Reigning Men

patriarchy, n. 

Pronunciation:  Brit. /ˈpeɪtrɪɑːki/ , /ˈpatrɪɑːki/ , U.S. /ˈpeɪtriˌɑrki/
Forms:  15 patriarchie, 16– patriarchy. 

1. A term used by feminists, to blame men for all their problems. 

Jane: "Why have we ran out of bread?" Gill: "Because of the patriarchy." 

Ooh, those cheeky Urban Lexicographers! Still ... they kinda got a point, right? It does seem a fair amount of feminist fuss about nothing. Women these days ... I mean, career advancement can be slow for those insisting on the whole 'time off to play with babies' thing, but we've got jobs ... the vote ... I'm pretty sure the Spice Girls never would've happened if Patriarchy. Not to mention Buffy. Work hard, make smart choices, quit complaining ... you'll do fine, ladies! Worked for me.

Well done me. Well done for being white, Western, wealthy, heterosexual, educated, childless ....

Hmm. Thing is, see (I'm starting to, a bit, I think) -- this is not just any patriarchy ... this is an "imperialist, white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy" (bell hooks, The Will to Change, p17). And, “In patriarchal culture women are as violent as men toward the groups that they have power over and can dominate freely” (p63).

Alice Walker fleshes out the gory details of this grim social order within the microcosm of an extended family in 1930s southern America, in her 1982 novel The Color Purple. Sisters Celie and Nettie grow up in an environment of subjugation and abuse at the hands of the widowed man they know as Pa, until Celie is transferred in marriage to another widower looking for someone to take care of his kids and work his farm. With little interest in her beyond her capacity to keep house, Mister repeatedly tries it on with Nettie who eventually runs away; after months and then years without communication Celie supposes her long dead.

The story of Celie's life with Mister, of their relatives and wider circle of acquaintance, is chronicled in letters -- Celie's letters to God, mostly, that she writes as a way of unburdening herself of life's hardships. There's barely a character in the book that isn't victim in some way to oppression; even those wielding the power are shown to be damaged by it. Mister (Celie too, out of jealousy) counsels his gentle son Harpo to beat his uncompliant but devoted wife Sofia; the two-sided violence that ensues as he struggles to live up to patriarchal ideals of domestic sovereignty destroys the loving partnership between them. Sofia leaves, and later ends up in prison for striking the mayor in retaliation for his wife's patronisation and racial abuse of her in the street. She is 'released' after 6 months into domestic service in the mayor's house, where she works out the remainder of her 12 year sentence in captive drudgery and near-total separation from her own children. But even the mayor's wife, who delights in her position of total ascendancy over Sofia, is belittled and predominated by her husband -- for example, when he taunts her by yielding to her pleas for a car but refusing to teach her to drive.

Meanwhile (spoiler alert, sorry!) Nettie has been writing letters to Celie -- letters which Mister has defiantly kept secret to punish Nettie for her intransigence towards him. Her life has taken some surprising turns since they parted and she is now (short version of the story) working with missionaries in Africa. She has also continued her childhood commitment to study, and her keenness to share her learning and experiences with Celie lends perspective on some historically and geographically broader instances of dominance and oppression: the horrors of the slave trade and its long-lingering consequences; the 'civilising' influence of white missionaries on African tribes, including the obligation for women to cover up in bulky dresses in equatorial heat; the tribal practices of ritual scarring and enforced FGM; the exclusion of women from education; the disruptive, merciless impact of western big business commercialising land with zero regard for its inhabitants -- overturning and displacing entire villages, charging rent, destroying crops.

Walker's story is ultimately, without wanting to give too much away, a powerful allegory for personal wholeness and right relationships, and the journey of healing towards those ideals. But the backdrop against which she tells it -- a portrait of the very worst in human nature and organisation -- is eye-openingly bitter.

I'm somewhere in the muddled middle of a re-examination of my worldview with regards sexism as a fundamental explanation for oppression and injustice. (N.B. so yes, expect me to get the language wrong, and to say naive things, and to be entirely inconsistent -- I apologise). Until recent years, I confess I've been rather indifferent or even dismissive; see, it's not often that I am so much as noticeably inconvenienced by the domination-oriented social order that feminists have termed patriarchy, let alone crushed or abused by it. But take my eyes off my comfortable, privileged self for a moment and it's frighteningly easy to find examples much like Walker's fictional accounts. And the more I recognise patriarchal forces at play in extreme cases, the more I spot them insidiously active at the comfortable, privileged end of the spectrum. For starters, the Urban Dictionary definition cited above is, well, it's evidence against itself. [1] As for my own relative advantage within the status quo? Perhaps hooks would explain me away as a 'patriarchal man in drag' (p55), and perhaps she would have a point. I may not actively, consciously, personally exert violence as a means to establish or sustain my position, but I unquestioningly benefit from a system that does so on my behalf.

I don't know why this late-dawning realisation should surprise me; it's all there right in the first few pages of the Bible -- which, thanks to recurring short-lived bouts of teenage fervour ("from start to finish! let's do this ..." [2]) I must have read vastly many more times than any other section.

Genesis chapter one. God creates the world -- fruitful, ordered, peaceful. It is, by His own description, good.

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.”

    So God created man in his own image,
        in the image of God he created him;
        male and female he created them. 

(Genesis 1:26-27)

Male and female together, together somehow bearing the image of God, together sharing a position of privilege and an entrustment of responsibility in the good world that He has made.

Genesis chapter three. The serpent gets the woman on her own. She chooses to satisfy her greed and curiosity and self-will rather than obey God's life-giving command. Adam doesn't take much persuading to follow her lead. Male and female together, rebelling against the good order within God's good world. And there are consequences ...

To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
    in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for [or 'against'] your husband,
    and he shall rule over you.” 

And to Adam he said, 

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
    and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
    ‘You shall not eat of it,'
cursed is the ground because of you;
    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
    and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
    you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
    for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
    and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:16-19)

"... he shall rule over you". Male dominance, then, seems to be very plainly a consequence of sin in the world, rather than God's ideal for His good creation. Not only that -- the square brackets in verse 16 highlight a tension in the translation of that particular phrase: the wording in the Hebrew can be legitimately interpreted (and very often is) to mean that a woman's desire from now on will be to usurp her husband's position and assume the upper hand herself. The loving, peaceful partnership of joint responsibility and mutual encouragement becomes a power relationship in which one party consistently dominates and the other seeks to overthrow.

This seems a pretty apt description of the observable state of affairs. Note that it is not in any way at all a command about how things should be, rather a pronouncement about how things will be from then on. It is a reality that we have to live with, not an ideal to live up to. And just as we do all we can to ameliorate the other specific consequences listed in Genesis 3 -- to make work bearable and fruitful, to make childbirth comfortable and healthy -- it is natural and fitting that we should earnestly seek, at every opportunity, to institute peace and partnership in place of the male/female power struggle.

And around about here's where I run into my uncertainties with feminism. Well, with some expressions of some feminisms, at least [3]. Because the various moves and initiatives towards equality have, at some times, in some places, been markedly characterised by anti-male sentiment and/or by the intent to establish female ascendency in the same model as male ascendency. I find it hard to celebrate 'progress' on either such basis.

What with all the violent and destructive outworkings of misogyny visible in human history, the strains of bitterness and resentment within feminist movement -- the desire, perhaps, to punish or demean males, to reciprocate wrongs done -- is perhaps understandable. But it is not constructive, nor healing. And it fails to recognise that men are also trapped and limited by patriarchy: they may be the ostensible 'winners', but patriarchal gender expectations burden males with immense pressure to 'prove themselves' through accumulation of power (status, wealth, influence), as well as the obligation to suppress emotion.

Which is all the more reason why 'liberating' women to aspire to, compete for, and attain the same dominance that men currently enjoy seems a hollow victory. Equal participation in patriarchal schemes of competition and status-seeking does nothing to liberate males and entraps females in new tyrannies. Moreover, it reinforces the basic and destructive values of patriarchy -- shifting the power around a bit but perpetuating (if not escalating) the conflict between the sexes and ultimately merely swapping one configuration of "oppressors and oppressed" for another.

If, as seems consonant with my understanding of Genesis, the 'problem' is not just male dominance but the whole principle of domination and the ongoing competition to achieve it, then surely the 'solution' has to consist in something radically different to a continuation and strategisation of the power struggle. Dismantling patriarchy requires partnership, and it requires humility. I've been thinking (and reading) a lot about this and I'd like to say more -- about Jesus as (among other things) the perfect expression of humanity and of non-patriarchal masculinity ... about what human relationships in general and male/female relationships in particular start to look like when we follow his example ... But it's too much for one post, and too muddled in any case at the moment. So, the plan is to make this the first in a two-(at-least)-parter. Except, I started writing this two months ago, and it has taken me this long to get thus far ... so whether or when I will manage to pin down the rest of my muddle remains to be seen!

[Edited to add: I seem to have managed a trilogy. See Masters of the Universe for part 2, and Me and You Versus the Patriarchy for part 3.]


[1] The (negative) details around the (positive) move to put a woman on the ten dollar bill provides a nice recent illustration. As John Oliver put it: "This is basically the perfect embodiment of the Women’s Rights Movement. Women ask for something they’ve earned, a bunch of men get together and talk about it, and then they give the women half and ask her to share it.”

[2] I consider it massively important and exciting to engage with the whole Bible, repeatedly, and I try to be intentional about recognising and attending to the bits I haven't looked at in a while. However, I'm not sure I'd recommend the 'start to finish' approach as it too often becomes an exercise in disconnected, self-punishing legalism with little room to grow in understanding and appreciation.

[3] bell hooks' ideal, for example, is one that I'm considerably more open to: "Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. [...] A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving." (bell hooks, The Will to Change, p123)

[Thumbnail image cc from pasukaru76 on Flickr].