Patriarchy Light
February 2001

I recently received a very thoughtful e-mail that reads in part:

I know that is considered "common wisdom" to equate patriarchy with oppression, but I'd like to challenge you (in the best tradition of brotherly wrestling) to reconsider that conventional wisdom. I think patriarchy has gotten a bad rap. I don't disagree with you that modern culture is toxic to men, is empty of any transcendent values, and is collapsing. But I am hesitant to identify patriarchy with our sick culture. The most I am willing to say is that it is patriarchy gone bad. But patriarchy itself is not a bad thing, and is responsible for creating civilization. The whole notion of fatherhood, and rule of the fathers, represents a tremendous step forward not just for men, but for women and children too. I deeply believe that it is fatherhood which allows for childhood and our developed human personality.

This comment brings up a whole slew of questions that get to the root of men's issues. After all, when there is talk of patriarchy, there is talk of men. I think part of an answer relates to Robert Johnson's comments concerning what level we're talking about. I have to keep reminding myself that it's the levels, stupid.

I have tried to emphasize in my writings that I am talking about the dark or shadow patriarchy when I mention the term. This dark patriarchy is the current American incarnation. Yet the question also arises, as it does here, is there a light, conscious, benevolent patriarchy in any parts of our lives as men. And how would this patriarchy light affect our lives for the good.

Again we're stepping into political incorrectness here. But consciousness is more important than correctness, at least to a therapist. And, if there is some help to us men in this discussion, it's worth the risk.

First of all, on the political level I have to agree with the feminists. For one group to have more inherent political power, being born into it so to speak, is both wrong, unjust and ultimately destabilizing. It is also contrary to the explicit values of our country. So rule by men, acting as fathers, benevolent or otherwise, seems to carry a darkness from the beginning. I also have to agree that we have a de facto patriarchy, even though, de jure, this culture is most affected by all those of voting age.

The same arguments against elite political power would be true of a political matriarchy. I don't believe that women in power would be any more benevolent then men, especially when their power was threatened. Any archy is about control and holding on to power. Group and political dynamics is usually blind to gender.

In fact, there is a matriarchy, both light and dark, existing in our lives every day, affecting us all intimately. It exists on a level other than the political. This is the emotional and social matriarchy in the family. In our country this matriarchy started in the Victorian age, about the time of the Industrial Revolution. At this time women were given the job of raising children, nurturing both their emotional and moral growth. Anthony Rotondo speaks of this in his fine book American Manhood. As he describes, "Home was the woman's domain, so it was filled with the piety and purity that were 'natural' to the female sex. This atmosphere of virtue made home the logical place to raise children, and woman the fit and proper person to do the job." The men's world, the patriarchal world, was seen, on the other hand, as "the locus of sin and evil."

Even today I talk to many men whose wives have effectively cut them out of the childraising department, banished them from this level. Or if they have wanted help in childraising, expect the childraising to be on their terms and with their rules. This emotional and social matriarchy unconsciously holds on to this familial power as surely as the patriarchy tries to hold on to political and economic power. The assumption in this matriarchal stance posits that men are unfit to raise children, soiled as they are by the world.

So what about the patriarchy at the political helm? What has the patriarchy done to positively create the civilization we know. I submit that the patriarchy has made an important contribution based on its strength, producing an efficient marketplace for the creation and proliferation of goods and services. The ability of a society to take care of itself materially, with the most efficient structure to provide for and protect itself, builds the foundation for any higher culture. In effect, the patriarchy has provided men who are effective protectors and providers. As in the traditional family, the father culture has provided a space for the emotional and spiritual life of society to have a safe space to flourish. So patriarchy has had an important place in the creation of our civilization. Think of that when driving a car or using a phone or reading a web page. In a sense, patriarchy has provided space for leisure, which some say is the basis of high culture.

A question may arise, has patriarchy been as good or bad an archy as any other? On the political level, the dark side of any oligarchy, rule by any elite class, is that it will never voluntarily give up its power for a higher good. It will always see itself as the higher good. In the patriarchy, the market has become the highest good, and the patriarchy its guarantor. I submit that our culture is in shambles at the political and social level because the marketplace holds our highest good, in effect our spirituality. Any oligarchy will, by its nature, deify its values, to the detriment of any higher power. The patriarchy's values deify the marketplace, with salvation being financial security and leisurely retirement the equivalent of heaven. So the obsession with the marketplace is both the strength and the Achilles heel of our patriarchy.

The cultural matriarchy also has these power issues. Besides discriminating against men as childraisers, it holds its own brand of childraising as its highest value. The dark form must retain its role of mother, at all costs, even when children grow up. Just as the patriarchy never lets men grow up to compete for power, neither does the matriarchy. In many ways matriarchs see men as perpetual boys, and, truth to tell, want it that way. I see many wives, identified with the matriarchy, who not only won't share childraising, but won't consider the possibility that their husband is an emotional or moral equal. The dark matriarch needs to stay the perpetual mother, as the dark patriarch needs to keep his fatherly control, no matter the age of the child.

The problem with any archy is the dark side of control. Yet control is necessary in a society that has children to educate, guide, and protect, as my e-mailer suggests. Maybe the better question is, can any culture survive without some form of hierarchical control? And at what level do we need control? In fact, in a family, any archy is better than anarchy. Children need guidance, structure, and some control. Children need both a matriarchy and a patriarchy. Children need parents who are not afraid to use their power. Shared power is needed, however. Neither mother or father is more important than the other. Neither can develop a child's whole personality alone. Both have their strengths and the time in their children's lives when they are most needed.

In my opinion, men need to refocus their attention from obsession with the marketplace to the importance of the family. This is where patriarchy has a more benevolent place. The hierarchical structure, that is patriarchy's strength, needs to return to the family. The conservatives have a point here. Parents need to be in charge of families, giving them much more time as a couple. This is especially true from the male side. Daughters and sons desperately need their fathers for much more than protection and financial providence. They also need top down guidance that patriarchs can provide. Hierarchy is a masculine way of nurturing that needs to be honored and developed. Fatherhood may have been a leap forward in our evolution as humans. In the last two hundred years it has leaped backwards. Modern mothers have had to hold the family together under the most trying of circumstances.

Women need to share the family realm as much as men need to share the political realm. I know that most women will say that their husbands are not interested in childraising. In some cases this is true. Men are taught to be interested in other things. Yet many men seem disinterested only because they are given the message that, not only is this not their realm, but they are naturally not good at it. Sometimes, for men it's much more a confidence thing. And any woman who feels her husband is disinterested has to ask herself, do I really want to share my children with my husband. Do I really want to share the rulemaking?

On the political level the rules are different from the family level. Just as the patriarchy needs to move into the family, for the sake of children, it must stop treating adults in society as children. A dark oligarchy will always treat the majority of the population as children, children needing guidance and control. Warren Farrell talks of the patriarchy as being just as oppressive to men as to women. The majority of men, supposedly in control, are treated as disdainfully as women.

Our culture needs an oligarchy of mature adults, regardless of gender, religion, color, sexual orientation. Just as a mature heterosexual relationship needs an equal partnership, this culture also needs a partnership of the best that matriarchy and patriarchy has to offer. This partnership would be for the benefit of its children and the emotional and spiritual well-being of its adults.

Most of all, our culture needs an inclusive oligarchy that is conscious of its dark side. This consciousness must guarantee that its existence will not become its own highest value, that it will not do whatever it takes to preserve itself. This consciousness must see its highest values to be greater than its own survival. This conscious culture must allow its children to grow up, without being carbon copies of itself. It must allow itself to be transformed in each succeeding generation by its grown up children.

I don't want to talk, as a dark patriarch, with rigid certainty. My aim is not to lecture. I don't talk as one who has the ultimate truth. These are just thoughts that men and women might need to think about. I talk more about men's strengths than women's only because this is a men's site and I know men better than women. I would actually like feedback about this idea of patriarchy, especially how it might be seen in a positive light in the building of our culture. Has it been a leap forward in the evolution of our Western culture. Other thoughts are accepted and needed.

I do know that men, today, get trashed, often in unfair ways, with words such as patriarchal, control freak, workaholic, stern disciplinarian. It is true that men need to grow beyond the dark patriarchy. But that doesn't mean that patriarchy is a four letter word. Men need to understand patriarchy better, in order to use it well, especially to know its limits. Men need to understand the levels. But is there something important in patriarchal structure and values, not only for men but for the whole culture, that should keep it from being leveled?

 Larry Pesavento, Copyright © 1999, 2000  

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