How I Went From a Male Chauvinist, to Supporting the Coming Matriarchy
My story starts like many other boys. Since children, they are told that some things are what men do and others what women do. Men being construction workers, leaders, while women cook and clean. Everything fit into those nice little boxes as a child, and I didn’t even think to question it. It was as true and correct as the sun always rises and sets every day. Another reinforcement beyond what typical parents instill in you is what you see in the church and what your pastor tells you — seeing only men in church leadership and women in the nursery — both in their rightful place. (However, that’s a topic for another day).
At first glance, this doesn’t seem so bad. What’s the issue with a system dominated entirely by men? That’s how it’s been for thousands of years, and we’ve gotten on just fine. Especially my being a man, why would I want it any other way? The whole idea sounds like self-sabotage. But the victims go beyond just women; boys and men are the victims from this male-dominated society too. They are some of the unknown, silent casualties in this long-drawn-out war.
One of the issues that boys get from this system is a false sense of self-worth. It is easy for boys to think they are superior to women just because of their gender. Children are very observant, and they see the society around them and how it is organized and structured. So they can grow up to have a feeling of superiority over women, I know I certainly did. When failures come up in life, at least you’re not a woman. Even the lowest man is still above the mightiest of women. I grew up with this thought process, and what it developed into proved to be toxic to me and towards the women, I dated and eventually the woman I married. It leads to bursts of lashing out, a sense of superiority over her, and emotional and physical abuse from both parties. I had become oppressive to my wife! Something had to change in this sea of repeating the same behavior like a broken record player. It became time for me to do some serious reflection and thought on my belief system in how women and men are in society.
I had known the word feminism before and matriarchy. I never looked too deep into it; they were just a bunch of crazy women trying to emasculate men and undermine the family while creating a socialist society. While there are feminists out there who advocate for that, a significant majority don’t. And those are the ones we need to lend our ears to, the ones who want equality between women and men, and not just to use their newfound power to dominate men like men have been dominating women for thousands of years. But a new and open world, where matriarchy can flourish and put an end to the power structure that defines the patriarchy. And there are good reasons why I now wholeheartedly support a matriarchy over patriarchy.
To start with, patriarchy itself is aggressive, and it has made the concept of masculinity just as aggressive and power-based. However, it had good reason to be aggressive long ago. Out in the wilderness, you need men who have that warlike prowess to keep everyone’s belly full and defend their territory. If you did not have that instilled in the children, you could have been just another conquered society and culture. But in today’s time, the community doesn’t need to work the same way as it used to. Society doesn’t pride itself on conquering other people, but by dialogue and partnering with others to build a better world. The old patriarchy/masculinity is out of touch and no longer needed.
This aggression and power hunger that stems from the patriarchy leads to other men and women being victims of this male-dominated world. We can see this in statistics as over 80% of violent crimes in the USA are committed by men. And it’s mostly against other men (Arrests By Sex). And it gets worse than that, according to Hattery & Smith:
“Nearly forty-four million women in the United States have been raped… If forty-four million men in the United States were the victims of these same kinds of violent crimes, it would be a national emergency, and resources would be made available to protect men from becoming victims.”
This should be an outrage to all men and start changing to prevent any more of this. Patriarchy is a cause of this; as mentioned previously, patriarchy gives men a false sense of superiority over women and allows them to think they can do whatever they want to women. Masculinity needs to have a makeover and become something new, something that supports women and men.
However, it’s not just violence against women occurring; it’s a multi-faceted issue with many others. This will be too brief to get into all of them, but I will mention one economic point discriminatory to women.
Studies show after controlling for things like education and experience, the average pay for mothers drops by 4 percent after the birth of the first child and another 12 percent for each additional child. — (Devine-Ahl, 2021)
Dismantling a male-dominated society and transitioning to a female ran society will reap so many benefits for the woman and man. Women could then be free to dream and explore their way and create a more open society that values feelings and communication. Men will also be able to do the same without having the brutality of male domination rearing its ugly head to them. Boys can be taught that they are no better than girls and start working in the early formative years of boys to change their behaviors towards women before they reach adulthood.
As Maureen Devine-Ahl puts it, patriarchy is power over others, while matriarchy is the inclusion of others. We are all well within our constitutional duties to alter our government to better suit society, and that would be getting rid of the patriarchy in favor of the matriarchy.
To get to a position where that can be a realization, it must first start in the home. Wives, mothers, sisters start little by little dismantling patriarchy when they establish matriarchies in their homes. Before the laws can change, society has to. We need to build a society that allows women to rule and govern just how men have since the beginning. Raise our children on this belief, and the next generation will all be in support of matriarchy.
My wife commented to me the other day that old saying we all know, “women are always right,” it’s not just a joke. It’s true. And because of how true it is, it’s even more of a reason women should be running society. My wife and I both have come to this realization, and both long for a day where men don’t dominate society but can transition to a new golden era, a new bright, peaceful future that not only have women at the table, but they run the table.
Sources
Arrests By Sex. (2018, August 20). Retrieved April 03, 2021, from https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/tables/table-42
Devine-Ahl, M. (2021). How to Make the Matriarchy: The Power and Promise of Prioritizing Women. New Degree Press.
Hattery, A., & Smith, E. (2019). Gender, power, and violence: Responding to sexual and intimate partner violence in society today. Lanham etc.: Rowman & Littlefield.
