Why Women Protect The Patriarchy
The patriarchy is a symbiotic system that involves both men and women. While many women claim to want to overthrow it, the truth is, just as many women protect it as men. Here's why.
In my last article, I wrote about America’s rage problem and how it relates to people being divided. While I may use the Bible to support some of my ideas and theories, it’s always important to understand that the Bible has been misused, mistranslated and misinterpreted by men in power for centuries. Just because something is in the Bible doesn't make it inherently right or wrong, just as someone saying something is in the Bible doesn’t make them inherently right. It is, however, a book that was written by real people over the course of thousands of years, so even outside of a “Holy” book it can shed some important insight into the modern world.
In my last article I explained how I believe human beings have two primary needs: purpose and relationship. I also explained how I believe that after the Fall, we became divided. Adam became blindly focused on pursuing purpose and Eve on pursing relationship as a means of fulfillment. In other words, they each began to find their identity or their sense of worth and value in either purpose or relationship. I believe that is the basis of patriarchy.
It is no secret that women can be absolutely insane when it comes to reproducing and even more so the more deeply tied to the patriarchy they are. Women will drain their bank accounts and drive their families into debt just to pay for expensive infertility and IVF treatments if they can’t get pregnant. And that’s after they’ve spent months, if not years, freaking out, stressing out and battling anxiety and depression.
Even when told that getting pregnant might be life threatening, some women will still blindly and zealously pursue a pregnancy. To make matters worse, some women will utterly destroy the very relationship they claim to be most important to them in their zeal to produce offspring. In many cases, they can even become suicidal or clinically depressed if they can’t. Why?
Patriarchy teaches women that a woman’s highest purpose or calling is that of being a mother. Eventually, not being a mother will eat away at a woman’s sense of value and worth until she feels utterly worthless if she is not a mother.
Even if a woman does not gain the sense of value and worth that she thought she would by becoming a mother, many will still ferociously protect the image of maternal bliss anyway. I think most people would be shocked to find out just how many “happy” mothers on Instagram genuinely hate their lives. Women entangled in patriarchal systems can even develop an absolutely fierce hatred for women that can procreate and simply choose not to.
Caged people cannot tolerate the existence of free people.
In spite of what many believe, it’s not actually men that are the primary drivers behind overturning Roe v. Wade, it’s women. Perhaps most prominently, a group of women led by Marjorie Dannenfelser, who was one of the earliest leaders of the Susan B. Anthony List. Ironically, the actual founder of the list, Rachel MacNair, left the organization when Dannenfelser became too militant.
What is perhaps most shocking is the number of prominent men who do not want to overturn Roe, but are beholden to Dannenfelser and her $78 million in annual campaign funds. If Dannenfelser was really interested in reducing abortion, she could raise funds to create support for women, thus eliminating the need for abortion, yet she does not. Because it isn’t really about abortion or saving children, let alone helping mothers have and provide for their children, it’s about power.
What many people miss about Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is that it wasn’t actually men that brought about Gilead on their own. It was women like Serena Joy who became so twisted with bitterness about their own inability to conceive that they willingly gave up their own rights in order to gain control of the babies of women who could. We see this today in the use of the phrase “domestic supply of infants” found in the Supreme Court draft.
Women like Serena Joy became so blinded by their own baby lust that they literally gave away all of their freedoms on a silver platter. By the time they realized what they had done, it was too late - the men had already seized power. Not just over the country, but over them, thanks to their overwhelming willingness to give up their own rights and freedoms if it meant they could take away someone else’s. There is a powerful lesson in that for those who choose to hear.
That is the sick, twisted symbiosis of patriarchy. Patriarchy teaches that women don’t have any value or worth outside of mating and motherhood, which means women who are most deeply rooted in patriarchy have the sickest desire for motherhood. Women that know they are valuable regardless of whether they have children or not, are those least rooted in the patriarchy. When they have children, they usually enjoy motherhood because for them it was a choice. They had children because they wanted to, not because they felt worthless if they didn’t.
Conversely, however, even women outside of religious systems can still feel the weight of a different kind of patriarchy. One that tells them their worth is in being a mother but they can also do it all and have it all. Those women often feel the pressure of being single mothers who also have careers or in some cases, might even support a husband while still doing the lion’s share of domestic duties. Women outside of religion are still not free of patriarchy, it just looks different.
When patriarchal women mate and it doesn’t bring them the sense of satisfaction or fulfillment that they were promised, they can become laser focused on motherhood to fill that hole instead. What’s worse, however, is that they can’t just be mothers, they have to be perfect mothers with perfect children and perfect families, so the sickness just goes on and on. Women can’t just have babies, they have to send them to expensive schools, buy them expensive clothing and involve them in expensive activities - all of which they generally need (or expect) a man to pay for and that is the sick symbiosis of patriarchy.
Women can end up pushing their husbands so hard to produce more, more, more, they either push them away entirely or they end up losing them to a less demanding woman or less demanding lifestyle. Not only do they lose their husbands but they often end up having to pay for all the things they expected a husband to pay for in the first place. In some cases, however, women actually end up thriving. They may find out that what they were actually missing was purpose, which they may not have been allowed (or encouraged) to pursue when they were married in a patriarchal relationship.
Patriarchy is a sick and twisted trap, that is also symbiotic.
What patriarchy promises men is unlimited control and power. But power over whom, exactly? Theoretically, the patriarchy offers power over women, but women often prove to be very tricky to control and dominate. Instead, man creates hierarchies, which is where we get White Supremacy; but also Male Supremacy, Straight Supremacy and Financial Supremacy.
In my last article, I shared this diagram, which is by and large how hierarchies work in the U.S.
This is the trap of patriarchy. In patriarchy, someone is always above you, so a man has to always be working, working, working to climb the ladder. But men also feel pressure to mate and start a family, which he has to pay for. Whatever money he spends on his family is money he can’t accumulate to increase his own status and position, so the needs of family will always conflict with the needs a man has to increase his own status and position. When push comes to shove, too many men simply abandon their families in order to focus on increasing their own status or wealth.
The “promise” of patriarchy is a lie.
Even if a man does stick around to support his wife and child, he will most likely have to work brutally long hours - particularly because he will always need to be making, doing, producing or achieving more, more, more. The time he spends working makes it nearly impossible to actually maintain a connection with his family, which can leave his wife with a longing for fulfillment he just can’t meet. In many cases, women may start to spend, spend, spend as a means of filling the emptiness of unfulfilled relationship, but that just means their husband has to work even more hours, which even further diminishes his ability to accumulate wealth.
Is it really any wonder why so many patriarchal men turn to affairs? Or even worse, sexual assault? They just want sex without all the nagging. They too want the fulfillment the patriarchy promised. How many marriages end in ruins because patriarchy never provides the fulfillment it promises? Both men and women in patriarchal systems are told that marriage and family will bring fulfillment, but instead it just brings emptiness and frustration.
Men can’t find fulfillment just being a work horse and women can’t find fulfillment in motherhood alone.
Both of those things are a life lived for someone else. Evangelical Christianity loves the phrase “Love God, Love Others” - but that’s just the trap of patriarchy and not what the Bible actually says. What it actually says is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, strength, soul mind and your neighbor as yourself.” That little tiny two-letter word is so important.
Both men and women love the idea of being completely self-sacrificial as if they have no individual needs. That is the allure of the superhero. Superheroes can just give and give because they never have any personal needs. They don’t get hungry or thirsty or tired, but men do - and so do women. Human beings are not superheroes- they have needs.
But patriarchal Christianity teaches that it’s not okay to have needs - that you have to just give and give and give and trust God to meet all your needs. The problem is, you keep giving away all the things that God gives you to meet your needs, so you just end up being an empty black hole of raging need. When everything you gain legitimately fails to fill the black hole, you start reaching out to take what isn’t yours in a desperate need to fill it.
To be human is to be weak.
To be human is to have needs.
You can’t get your needs met until you admit you have them.
Patriarchy depends on the archetype of the strong man who always makes all the right decisions, which actual mortal men can never live up to. More recently, it as also begun to encompass strong, powerful women that can do it all and have it all. Intimacy, however, requires vulnerability which is why there can never be intimacy in patriarchal relationships because the patriarchy can’t show vulnerability and still maintain power and control.
In addition, women may also belittle men for showing exactly the kind of weakness and vulnerability that is necessary for intimacy. In some cases, it is because they need men to “suck it up” and just keep working at a job they hate or may even be an abusive work environment in order to continue to be the provider. In other cases, however, women have been raised to “worship” the image of a strong, all-knowing, all-powerful man and it is the woman that cannot let go of this image. In still other cases, women who feel they have to be strong and tough and “suck it up” may despise men who attempt to reconnect to their own emotions.
Health and wholeness in relationships requires weakness and vulnerability, which requires both men and women to let go of their preconceived notions of what a man or woman “should” be. In patriarchal culture, women must bow to their husbands without ever questioning or challenging him, or prove themselves every day to be every bit as strong and tough as a man - if not more so. Patriarchy puts far too much pressure on couples, because it rarely allows them to work in partnership with each other. They can never express weakness, or doubt or fear. They will make mistakes, but they also can’t admit to them because that would be admitting weakness, which the patriarchy cannot tolerate.
Patriarchy is man’s attempt to be god.
God, on the other hand, only established one hierarchy, which looks something like this:
This is what it means to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, strength, soul, mind and your neighbor as yourself. It means God is above us all and we all live as equals under Her.
We set ourselves free when we recognize our dependence on something or someone greater than man. As long as we believe men have something we need, we will alway be enslaved by them. This is why sexual harassment and sexual assault in the workplace runs just as rampant in churches. When women feel that either their livelihood or the fate of their soul depends pleasing a man, they are at their mercy. When women recognize that it is God who will provide for them and their children, they stop putting so much pressure on men to produce and stop allowing themselves to be victimized. When men recognize that God provides, they also stop feeling so much pressure to produce.
When women recognize that they are loved, valued and worthy just as they are, they stop needing a partner and children to give them worth. When men recognize they are loved, valued and cherished just as they are, they stop having to constantly grind to increase their net worth as a measure of their personal worth. When men and women seek out the wisdom of God together, women stop needing men to be all-knowing and all powerful and men stop feeling like they need to be. When women recognize they can get everything they need from God, they stop relying on man, which takes away the power men have over them.
We don’t overthrow the patriarchy, we set ourselves free from it when we choose God instead.
Here is “the gospel,” the thing that churches want you to believe you have to go to church week after week and after week to hear over and over again (and give a lot of money to hear) - which, ironically, you’ll almost never hear:
You are deeply, inestimably loved exactly the way you are, right where you are. God knows all of your hopes, your dreams, your fears and desires - and desperately wants to partner with you to create the most fulfilling life imaginable. You are loved. Right here, right now. You don’t have to do a thing to earn it and even less to keep it.
That’s it. Patriarchy has to create all kinds of “usses” and “thems” so that they can always call one better than the other.
Man - Woman
Black- White
Rich - Poor
Superior -Subordinate
Gay - Straight
Cisgender - Transgender
American - Russian
Christian - Jewish
These are all man made categories that attempt to place one over the other as being better than other. What the Bible says, however, is:
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28 NIV)
Man creates all kinds of hierarchies that don’t exist in God’s kingdom. These hierarchies are the primary source of all of our rage, which comes from the idea of either not being “good enough” or not having enough. The truth is, we all have different needs. We also all want different things and yet can still get jealous when someone has something we don’t. Out of the first four recorded people on the planet, one killed another in a jealous rage. Not because he was starving and didn’t have enough food, simply because he was jealous of God finding favor with his brother.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt 11:28-30)
I left the church at 22 and do not consider myself a Christian at this point. In fact, I do not claim any religion. However, a lot of your musings are super helpful and reaffirming for a thirty-something woman that will likely find a long-term relationship one day. The question of children is an iffy one for me, and right now I enjoy my career (which involves working for children/teens), my pastimes and traveling with friends.
While this may sound "glamorous" a whole LOT of men and women (to my surprise) would rather passive aggressively convince me that I should fight like hell to find a man and have babies like they have. One married female friend with a family of her own in particular is so consumed, obsessed even, with single, childfree women and our wombs that that is all she likes to talk about and that is marriage. She literally scours YT all day for content by the right, redpillers, and femininity coaches to prove that the institution of the nuclear family is endangered because a few women are taking longer or are choosing not to.
I've been online in black woman centric spaces now for the better part of 7-8 years and I have seen women fight each other tooth and nail, doxx and sabotage and even ruin a few of her sistren's lives over jealousies where men and marriage are concerned. I have seen them espouse the most anti-woman rhetoric and ideals all for the sake of getting a man to marry you because the worst thing in the world to them is a woman that is past 25 and has no wedding ring or date set even though she may be thriving in other areas of her life.
Women, and in my case fellow black women, can be VISCOUS to other women in their crusade to uplift and uphold toxic patriarchal norms. It cannot be simply a thing where you say, "live and let live" or "to each her own" no, they will do what it takes to force your submission to ways, ideals and a lifestyle you simply don't want or at the very least feel as though you have the ultimate freedom to decide to engage with it or not.
This is about self-determination and autonomy. Things that a whole lot of women fear. I can understand it though because personal power mixed with the feminine is a huge responsibility, but it is not proper nor correct to pigeonhole other women into their unresolved issues and fears around freedom.
I do like your writing, but I feel like this was several articles into one. Towards the end I started skipping bits. The part about women needing to be mothers seems very true for women of the past. But I'm grateful to know that this upcoming generation seems to have a different view.my own daughter (32 years old) has always been firm on not wanting kids. When I tell her how amazing she is to not pay mind to older hens thinking she should want them she informs me it's not just her. Many in her generation would rather focus on themselves. But the older generation is dangerous.