To be oppressed means to be deprived of your ability to choose.
Psychological patriarchy is a “dance of contempt,” a perverse form of connection that replaces true intimacy with complex, covert layers of dominance and submission, collusion and manipulation. It is the unacknowledged paradigm of relationships that has suffused Western civilization generation after generation, deforming both sexes, and destroying the passionate bond between them.
All over the world people live in intimate daily contact with one another. They wash together, eat and sleep together, face challenges together, share joy and sorrow. The rugged individual who relies on no one else is a figure who can only exist in a culture of domination where a privileged few use more of the world’s resources than the many who must daily do without. Worship of individualism has in part led us to the unhealthy culture of narcissism that is so all pervasive in our society.
No level of individual self-actualization alone can sustain the marginalized and oppressed. We must be linked to collective struggle, to communities of resistance that move us outward, into the world.
Whether they regard themselves as pro- or antifeminist, most women want men to do more of the emotional work in relationships. And most men, even those who wholeheartedly support gender equality in the workforce, still believe that emotional work is female labor. Most men continue to uphold the sexist decree that emotions have no place in the work world and that emotional labor at home should be done by females.
To fulfill that mission, my teachers made sure they “knew” us. They knew our parents, our economic status, where we worshipped, what our homes were like, and how we were treated in the family.
Love allows us to confront these negative realities in a manner that is life-affirming and life enhancing.
I learned then that it is more fulfilling to live one’s life within a circle of love, interacting with loved ones to whole we are committed.
The belittling of anyone’s attempt to name a context within they were wounded, were made a victim, is a form of shaming. It is psychological terrorism. Shaming breaks our hearts.
Cultures of domination rely on the cultivation of fear as a way to ensure obedience.
The mutual practice of giving and receiving is an everyday ritual when we know true love.
We learn to love men more because they will not love us. If they dared to love us, in patriarchal culture they would cease to be real “men.
When women internalized the idea that describing their own woe was synonymous with developing a critical political consciousness, the progress of the feminist movement was stalled.
For many men the moment of violent connection may be the only intimacy, the only attainable closeness, the only space where the agony is released.
In the dominator model the pursuit of external power, the ability to manipulate and control others, is what matters most. When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent but it will frame all relationships as power struggles.
In truth, true love is all about work.
The feminist call was for women to embrace ways of seeing beauty and adorning ourselves that are healthy, life-affirming, and not overly time-time consuming.
Our cultural obsession with death consumes energy that could be given to the art of loving.
Action, like a sacrament, is the visible form of an invisible spirit, an outward manifestation of an inward power.
Many of us were the unplanned children of talented, creative women whose lives had been changed by unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. We witnessed their bitterness, their rage, their disappointment with their lot in life and we were clear that there could be no genuine sexual liberation for women and men without better, safer contraceptives, without the right to a safe, legal abortion.