What is Patriarchy?
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This blog post is the second post in a series leading up to our first Men’s Call that will take place at 8:30pm ET on July 8, 2019. This series explores adrienne maree brown’s blog post relinquishing the patriarchy. Check out post one, Let’s Relinquish Patriarchy, for context.
Let’s start where adrienne begins. Here is the simplest definition of patriarchy:
the system of society/government in which men hold the power and women are excluded from it.
She tells us what it is. She asserts that it is collapsing. And she admonishes us to give it up and get ourselves out.
She reminds us that it won’t be easy. But conscious masculinity is not about the easy path. It is about rising to the challenge. Specially when we hear a call to freedom.
adrienne is pragmatic in reminding us that total revolution or liberation do not happen in one generation. We know we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. And we know that we live for our descendants.
But she also offers the testimony of her own personal transformation. She speaks of her own experience in relinquishing unjust ideologies and engaging her own evolution. She wants us to know that we too have the option of growing and evolving.
Of “tipping society towards justice.”
adrienne goes on to challenge our sense of what is normal. She reminds us that we are much more than what is: white, us citizen, who has degrees, is (or is married to) a cis male, straight and able bodied. And she articulates how holding on to this idea of normalcy is precisely how we become complicit in causing pain and injustice.
How close are you to this idea of “normal?”
How do you tend to consciously or unconsciously imagine yourself superior to those further from this idea?
How are you simply unconscious, unaware of what it is to embody something that is other than male?
Are you ready to listen to things that you do not want to hear? Things you do not want to believe?
Many men in this group have done a lot of work to consciously undo the impact of patriarchy on our lives and the lives that we impact. I have called myself a feminist for a long time, and this hasn’t been enough to keep me from perpetrating patriarchy.
These are questions worth coming back to over and over again. And it is always best when we do it together.
I look forward to being with you on July 8. I encourage you to comment below.
Please feel free to invite other men in your life. Brothers who are ready to do the hard work together.
Saludos,
Gibrán