As the light autumn rain whipped against my face, I pushed my earbuds further into my ears and turned up my music in an attempt to bury the all-too familiar morning grogginess. All I wanted to do was scurry to work where I could drown out my sleepiness with a tall cup o’ Joe. The last thing I wanted on this Tuesday morning was two adolescent boys trailing me with their bikes, whooping and hollering at me like I was some ice cream truck just waiting to satisfy the hunger of eager male chauvinism.
Since coming to college, I’ve fell victim to a veil of ignorance. It’s a paradox, really. As I cultivate a liberal education in the arts and sciences, I’ve subconsciously fostered the assumption that the rest of the world was cultivating wisdom as well – that it was growing up alongside me. I’m starting to realize just how much farther we have to go until we reach a true kind of societal sophistication.
Patriarchy is the system that tells me to put up with being treated like an object no matter what I’m wearing. Patriarchy is the system that encourages little boys to treat a woman twice their age like a commodity. Patriarchy is every sexist joke, stereotype and generalization affecting men, women and children alike.
According to Allan G. Johnson, “Patriarchy’s defining elements are its male-dominated, male-identified and male-centered character, but this is just the beginning. … Above all, patriarchal culture is about the core value of control and domination in almost every area of human existence.”
Patriarchy is difficult to combat not only because it’s easier to follow paths of least resistance rather than act as a change agent, but because it is an utterly pervasive system that works through each and every one of us. Even though it may be hard to recognize the extent of patriarchy in the world today, it has a real, measurable impact on all genders.
A Daily Mail article referenced a study that found that about 80 percent of girls aged 10 have dieted before and are “stressed out” about how they look. We must wake up and ask ourselves, as Johnson encourages, what is the system that allows this to be okay? How are we perpetuating alienation and self-depreciation?
I was one of those girls that had dieted by the time I was a 10-year-old. Not because my family forced me to. Not because I even wanted to. I dieted because I couldn’t stand to be called “fat” anymore. I dieted because crying didn’t make anything better. I dieted because everywhere I looked I saw images of what women were supposed to look like. I dieted because a babysitter once told me when I was in first grade that I didn’t get cheese on my sandwich because I needed to lose weight, and she didn’t even blink about putting cheese on my brother’s.
Going on a diet was the only control I had, it seemed. It was the only way I could feel comfortable in my own skin.
I know now, as a grown woman, claiming control of your life is a lot harder than going on a diet. Especially when half the world is still asleep to – and perpetuating by participating in – the despotic system that continues to oppress so many.
No matter how much I individually resist the pervasiveness of patriarchy, there’s not much I can do about the majority of us who refuse to acknowledge the all-encompassing nature of the repressive system we participate in.
“Like all social systems, patriarchy exists only through people’s lives,” Johnson writes. “To some extent, people experience patriarchy as external to them; but this doesn’t mean that it’s a distinct and separate thing, like a house in which we live. Instead, by participating in patriarchy we are of patriarchy and it is of us. Both exist through the other and neither can exist without the other. Patriarchy isn’t static; it’s on ongoing process that’s continuously shaped and reshaped.”
We participate in patriarchy by following paths of least resistance, which manifest most commonly in our relationships with one another. Although we can’t change the way the media portrays men and women, we can control how we talk about and interact with gender and sexuality. We can change the way we talk with, act toward and complement one another.
The time has come for us to reclaim our control and move beyond a state of victimhood. It’s time we let our boys cry and our girls eat cake. Patriarchy exists because we all let it exist. We must resist the propaganda that divides and separates us in boxes too small for our potential. Only when each of us is aware of our own contribution to oppression can we move beyond it and create a society characterized by reason, dignity and respect.
