Patriarchy Must End

This week I am still feeling deep grief for the world. As I watched the scenes unfold in Afghanistan this week, my heart felt like it was literally breaking. That country is falling back into the clutches of toxic patriarchy, and I can literally feel the fear of the women and girls as they are forced back into the dark ages of Sharia law. I also realize how thin a line there is between our modern world and the stifling rule of the patriarchal male god.

It is time for patriarchy to end. It must die, in order for our world to survive, but it won’t go quietly. Power is highly addictive, and those in power won’t give it up easily. We only have to look at our own legislators as they try to control women’s bodies, at law enforcement as it wages war on bodies of color, at the inequities in health care during a pandemic. Patriarchy won’t go quietly or easily.

Patriarchy is broadly defined (Merriam Webster) as “control by men of a disproportionately large share of power.” In Sociology it is commonly described as a “system of social structures and practices in which men [white men generally] govern, oppress, and exploit women.” In my view it is not just women who are oppressed by patriarchy. It is anything or anyone that is viewed as the “other” – people of color, gays, transgenders, even the earth herself.

Patriarchy, as a system, uses “power over” to control, exploit, and to subjugate those which are not at the top of the power structure, namely high-status men (usually white men). These men control the laws, both secular and religious. They control the money. They control anyone and anything that they perceive as lower status. They are addicted to power and status and terrified that they will lose that power.

To keep the “other” in line, laws are codified into religion and culture. These control every aspect of someone’s life – marriage, education, property rights, bodily autonomy. We only have to look at the culture wars over abortion and gay marriage to see patriarchy in action.

There is general presumption in most world religions that God is male. Within that presumption are the seeds of patriarchy. If God is male, then it follows that everything that is not male is less than. It sets up a hierarchy in the family and in society. There is also a presumption that man is above nature and rules nature, which leads to the using up of our earth.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1:26

As I look at Afghanistan and as I see our own country caught on the throes of racism and sexism, ancient memories awaken in my very DNA. On some deep level I remember the witch burnings, torture, slavery, and rape. I remember being treated as property. I remember the hopelessness of not being able to use my mind and the powerlessness of being a woman or of being in a lower caste. And once again I grieve. I grieve for the world because more than one half of us have been unable to use our talents and gifts to make the world a better place. I grieve because the patriarchy still has an iron grip, wielded by old white men who do not want to share power. I grieve for all the women and children and men who have died because in the mind of the patriarchy their lives were worthless.

But there is hope. In the throes of the patriarchal backlash, we see women and people of color being elected to high office. We see climate change being taken seriously. We see movements across the world calling attention to inequities of all kinds. We see small groups working diligently to combat racism and exploitation.

But we must remain vigilant. Everything can change in a heartbeat. All the progress that has been made can be lost in an instant. We must continue to root out patriarchy in our own lives. We must continue to reject power over and replace it with power within. We must stand in the truth that we are all connected, that we are all one and that no race or sex is better than another. We must integrate and balance masculine and feminine, and we must soundly reject that patriarchy is the natural order of things.

Barbara Garland
August, 2021