It’s Time for a Matriarchal Society

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, one per­cent 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 and 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.