The Patriarchy Can Only Continue With Women's Cooperation

Can half the human race tip the balance?

I finished my last post with a question about what is at stake in the argument regarding women’s reproductive rights.

Is the abortion issue really about pro-life, or is it at its core about preserving the patriarchal structure of the state and the family?

I was born in 1961 into a Roman Catholic family of six children. Pretty typical. My mother was trapped in a marriage with my alcoholic father. As I grew up, I watched her navigate a volatile marriage. She was financially dependent upon an addict, and raised six children without much help from my father. My mother was the church organist and accompanied the choir every Sunday mass. When she decided to divorce Dad in the seventies, the priests banned her from the church. They knew what she was dealing with since they often came to our house after church for Sunday afternoon cocktails. In those days, she was a heretic for filing for a divorce. 

She broke away despite the stigma, fought her way back into the church, and started a career as a life insurance agent to support us. She will always be my inspiration.

I left the Catholic church when I was seventeen and became an evangelist. When I got married, I was the quintessential ‘good wife’, a submissive Christian wife. I was homophobic. I played the roles that scripture demanded of me. I bought into the dehumanizing philosophies of the patriarchal interpretation of scripture. 

When I left the church and explored other faiths, new ideas and ways of thinking about spirituality opened up to me. I was free to walk outside the religious boundaries that I’d grown up with and spent twenty years of my adult life in. I was free to be a wild heretic. 

As I write this, fireworks are going off while the sun sets on the mountain range in the west. Independence Day is still two days away, but we’ll be celebrating all week long in my recreational neighborhood here in the Rocky Mountains. Independence from patriarchal systems embedded in politics, religion, and culture is the new freedom emerging through the nonviolent revolution of education.

The system of patriarchy can only continue with women’s cooperation. 

Since we have the power of half the human race, as a collective group, women are guilty of cooperating with a system that doesn’t serve us. I am guilty of this on a personal level. I cooperated with patriarchs for the first half of my life. I thank Gerda Lerner, (reference my last two posts) and women like her, that have been brilliant heretics who exercised their voice for the benefit of all of us. In the last half of my life, I’m deprogramming patriarchal thinking in myself. How can I help others? Am I a politician? No. An activist? No. Am I an educator? No. And I don’t want to be any of those things. My place in this quiet revolution is to tell new stories.

At a yoga retreat this weekend, I was soaking in the hot springs when my friend asked me what my superpower was. I had to think for a moment, but then I said, “My imagination.” I’ve imagined my way into a better life many times over. My daughter says I’m an expert at reinventing myself. But I’ve had to, to make life better for us. I had to do it when I lost my husband to cancer. I did it when I left the church. I did it when I became an empty nester. I did it when I found myself in an unhappy marriage. I did it again when I moved in with my mother to care for her. And again when she passed away. I’m doing it now as I earn my degrees in Religious Studies and English to become a freelance writer and transition out of sales. 

Imagine a better life. Write it down. Make it happen.

I imagine a better world for my daughters and two grandsons. I imagine a better life for all women, for all genders, for our planet. The oppression of women affects everyone, of every gender. Ecofeminists explain how it affects the health of our planet. When Gerda Lerner outlines what needs to change on a global scale, it is absolutely overwhelming. Gender indoctrination, androcentric history, bans from education, politics, the economy, objectification of the female body, commodification of our reproductive power, and the list goes on. 

Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash

How can I even make a dent? 

Storytelling is powerful. It shapes our culture, our traditions and rituals. Stories can oppress or liberate. I’ve lived on both sides of the fence. I’ve accepted gender indoctrination and broken out of it, so I have that experience to draw on. Religious stories have shaped our societies, whether we acknowledge it or not. Christian and Judaic stories have especially shaped our culture in the United States. Stories in the form of scripture or history are the root of androcentric attitudes of women’s emotional, spiritual and intellectual capacity. Stories like Adam and Eve have determined gender roles for thousands of years. Whether you are an atheist, agnostic, or follow a faith, culture is the engine that fuels politics and politics affects us all. We can’t simply deny it or fight it. What you resist persists. 

We need fresh stories, new symbols and new ideas to create new cultures. In my way of thinking, we must imagine a new reality, write our way into it and tell new stories.