#009: On the paradox of the patriarchy
Or the way the patriarchy f*cks men that no-one is talking about
In a newsletter a couple of months ago, I wrote that:
We must work to offer men the support they need to crack their narcissistic exteriors and expose the raw vulnerability within that is driving these behaviours. This is a complex problem woven into the fabric of how our society functions and requires a separate essay (or three).
Recently, I’ve felt compelled to write that essay.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve asked a number of mixed-gender groups the following question: “What is one thing you wish the other gender(s) understood better about being your gender?” The answers startle me. While women’s answers are fascinating and diverse, what strikes me most is that every time I’ve asked a man this question, their answers have amounted to the same thing: we are worthless until we prove our worth.
It is no secret that men are facing a crisis. Two patterns have been emerging in my own life that have compelled me to better understand the interlocking systems that are crippling our men.
Read time: 13m 46s
🪟 A window into my brain
The global crippling
I love patterns. Identifying and interrogating patterns is one of the most powerful ways to shift the engines of history onto different tracks. Let me tell you about two that have been on my mind a lot.
The first pattern is that I’ve had a few romantic relationships, friendships and professional dynamics with men that have forced me to question the broader system within which men are born, brought up and socialised. The reason is because these men have exhibited highly problematic behaviours. As a feminist who doesn’t resonate with the rhetoric of the archetypal man-hating feminist, I started breaking down the behavioural patterns that I saw in the men I was building these relationships with, while also interrogating the traits that existed within me to attract them into my orbit in the first place. While the surface-level characteristics of these men differed enormously, the most common underlying traits I identified in my small sample size were: a deep lack of self-awareness, crippling (but disguised) insecurity and some form of narcissism.
The second pattern is that, while I have had the privilege of working with some brilliant male leaders, I have also noticed that many men do not know how to lead effectively. Now, I’m not claiming that female leaders have it all figured out. However, one could argue that meaningful, courageous leadership stems, in part, from a deep capacity for empathy. Since empathy often originates in lived experiences that play out at the intersection of an individual’s power, privilege and struggle, it makes sense that minority leaders, such as women, tend to be higher quality leaders. When I looked first to my friends and then to the global stage to see if my microcosmic experience of leadership matched up, I was saddened to see that most of the male leaders I saw across politics and business mirrored my personal experiences: they often seemed to be operating from a place of deep-rooted insecurity, allowing their egos to rule their decision-making and their (often barbaric) treatment of other people.
The interweaving of my personal patterns with the patriarchy was highlighted by Laura Bates, feminist writer and founder of the Everyday Sexism Project. She says about her book Fix the System, Not the Women: “We’d all been thinking of these stories as individual problems – our own personal, coincidental lists. But they weren’t. They were connected. And that meant that the problem wasn’t with us; it was with the system.”
My realisation is simple (and not novel): 77% of our men have suffered symptoms of mental health conditions such as anxiety, stress or depression. But 40% of them won’t talk to anyone about it. Yet we are still elevating them into positions of power, authority and leadership and complaining about their subsequent behaviour (rightly so, I might add) when the support structures don’t exist to help them become better men and better leaders.
Whether we examine the hierarchical nature of traditional organisational structures, the dynamics of capitalist consumerism or the damning mental health statistics, the unspoken question becomes quite clear:
What is happening in our society for the archetypal patriarchal man to outwardly thrive but inwardly cripple?
The Halving
Picture a prison cell divided by a row of electric bars. On one side, men are imprisoned behind the bars of patriarchal masculinity. On the other side, women are imprisoned by a patriarchal culture of violence, domination and greed. The cell is continuously pumped with a lethal gas, containing a drug that forces everyone to silently submit to their lifelong sentence, no matter how great their emotional or physical pain. On the rare occasions that a man and woman do manage to escape their drugged stupor–attempting to collaborate to work out why they were imprisoned in the first place, or perhaps to hatch an escape plan–the electric bars violently fling them back to opposite corners of the cell. And so the cycle goes on.
We are all held hostage in this prison cell. The very same bars imprison us all, man or woman. But I am tired of being flung to opposite corners of the cell. In fact, I want to rip out the electric bars from the middle of the cell and wean everyone off the drug they didn’t know they were being forced to absorb.
Our collective consciousness acknowledges that the patriarchy is causing massive harm to women. What it doesn’t acknowledge is that most men are also victims of a socio-political system that, instead of benefiting them as they were socialised to believe, is failing them as much as it is failing women.
As bell hooks articulates in Understanding Patriarchy:
Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.
If we were to strip this definition back to its bare bones, the word “domination” is the one that repeatedly bares its razor sharp teeth. Indeed, domination is the organising principle of our civilisation and a cornerstone of psychological patriarchy, which we can think of as the “structure of relationships organised under patriarchy” (Terrence Real). To paraphrase bell hooks, psychological patriarchy enables a perverse form of connection that buries true connection under impermeable layers of domination, subordination and manipulation.
One widespread but unspoken manifestation of domination is labelled by Olga Silverstein, author of The Courage to Raise Good Men, when she discusses the “halving process”, in which men and women are taught to “excise half of their human qualities and hand them over to the other sex”. Traditionally “feminine” qualities such as emotional vulnerability and compassion are held in contempt when displayed by men, while traditionally “masculine” qualities, such as stoicism and assertion, are exulted in both men and women.
The imagery evoked by the word “halving” is revealing: it presupposes the ultimate truth that every human being contains multitudes, including both feminine and masculine traits. To reduce each of us to a mere half of our natural selves is to perform an act almost as heinous as Voldemort splitting his soul to achieve immortality; it is to go against the natural integrity of the human condition. The word “integrity” evolved from the Latin adjective “integer”, meaning “whole” or “complete”. It is generally defined as “an undivided or unbroken completeness”, or “a state of being complete or whole”. How we choose to interact with the masculine and feminine energies within us shapes our integrity. Sadly, psychological patriarchy actively sabotages integrity in both genders.
Terrence Real describes another force that interacts with the halving process, known as “core collusion”. This refers to the instinctual desire the person in a relationship who inhabits the “feminine side of the equation” has to protect whoever inhabits the masculine side of the equation, even while being trivialised or abused by that person. Such a dynamic can be seen in a child (feminine) / parent (masculine) relationship, a victim (feminine) / abuser (masculine) relationship and even a hostage (feminine) / kidnapper (masculine) relationship. It is important to remember that the masculine and feminine do not correspond in any way to male and female gender roles, rather to the characteristics we are conditioned to perceive as being more masculine or feminine.
The combination of the halving process and core collusion trigger a vicious cycle where neither men nor women are supporting the growth and development of the other gender, but rather reinforcing existing gender roles. This dynamic often leads to women feeling like they are the emotional service stations for the men in their lives, while men continue to feel like they cannot properly express themselves, for fear of being seen as weak.
This very dynamic was illustrated to me during a recent rewatching of The Incredibles, one of my favourite Pixar movies. Since the content of this essay was on my mind, something struck me about the gender norms embodied by both protagonists. Scene after scene, we watch Elastigirl bending, stretching and collapsing herself, embodying the constant shapeshifting that women must do to “stretch across the gap of male ignorance” (Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde) and educate and heal men. Simultaneously, we see Mr Incredible continuously shut himself off from his wife and his family to pursue the thing that makes him feel whole and worthy: being a patriarchal superhero who saves the world.
The paradox of patriarchy
Shame and silence are two of the most powerful weapons that society uses to perpetually perform the halving process. You see it in the bowed head of your 5 year old son’s head as he trudges home from school simply because he wanted to wear nail polish that day. You see it in the statistic that 40% of women in the UK believe that men are promoted more frequently or sooner than women, despite them generally feeling much more confident in their performance. You see it in the fact that for 40% of men, it would take thoughts of suicide or self-harm to compel them to get professional help.
In the 21st century, every young boy is used as a weapon to perpetuate patriarchal psychology. As bell hooks puts it, “To indoctrinate boys into the rules of patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and to deny their feelings”. This denial takes the form of a brave mask boys place upon their face to shield themselves from shame. Indeed, the reason we haven’t seen a male-led movement similar to feminism for dismantling the patriarchy is because patriarchal shaming socialises males to believe that without their role as patriarchs they will have no reason for being. In other words, their default worth in society will be zero.
The crux of the issue, therefore, is a paradox: while the patriarchy undermines men, men have an innate belief that it benefits them. Enabling men to transgress patriarchal boundaries in order to become whole and love themselves will enable us to counteract the halving process and move towards a collective wholeness.
Moving towards wholeness
The crisis of psychological patriarchy that impacts both men and women lies at the root of the majority of complex challenges we face as a society, be that toxic male leadership, a global swing to the far-right of the political spectrum, the patriarchal media algorithms that reward hyper-toxic content, or a growing mentality of “kicking the can down the road” when it comes to existential threats such as the climate crisis.
Indeed, as articulated by Audre Lorde in The Master’s Tools will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, what does it mean when the tools of a racist, sexist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? Does it mean that only the “most narrow parameters of change” are possible? Regardless, we have no hope of dismantling a system if we continue to engage in collective silence and denial about its widespread impact on our lives (Understanding Patriarchy, bell hooks). Thus the first step must be conversation and an untangling of the patriarchal knots that bind men to traditional perceptions of masculinity and male worth.
I believe that enough men are willing to change, willing to question their role as dominators, willing to interrogate the patriarchy. I also believe that there are enough men and women who want to help men change. This is likely one of the most complex, systemic challenges we face as a society. Where should we begin?
Create healing spaces for men outside of heterosexual romantic relationships. Most women are tired of trying to change their male partners for the better, particularly when they are often the victim of continual emotional (or physical) abuse at the hands of their male partners. The problem is that romantic relationships are often the only container within which men feel they can be healed or can at least begin their healing journey. This is unhealthy for both men and women and points to the need for us to create more spaces outside of heterosexual romantic relationships in which wounded men can heal safely, without judgement.
Work with young boys to counteract the halving process. The earlier we can intervene in a child’s socio-emotional development to help them understand that all human qualities are valid and worthy of attention, the higher our chances of not socialising young boys to deny their feelings and grow into emotionally incompetent men.
Embrace matriarchal models and tools to dismantle the Master’s house. Patriarchal rules still govern most of the world’s religious, education, labour and kinship systems. To effectively dismantle these rules and the structures they uphold, we must present a viable and more effective alternative. As I previously wrote about, the aim of a matriarchal society is not to exercise power over or oppress men, but rather to “follow maternal values, nurturing the natural, social and cultural life based on mutual respect,” (Heide Goettner-Abendroth). If you examine any matrilineal or matriarchal human society, be it the Mosuo in China or the Minangkabau in West Sumatra, they are, without exception, gender-egalitarian societies. The concepts of caste, class or hierarchy that are so deeply woven into the fabric of our society are also largely foreign to the matriarchal society. Instead, the natural differences between genders and generations are accepted, embraced and honoured, bathed in regenerative rays of mutual respect, dependence and dignity.
I would like to end with an excerpt from Audre Lorde’s timeless essay The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House:
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support.”
As I close this essay, I would make one minor tweak: And this fact is only threatening to those women and men who still define the master’s house as their only source of support and worth.
To truly dismantle the patriarchy, men and women need to grab the electric bars that divide them and wrench them out together, one by one. Only by recognising the paradox of the patriarchy can we move towards a future of wholeness, collaboration and reciprocity.
🖋️ Sentences I wish I’d written
Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.
~ Audre Lorde
I can do nothing for you but work on myself. You can do nothing for me but work on yourself.
~ Ram Dass
The wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.
~ bell hooks (this is a repeat from a previous newsletter but so worth the repetition!)
💭 A question for you
If you identify as a woman, what’s one thing you wish men understood better about being a woman?
If you identify as a man, what’s one thing you wish women understood better about being a man?
I would LOVE to read your answers, so please hit reply to let me know!
Wishing you a beautiful week,
Nikita 💃🏽
Every man, father, brother & son should read this 💛