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. continue reading »
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? 
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 find this concept from the theories of economics and enterprise a very useful rule of thumb in helping me approach my life and make both big decisions on my life’s course, as well as day to day decisions while charting that course, including looking back and evaluating in hindsight what I have done or chosen not to do. I think perhaps as a society and participants in an economic system, we have lost touch with this rule of thumb along the way, which I believe has led to a large degree to our current economic turmoil. 
Those words crossed my mind this morning and I struggled for a moment to dig into my mind to remember where they were from. I did find it, though the blessed Internet (my “Mind 2.0”) would have found it for me if I had typed those words into a browser. It came to me. That Crosby, Stills and Nash song called… now what was it… ah yes… 
Our son Eric lives out back in our guest house and our daughter Emma still has her bedroom in our house, so they are technically still “in the nest”. But they both are now so wrapped up in their own busy lives that we only manage to sit down and have a good conversation with them about what’s up maybe once a week. Since our daughter has such a busy schedule of work, various classes, and a boyfriend, we can go for days without seeing her at all. If it were not for our current severe recession, combined with the sky-high rents on apartments here in Los Angeles, our nest would be completely empty.