Why women are so uppity these days
So many women speaking out. Is this new? Or is women's ability to speak out what is new?
Attention paid subscribers: the replay of our book club this week is under the pay wall at the end of this post. Enjoy!
“What do you think has changed in the past 20 years regarding patriarchy, masculinity and feminism? What has improved? What has gotten worse?”
This was one of our discussion questions at our Matriarchal Blessing book club this week when we discussed The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love by bell hooks, which was written in 2004.
I’m still chewing on this question and the brilliant things that were said in our discussion.
On the one hand so much has improved in the past 20 years.
In her book, bell hooks said that as of 2004 most people couldn’t even spell patriarchy, let alone knew what it meant.
If she were still alive, she might be shocked to see how common discussions of patriarchy are today.
On the other hand, women’s reproductive rights are being taken away, decades of progress rolled back before our very eyes.
In many ways it feels like we’re going backwards. It feels like we are more divided than ever.
The more I chew on it, the more I think we hardly realize just what a unique time in history we are living in.
For thousands of years under patriarchy, women did not have their own legal identity- they were the property of their fathers or their husbands. Women have been dependent on a man for access to food and shelter for most of history.
It is only so recently that this is changing. We are only one generation out from women being able to have her own credit card, buy a house or get a loan without a male co-signer (1974).
With few exceptions, for centuries women have had no choice other than to get married and have kids.
Now women can choose. I think we forget just how recent that choice is. How new it is for women to have a say over the direction of their lives.
Without understanding this historical context, many men see women not choosing to marry or have kids as an attack on men, especially when women choose to voice her feelings publicly.
Many men are asking why do women suddenly hate men so much these days? Why women complain so much?
Do more women complain about men now or do we just have a public voice for the first time?
Before social media our ability to have collective conversations on a national or global scale was dependent on 1. The publishing industry: books and magazines, 2. The entertainment industry: film and television or 3. The press: newspapers and televised news media.
Who was running these industries?
Publishing
Between 1800 and 1900, only 10% of books were written by women.
By 1970, that number had only increased to 20% of books being written by women.
Women were writing, but they were not the ones in charge of publishing.
When women did write books it was so hard to get published as a woman that they often had to pretend to be a man and publish under their initials rather than their name.
Entertainment
In 1998, women made up only 9% of film directors and 13% of writers.
Today, women still account for less than 20% of movie directors and less than 10% of cinematographers.
While less than half of movies pass the Bechtel test where two women are speaking together about something other than a man, 95% of movies pass the reverse Bechtel test where two men are speaking together about something other than a woman.
Journalism
In 1971, 11% of television journalists were women.
In 1990, women made up 37% of news staffs, but only 9% of newspaper executives.
All this to say, women were not the ones in charge of collective conversations.
Enter the internet.
Tiktok has one billion active users across the globe. Instagram has two billion. Facebook has three.
Never in history have women had such a wide-reaching platform to communicate with billions of both men and women all across the world.
Global collective conversations are not new, but women’s widespread participation in them without having to pass through middle men is new.
Women’s history was almost never recorded. What was recorded we do not teach in schools, but now?
We’re teaching each other. Take this TikTok of milestones in women’s history with 1.8 million views and thousands of comments:
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Or this conversation asking happily married women if they would ever get re-married if something happened to their husband. Tens of thousands of women conversed together in the comment section.
Or this one on how patriarchy has co-opted the Bible. 2.9 million people watched this.
I wonder if women in the 1800s or even in the fifties could comprehend leading or participating in a conversation with half a million people even one time, let alone on the daily.
Before social media, women were feeling the pain of patriarchy and they were expressing their pain to each other, but before social media, they did not have access to global audiences and global conversations.
History clears up why it feels new to hear women speak out
Why haven’t we heard women’s complaints about patriarchy in the past?
So many reasons.
Their complaints weren’t written down. If they were written down, the writings weren’t saved or spread. Neither women nor their complaints were taken seriously.
And women were historically severely punished for speaking out against men:
One of the earliest written laws we have record of is from the rule of Urukagina from 2400 BC. It states:“If a woman speaks disrespectfully to a man, that woman's mouth is crushed with a fired brick."
The Bible is full of warnings for women to stay silent. It teaches that a woman is not permitted to speak in church, that she must obey her husband and never exercise authority over men. When Miriam spoke out against Moses she was exiled.
As far back as medieval Europe we have record of “ducking stools:” a chair used to dunk women in water as punishment for complaining, gossiping or arguing with men.
From the 16th all the way to the 19th century, outspoken women were silenced with a scold’s bridle- a metal muzzle with a tongue depressor.
Women could be forced to wear one for anything from nagging her husband, speaking out against abuse, preaching in public, complaining or voicing a dissenting opinion.
In some parts of Europe, it was customary when a husband turned his wife in, for him to parade her around the town in a scold’s bridle to further deter her and any female on-lookers from speaking badly about their husbands.
Institutionalization: Throughout the 19th and on into the 20th century women who spoke out against men were frequently institutionalized. Hysteria was often diagnosed for women who were outspoken, resulting in institutionalization, intense medical procedures or medications in an attempt to subdue them.
The book The Woman They Could Not Silence tells the harrowing story of Elizabeth Packard, whose husband had her captured and institutionalized for disagreeing with him.
The Yellow Wallpaper, written in 1892 by Charlotte Stetson shows just how common a diagnosis of hysteria was for women at the time. In the book, the wife is locked up in her upstairs nursery by her husband and male doctor and forbidden to write in order to heal from her “hysteria” and “nervous disposition.”
Tried for witchcraft: During the witch trials in Europe and colonial America, women who were outspoken, independent or challenged male authority could be accused of witchcraft leading to imprisonment, torture or execution.
Domestic violence: Until very recently in most countries a husband was legally permitted to discipline his wife. Speaking out against men, especially within marriage, often resulted in domestic violence.
It wasn’t until 1975 that most U.S. states allowed wives to bring criminal action against a husband who inflicted injury upon her.
In 1966 in New York, beating by a husband first became grounds for a wife to divorce him, but only if she could prove that a significant amount of beatings had taken place.
In 1886 a court in North Carolina declared that a criminal indictment could not be brought against a husband unless the battery was so great as to result in permanent injury, endangering their life.
In 1882 Maryland was the first state to pass a law that made wife-beating a crime (punishable by 40 lashes or one year in jail).
Before this, wife beating was completely legal. In fact, it was often recommended.
Legal and Economic Disenfranchisement: Women who spoke out against men risked legal consequences including losing child custody, property rights or financial support. All of a woman’s assets were legally the possessions of either their husband or father, meaning a woman who challenged their husbands or fathers openly risked losing everything they owned including their children.
And the historical landscape is significantly more grim for black women and women of color. The penalty when they spoke out about their own abuse, especially when their abusers were white, was often death.
A long history of these severe punishments should clear up why it feels new to hear women speak out against patriarchy.
They literally were not able to historically.
In our collective grieving era
"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." - Thomas Aquinas
When I started to deconstruct the religion I had believed my whole life, Mormonism, my own anger was very uncomfortable to me.
I saw a therapist for the first time just so she could teach me how to get rid of my anger towards Mormonism and all that I had given up to follow it. I wanted her to give me a three step plan out of my anger.
But she gave me no such plan. Instead she told me anger is the correct response to injustice.
“Anger is the healthy response to injustice, or a boundary being crossed. Grief is the healthy response to loss…. discomfort is the healthy response to knowing it’s time to make a change.” - Brianna Wiest, When You're Ready, This Is How You Heal
But I kept coming in asking “But should I still be feeling grief and anger? Shouldn’t I be over it yet?” Again and again and again she had to remind me that there is no direct flight from order to re-order without passing through disorder. I so wanted to find that direct flight from peace in Mormonism to peace outside of Mormonism without all the uncomfortable feelings of grief, rage, remorse, irritation, disappointment and anger.
But that’s not how rebirth works. It goes from birth to death to rebirth. Something new can’t be reborn without something old dying. Death is messy. Grief and anger are non-linear and can’t be bypassed on the healing journey.
I can’t help but wonder if we women collectively are in our disorder phase- that messy death stage in between something old and something new. The old ways are dying and death is messy for everyone.
For the first time we are seeing women grappling with their patriarchal wounds on a global scale. It’s messy because grief is messy and death is messy.
So yes, many women are expressing their grief and anger with patriarchy. This isn’t new, it just seems new because women have never been given an unmitigated global platform before. And because of said global platform, more people than ever are waking up from patriarchal indoctrination.
And it’s going to take time to heal.
One woman in our book club said that she had such intense trauma from the men in her life that she needed a lot of time to heal. She’s now on board with bell hooks’s message that feminism needs to be able to include men and their pain and an honoring of maleness, but she needed time to grieve and heal first.
I think we are now seeing this micro example on a macro scale.
I agree with bell hooks when she says that the future of feminism must make room for men and an understanding and acknowledgement of their pain under patriarchy. The goal is full equality and partnership with men, not an annexing of men.
I have hope for that future. But we are only just beginning to reckon with a silenced history of women’s oppression under patriarchy.
One in four women still experience sexual assault. You can’t be expected to go to a peace treaty with a still bleeding open wound. You need time, bandages, a wet nurse, a cot, some sleep.
The problem isn’t the vocalization of the pain of patriarchy, the problem is the lack of education around patriarchy and women’s history.
If you are a young man born 18 years ago with no education about the patriarchy or the history of women’s oppression and you notice lots of women complaining about men, you would think “What a whiney man hater!”
This is exactly what is happening because unless you go out of your way to seek out an education on patriarchy and women’s history, you are simply not getting that education. It is not taught in schools.
In an article in the Washington Post, one high school senior noted that in her AP US history textbook, despite 20+ page chapters dedicated to each of the wars the US has participated in, there is one paragraph, less than 100 words dedicated to “women,” mentioning they can now vote.
No mention of the intense battle to win that right. No mention of the centuries of women’s oppression and silencing.
Without understanding our very recent history of women being men’s property, without understanding how our current system of patriarchy harms everyone, without understanding our unique moment in history, you may very well hear women speak of their mistreatment and think women have become uppity bitches all of the sudden.
Women’s pain under patriarchy is not new.
Women voicing their pain under patriarchy is not new.
What is new is women not being beaten, killed, medicated or institutionalized for speaking out.
What is new is women voicing their pain to a global audience.
Under this paywall is the replay of our book club for paying subscribers. Our next book club will be in January and we will be reading The Chalice and The Blade by Rianne Eisler.
To watch the replay and join the Matriarchal Blessing book club- become a paid subscriber- we’d love to have you.