If you read the first essay you know now that when I attack patriarchy I am not attacking its inherently good values but the ills that stem from an unbalanced, skewed version of it. Make no mistake a skewed version of matriarchy would be just as bad. Unlike many feminists, the ideal for me is not a “Women Rule The World” scenario like the Beyoncé video, but one where there is balance. The longstanding oppression of women is no excuse for us repaying in kind when we are given power.
Most importantly, when I attack lopsided patriarchy I am also not attacking men. Remember that men are also the victims of viral patriarchy just as much and perhaps even more than women. Remember that we all have masculine and feminine within us and need both sides celebrated, recognized, expressed in order to be healthy. Stamping out the feminine in men has hurt them severely just as oppressing the masculinity in women has hurt us.
So relax!
If you are a man reading this and are tired of bitter, male-bashing women in your professional life or the important female in your life who is currently making you miserable with all manner of desperate emotional, sexual and psychological attack and control please take a deep breath and put aside your hurting and personal issues.
I know you men have it hard, though you try to hide it. I know you are very fragile emotional creatures under all that machismo. Worst of all you are ashamed of your inner vulnerability. Thanks to lifelong socialization within this system, you think the only respectable way of easing the pressure on the emotional valve is through drugs, abusing others or suicide. Certainly not relying on another, admitting weakness and allowing someone to nurture you. That's only for “sissy boys”.
Do not be surprised that is it so hard to admit that there is indeed a vulnerable person within you (your Divine Feminine, Yin Element) without feeling intense shame. Shame after all is the primary weapon of choice by the skewed patriarchal system. Shame makes us go out of equilibrium with the original Divine Masculine and Feminine that was perfectly balanced in us when we were born.
So, what essentially is at the heart of warped patriarchy? First...
Different But Equal
When you argue with someone who happens to be passionately defensive of the patriarchal status quo they ultimately point to the fact that men deserve to be large and in charge because they are bigger, stronger and even smarter. They will point to the great feats of architecture, technology and conquest and claim they were spearheaded and achieved not by women but by men.
And any man who argues this is right…but only partially.
The average man is pound for pound brawnier than the average woman. Their societal gender indoctrination has helped them to be better analysts, innovators, movers and shakers in the subjects and skills deemed most useful to trade, industry and exploitative empire building.
Women on the other hand are smaller in mass. Our biological and hormonal make-up makes us more intuitive and extremely resourceful and detailed practitioners of whatever skill or knowledge we are allowed to learn. But remember that for a long time we were allowed to learn very little. In fact in some parts of the world, it is still dangerous for a girl to go to school. For a long time, the only thing we were prized for was our ability to please a man, incubate “his” babies, nurse them and do household duties.
Now, there is nothing wrong with any of these things in of themselves when chosen freely by a woman who wants and loves such duties. However, they are not the extent of a women’s full human potential and not all women past and present if given a choice and enabled from young to see limitless possibilities would willingly choose that role as their only function in life. Men, imagine if your ONLY role as a man was limited to just rutting, inseminating and protecting harems of females. Imagine if that was considered to be the full extent of your value and human potential. See how demeaning that is?
Our soul calling and our sexuality is far more complex than which pole goes in which hole to make babies. Men and women have the need to dream, create, think, express, lead, explore, learn and contribute in other ways.
In their marriage ceremony, the Archbishop of Canterbury put at the very top of the priorities of HRH Prince William and Kate's marriage, not love, not soul perfection, but creating children. Her Highness is expected to service the British Empire by producing an heir and a spare or else. From the poorest woman in a rural village to the Princess of England, a woman’s ability to conceive has been treated as her most important duty.
There was a time women fought and hunted right alongside our fathers, brothers, husbands and lovers and physical strength was prized in the female as a benefit to the entire tribe. A weak, prissy, little delicate lady in need of constant protection would have been a tremendous burden in a world of harsh survival. There is no way the human race came this far if women could not hold their own, create tools, explore and experiment with new herbs, protect her young and find food and shelter.
Prehistoric women had not yet been "tamed" into helpless, demure little ladies so they could also fight back violently if they were not interested in male sexual advances. Her sexual preferences had to be at least respected because rape was not an easy resort to take. It could cost a man his eye or worse.
Patriarchy- The Answer To Female Rejection
Unbalanced patriarchy exploits a natural, primal, evolutionary Omega constant- the fittest will survive.
However, it ignores the natural Alpha check and balance which is “ladies choice.”
Patriarchy is a war with the role of female choice in natural selection. whether that female is woman or Mother Earth.
Early man saw Mother Nature playing before his eyes in the animal kingdom. He saw the rut, the hunt and what happened to males that did not measure up. It was brutal. The males had to be strong hunters, strong sportsmen and spar for the female's affection. Victors got to pass on their genes. Losers got to die off. Even after conception, a mother who was not satisfied her offspring was viable enough would eat it or abandon it to die, his daddy be damned.
Nature was our first teacher but in the application, men and women discovered that they were far more complex beings. Our relationships were not as rudimentary as two males clash, victor gets guaranteed pussy and she bears him all his babies. In fact, biologists are now finding out that it was never even as clear cut as that in the animal kingdom either. Furthermore, unlike the animals, humans have far-reaching, stronger emotional and spiritual needs.
Early man discovered that he actually preferred to be loved, accepted, embraced and desired by the woman he desired. He wanted her love him freely. He wanted her to love the children he sired and delight in nursing them. That is the Yin Consciousness within him, the Divine Feminine, vulnerable, emotional, sensitive and just side of a man. He discovered that although his physical strength meant he could force sex, he could not force a woman to desire, love and respect him or love the children he helped conceive.
Not even the richest most powerful man in the world can force a woman to love him as captured beautifully in The Song of Solomon.
As for women, they discovered that a man’s physical prowess alone was not enough, even if it might excite them during their most fertile time of the month. They did not feel as enamored with muscles and uncompromisingly insistent dick outside that fertile window. Neither did they want to be ruled over or dominated because within their smaller skulls was an extremely dynamic, intuitive brain.
From the Lady McBeths to the Hillary Clintons, that inner male Yang Consciousness within all women is extremely shrewd. It is said that it is better to have a ruthless man after you than a ruthless woman. Throughout history, women have plotted, schemed and delivered brilliant bedside assistance to men in their political manipulations from king’s courts to boardrooms. They were the ghost-writers of many volumes of wisdom. They were the innovators and inventors of herbal medicines and many tools.
It was not enough for the man to just flaunt his muscles, win contests of strength or dominate sexually, he had to seduce our detailed, observant, ambitious Yang Consciousness as well. This trait of ours helped to save many men who were not necessarily the physical alpha of the pack or had lost their appeal due to old age, injury or sickness. They could still win the undying love of many women just by mastering the art of appealing to her Divine Masculine mind.
How? Through humor, cleverness and creativity.
The art of seduction and masterful use of language and music could make a woman drop her prehistoric panties. Men who bothered to master these things became shrewder. It was iron sharpening iron in every sense and they passed down these smarts to their offspring even if they could not always pass down the best physical features.
The genetic line between beauty and brains began to be drawn.
We must thank the prehistoric ugly and wimpy men who could not compete with the handsome, brawny jocks. They along with their women gave us culture and politics. Puny men and women innovated ways to compensate for the brute strength they both lacked- the wheel, the lever, the pulley, better long distance weapons, better hunting and gathering strategies, problem solving, craftsmanship, artistry and so agriculture and commerce were invented.
Even though men and women had more criteria to judge suitability which now included entirely new things like education, wealth and political power, the core issue still had not been resolved.
Insecurity, jealousy and possessiveness were still serious challenges, particularly for men (attractive and not) who had not learned how to master the art of winning a woman’s love and wooing her Masculine mind.
Some men decided that if they could not get real love, they would settle for a Stockholm Syndrome kind of devotion. They discovered that after enough abuse, loss of identity, harassment, confinement, powerlessness, a woman could be broken down.
To this day there are some men who only know how to deal with women this way because that is how they were taught by their fathers, religious leaders, society. Tear the female down utterly and then reassemble her as a faithful slave. Volumes have been written in almost every culture on how a man can dominate a woman until she cracks and he can then “manage” her as if she were a child or livestock.
Many men make a very good effort not to resort to this but sometimes all it takes is the slightest bit of rejection or resistance for the fragile male ego to hurt so much, they step right back into their father’s shoes.
Patriarchy- The Dominion Enabler
The growing innovation, commerce and agriculture made human populations settle, multiply, quickly use up land and spread out even more. Tribes began to come into conflict with one another because of competition for the best land. The time of empires and wars had arrived. Patriarchy took on a whole new role.
Now it was about more than just protection against female rejection, it would also help to ensure that clans, tribes, nations were populous enough to supply large, strong armies and bounce back faster after a military decimation or overcome oppressive colonialism through a population explosion. How? Place women in a position where they did nothing else but breed and tend a nursery of children who would become future soldiers for the empire. This was her primary duty until she died or her fertile years were over or her husband/master lost all desire, whichever came first.
Patriarchal polygamy began to be practiced.
The power of female selectivity, sexuality, reproductive choice and her sharp Divine Masculine mind are anathema to empire-building.
How do you turn strong, smart, sexually selective women into desperately dependent breed mares? You cut off all their power- their sexual power (FGM), power of choice (arranged marriage), power of intellect (denial of education, exclusion from decision making), physical power (exclusion from hunting, warrior activities, overprotecting, fattening, cloistering, encumbering her movement), financial power (denying her enterprise, inheritance or ownership of property), reproductive power (killing midwives who supplied contraceptive and abortive herbal potions) and last but not least her spiritual power (destroying the Goddess, denouncing the role of priestess, witch, wise woman and placing the female on the lowest rank of Divine hierarchy (see the Apostle Paul) so she could not ever claim to have Divine authority.)
Humans have always been polyarmorous with monogamy being the exception not the norm. Both heterosexual men and women are driven biologically to diversify their reproductive encounters. Men feel the urge to sow their seed among many women. Women feel the urge to always select the fittest male during her fertile window. This is what Mother Nature wants! However, Patriarchy is all about circumventing Mother Nature to protect male ego.
When women became breed mares, they became commodities to be passed unspoilt from father to husband, often with no choice in the matter. It also became important to ensure she only conceived offspring to her husband (more on why later)even though naturally, she felt desires for other men and sometimes that did not include the man she was forced to marry. Men of course, could continue to pursue their happy seed sowing as exceptions were ALWAYS made for their libido, either take additional wives or visit a prostitute.
It was not just women who were harmed by this but men as well. Now that women were commodities and slaves, male/female relationships became more calculated, deceptive and mercenary. Remember that men need to know and feel genuinely loved and desired. In fact, in civilizations that institutionalized prostitution for social or religious reasons, prostitutes were trained in the art of making men feel exactly that way. It became a precious kind of skill in a world of arranged marriages, females merely doing their “duty” and men no longer interested in or needing the art of pleasing a woman as he could just buy one.
In the new system ALL men were required to be soldiers ever ready to defend and expand the wealth and sovereignty of their lord, king, raja, sheik and the religious hierarchy that kept everyone in their place. Just read the Old Testament and you will see that the most barbaric ways were employed if necessary.
In many ways, men suffered more because unbalanced patriarchy dealt them a double blow:
- Over-protection of an ego made increasingly overinflated and yet fragile when it comes to self-image, sexual appeal and sexual rejection.
- Hardening of the heart, dulling of the conscience, allowing something as powerful as testosterone to go into overdrive.
- No healthy and healing outlet for their emotional pain as a result because emotion was considered feminine and therefore weak.
The Aftermath
We know all about the horror stories of female oppression, so I want to focus instead on what damage was done to the men. Starting with:
Feeling Abandoned By Divine Mother
Have you ever met a man who grew up without the love of a human mother figure? They latch on to any woman who makes them feel safe with a kind of possessive desperation. The reverse happens to women who grew up without any father figure. Well imagine growing up without your Divine Mother and you can see why society is in the state it is in.
All that is material, comforting, pleasurable and nourishing has become the substitute for THE Mother and we are overindulging and sucking Mother Earth’s breasts dry and speaking of sucking Mother Earth’s breasts…
Infantile, Self-Centered Lovemaking
Men should be expected to have a healthy, testosterone driven libido. However disconnection from their Yin Consciousness prevents any further mastery of their mojo into something more emotionally developed, controlled and masterful.
Remember the early men who had to discover the art of seduction in order to compete with the brawny jocks? Well patriarchy undid any need for wooing a woman's Masculine Mind or being a skillful lover. As a result, a large number of men attractive and unattractive alike, are in a state of infantile drooling and premature ejaculation which is a turn off.
Such men are insecure around women because they are incapable of seduction and often demonize the “wizened woman”, the divorcee, the playgirl. Shows like Sex And The City infuriate them. Unlike the confident male sexual sophisticate who has learned enough empathy, technique and self-mastery to please an experienced woman, the drooling, sexual man-child likes his women virginal, clueless, girlish so she cannot judge his poor lovemaking skills and/or so desperate she has no other option but to put up with his clumsy, self-centered attempts at sex.
Unresolved Self-Image Issues
We often marvel how handsome or powerful married men who can have any beautiful woman or already have beautiful wives will still go cheat with a fat crack whore or the less attractive intern, nanny or maid. The thing is when it comes right down to basic, biologically driven, magnetic lust, women are always pickier. We need appealing smell, pleasing appearance, seduction skills and some indication of prowess physical, sexual, intellectual, financial just to get aroused enough for sex.
It sounds crass but if the ugliest, most obese woman on the block, pulled down her panties and was giving it away, some man will take up her offer. Yes, even female vagrants get laid. Male vagrants? A little wine-up on J’ouvert is the best they can do.
Body image is deceptively more important to men than they let on because they know how important it is to women. Men just internalize a lot of the pain and insecurity they feel. That suppressed dissatisfaction is dangerous because the resentment is often channeled in destructive ways.
Stuck With Atrophied, Damaged, Dysfunctional Females
Patriarchy has seriously damaged women. We never stop to consider what men must now contend with because of women who are now:
- Mercenary, needy with low self-esteem and desperation expressed in passive aggressive ways that wear down and emasculate men
- Immature and/or prudish, frigid which deeply frustrates men who are sex positive
- Nursing unused ambition and wounded ego through bitterness, catty, backstabbing, gossiping and petty social game play with other females
- Indecisive, dumb and helpless making men feel overburdened with the full load of planning, protecting and providing
- Desperate users of sex and reproduction as their only currency which makes men feel distrustful, trapped and resentful
- Damaged by emotional, sexual and physical abuse and unable to love freely.
A well-meaning man who has been run-over by the batshit female bus usually does not want to hear anything about how bad women have it. As far as he is concerned, women are on a warpath of destruction! But the truth is, women are fighting to survive and acheive some kind of self-worth by any means necessary.
The sad thing is that the women who have enlightened and liberated themselves from such tendencies are usually the women that terrify most men because they are too smart, too spiritual, too sexually free and too successful for most men's wounded egos to handle.
Always Uncertain Of Her Heart
A slave cannot truly love a Master unconditionally with the freest will.
Imagine the burden of the man who must undertake dominating a woman under the illusion it is his God-given role. It is tiresome work! Especially if he is using such conditional, controlling means while hoping to receive genuine love in return.
It is ever present in his mind that her choices are not entirely free. Therefore he cannot ever know for sure:
Do I really have her unprompted love, desire, devotion or is she just doing what she must to survive or gain some social standing? If she were as free as a man, would she still choose me?
Funny how the most controlling societies are also the most suspicious and unforgiving of women. It is as if they know that tighter you hold the spring between your fingers the further away it will fly if it gets the smallest bit of release.
Isms and Phobias
Racism/Xenophobia
When tribes and empires began competing for supremacy and domination, it resulted in an increasing clannish/tribal protectionism. Oppressed tribes formed a common solidarity that became a source of racial pride. This could become warped into a growing US vs. THEM culture. Even so, this is not the worse kind of racism there is.
The really virulent, entrenched kind of racism is closely linked to male heads of households trying to secure a PURE patriarchal lineage through which they could eventually grow wealth and power and if lucky be reborn to enjoy it.
When empires came into being, not all families ascended to the upper echelons of power. For those who did not acquire wealth in their lifetime, there was the hope that through successive generations they could one day do so. In the skewed patriarchal system, the main goal is acquisition of power and dominance. It is everything!
The burden of patriarchal legacy denies children their right to freedom and self-actualization.
Fear of death is very strong (more on that a few paragraphs down) in patriarchal societies so finding ways to be eternal is a big deal. Trying to live on through name, legacy and genetics required the creation of a male heir who would be an exact replica of the father, carry out the father’s unfulfilled dreams, grow the father’s wealth and carry on the father’s legacy. An exact replica meant that men wanted their children and grandchildren to look just like them. In fact the patriarch of the family would often not recognize any children that did not seem to be of his lineage.
So of course, interracial coupling produced more dissimilar results. Also women who were unfaithful were easier to identify and punish if their “hornerman” was from another race once the incriminating offspring was born.
Today, this kind of racism is still very much alive. In fact, I still maintain the only way to identify a real racist is the test of interracial couples or children.
Classism
Remember the very first definition of unbridled patriarchy? Survival of the fittest WITHOUT the checks and balances of choice? Classism is the societal and economic manifestation of this.
It is not that hierarchy is inherently wrong. It is just that with great power comes great responsibility.
The head male gorilla may enjoy the best vantage point, first pick of females, first pick of food BUT all of this privilege comes with a heavy responsibility and a heavy price. He has all the power in order to SERVE his fellow troop. That is Mother Nature’s check and balance.
In a system that has attempted to foil Mother Nature and fly in the face of Universal Balance, we have the most privileged 1% in America who do not want to pay taxes. The custodians of the empire do not go and fight their wars but send poor, young men and women to die for them. We have people who actually feel comfortable living in ostentatious wealth while surrounded by poverty. We have people who really think that wealth and fame is for their own self-esteem and not tools of power GIFTED to them to be USED to help maintain a more beautiful, balanced planet.
Homophobia
In a truly balanced world, gender would be as nature intended- diverse. Love would be love no matter the gender. The roles and responsibilities we gave people would be based on their demonstration of their abilities and talents not whether they had a penis or vagina. That includes the roles and responsibilities of parenthood.
Since this is not the case and we have not only presumed what women should always be and what men should always be but decided to forcefully and blindly apply it to everyone we are in part to blame for the easily identifiable screaming queen and diesel dyke.
The most entrenched form of homophobia comes from those who resent the fact that homosexuals flaunt the truth about the Masculine/Feminine Imbalance that exists in the world. They flaunt the truth, that our gender roles are not distinct, dual and set in stone but diffuse, diverse and dynamic.
Those of us who believe in reincarnation see them as souls desperately seeking to rebalance in this life. Victims of patriarchy; the helpless, girlish, superficial bimbette reborn as a man and the brutish, emotionally repressed, testosterone led tool is reborn as a big breasted woman. It is the Universe seeking balance.
Those of us closer to that balance- the true bisexuals, gender neutral, Ishvara souls can clearly see why those who bravely live out a seeming mockery of the gender stereotypes should be celebrated. We clearly see why they spark the ire of those still slaves to the stereotypes and depend on them for a sense of identity, purpose and perimeters.
The heterosexual woman who has blindly bought into the "domestic Goddess", "husband's helpmate" role as her only purpose in life and has been forced to channel all her unspent intellect and ambition on emotionally controlling her children and socially controlling other women with underhanded catty games just to feel some kind of power, is forced to take a good, long hard look at her life when she encounters a lesbian, especially one who is just as feminine and beautiful as she.
Yet the lesbian is truly her OWN WOMAN, belongs to no man, follows her passions, expresses her talents, makes her own way, loves other women, promotes sisterhood instead of trying to compete for male attention. Now the heterosexual domestic goddess and Queen Bee is forced to ask herself, "What is my excuse?"
The same goes for the heterosexual man who has blindly bought into the "boys never cry," and "men only do manly things" who encounters the manly fairy.
Some straight people let the experience free them and open a whole new world. Others run screaming from it, deeply resentful at the gay person for contradicting their life choices and beliefs about how they are supposed to be as men or women, even if those beliefs on closer examination are not making them and the vast majority of heterosexuals truly happy and fulfilled.
Thanatophobia (Fear Of Death)
Memory is of the Feminine Divine. Call it what you will, the Alpha, the mitochondrial factor, the XX factor. The most important kind of knowledge/memory there is, is the awareness of one’s eternity.
Only an active awareness of the Divine Feminine allows humans to embrace the complete circle (Death and Rebirth) without fear. Humans with this kind of awareness can see death just like puberty or menopause, a natural process. They can embrace the contrast between light and dark. They can revere the deep, strong currents of the river that provides fish but which can also sweep a child under to the next world.
Awareness of the complete circle also makes it possible to surrender to experiences that make the spiritual a very tactile thing. One begins to see that the veil separating the physical and spiritual is extremely thin which of course opens up whole new realms of exploration fiercely forbidden by single Male Divine Parented Judeo Christianity which is only concerned with stimulating the waist up. Speaking of which…
Erotophobia (Fear Of Sexual Pleasure
Orgasm is called the “little death” but if you are afraid of death period and therefore afraid to surrender, afraid to embrace vulnerability, afraid to free fall and disconnect into pure sensation from the waist down, then the full power of the little death will continue to elude you.
This kind of dysfunction has affected primarily women. No surprise as they have been sexually repressed with far more consistency and intrusiveness by the patriarchal system. However, anorgasmia (loss of orgasm or inability to have orgasm) is becoming a growing problem among men.
Can you imagine the combined, pent up frustration of a growing number of men who are unable to orgasm? Or who ejaculate with little to no depth of pleasure from the release?
Why Do You Defend It?
Has unbalanced patriarchy done such wonderful good in your life that it is worth defending? Has it made you happier and healthier in all aspects of your life? Has it been able to secure you the freely given, unconditional love of a woman? Has it made you richer? Has it made your country a better place? Or is the truth that other than that top 1% who have always benefitted from this system, you are just another pawn, hanging on to the dream that one day, your son, your grandson will lift your name up to join that 1%?
Are you ready to remedy all of the ills of patriarchal imbalance? Stay tuned, we will explore in the final essay how we all can reconnect to the Mother, how women can tune into their Yang Consciousness and how men can tune into their Yin Consciousness.
