Resisting patriarchy. Some ways that both women and men can resist patriarchy:
Political action to end world slavery of women and girls.
Work to change the legal system so that “equality” doesn’t mean treating women the same as men. Women have different needs than men, especially with regard to pregnancy and children. Those needs must be accounted for.
Work to provide support networks for prostitutes – the victims of enslavement typically since childhood – and arrest the perpetrators, the johns and pimps.
Mandate that both women and men must take time off for family care so women are no longer penalized at work for caring for children or parents.
Learn how, even with affirmative action, huge wealth continues to be unfairly transferred from women to men at work. Seek to end practices of nepotism and collusion that allow this.
Support women-owned businesses and services whenever possible.
Be accurate in speech. Insist on gender inclusive language; humankind (instead of “mankind”), women and men (not simply “men”), mail carrier (not “mailman”), etc.
Speak accurately about things as they really are. For example, acknowledge that prostitutes are the victims – not the criminals – in illegal prostitution.
Acknowledge that fear for their safety means that anywhere in the U.S., women alone are not safe – after dark or during the day. Attackers are men.
Re-train women and girls not to blindly hand over their authority or trust to men in positions of authority – whether they are doctors, teachers, pastors, etc.
Most of all, education – especially for women and girls who are often denied psychological, emotional and monetary support for college in this country and basic education in other countries. Education is a human right.
Let’s be clear, patriarchy (pater arché or “father/men rules”) is abusive by design. Anytime one group, in this case men, hold power over another group (women) it is abusive. Mature adults do not need other adults to tell them what to do, how to behave, what to believe or what to think. When one group (men) believes they have the right to do this – it is abuse. It doesn’t matter if it happens in the board room, classroom, bedroom or worship space. When men believe they have the right control other adults they are being physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually abusive.
Because our culture is patriarchal, women are trained from childhood to believe that they should hand over their power to men. This happens in many ways, some overt, some subtle. Regardless, this kind of inculturation restricts their freedom and prevents women from being truly human. It also impoverishes men who then never experience the riches and gifts of women freely choosing their actions and vocations.
Understand this – it takes a lot of threats, secrecy, violence and abuse to maintain a system of patriarchy. Everyday, women are raped, beaten and killed in order to maintain patriarchy. Women are psychologically, emotionally and spiritually abused in order to maintain patriarchy.
It’s no accident that sexual abuse occurs frequently in family, corporate, educational and religious institutions. They are profoundly patriarchal – so abusive by design. Punishing individuals will never solve the problem – though that is necessary. Neither will swapping women for men in positions of power. The actual system must be changed so that power is shared.
Some may claim that “someone needs to be in charge.” In a family situation this is often assumed to be the husband or father. Not so. Many couples and groups function well using consensus. Other groups implement various types of representative democracy. What typically doesn’t work very well is any form of patriarchy, monarchy, hierarchy or dictatorship. These are the very breeding grounds of abuse by design – creating an unequal power dynamic. Love, by definition, requires mutuality. Love between adults necessitates that power is shared.
Our culture is infected with acute xenophobia (pronounced “zee-no-fo-bee-ya”). It means “fear of strangers.” It’s often confused with being an introvert. This is incorrect. To be introverted means to be better at relating to people one-on-one. Being an introvert is the opposite of being an extrovert, or someone who easily relates to more than one person at the same time. Neither of these has anything to do with xenophobia.
In my family of origin there was acute xenophobia along with racism, sexism and homophobia – just to start. Symptoms of xenophobia I remember included statements like “our friends are our family” or “only family should watch my children.” These are typical statements of extreme xenophobia. Generally family members simply didn’t relate to anyone who wasn’t part of our family. An exception might be people they worked with, but these relationships didn’t extend much beyond work.
The ability to listen and share in order to relate intimately and develop empathy for others is an essential part of our humanness. Xenophobia, like other psychological and emotional illnesses, short-circuits this process.
Because of xenophobia no one in my family of origin was very involved in civic or community activities. No one volunteered much or contributed to non-profit organizations. There was no sense of contributing to the wider community in gratefulness for all we had received – both fairly and unfairly (through unearned privilege). There was little sense of caring for others in need. No one offered to serve in the capacity of leadership in any way – even though nearly everyone in my family – especially the men – benefited greatly from both public and private education, college, and all the benefits of white privilege. This meant that we never lacked for food, healthcare, clothes or home ownership.
Consistently most family members avoided relationships with people of different ethnic or racial backgrounds, different interests or lifestyles. Living this way results in an extremely narrow and impoverished life.
Generally, by adulthood, if an individual hasn’t managed to extend most of her or his friendships or relationships beyond family members, something is drastically wrong.
Our families are meant to be the training ground where we learn how to trust others, thereby allowing us to extend ourselves outward to those who are different in the world. Take a look around you. If your most of your social life and friendships involve family members – you, too, are xenophobic.
For Christians, Christianity calls us to be on mission – extending ourselves through hospitality and friendship to those who are very different – culturally, socially, racially, and more. These interactions change us, making us more of who we are meant to be. To fail to extend ourselves to others, is to fail – in part – to be fully human, fully whole. In the image of our Trinitarian, relational God, diversity is a necessity for us to thrive too.
How to counter xenophobia? Reconsider how you spend your time. Shut off the radio. Shut off the TV. Shut off the computer. Take that time and ask to meet a neighbor for coffee. Join a book club. Volunteer to teach English as a second language. Meet others – beyond where you work. Stop and ask yourself if you even know your neighbors. If you’ve lived somewhere more than a few months, introduce yourself to those living near you.
People are infinitely interesting. The vast majority are happy to offer friendship and hospitality, particularly those recently arrived from other cultures. For those of us from a xenophobic background, extending ourselves isn’t easy. However, for our own health and development we need to make the effort. Introduce yourself. Invite others into your life. Be inclusive. Resist family and cultural xenophobia. It’s not inevitable. It’s not the way it has to be. It’s not who we are called to be.
Do something good for yourself and someone else. Get to know someone new today.
In our culture we view the world through the eyes of privilege – actually over privilege or unearned privilege. We often attribute our unearned privileges to “blessings from God” or to “luck.” Even scientists in our culture fail to see the effects of unearned privileges and attribute these benefits to luck. But it isn’t luck at all.
An article in Science Daily entitled Reward the Second Best, Ignore the Best is a great example of these blinders of privilege at work. The article reports that those who are most successful often are successful because of a combination of both luck and skill. It states,
Implications of this research
The lucky few should understand and appreciate the role that luck played in their extreme success, and with that understanding comes an obligation to those that have not. The lucky few may be more skilful than others eventually, but the way they gain their superior skill can be due to strong rich-get-richer dynamics combined with the good fortune of being successful initially.
This was interesting because the author used Bill Gates’ extreme success as an example of this phenomenon.
Yes, Bill Gates may be very talented, but his extreme success perhaps tells us more about how circumstances beyond his control created such an outlier. Stated differently, what is more exceptional in this case may not be Gates’s talent, but the circumstances he happens to be in.
For example, Gates’s upper class background enabled him to gain extra programming experience when less than 0.01% of his generation then had access to computers; his mother’s social connection with IBM’s chairman enabled him to gain a contract from the then leading PC company, generating a lock-in effect that was crucial for establishing the software empire. Of course, Gates’s talent and effort play important roles in the extreme success of Microsoft. But that’s not enough for creating such an outlier. Talent and effort are likely less important than the circumstances (e.g., network externalities generated by customers’ demand for software compatibility boosted Gates’s initial fortune enabled by his social background) in the sense that he could not have been so successful without the latter.
And yet, the author clearly demonstrates it was not, what the author described as, “lucky circumstances” that aided success. In the case of Bill Gates, the author explains that it was actually “Gates’s upper class background [that] enabled him to gain extra programming experience when less than 0.01% of his generation then had access to computers; his mother’s social connection with IBM’s chairman [that] enabled him to gain a contract from the then leading PC company, generating a lock-in effect that was crucial for establishing the software empire.” So inherited, unearned benefits and privileges of class created the circumstances contributing to Gates’ initial success – so not luck at all — but the unearned benefits of the privileged.
Our social and economic systems are specifically designed to benefit some at the expense of others. What would have been unusual is if Bill Gates hadn’t benefited from his inherited, unearned, upper class privileges.
While the premise of the article is worth noting – that we should consider more carefully the success of those rated “second best” – it should have noted that unearned privileges of class, not luck, gives a big leg up to those at the top.
As Americans we like to believe that we live in a classless society or that everyone has an equal opportunity for success. The reality is that we live in a highly stratified society of social class with an income disparity of countries like Uganda and the Ivory Coast.
We may pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, however our bootstraps came from somewhere. We didn’t create them, but they weren’t “luck” either. And our social and economic systems are designed so that some of us don’t get any bootstraps at all.
Our task in this world is to provide similar bootstraps to those with none so that everyone has a chance to use their gifts and live a fully human life. This requires learning how social and economic systems really work so we can make intelligent changes. We are all connected. We will not all be whole and healed until all are whole and healed.
I AM is the 2011 creation of film maker Tom Shadyac, “one of Hollywood’s leading comedy practitioners and the creative force behind such blockbusters as “Ace Ventura,” “Liar Liar,” “The Nutty Professor,” and “Bruce Almighty.”” Shadyac uses the film to explore two questions: what’s wrong with our world, and what can we do to make it better?
In the film a series of experts explains that everything in reality is connected and when we don’t honor that truth, things go awry.
Shadyac should stick to comedy. These questions require digging below the surface and thinking at a deeper level. The movie fails at both.
This was truly a disappointing film. I would never show this in my classroom for the following reasons:
1. The film consistently uses non-gender inclusive language. For example “mankind” vs. humankind, “men” instead of men and women or human beings, etc. What was he thinking? Was he thinking?
2. The scientific “experts” in the film are predominantly white males with the exception of one woman and one person of color, Archbishop Desmond TuTu.
3. Positive actions are portrayed by whites. Not so for persons of color. The first clip of a person of color is someone making a negative gesture in traffic, followed by another person of color aggressively picking a fight with someone in the car ahead. Wow, just wow.
4. Systemic aspects of the issues of patriarchy, racism, sexism, or nationalism are never even mentioned, much less addressed. In fact they are subtly promoted. This is done by using white males as “experts,” Obama’s presidency as evidence that the race issue is resolved – it isn’t, or the tragedy of 9/11 as moving the dial in an experiment – but what about the more than 5,000+ women who die every year in the U.S. due to rape, abuse, violence? Why don’t their deaths move the dial?
Basically this is a “warm, fuzzy, feel good” film that stays only on the surface. The economic, educational, taxation and legal systems that continue to transfer wealth to the rich, and rich countries, and keep the poor poor – by design are never discussed or even alluded to.
“I Am” is to systemic injustice what the movie “Crash” was to racism. Individualism is subtly promoted. It is a personal, feel-good message only; if we all just love each other the world will be healed. No. It. Won’t. Systems of injustice need to be dismantled. Laws must be changed.
The viewer is never challenged to think critically about the underlying causes. Perhaps this is because the director himself, a beneficiary of patriarchy and a very privileged background, experiences unearned benefits everyday due to his sex and skin color, to say nothing of his famous father. Who would want to question that?
As you can guess – I don’t recommend this film.
Instead I recommend the film: The Human Experience. You can read why in my write up of it here.
