violence in some, including from the in-groups trying to maintain their power and control (in a context of scarcity) and out-groups excluded from power and respect, struggling for such or at least to get revenge against “the man”. It’s a vicious cycle, with the presence of these violent groups on the periphery of hierarchical power motivating those within the hierarchy of power to protect themselves by their own sanctioned and proactive aggression and violence.
The other great motivator is love, which is the natural bond between parent and child, the earliest and most fundamental of human relations. Just as fear begets fear, love begets love, and I for one live in the continuing grace of the love that my parents bestowed on me as a young child, which has given me the strength to get through the tribulations I have encountered at points of my life after those first years. In as profound a statement as FDR’s on fear was the Beatles, “All you need is love”.
I am convinced that there is a complex mixture of love and fear woven in with elements of denial and settling for the path of least resistance that contribute to the survival and perpetuation of these ancient beliefs and protocols of patriarchy, at times seemingly as strong as ever, into even this new century. They are all tied up with fathers “giving away” their daughters and mothers pulling away from their sons so they don’t become “sissies”, as well as a host of other societal rituals.
It is stunning to me to hear even the most progressive parents convinced that boys wanting to play with guns (and turning Tinker Toys and even random sticks into weapons when the more explicit facsimiles are not available) is somehow a genetic trait of their maleness, and not socially constructed. What is that all about? In the urban environment I live in, more than 99% of the men you encounter are not carrying a weapon, yet it seems that the overwhelming majority of adult males in movies do? What is that all about?
And then what about this whole “sissy” thing? How many stories did I grow up with in movies and TV (our contemporary mythology) about boys who are bullied or accused of being soft or weak “wusses” (or worse) whose shy or nerdy dads must rise to this profound crisis, embrace their “real” manhood and teach their sons (but not so often their daughters) to fight back.
Ours is a culture that celebrates, even worships the “alpha” male champions on the sports field and cutthroat millionaires (including the ridiculously ego-involved Donald Trump) in the world of business. While we go gaga over these alpha type males and there stellar competitive abilities, it is a woman’s face and figure that command that similar level of star quality. (A comparably great looking young man without the alpha skill set is derided as a “boy toy”!) Women are one more trophy that men compete for, and a smart woman (or her father in more traditional societies) holds out for the best “catch” and the most competitive offer.
This is all tied up with the popular cultural mythology that stealthily perpetuates patriarchy, a society built around and championing men and all the qualities of “manliness” that they exhibit, with women playing the secondary role of motivator as the beautiful princess, the trophy wife, the loving and long-suffering mom, or the face that launches 1000 warships. And though it seems to be about the positive elements of success and beauty, does it really belie a fear-based mythology of avoiding being a sissy male or an ugly woman? Have these most sophomoric ridicules really driven the perpetuation of these ancient protocols through 50 centuries?
When exposed and called out, these beliefs and protocols of male supremacy stink like rotten carved pumpkins left out on the front porch too long after Halloween, yet somehow we ignore our noses and allow these “traditions” to persist, to be celebrated in our daily conversations and popular culture, and in many venues continue to thrive.
And how did it all get started? Whether or not you believe the genesis of the “dominator model” put forward by archeologist Marija Gimbutas as synthesized in Riane Eisler’s book, The Chalice and the Blade, at some point in its history, it looks like the human race’s natural inclination for love got overwhelmed by fear. In the presence of so much fear, the adaptable human animal developed a new defense mechanism, a sort of original “martial law” or “circling the wagons”, where the strongest and most aggressive would be ceded the lion share of power to protect the rest of their clan from what was, or was at least perceived, as an increasingly dangerous world.
Caught up and overwhelmed by the power of fear, or maybe just giving in to the path of least resistance, each generation passed this “martial law” on to the next by transmitting it with fear mixed with the more natural love for ones progeny. After many generations these strategies for transmission became normalized, even seemingly trivialized to the tale of the 98 pound male weakling who has the buff bully kick sand in his face at the beach and then walk off with his girlfriend to boot, but still carrying the force of profound fear from the distant past.
Given this context, Allan Johnson says in his book The Gender Knot, that, “Men must be aggressive and develop a capacity for violence in order to defend society and family.” Since I am convinced that the natural relationship between parent and child is one of love, this fear-based training of sons to be aggressive was originally done in what was felt to be a context of love, “tough love”, the only form of love that could protect the succeeding generations going forward from the fears generated in a context of scarcity.
At some points in history the fear and danger was probably real. But this system of “martial law” passed on from one generation of fathers to the next at some point became no longer necessary, yet the mechanisms of fear used for its transmission were so powerful that the fear was internalized in the subconscious to the point of seeming natural. The system developed a nearly unstoppable logic, momentum and according to Johnson, “Perhaps the bedrock of patriarchal ideology is the belief that it is necessary, socially desirable, and rooted in a universal sense of tradition and history.”
I for one am convinced that patriarchy is not!
But every day I notice the little things that perpetuate this ancient ethos. Adults roughhousing with little toddler boys while cooing at the little girls. Men and women gravitating to separate rooms at a party. Seemingly knowing pronouncements made that “boys will be boys” or “girls will be girls”, with smiles of agreement from others. Celebration of developmental rituals that turn “boys into men”, and others that maintain women as “girls”.
If you agree with me that developmentally, the human race is ready to be done with this archaic system, seemingly burned into our psyches and maybe even our DNA, then the very challenging question is how.
Challenging Patriarchy
So once you define the contemporary manifestation of this ancient way of being, and maybe understand how it has managed to perpetuate itself through a couple hundred generations of parents to children, how then do we address challenging and working towards ending this (what I would call) perpetuated vestige of an archaic system for organizing society?
Allan Johnson, in his book The Gender Knot, says the solution starts with acknowledging patriarchy exists as a collective system with its own internal logic, conventional wisdom and “paths of least resistance”, rather than as bad behavior by a bunch of individual men towards women. A systemic problem is not resolved by trying to identify “bad apples” and somehow weed them out or limit their influence. Most men and women participate in this system without consciously intending to oppress or be oppressed, without even being aware perhaps that the system exists.
The idea of “paths of least resistance” is critical here. When I’m part of say a discussion with only males present, particularly people I may not know well or that have some authority over me, and someone makes a sexist joke about women, the easiest and perhaps safest thing to do is to laugh along (for show) or at least shut up. Or when you are put in a situation of acknowledging maybe some inadvertent, insensitive behavior on your part towards one or more women, not to resort to saying something like, “Well you know how we men are!” and just laugh it off. Another example would be acknowledging that your daughter is “daddy’s girl” even if you don’t define your relationship with your daughter in those terms.
Based on the understanding of this oppressive system, Johnson says that it is important to take responsibility for patriarchy and your role in it without accepting the guilt or blame for the creation of the system. This gets back to the idea of a bad system versus bad behavior by individual men. To take on all that guilt and blame is too heavy and overwhelming a load, and if anything, generally makes you less effective in doing anything about it. Yet it is important to understand that even passive participation in patriarchal conventional wisdom and its paths of least resistance perpetuates the ideology.
Finally, after acknowledging patriarchy and taking responsibility for our part in it (without guilt or shame), it is important to muster the courage when we can to take little risks to challenge those conventions, including facing the discomfort of others if we rock the boat. “Pick your battles when you can be most effective”, as my mother would say. Here are some of Johnson’s suggestions, along with his basic advice to “think small, humble, and doable rather than large, heroic, and impossible”, but given that, “Don’t let other people set the standard for us”...
1. Find little ways to withdraw support from paths of least resistance and people’s choices to follow them, including our own.
Whenever I walk into a party or some other social situation with several circles of people, if all the men are in one grouping and all the women in another, I will generally break the “gender barrier” and go join the group of women. I find it so interesting how the dynamics of a group change (generally from my experience for the better) when the group transitions from single gender to mixed, even with a single individual of the other gender. Breaking that gender barrier reduces the tendency for normative statements about a gulf between men and women akin to the “men are from Mars and women from Venus” idea, which I believe to be a key premise that perpetuates this ancient ideology.
2. Dare to make people feel uncomfortable, beginning with ourselves.
The classic situation is being in a group of men when someone tells a sexist joke that disparages women or men that are not behaving in a traditionally masculine way. Depending on the joke and the spirit in which it was delivered, I might acknowledge that it is funny, but then add, “but you got to admit its kind of sexist”. The joke teller may then acknowledge that and perhaps apologize, or maybe argue the point or political correctness generally. All these scenarios, if handled with sensitivity can lead to make implicit patriarchal conventions more explicit and acknowledged.
3. Openly choose and model alternative paths.
When I am in a casual discussion with other men, I often try to lead the discussion away from talking about inanimate objects and their attributes, including cars, computers and other high-value possessions, and towards talking about people, relationships and feelings. At a minimum, a great entrée with guys you don’t know very well is to ask, “So how do you know so-and-so?” or “how did you meet?”
4. Actively promote change in how systems are organized around patriarchal values and male privilege.
When you are out in the larger community maybe volunteering within a religious congregation or some other community group, and the need arises to form a committee and designate a chair for that committee, be proactive to suggest a woman in the group, that you think would do a good job, be the chair. If you encounter a leadership or other decision-making group that is all men (or even all women), publicly note that you are surprised the group is single gender and ask the members if they have any thoughts on that.
5. Rally men along with women to challenge patriarchal practices, since men generally wield more collective control over the social systems that need to change.
It is not fair and generally not as effective to expect members of the unprivileged group to do all the heavy lifting of challenging that privilege. Again, when the “gender barrier” is broken and men join women in challenging a particular item of male privilege (like watching the football game rather than helping clear the dishes), there is a paradigm shift away from any women’s sphere versus men’s sphere or any (even playful) talk of the battle between the sexes. As long as only women are complaining it is much easier for men to be in denial about their behavior or claim some sort of prerogative to “be one of the guys”.
It is most often just the little things that I have grown to find fairly easy to do, without risking too much embarrassment of myself or others. But every little “picked battle” is important, and if you are smart like a good army general, you will learn to fight your battles on favorable ground, when you have it, but then keep your powder dry for another day, when you don’t. (So there I go making a military analogy which may resonate more with the men reading this piece than some of the women!) Hopefully you get my meaning.
