Patriarchy is the Keystone Inequality
All systems of supremacy are built upon patriarchal conditioning and its core beliefs
American misogyny seems to be the animating force of this election cycle, no? Despite Gen Z’s reputation for a social justice or death mentality, new polling suggests that young men are drifting further rightward and embracing (partial) patriarchal “traditional” expectations while young women are asserting their sovereignty through progressive politics.
It’s insane that it’s politically progressive to acknowledge women as full human beings entitled to sovereign decision making and bodily autonomy. And it’s even more insane that these rightwing bros - who span all generations, this is not Gen Z specific by any means - are espousing traditional wifely expectations while also demanding that women split financial burdens 50/50, thus alleviating their own selves of any traditional masculine provider standards.
These men don’t just hate women having standards for care and conduct that reflect their own self-love and self-respect - these men hate the concept of working to meet any standards for their own selves - outside of self-pleasure.
This combative alignment is playing out across all generations, as demonstrated by heterosexual women of all ages initiating the majority of divorces. A growing number of women - divorced or otherwise - are consciously selecting to withdraw their focus from men at large.
The feminist movement to decenter men continues to gain popularity and influence across social media, and men are obviously beginning to feel - and viciously react to - the withdrawal of easily accessible feminine attention and resources in their own lives.
Even kings of capitalism aren’t immune with men like Elon Musk and hillbilly venture capitalist J.D. Vance rallying against the existence of single, childless women and the declining birth rate as a supposed existential threat to civilization. Their solution is to wield targeted state violence to rescind the rights of girls and women, hoping to force them to submit to roles of wife and breeder for the supposed good of the nation.
And you know what? They’re not one hundred percent wrong about the declining birth rate being an existential threat to capitalist systems. American capitalism requires women to act as the social safety net that cares for men by doing all of the labor to make their lives worth living, in addition to caring for the young, elderly, sick, and vulnerable without any promise of social support or reciprocal care.
In this patriarchal worldview, women are expected to meet all human needs without needing anything in return. This is necessary because none of our social systems are designed with the mandate to meet the needs of human life. It’s all built upon the unpaid and unrecognized work of women, and borrowing against future generations that must continuously grow in size to continue borrowing against without default.
All systems of supremacy are built upon patriarchal indoctrination and rely upon the core beliefs it cultivates.
Without women’s endless giving and sacrifice and labor, it all falls apart too blatantly for the existing systems of supremacy to continue to function as they have.
Women are rejecting men’s standard of conduct across the board. There is an open disgust amongst patriarchal men at the concept of working to meet standards of care, knowledge, respect, emotional maturity and a basic mastering of relational skill sets that are required to create healthy romantic partnerships, family dynamics, and community cultures.
Throughout all realms of society, men are struggling or opting out of participation altogether. Media narratives around the crisis of masculinity and male loneliness further imply that something needs to be done for men to address their self-selected tortuous existences. Patriarchal advantages are being challenged and women are fed up with being the scapegoats and unappreciated work horses of men’s lives.
Our politics reflect this patriarchal showdown. Actually, all of our major social crises stem from the foundations of patriarchal dominance beginning to erode because every social system we have built and inherited is based on the patriarchal extraction of labor and resources from women - forcibly, violently, and without any valuable reciprocation. Let’s talk about it.
Patriarchy is the first and keystone inequality upon which all systems of supremacy grow upon
To be clear, men like Elon Musk and J.D. Vance are absolutely aware of this. The exploitation of women as the basis to continue maximum extraction is a purposeful component of the system. That is why they’re slandering the existence of happy, self-sufficient, single, childless women as the fall of civilization itself.
Dismantling patriarchal conditioning within ourselves is a direct strike against the social logic of supremacy that all of these corrosive systems are built upon - patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, the systemic subhuman treatment of children, and Christian nationalism (within America - different patriarchal religious tyrannies exist elsewhere).
Seriously - it goes that deep because patriarchy is the keystone inequality that conditions us all from birth to accept a social logic and expectation for supremacy based relations where dominant roles extract from those forced into subservient roles without reciprocation. We are taught explicitly and implicitly that extractive dynamics are the foundation for social order and that true equality is a dangerous and mockable form of anarchy.
All systems of supremacy are built upon patriarchal indoctrination and rely upon the core beliefs it cultivates. Core beliefs are the unspoken logic of expectation built within us from early experiences and exposure to normalized dynamics within our family, immediate communities, and cultural traditions. Core beliefs are the thought beneath the thought - the subconscious assumptions that filter what we perceive into meaningful narratives and value assignments.
As we consciously deconstruct the patriarchal conditioning within ourselves - and act accordingly - the logic of exploitation as social order begins to fall apart. This threatens all major systems of supremacy.
KEY ASPECTS OF PATRIARCHAL CONDITIONING
Conditions supremacy hierarchy at the most intimate family level with partnership being defined by submissive and dominant roles favoring men
The dominant role is defined by entitlement to extraction and the will to impose perceptions of belief upon the subservient role, funneling the subservient role’s social identity through those imposed beliefs
The subservient role is defined by sacrifice and imposed limitations as standards of virtue
Demolishes core expectation for mutual benefit and mutual respect and mutual quality of life at foundational home raising level
Conditions expectations for men to exploit women to benefit from unpaid labor, unreciprocated care, and reproduction value
Conditions men to focus their attention and energy upon self and women to focus their attention and energy upon others
To internally justify this intentional subjugation and exploitation, men are conditioned to believe that women are subordinate and inferior entities that cannot be trusted with free will or respected as independently capable human beings
Conditions an attitude of incrimination against women amongst men and women alike through patterns of cultural ridicule, devaluing, and erasure
Conditions all to culturally demean spheres of domestic labor and femininity to psychologically disempower women and further sow seeds of incrimination towards feminine coded interests and work
Conditions a reciprocal overinflation and valuation of masculine coded spheres of labor, interests, and pursuits with the aim to maximize attention and resources toward men and minimize access to attention and resources for women
Conditions expectation that men should benefit from the presence of a woman and that a woman must justify her presence before a man by performing for his benefit
Conditions expectations that men are entitled to benefit from women without ever having to cultivate any meaningful knowledge of her needs or desires
Conditions expectations that men are entitled to receive anticipatory care, resources, and support from women without ever cultivating a meaningful understanding of their own selves, core beliefs, emotional wounds, triggers, or behavioral patterns
Conditions expectations that men are not responsible to cultivate any knowledge, understanding, respect, or routines of care towards women
Consider - would a man feel that way towards his car? That he was entitled for it to run and function beautifully, meet all of his transportation needs and status expression desires without him having to develop the appropriate knowledge and investment in maintaining the vehicles needs proactively?
These subconscious conditionings are leveraged to create resigned acceptance and justification for exploitative relationships throughout all of society
This creates major ingrained barriers to creating mutually beneficial social structures that honor human life by prioritizing meeting needs and fostering connective communities of inter-reliance
This imbalance creates radically exploitative expectations and standards across all spheres of life
Conditions us to believe that artificial systems of exploitation are natural and thus irrefutable and unchangeable - when in reality, nature flows through a balance of competition and cooperation
Artificial systems of exploitation replace cooperation, which degrades what competition alone can even accomplish
Imbalance results in states of arrested development (think Peter Pan syndrome and narcissistic orientations) and the loss of a mature vision for human life and the bonds of civilization
Do you believe that capitalism could exist without patriarchy being our default structure for family, care, community, and religion? I do not. Growing up in environments where women serve men and perform most or all of the domestic labor, child care, elderly care, emotional labor, and community organizing that creates stable, connected, worthwhile lives teaches us that those unpaid, unrecognized, yet vital spheres of work are a woman’s responsibility exclusively.
It conditions us from the earliest ages to view women as an inexhaustible resource without needs and desires of her own that must be respected and valued beyond a perfunctory “thanks hun!”. These conditioned resignations that some are born to labor and suffer for the salvation and pleasure of others are leveraged to justify the infliction of poverty and cruelty against scapegoated classes of people - through whatever hierarchical stratification - racial, economic, religious, or otherwise.
We are taught explicitly and implicitly that extractive dynamics are the foundation for social order and that true equality is a dangerous and mockable form of anarchy.
The work of supporting human life and meeting needs is demeaned through erasure and conditioned attitudes of incrimination towards women and femininity in general. Simultaneously, men’s labor - generally outside of the home or attributed to annual housework tasks like gutter cleaning - receive overinflated and outspoken value, appreciation, and encouragement.
We are taught to value men and demean women. His time is important and must be protected because it’s culturally associated with dollar values, while her time is an inexhaustible supply meant to be dedicated to the welfare and comfort of those around her because it’s culturally associated with homemaking and child rearing.
Even if she works just as many hours outside of the home as he does - and especially if, God forbid, she outearns him. Check out this study showing that women who out earn their male partners actually do more domestic labor - to help his ego feel served and assured.
Major Systems of Supremacy:
Patriarchy
Capitalism
White Supremacy
Systemic subhuman treatment of children
Christian nationalism / Patriarchal religious political tyranny
We have a high cultural tolerance for masculine abuse and a low cultural tolerance for feminine expression. He can withdraw resources based on moods, whims, and manipulative tactics to extract denied desires. He’s empowered by the slow and costly court processes - and pervasive attitude of incrimination against women - to financially abuse his wife and children.
She cannot abandon her children, family, and domestic responsibilities - that would be the definition of evil - regardless of the abuse or suffering inflicted upon her. She cannot advocate for her own wellbeing and needs without being labeled a difficult and selfish diva - or worse.
By promoting a sense of entitlement for men to feel superior to women as some supposed birthright, patriarchy ensures broken and divided homes - and broken and divided houses always fall when battling external threats of subjugation and exploitation.
These ingrained core beliefs and expectations create the subconscious acceptance for all sorts of exploitation. Of course the man with capital - the inanimate resources - is more valuable than the laborer who actually creates and thus is entitled to extract from the creator for the lowest tolerable return. The invisible hand of the market is really about the greatest extraction that can be enforced with the smallest return.
Just as companies collude to collectively drive up prices, men collude by collectively playing dumb (weaponized incompetence), refusing to call each other out for poor behavior, relying on stories of overtly abusive men to excuse their own shit behaviors, and purposefully promoting attitudes of incrimination against women at large by obsessing over gold diggers and porn stars.
These dynamics hurt us all - not just women - by perpetuating standards of spiritual impoverishment as social values of business savvy and masculine cunning. Without patriarchy at home, unfettered capitalism wouldn’t be tolerable.
By promoting a sense of entitlement for men to feel superior to women as some supposed birthright, patriarchy ensures broken and divided homes - and broken and divided houses always fall when battling external threats of subjugation and exploitation.
Capitalism requires this intimate division and impoverished vision of love and bonding to continue. Healed homes built from mutual respect, care, and valuing break the subconscious patriarchal conditioning that orientations of supremacy rely upon to maintain cultural, political, and social legitimacy and hegemony.
The totality of patriarchal conditioning instills the belief that supremacy and extraction are the natural order of life - this is incorrect. Nature grows through a balance of cooperation and competition. These patterns of conditioning replace natural mandates for cooperation with artificial systems of exploitation - severely diminishing what competition alone can even accomplish.
Exploitation and supremacy as the way of life is inherently traumatizing and fundamentally disrupts human development from birth through adulthood - and we are all suffering to varying degrees for it.
As we dismantle these conditionings within ourselves, we dismantle the ineffable building blocks of logic, expectation, and tolerance or submission that capitalism, white supremacy, Christian/religious nationalism, and the systemic subhuman treatment of children require to maintain dominance as our way of life.
I believe understanding this perspective is critical - especially for women - as we stand defiant against the violent threats of reactionary backlash and supremacist bullshit from people who feel entitled to never do the hard work of growing the f*ck up. These are people who need others to hate as a source of self-esteem while seeking to extract from the hated classes instead of working to build cooperative systems.
And, of course, there are many patriarchal women out there. I stand in opposition to those women who leverage their free will to support and defend these systems of exploitation. I respect their free will and I stand against their choices as self-serving, short-sighted, fearful, and cruel.
Next Time on Coco Battles Supremacy At Large…
In upcoming posts, I’ll explain how all systems of supremacy function as the institutionalization of narcissistic abuse and take a deeper look into each of these major systems of supremacy and how they build upon patriarchy. (Supremist orientation = narcissistic orientation at scale).
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TALK SOON! xoxoxoxo Coco + Maude
