The patriarchy won’t go down without a fight

The day Roe v Wade was overturned, my father-in-law slapped me in the face

When in danger, our animal selves have mechanisms that keep us safe. We fight, flee, freeze, or fawn or flop. I froze that day. It’s a normal response to a threat. But now I’ve thawed! And in that thawing, I can see aspects of the event that I couldn’t before.

Physical violence is never excusable. I don’t mean to condone it but this post isn’t about the details of what happened. Nor is it about blame or responsibility. This post is about shining a societal lamp on my story so we can see the patriarchy that underpins it.

As my shock wore off in the days after, I went from thinking “I did something wrong” to “What I did was I didn’t meet their expectations”. And then that brought up the question “What are the expectations and why are they there?” The answer was all around me. Culture. It’s culture that dictates the prescribed set of behaviors that we come to expect. When we don’t meet those expectations we are seen as ignorant, unlearned, and rude. And in many cultures those expectations differ by gender. (This might be my story, but you too are most likely living in a patriarchy that reveals itself in small and large ways.)

Let’s say a man comes home on a Friday after picking his kids up. He arrives at his house where his in-laws have already arrived. His wife is out of town. He’s a bit preoccupied and not very talkative. He has a long list of things to take care of. This man proceeds to do some fun activities with his kids, helps them pack for their overnight camp, orders pizza for the entire crew, and jets to his home office in between it all to get some work done. What a “family man”!

Now let’s say this person is a woman. I believe in a patriarchal society you might suddenly see this same situation differently.

Maybe you have different expectations of her. She should take care of those around her. Everyone and anyone in the house is a guest of hers. She’s expected to provide drinks and food to her guests, to make sure they are happy and content and graced by her presence. When she slips away to do work, she’s ignoring everyone else. When she seems disengaged it’s because she’s being rude.

Expectation has the potential to set one up for some kind of emotional reaction when that expectation is not met. In my case, my father-in-law’s reaction was anger, yelling, and hitting.

According to Gavin de Becker, a leading expert on violence, physical violence requires the perpetrator to believe they have four things: 1) justification, 2) no alternatives, 3) the ability to perform a violent act, and 4) no perceived consequences. I would imagine this calculation is done very quickly and perhaps not consciously.

How, in my situation, did my father-in-law make this calculation? I cannot be sure. But the patriarchy tells men they need to be in control. In control of resources, their feelings, their families, their environment, their future. On that day, I believe my father-in-law felt that control had slipped away from him somehow. On some level, he thought I was not measuring up and was to blame for emotional reactions of those around me. In that moment of deBecker’s calculation he perceived justification.

This is important because, in the words of Shefali Tsabary, “We don’t live a life, we live a pattern.” (A Radical Awakening). We are living the pattern of a patriarchy. We are likely to perpetuate patterns unconsciously if we can’t see them. It took me awhile to be able to see the gendered nature of what happened. But now that I see it, I can’t not see it everywhere.

How often do we fill in the blanks of what we don’t know of someone with our assumptions? And how often are those assumptions gendered? How are each of us considering someone’s gender in the role we believe they should play? I see it in my hesitation in asking a suburban woman what she does for work. I see it in my sentiments towards a man who leaves the office at 4pm versus a woman who does the same. I feel it in my raised eyebrows towards a stay-at-home dad versus the quiet nod towards a stay-at-home-mom.

It’s important to notice the small and the large ways the gender inequalities creep into what we have come to expect. Both men and women uphold the patriarchy and both men and women suffer from it. My experience on that day has shown me that many of in my family have suffered from expectations stemming from my gender and the reactions borne out of the subjugation of women.

There are many other factors that contributed to that moment with my father-in-law. I certainly have not listed them all here. But as time passes and I zoom out, the gender bias and subordination of women is the most interesting to me. I hope that writing about it allows others to see that they are not wrong, not to blame, and not to feel ashamed — that holding onto those concepts only perpetuates and strengthens the patriarchal culture. I imagine the woke part of this world (hi San Fran) doesn’t experience patriarchy this way. But where I live we do. And it’s more than just a location. It’s a generation and it’s a cultural inheritance. It is insidious and ubiquitous. And as you make your shifts out of the patriarchy in small and big ways, you too might get some version of a slap.

I might be wrong here. But I might be getting some of this right. Please comment!