All day, every day, therapist, mother, maid
Nymph, then a virgin, nurse, then a servant
Just an appendage, live to attend him
So that he never lifts a finger
24/7 baby machine
So he can live out his picket-fence dreams
It’s not an act of love if you make her
You make me do too much labour. ~ Paris Paloma, Labour
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. ~ R.E.M.
For many decades, evolutionary scientists believed that a patriarchal society was the most natural. Until our ancestors, the great apes, proved them wrong (we still share 98.7% of our DNA with the apes). Bonobos, or pygmy chimpanzees, were neglected for decades by primatologists as simply being smaller versions of chimps. But they are very different. Bonobo groups are overseen by dominant females, whereas the chimp hierarchy is structured around an alpha male and his male cronies. Chimp communities, which focus mostly on power and sex, are violent, competitive, and murderous. Bonobo communities are generally peaceful and tolerant.
It’s time for some bonobo energy. But before I attempt to convince you that we’re past due for some matriarchal vibes, let’s define the patriarchy. A patriarchal system is one based on control and competition. It glorifies dominance and profit and is designed to keep power in the hands of a very few at any cost. In the patriarchy, 1% of the collective holds more wealth than all the other billions of people combined. Racism, capitalism, and the climate crisis would not exist if it was not for the patriarchy. This way of being demands our disconnection and exhaustion. It feeds on our fear, stops us from thriving. It overworks and distracts us, so we have no energy to unite and rise up. It’s a world where we’re gaslit into believing gender equality exists, when all the evidence points to the contrary. Told it’s a merit-based world, where “merit” means born into wealth and privilege only. It’s a world where we would rather elect a convicted criminal than a compassionate, intelligent woman. Because, you know, emotions can’t be trusted.
It is unfair and it is unnatural.
What if – and stay with me here because this might sound crazy – nobody has to lose for everyone to win?
I keep coming back to my own nervous system state. I am dysregulated a little when I read the daily news, sure. But, for the most part, I feel more hopeful and optimistic about our future than I did during Trump’s first term. I can see through the general chicanery. But it’s more than that.
I believe that all the pain we are feeling right now is a collective and desperate clutching to the familiar way of being, even though it hasn’t worked in a very long time. The toxic patriarchy is coming to an end. Our very foundation is being stirred up and the sediment at the bottom is rising to the top. This rising against the machine was always going to be painful. We’re in the revelation part of the Hero’s Journey, the part where everything sucks, but we’re on the very precipice of positive transformation. The rebuilding will be uncomfortable and not without its own mistakes.
But it is time for the matriarchy. We’re not trying to flip the power dynamic so that women can rule over men. Women are more concerned with connection than control. We want to create a world where power is shared instead of hoarded, where resources are shared rather than exploited. We want a reality where people are prioritized over profit, where emotional intelligence is valued just as much as logic.
I think about my own mom and how she showed up so fully for her two extremely different children. My brother Ian and I are almost polar opposites. He was a head-in-the-cloud artist with ADHD and I was a headstrong, I-will-do-it-by-myself sort of kid. We both felt different. But where Ian suspected everyone else was wired correctly and he wasn’t, I naturally assumed I alone was privy to the secrets of the cosmos. Which showed up as a kid convinced she was always right. But God bless my mother, she gave us both exactly what we needed to thrive. Her time, money, and energy were allotted as needed so that we both felt heard and seen.
Everyone wins when no one is left behind.
