Why America Can’t Break Out of Patriarchy’s Trap
Aug 3, 2020
By now, you’ve heard thatAOC was accosted on the steps of Congress by Ted Yoho. He called her a “f***ing b*tch,” publicly menacing and taunting her, trying to bully and frighten her. It’s repellent to anyone who wants a civilized, decent, and modern society, and it’s the tip of a very big iceberg. Which is that Americahas a special problem with patriarchy.
Think about it for a second. There you are, going about your business, walking down some steps after work, when a man, large, much bigger than you, stops you and starts yelling at you. He works himself into a frenzy. Soon enough, he’s cursing at you, spittle is flying from his lips, his eyes bloodshot with rage, his entire body tensed up. What’s going to happen next? Is he just trying to scare you, to intimidate you, or maybe he’ll strike you and hurt you? Either way, the message has been sent.Male violence tends to run this society.
Male violence permeates America in sucha special and pervasive waythat I think it’s genuinely difficult for Americans to see the depth of it.Male violence is in the very air that Americans breathe, from the day we are born. Off goes a young man to college, where he joins a “fraternity.” There, he’s hazed, to teach him that violence is the ruling principle of life. And soon enough, he’s preying on women. A young woman joins the workforce, and is proud to have her first professional job. Only every day, it’s perfectly acceptable for her boss to scream at her, shout at her, and demean her. Americans don’t understand it, but this is what I mean byAmerica’s special problem of patriarchy. These institutions, this culture, exists nowhere else in the world. That’s not to say there aren’t societies that aren’t deeply patriarchal, but by and large, they’re poor countries with a long way to go. Among rich nations, patriarchy — theinstitutionalization of male violence— is one of the key forces which has kept America fromever becoming a truly modern and civilized society.
You can also see America’s problem of male violence writ large in itsfailure to deal with Coronavirus.Why are150,000 Americans dead? When only a fraction of that number needed to be? The negligence starts with theMisogynist-in-Chief, Donald Trump, and trickles downhill to governors inRed Stateswho are a certain kind of man, schooled in the values of dominance and aggression. You shouldn’t have to think very hard about why men inculcated into patriarchy’s values of cruelty, brutality, and survival of the fittest, led the nation to a stance where they simply ignored the weak, elderly, and frail. If patriarchy’s rule is “the most violent man dominates everyone else,” why bother fighting a pandemic?It’s only doing your work for you.
So there’s a question which occurs to me more and more frequently these days. Why don’t more of us reject male violence? That applies to both men and women — but I’ll come to that.
Now, by male violence I don’t just mean the idea that some men are abusive. Physically, verbally, emotionally. Of course they are, and it’s a terrible thing. But that is a facet of a much, much larger issue, question, problem. The problem of patriarchy. I think of our societies, our social contracts, our institutions, assomething very much like abusive relationshipsthese days. Ones that we’re trapped in.
If we think about it, the original feminists were…exactly right.The force that has run the world since time immemorial is male violence. As fellow Medium writer Elle Beau points out, patriarchy isthousands of years old.Male violence organized into great hierarchies and ranks, that made empires, battling with each other, in great wars,to possess, own, dominate, have the right to use and abuse everything and everyone else. So by male violence I mean the original feminist point that the rest of the world and everything on it and in it has long been regarded as a female bodyto be owned, violated, and raped, by tribes of violent men. Today, those things are our democracies, histories, truth, the planet, life on it,and civilization.
There’s little doubt that’shistorically true. The troubling thing is how true it still is.What else is a Trump but the embodiment of pure male violence? How about a Farage, a Modi, a Xi, a Duterte? Why is it that predators have risen to the tops of our societies? It’s because male violence is still the way we have been taught to choose.We are proud of our violent men.We vote for them, over and over again. So I mean that we still make the social choice — not just the individual, personal one — of male violence as the force that really runs our world.
The socialization into male violence — for both men and women — starts early.In school. At “fraternities” and “sororities,”where we learn to become brothers in violence— and sisters in submission to them. It’s reproduced at “work,” where we mostly labour tomake violent men richer. But the problem is that we are then led by violent men who turn right around and are quite happy raping the bodies of our democracies, prosperity, civilization the planet, and life on it. Theyreward violent men like themselves,creating systems which are really justhierarchies of violence. Those systems become the failed institutions which abuse (the rest of) us. That is one crucial way inwhich we are self-destructing.
So one interesting twist is that it’s both men and women who still choose male violence. Brothers in violence, yes — but also sisters in submission to them. That’s unfortunate — but true. Trumpwouldn’t have risen without the support of women. The same is true for every one of the-neo fascist demagogues, from Farage to Duterte. Women more often than not make the crucial difference in the social choice of male violence. But I think men and women choose male violence for different reasons.
Men choose male violence because it offers them a certain bargain.Consider the position of the second or third or fourth ornth most violent man in the hierarchy. The hierarchy is established by violence, and reproduced by violence. So the less violent man submits to the more violent man, and so on, until the most violent man — the Trump, Putin, Farage — is at the top of the ladder.But the one who submits receives a certain set of rewards. He wins the second most land, the second prettiest woman, the second rank, the second title,the second highest kickback, and so forth.
In other words, male violence is a pattern of hierarchical submission and domination.You can see that very, very clearly — and grotesquely — in the case of America. A band of brothers in violence has always ruled this country — with the whip and the fist and the gun. And today, the results of that are all too easy to see — and often to grim to bear.
Not willing to do any violence? Not willing to rape any bodies — not just human ones,but social, political, economic, ecological ones?Then you cannot join the higher ranks of American society in any way whatsoever. American society is vivid proof of male violence at work at a social level. And it’s collapse is, too — because that system has elevated predators to the highest ranks in society, who did what predators do: they turned on those less willing to do violence.The American middle class was ripped apart, and the American dream turned into anightmare of poverty, despair, and fear.
You can see in the case of America how American women are attracted by male violence, too. Think ofthe masses of women who pushed Trump over the top. But that’s just one instance. Think of the poor women of Faux News. They’re a pretty good example of the sisters of submission to the brotherhood of male violence — all makeup and peroxide and pleasing smiles. Their looks matter in a way that their male counterparts’ don’t. American women in general are much more fearful and submissive than European ones — precisely becausethere is much more male violence in their society.
So women, too, strike a certain bargain with male violence.Male violence says to them: the band of brothers will offer you protection.But only on these terms. You will be paired with the most violent man, who is the highest ranked one, according to your “attractiveness” to the rest of the tribe. And as his mate, your role isto make-believe his violence away. You are to be the pretty face that hides the gun and the bomb and the club. Therefore, your job is to look nice, to hide your feelings, to go on smiling, to be polite. (No wonder American women have so been obsessed historically with decorum and moral panics — they were the ones behind prohibition, staunch supporters of slavery and segregation, and so on.) Their job is to hide, to sanitize, to cleanse away all the violence their men do, to do the emotional labour of pretending all that violence is necessary and just and good and right, and then perhaps to teach it to the kids. Only then do they receive protection from it themselves.
Male violence strikes a kind of bargain of extortion with women.It’s not a surprise that so many women in societies as patriarchal as America choose male violence. In a world made of it,it’s the only thing that offers you protection from it, like a kind of terrible dilemma. Even if you must suffer some yourself in silence, it’s better that than the alternative — being exposed totally tosocially organized violence done by men. Women in that position are simply made the outcasts and nobodies of society, scorned and rejected and hated.
But what happens when men reject participation in the hierarchy of violence? I’ve already pointed out one set of consequences — you are starved of resources, money, status, respect. Let me now put it more sharply. You are not a part of the band of brothers of violence. You are an outcast. You are outside the tribe. What does that make you? A nobody. The incel is angry not because of male violence — but because he’s not a part of its brotherhood, and therefore he can’t claim a sister in submission.
The means are different, perhaps, but the ends are the same.A woman who rejects male violence is never seen as a woman. And a man who rejects male violence is never seen as a man at all.A person who rejects male violence is not a person.
They are less than human. They are worthy of contempt, disgrace, and scorn.They are “ugly” if they are women, and they are “wimpy” if they are men. The threat is permanent, it’s everywhere, and it’s absolute, total, existential. Do you want to be nobody? Wouldn’t you rather be a person, than no one at all?
In that way, patriarchy isa kind of fascism— andfascism is a kind of patriarchy.If you are not a brother in violence, or a sister in submission to the brotherhood — you are not really a person at all. That is how male violence extorts men and women both into choosing it. It says that if you don’t choose me — I will punish you. You will be nobody and nothing. I will hurt you and hate you and wound you. So we choose male violence, over and over again. Enough of us, both men and women, for it to still be the single social force that truly runs our societies. Trumps and Farages and so on — they’re just its embodiments. The hand that holds the club is male violence, as a choice, as a desire, as a need, as a value. That old way: I will possess and rape all the bodies that I can, and my brothers will respect me then to the precise degree that I do. I will protect you if you submit — and do as I say. Fear me. I can hurt you. I can hurt you forever.
By the way — isn’t all that a pretty good description of hell?
It felt that way to me. Let me add a personal note here.You can see from my writing that I’ve always hated — really hated — male violence, the bands of brothers, that old formula ofpossess-own-abuse-rape-discard. And I’ve paid the price, too. The moment that organizations and institution discovered this about me — bang! — game over. It hindered not just my career. But it left me profoundly lonely, too. Don’t cry for me. I have a wonderful and lovely partner. I love her for who she is. And I’m much happier never going on CNN and MSNBC than being a pundit. Tiny violins. The point is: I can’t not see the obvious. Reject male violence — and you are an outcast.
I felt I was in hell, living in the ruined worlds male violence made.Worlds of trauma and loneliness and despair and pain. Until, finally, I understood who I am. Who I’ve always been. One day, I think, at last, I stood up, and welcomed the devil to damn me. Then I was at peace, in hell. It was this fierce rejection of male violence, which I could never, ever bring myself choose — no matter how often I was called “fag” or “loser” or “dork” or “nerd” or worse, no matter how times I was ground into the dust, and tried to fight back my abusers. In some way, I knew: my abusers weren’t just these dumb kids picking on me. It was their parents, their teachers, the society which had made them little instruments of violence.
And maybe that was because I understood, deep down, how my grandparents and their grandparents had lived through something like a perpetual holocaust — being the servants and slaves of violent men.Maybe it was because I saw how the trauma of those holocausts rippled through the generations, right down to my mother, my father, me. Hell on earth. Hell in life.
I’ve hated male violence for what it did to my worlds.How itraped all the bodies of all the worldsI tried, and failed, to carry in my little arms as a child. I understood that much when I was small, even if it took me many, many years to be able to say just how. And many more years to understand just why this force of violence keeps on going, like a tsunami without end,laying waste to history, futurity, and possibility.
A final note. AOC wasn’t frightened by Ted Yoho’s aggression, his very American display of spectacular male violence.In fact,she gave a powerful speech condemning it, and discussing the issues above, which I encourage everyone to watch or read.A speech isn’t going to change the problem immediately. Let’s not forget who propelled Trump into office —a majority of white women. If America ever wants to join the ranks of civilized and modern nations, it is going to have to address the outsized problem of male aggression and violence and root it out. Biden nominating a woman for VP would be a good step. Let’s hope that journey towards true equality continues.
I think I understand, at last, why so many people choose male violence.Who would they be without it? Naked, alone, helpless. Ah, but they would also be free. To swim in the waters, and kiss the sky.Therein, my friends, lies the tragedy.
UmairAugust 2020
