I Tried To Spiritually Bypass Patriarchy
A couple of years ago the feminist in me was awakened. A man from my tiny spiritual community in Colorado mountains commented on a meme that talked about smashing the patriarchy in the new year. I’m paraphrasing, but he proclaimed that we do not live in a patriarchy because women rule the world. Women are so powerful that men are willing to do anything for pussy, men are even willing to KILL for pussy.
He was rumored to have a mail order bride which I naively assumed wasn’t true, so I used that as an example of how women do not have equal human rights. Sure as fuck he flipped out on me for insulting him, telling me he paid a fair dowry to her family and that us westerners are so judgmental of different cultures, that she was grateful to be able to do this for her family. We’re all one energy anyways...
A year later I saw this woman in her last trimester of pregnancy lifting heavy rocks to do landscaping for his business, maybe she was happy to do it, who knows. The point is that he has power and she has none. In the supposedly liberated United States he bought a human slave and was telling me to shut up about patriarchy.
This was the day I learned why I need feminism. None of us are free until we are all free. The witch in me who was hung, drowned, burned and had her tongue cut out countless times, awakened with a roar of 5000 year old rage.
But this rage scared the shit out of me and just like any other good girl raised in a patriarchal society, I found a way to minimize and silence myself.
On my spiritual journey I found out that what you focus on expands. If I focus on patriarchy and this rage I will only create more of that, is what I told myself. So to combat patriarchy I should focus on balance, unity, oneness. That is what I set out my mission to be and what I put my efforts towards. But I was battling crippling procrastination every step of the way and I kept seeing messages like “Your procrastination means you don’t believe in what you’re doing”. But I really do! My mission is founded in my life’s lessons, I believe in this and I want everyone to be aware that we’re all one! It’s a noble life’s purpose, I told myself.
I now recognize this as internalized patriarchy, ancestral trauma, a defense mechanism built into my DNA to not get burned at the stake again. The same thing that helped me survive all the ass grabs and pussy grabs growing up in this world by keeping me silent. The same thing that keeps other women laughing uncomfortably in the presence of rape jokes and crossings of their boundaries.
Much like on an individual level, we can’t heal our traumas by ignoring and suppressing our pain, same goes for the collective. We can’t heal the collective and ancestral traumas if we’re not willing to acknowledge and express them. We can not build a world of liberation without exposing every last bit of the shadow. And we have a very long way to go, when we’re still completely blind to it on the global scale.
I want to make one thing clear, all gender identities enforce patriarchy and all suffer because of it. It is internalized even by those identifying as feminists. This is not a problem exclusive to women, this is the problem at the core of all other problems, especially the destruction of our planet.
I started the year off by reading the most liberating book by Dr. Valerie Rein called “Patriarchy Stress Disorder” that I highly recommend to every human being, but especially to every woman on a self improvement hamster wheel. (Get it here)
My artwork has always been about welcoming the divine feminine energy and our evolution but I have been holding back a whole lot. Feminism is a priority in restoring balance on Earth. Now that I’ve regained my voice I will be using it regardless of whom it makes uncomfortable and I wish the same for you.