This entire series has rewritten my brain, and this finale brought me to tears. I want to print out every piece and wallpaper my town with them, make everyone read them. Thank you for sharing, and for giving some serious calls to action! Standing my ground, seeing myself as equal to all the men in my life, not just those I trust, will be a big step, but one I feel empowered to take now
This needs to be shared far and wide. Your words, and your vision, have such power, in particular because they point us back to ourselves as the solution. Bless you! Feeling inspired in my own project of uncovering and depicting the origins of patriarchy. If we can understand how it began from the perspective of individual actors, we can create the alternative going forward.
This!!: “Patriarchal masculine men have painted themselves into a corner where the only masculine behaviors and attributes left to them that women haven’t touched are the dangerous and destructive ones.”
Lovely piece, Celeste. I agree wholeheartedly with your conclusions:
- let's not waste our energy convincing people (esp. people benefiting from patriarchy)
- focus on changing ourselves: examine where we can set healthier boundaries for our needs, and do our best to articulate what we're striving for without blame, etc.
- let's do our best to be better humans, and to help others be better humans, too.
Early on, you said this: "There is nothing wrong with masculinity when defined as strength, courage, independence or assertiveness." I take umbrage with this, because defining any trait as "masculine" or "feminine" removes its availability to the other gender.
Thus, I was super relieved to read this at the end: "I envision a world where we loosen our death grip on gender performance of masculinity and femininity and just be humans. Where we aren’t men first or women first, but humans first." and also "I envision a world where we work together to level all of our current unfair hierarchies- race, class, gender and sexual orientation."
Absolutely agree. Traits aren’t gendered. Culture is a helluva drug. I think change is only possible within a person. You can’t change a mind. There are labor intensive ways to create an environment to encourage it, but most of us don’t have that kind of time. Modeling means doing work on yourself, for yourself. That is a very visible way to help!
This was great to read, and I found myself thinking “it’s much more simple than this.” I’ve seen people use labels like feminine and masculine and patriarchy as an attempt to make it easier to control the change, but I see it complicating change instead.
I believe change comes down to becoming individuals who are emotionally intelligent, vast in our ability to feel and process our own feelings, communicative in healthy ways, present to conflict when necessary, mature in our decisions in how we love and lead ourselves first before others.
Then we take those skill sets and teach our children, especially our boys to be emotionally healthy. Hopefully the father follows that because the truth is easier to follow when it’s demonstrated as being embodied and not “told”.
None of that is about patriarchy or feminine or masculine. It’s about being loving, healthy human beings. And it has to start in us first, then our children.
Change cannot happen if it doesn’t start there first. And trying to change a system before doing all that is futile. The system reflects what’s already broken inside of us as individuals.
Another note: I am blessed to say I am immersed in a culture of healthy and loving men all around me, I’ve come to appreciate and need the benefits of what we could call patriarchy. So I get a little sad when people take the word patriarchy to represent something negative. I didn’t see you using it as negative but there is missing context to the possibility of this being an extremely positive thing.
I say all of this in appreciation for what you wrote because discussion is very important 💕 Thank you.
I like a lot of what you say but I’m curious about healthy patriarchy. I have never seen a healthy dynamic of men ruling over women rather than partnering with them.
Absolutely. I’ve seen the healthiest version of patriarchy is men partnering with their women, not ruling over them. Women only submitting and/or following a man unless he has the best interest of her, their family, and even their community. It doesn’t mean he’s perfect, it means he’s humble. This is usually a man who’s learned how to submit and/or follow a higher power above himself first. I’ve seen this many times and it’s wonderful!
I’ve done many years of healing and what I described is far from parent child relationship. It’s a way I describe spiritual covering in a certain way so I apologize if it’s not translating. Man and woman do their own kind of covering for each other but sometimes it’s tough to explain in one comment thread, better for a conversation. Please feel free to reach out if you want to chat more, I’m open to it!
Maybe I’ll reach out. I’m just really tired of the defense of these systems that place men in stewardship over women as if women don’t have direct access to Godde.
I understand. I’d be happy if you did reach out. In no way did I mean a woman couldn’t or wouldn’t access God herself. So I think we may have different ideas of what all this looks like.
I completely agree that we need to become a society of individuals who are, "... emotionally intelligent, [able to process ...] feelings, communicative in healthy ways, ..." In other words, becoming emotionally and intellectually healthy people, able to care for others, is to be a successful HUMAN--'masculine' and 'feminine' are irrelevant, frankly. As I commented above, 'healthy patriarchy' is, to me, a complete contradiction in terms.
One way we can sell this idea to men is by highlighting the sexual satisfaction that arises from “learning women.” My own marriage is a small sample size, but my partner actively studied female anatomy and pleasure before we got married. He also has intentionally studied my emotional landscape. The result is an extraordinary physical and emotional relationship. My impression is that men with satisfying relationships with women are more secure, and less prone to unhealthy masculinity.
I remember when, about 5 years after leaving Mormonism, I turned to my husband of 14 years and said, “I enabled the inequality in our marriage because I was taught to just do all of these things as my wifely duties, and it’s not ok.” He responded that he never asked me to do those things! However, he also never insisted on doing more— because ultimately, men won’t advocate for change when the status quo benefits them! Both are true: men may not be explicitly advocating for lives ruled by traditional gender norms, but they often don’t see the negatives of those norms until their female partners do. So yeah, taking stock in the role we as women may have played in perpetuating inequality in marriage may be real sucky, but doing that work to change our individual relationships does start with ourselves.
Yes. And...to be clear...when you start valuing yourself, when your words and actions align, when you stop dancing, your dance partners may/will not like it. They are benefitting from our complicity in the codependent patriarchal system, and they won't give up their benefits without a fight. So, hold on to your heart. We're going to need a rock-solid identity that is founded on an internal locus of validation and belief in our own "very goodness" to do this. If we don't have this, we will fail. So start there. And a word of reality: just because you do your work and disrupt the dance in your own life and family, there are no guarantees you'll get what you want. I didn't. My awakening cost me my 21-year marriage. What I got instead was my true self, and true freedom.
Oh yes this is so true. Thanks for pointing it out Leslie. No one is likely to applaud you for taking up more space for yourself. They will likely punish you and call you selfish. It takes a lot of self-validation to stop people pleasing habits.
Interesting connection to "Codependent No More," which I am reading at the moment. I wonder if codependence is simply part of the female condition in a patriarchy. I realize how much anticipating of needs and compromising I do on behalf of males (assuming a non-female centric movie, for example) where as they have no problem going after what they want. How can women be more "main character" in their own lives? It feels selfish.
as an independent woman who never married or had kids, my observation of women who have been moms is that they are, in general, far more accommodating and other-directed than I am. It makes me feel like I need to move towards being more accommodating, and at the same time, sometimes I wish I could do more to help my women friends value their own needs more.
“codependence is simply part of the female condition in a patriarchy”.
Yes it is. We are socialised to be co-dependent.
Think back to when you were 21. How many of your female friends were actively trying to figure out how to get some guy to “commit”? How many dudes the same age were expending mental energy trying to figure out how to get a woman to “commit”? Vanishingly few.
Women’s willingness to commit to, and dedicate their lives to, men has been indoctrinated into both sexes for centuries.
I think a lot about how our society is conditioning men to be more codependent than women these days. Single mothers tend to better when it comes to caring for, building community, providing and protecting their children. We teach our daughters these skills but lack in teaching our sons. Imagine if we raised all of our children to be skilled parents with all the tools to build the next generation.
So, so good. It reminds me of something I heard -- that people treat us like we allow them to treat us. Standing our sacred ground is a big part of the work. Also, just finished the series, Adolescence. It does a good job confronting masculinity in a very visceral way that left me thinking for days......
I am beginning to see how examples set in the home have ongoing influence in people's adult lives. Luckily my half siblings and I grew up deeply opposed to misogyny, having witnessed it in action against our mothers by our father. It was like a vaccination against patriarchal attitudes. All of his children have gone on to form fairly stable families that practice gender equality. If people are unaware of the underlying problem, ie. patriarchal attitudes, self reflection in the home is the best place to start. I loved reading about the Icelandic women's strike. Thanks for writing this series and the thought provoking, balanced arguments within each piece.
Okay, this feels like a start to what could be a -very- long conversation.
Is you substack supposed to be a "safe space?" I'm surpised none of the men you are talking about are commenting here. As for me, I'm mystified because I tend to know such men from a distance.
Your goodwill and winsomeness are a really welcome break from the "toxic femininity" I find in women's issues circles. But do I have permission to "fart in your church?"
I tried really hard to read your essays, not all of them, but certainly this 5 parter, and also some others. It has some notable angles that I believe are genuinely profitable. Whether the inferences you are making are going to give you what you are looking for, I'm less sure...
The behavior you describe as Patriarchial Masculinity: Doesn't it just amount to Cluster B personality disorders in men being culturally codified? Your masculine patriarchy list reeks of their traits, and the good men I know have the masculine traits without emotional stunting or lack of empathy. High functionung men can exhibit all the attributes of strength and cinfidence, but personality disordered people fake confidence which is what people are looking for from leaders.
Permit me to throw in a few wrenches into the machine:
1) gratuitously violent men are ones that have a need to reassure themselves of their power. They are not make role models, but actually like harmful decoys.
2) They are not representative of what the Scriptures describe as good men, even Jesus for that matter. Now knowing how the Christians were Different from Rome, ancient Greece, Egypt, etc. Is relevant. There is much more to say about this, but I have to leave it at that for whatever brevity I can salvage.
3) Your discourse is (excessivey?) US centric? It's understandable given your story and context, and I praise you and applaud you for speaking out so winningly. But it's not the context I know as a man. What about the Men I grew up admiring? One of my role models is Martin Luther (not King Jr. although he's an interesting dude in his own right, to be fair) or even my grandfather who came from a community in Poland where he was used to his wife managing household finances. Once he joined a posse to beat the crap out of a known wife beater. (It worked.)
4) Your discussion of men fleeing spaces which come to be "dominitated" by women is poignant. But itncan go both ways. My wife is a real tomboy without being a "butch". (She's a ferociously tender lover :)) She had excellent working relationships with male peers and high functioning male superiors. But unsecure, backstabbing female peers and superiors were a veritable nightmare upsetting me with her as much as any dysfunctional male superior.
5) Your experiences with Mormonism are instructive and damning of the sect. Having said that, you ought to understand that Mormonism, like all psychotic outgrowths of Seventh Day Adventism (why these people read Galatians cross-eyed is enraging to me!) is an abusing cult. I call it Islam foe American users. To enrich your perspective, look at what happened to Bishop Martin Stephan and his expulsion, leading to gut-wrenching soul-searchung of his community resulting in the founding of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Additional examples include Jim Jones and "David Koresh".
Indeed America was and still is built on the backs of driven, resourceful people who are manipulated by slaveholders, and cult leaders. I'd give you 3 guesses as to who it is now, but you only need one.
And as for me personally? It's not just the other men (although many other men certainly do not like me because I confront everyone like Jonah and Amos.) Women also play a decisive role in shaping men's behavior. My mother likely had Histrionic Personality Disorder registering 11 on the DSM (Richter?) Scala. The me. Who love me marvel at how well I survived her. My wife too.
But before I married my wife who wouldn't take no for an answer married me, I suffered agony being a fluing monkey around many other womem who I hoped to win. Polite Canadian girls who are trained in the world of decorum want a man of discretion, not a prophet. And please tell me why "Nice guys finish last"? If you deny it, you know you're lying.
Please let me know if you feel I can be a good gadfly in your quest for better men. I'm sure there is much more for us to engage on.
This entire series has rewritten my brain, and this finale brought me to tears. I want to print out every piece and wallpaper my town with them, make everyone read them. Thank you for sharing, and for giving some serious calls to action! Standing my ground, seeing myself as equal to all the men in my life, not just those I trust, will be a big step, but one I feel empowered to take now
Cheering you on Lara!!!
Agree 💯 I want to share this everywhere.
Thank you so much for this series, I really appreciate your thoughts and insights. Your writing is so valuable.
This needs to be shared far and wide. Your words, and your vision, have such power, in particular because they point us back to ourselves as the solution. Bless you! Feeling inspired in my own project of uncovering and depicting the origins of patriarchy. If we can understand how it began from the perspective of individual actors, we can create the alternative going forward.
This!!: “Patriarchal masculine men have painted themselves into a corner where the only masculine behaviors and attributes left to them that women haven’t touched are the dangerous and destructive ones.”
Lovely piece, Celeste. I agree wholeheartedly with your conclusions:
- let's not waste our energy convincing people (esp. people benefiting from patriarchy)
- focus on changing ourselves: examine where we can set healthier boundaries for our needs, and do our best to articulate what we're striving for without blame, etc.
- let's do our best to be better humans, and to help others be better humans, too.
Early on, you said this: "There is nothing wrong with masculinity when defined as strength, courage, independence or assertiveness." I take umbrage with this, because defining any trait as "masculine" or "feminine" removes its availability to the other gender.
Thus, I was super relieved to read this at the end: "I envision a world where we loosen our death grip on gender performance of masculinity and femininity and just be humans. Where we aren’t men first or women first, but humans first." and also "I envision a world where we work together to level all of our current unfair hierarchies- race, class, gender and sexual orientation."
Absolutely agree. Traits aren’t gendered. Culture is a helluva drug. I think change is only possible within a person. You can’t change a mind. There are labor intensive ways to create an environment to encourage it, but most of us don’t have that kind of time. Modeling means doing work on yourself, for yourself. That is a very visible way to help!
This was great to read, and I found myself thinking “it’s much more simple than this.” I’ve seen people use labels like feminine and masculine and patriarchy as an attempt to make it easier to control the change, but I see it complicating change instead.
I believe change comes down to becoming individuals who are emotionally intelligent, vast in our ability to feel and process our own feelings, communicative in healthy ways, present to conflict when necessary, mature in our decisions in how we love and lead ourselves first before others.
Then we take those skill sets and teach our children, especially our boys to be emotionally healthy. Hopefully the father follows that because the truth is easier to follow when it’s demonstrated as being embodied and not “told”.
None of that is about patriarchy or feminine or masculine. It’s about being loving, healthy human beings. And it has to start in us first, then our children.
Change cannot happen if it doesn’t start there first. And trying to change a system before doing all that is futile. The system reflects what’s already broken inside of us as individuals.
Another note: I am blessed to say I am immersed in a culture of healthy and loving men all around me, I’ve come to appreciate and need the benefits of what we could call patriarchy. So I get a little sad when people take the word patriarchy to represent something negative. I didn’t see you using it as negative but there is missing context to the possibility of this being an extremely positive thing.
I say all of this in appreciation for what you wrote because discussion is very important 💕 Thank you.
I like a lot of what you say but I’m curious about healthy patriarchy. I have never seen a healthy dynamic of men ruling over women rather than partnering with them.
To me, the term 'healthy patriarchy' is an oxymoron, as the very definition of patriarchy is men's domination over women.
Absolutely. I’ve seen the healthiest version of patriarchy is men partnering with their women, not ruling over them. Women only submitting and/or following a man unless he has the best interest of her, their family, and even their community. It doesn’t mean he’s perfect, it means he’s humble. This is usually a man who’s learned how to submit and/or follow a higher power above himself first. I’ve seen this many times and it’s wonderful!
That sounds like a parent child relationship and not a partnership.
I’ve done many years of healing and what I described is far from parent child relationship. It’s a way I describe spiritual covering in a certain way so I apologize if it’s not translating. Man and woman do their own kind of covering for each other but sometimes it’s tough to explain in one comment thread, better for a conversation. Please feel free to reach out if you want to chat more, I’m open to it!
Maybe I’ll reach out. I’m just really tired of the defense of these systems that place men in stewardship over women as if women don’t have direct access to Godde.
I understand. I’d be happy if you did reach out. In no way did I mean a woman couldn’t or wouldn’t access God herself. So I think we may have different ideas of what all this looks like.
Patriarchy is a hierarchical system. There is no patriarchy without domination.
I completely agree that we need to become a society of individuals who are, "... emotionally intelligent, [able to process ...] feelings, communicative in healthy ways, ..." In other words, becoming emotionally and intellectually healthy people, able to care for others, is to be a successful HUMAN--'masculine' and 'feminine' are irrelevant, frankly. As I commented above, 'healthy patriarchy' is, to me, a complete contradiction in terms.
One way we can sell this idea to men is by highlighting the sexual satisfaction that arises from “learning women.” My own marriage is a small sample size, but my partner actively studied female anatomy and pleasure before we got married. He also has intentionally studied my emotional landscape. The result is an extraordinary physical and emotional relationship. My impression is that men with satisfying relationships with women are more secure, and less prone to unhealthy masculinity.
This series has been excellent and really changed my perspective on things. Thank you for writing it.
I remember when, about 5 years after leaving Mormonism, I turned to my husband of 14 years and said, “I enabled the inequality in our marriage because I was taught to just do all of these things as my wifely duties, and it’s not ok.” He responded that he never asked me to do those things! However, he also never insisted on doing more— because ultimately, men won’t advocate for change when the status quo benefits them! Both are true: men may not be explicitly advocating for lives ruled by traditional gender norms, but they often don’t see the negatives of those norms until their female partners do. So yeah, taking stock in the role we as women may have played in perpetuating inequality in marriage may be real sucky, but doing that work to change our individual relationships does start with ourselves.
Yes. And...to be clear...when you start valuing yourself, when your words and actions align, when you stop dancing, your dance partners may/will not like it. They are benefitting from our complicity in the codependent patriarchal system, and they won't give up their benefits without a fight. So, hold on to your heart. We're going to need a rock-solid identity that is founded on an internal locus of validation and belief in our own "very goodness" to do this. If we don't have this, we will fail. So start there. And a word of reality: just because you do your work and disrupt the dance in your own life and family, there are no guarantees you'll get what you want. I didn't. My awakening cost me my 21-year marriage. What I got instead was my true self, and true freedom.
Oh yes this is so true. Thanks for pointing it out Leslie. No one is likely to applaud you for taking up more space for yourself. They will likely punish you and call you selfish. It takes a lot of self-validation to stop people pleasing habits.
Inspiring article and series!
Interesting connection to "Codependent No More," which I am reading at the moment. I wonder if codependence is simply part of the female condition in a patriarchy. I realize how much anticipating of needs and compromising I do on behalf of males (assuming a non-female centric movie, for example) where as they have no problem going after what they want. How can women be more "main character" in their own lives? It feels selfish.
as an independent woman who never married or had kids, my observation of women who have been moms is that they are, in general, far more accommodating and other-directed than I am. It makes me feel like I need to move towards being more accommodating, and at the same time, sometimes I wish I could do more to help my women friends value their own needs more.
“codependence is simply part of the female condition in a patriarchy”.
Yes it is. We are socialised to be co-dependent.
Think back to when you were 21. How many of your female friends were actively trying to figure out how to get some guy to “commit”? How many dudes the same age were expending mental energy trying to figure out how to get a woman to “commit”? Vanishingly few.
Women’s willingness to commit to, and dedicate their lives to, men has been indoctrinated into both sexes for centuries.
I think a lot about how our society is conditioning men to be more codependent than women these days. Single mothers tend to better when it comes to caring for, building community, providing and protecting their children. We teach our daughters these skills but lack in teaching our sons. Imagine if we raised all of our children to be skilled parents with all the tools to build the next generation.
insightful, informative, and the labor of love is clear.
i joined ‘Stack as a suggestion from an editor who nudged me into showing some ideas of a book in progress.
the subject is the relationship between a father and a daughter. i am the father.
it is fundamentally about a family, but with a focus on the aforementioned nuance.
if the objective is to “dismantle patriarchy…etc”, my humble contribution is it starts with the fathers, and it starts early. real early.
fathers with daughters.
BUT: more so, fathers with sons.
humbly.
I totally agree Dario. Best of luck on your book! It’s an important topic for sure
So, so good. It reminds me of something I heard -- that people treat us like we allow them to treat us. Standing our sacred ground is a big part of the work. Also, just finished the series, Adolescence. It does a good job confronting masculinity in a very visceral way that left me thinking for days......
I am beginning to see how examples set in the home have ongoing influence in people's adult lives. Luckily my half siblings and I grew up deeply opposed to misogyny, having witnessed it in action against our mothers by our father. It was like a vaccination against patriarchal attitudes. All of his children have gone on to form fairly stable families that practice gender equality. If people are unaware of the underlying problem, ie. patriarchal attitudes, self reflection in the home is the best place to start. I loved reading about the Icelandic women's strike. Thanks for writing this series and the thought provoking, balanced arguments within each piece.
Misogyny, patriarchy are the gateway drugs to colonialism and malevolent dictatorships.
Okay, this feels like a start to what could be a -very- long conversation.
Is you substack supposed to be a "safe space?" I'm surpised none of the men you are talking about are commenting here. As for me, I'm mystified because I tend to know such men from a distance.
Your goodwill and winsomeness are a really welcome break from the "toxic femininity" I find in women's issues circles. But do I have permission to "fart in your church?"
I tried really hard to read your essays, not all of them, but certainly this 5 parter, and also some others. It has some notable angles that I believe are genuinely profitable. Whether the inferences you are making are going to give you what you are looking for, I'm less sure...
The behavior you describe as Patriarchial Masculinity: Doesn't it just amount to Cluster B personality disorders in men being culturally codified? Your masculine patriarchy list reeks of their traits, and the good men I know have the masculine traits without emotional stunting or lack of empathy. High functionung men can exhibit all the attributes of strength and cinfidence, but personality disordered people fake confidence which is what people are looking for from leaders.
Permit me to throw in a few wrenches into the machine:
1) gratuitously violent men are ones that have a need to reassure themselves of their power. They are not make role models, but actually like harmful decoys.
2) They are not representative of what the Scriptures describe as good men, even Jesus for that matter. Now knowing how the Christians were Different from Rome, ancient Greece, Egypt, etc. Is relevant. There is much more to say about this, but I have to leave it at that for whatever brevity I can salvage.
3) Your discourse is (excessivey?) US centric? It's understandable given your story and context, and I praise you and applaud you for speaking out so winningly. But it's not the context I know as a man. What about the Men I grew up admiring? One of my role models is Martin Luther (not King Jr. although he's an interesting dude in his own right, to be fair) or even my grandfather who came from a community in Poland where he was used to his wife managing household finances. Once he joined a posse to beat the crap out of a known wife beater. (It worked.)
4) Your discussion of men fleeing spaces which come to be "dominitated" by women is poignant. But itncan go both ways. My wife is a real tomboy without being a "butch". (She's a ferociously tender lover :)) She had excellent working relationships with male peers and high functioning male superiors. But unsecure, backstabbing female peers and superiors were a veritable nightmare upsetting me with her as much as any dysfunctional male superior.
5) Your experiences with Mormonism are instructive and damning of the sect. Having said that, you ought to understand that Mormonism, like all psychotic outgrowths of Seventh Day Adventism (why these people read Galatians cross-eyed is enraging to me!) is an abusing cult. I call it Islam foe American users. To enrich your perspective, look at what happened to Bishop Martin Stephan and his expulsion, leading to gut-wrenching soul-searchung of his community resulting in the founding of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Additional examples include Jim Jones and "David Koresh".
Indeed America was and still is built on the backs of driven, resourceful people who are manipulated by slaveholders, and cult leaders. I'd give you 3 guesses as to who it is now, but you only need one.
And as for me personally? It's not just the other men (although many other men certainly do not like me because I confront everyone like Jonah and Amos.) Women also play a decisive role in shaping men's behavior. My mother likely had Histrionic Personality Disorder registering 11 on the DSM (Richter?) Scala. The me. Who love me marvel at how well I survived her. My wife too.
But before I married my wife who wouldn't take no for an answer married me, I suffered agony being a fluing monkey around many other womem who I hoped to win. Polite Canadian girls who are trained in the world of decorum want a man of discretion, not a prophet. And please tell me why "Nice guys finish last"? If you deny it, you know you're lying.
Please let me know if you feel I can be a good gadfly in your quest for better men. I'm sure there is much more for us to engage on.
Joe