R&D: What Is It Exactly?

I’m heartened and humbled by the wave of public and private messages from readers of the blog. Thank you for your kind words. While this work is all for the “audience of One,” I do appreciate knowing others are tracking with me.

As I’ve done the research in recent weeks for my memoir and essay work, I’ve been pretty lost most of the time. How do I talk about these things without villifying those who also participated in this patriarchy? How do I not place blame? How do I not sound completely bitter?

And then, one of the worst adverse effects of this patriarchy is that I was trained to not make decisions for myself (it wasn’t just me as a girl; my husband grew up in the same patriarchy and was trained to not make them either; that is how bad patriarchy can become). Thus, I just go round and round and get nowhere.

So for clarity, I think I’ll try and explain what I think patriarchy is.

Patriarchy is one of earth’s oldest traditions. It started in the Garden of Eden. Remember in Genesis 3:11-13 when the LORD God asked Adam and Eve why they had eaten of the forbidden fruit? Yes, the woman ate it first, but the husband blamed her immediately. And he ate it right after she did! I think that perverse response set the whole thing off. I could be wrong. I could be slightly influenced by all the books I’ve been reading lately about patriarchy and their reasoning. To a patriarch this first sin proves that women always seek to take control of men. To them this is where women first went wrong and then influenced the rest of us who speak up about patriarchy. They harp on this constantly and we haven’t heard the end of it.

This is the foundation of patriarchy: blaming everyone else for your own responsibilities. That’s the meanest streak in this cult. In a Protestant belief system that owes everything to taking personal responsibility for what one believes, I’m stunned we’re still here.

I believe patriarchy reduces a woman to a doubted character, someone on the cusp of losing everything that “he” (emphasis mine) holds pure. A women to a patriarchy believer is someone who is prone to falling down a “slippery slope” to feminism, abortion rights, homesexuality, etc. Patriarchy believes all of the world’s sin is a result of women (Eve) refusing to submit herself to a life of quiet and morality.

I have a lot more to talk about on that, but let me add now that patriarchy is so much more than just about demeaning a women because of her sex. Patriarchy has a long reach; there are curling vines of this cult that wind themselves around everything in our lives, especially among a populace that focuses so much on a fallen world. Patriarchy plays on those fears in countless ways. That, in my opinion, is the worst sin of all.

In my life, I’ve seen that patriarchy is:

a way for pastors to get their way in their church; if another man disagrees, it can be said he is being led around by the nose by his wife.

a way for children’s bad behavior to be excused, especially boys–”boys will be boys”

a way for the equilibrium of a marriage to go completely upside down (more on that later; I’m talking women who rule the house)

an emotional manipulation of men into thinking that their rights over their family matter more than a safe, loving home

a flood of over-emotional, overhyped moral revelations that are only used to torture helpless women and children

an overzealous father or patriarch refusing to step aside to allow his own sons to make decisions about their future.

Anyone have others to add to the list?

Of course, I’ll talk about more of this in detail later on, but if you’ve seen the movie Waitress (PG-13), you’ve seen patriarchy in the form of domestic and emotional violence. That movie showed me how the world has copied the church in this demeaning of women.

What a wonderful tradition we’ve set for everyone.

I think it’s pathetic.

But how did I get here? How did I get into patriarchy and most importantly, praise GOD, how did I get out?

We have to start at the beginning.

Tagged as: patriarchy, R&D