Ferrari in the Desert

I’m literally surrounded by men. Their homes form a circle around mine. Sometimes my daughter will grab one of their hands and take them for a walk. I figure it would do more harm than good to her if I intervened and never let her interact with them – mostly because she needs outside social interaction and few other people are around. She needs to learn to trust her own initiative, and as long as I’m right there, its OK. She’s only using them to balance while she walks.

However, its disturbing to me that through these brief encounters, these fathers-by-proxy, she may learn to trust men. Which is exactly the purpose of the institution of fatherhood. Dad’s job is to instill in his daughter a sense of confidence in males. To prepare her to eventually be swooped up by another male. The challenge is for him to be selfless enough in this task that she is desirable to another man (meaning he does not rape her and cause her to hate men), but that he has still groomed her well enough to accept another man’s rule over her. He must play the role of the benign slave master and teach her to value her subordinate status, which works well enough so long as he doesn’t tip the balance and sneak a taste of the forbidden fruit, so to speak, for himself.

So in a sense I would rather these men not act so kindly toward her, because she is getting entirely the wrong idea about males. None of them actually give a flying fuck about her – if we got evicted, how many would let us sleep on their couch? None. They are simply relishing their moment in the limelight, collectively playing the role of the “good father,” knowing damn well it all ultimately comes at her expense. They are gleefully logging community service hours for the global mutant mafia, while I stand by helplessly wishing we lived on an iceberg in the middle of the fucking Arctic.

Now the problem with living on an iceberg in the middle of the fucking Arctic, aside from global warming and all the complications of the iceberg lifestyle that entails, is that it’s fucking lonely. My daughter and I both need social interaction outside of each other, and polar bears just won’t do (neither will pizzly bears, the result of polar bears being forced out of their normal habitat by mutant (“human” male) activity into grizzly territory. We need other female humans (humans), and unfortunately, they (we) are all infected with parasites (males, if you somehow didn’t get that by now).

This phenomenon is what a former male acquaintance described to me as “Ferraris in the desert.” As females, we’re isolated, we’re trapped, and we’re fucked. Basically. [Now you know when a male tells you that, he’s not “just angry at men because he’s been hurt in the past,” as women’s apt analyses of patriarchy are often dismissed – he’s bragging. Just because it can’t be said enough times, here it is again: THEY KNOW. They know, ok? They totally do. They know because they do it on purpose. They do it because they like it and because they want to. Ok? Ok.]

So if we want time with women and girls, we pretty much have to put up with the men and boys. This I tell you siiiiister, you can’t have her without the mis-ter. Sad, but true. I mean, am I missing something? Sure, I could find another woman or a bunch of them with only daughters (no children won’t do, in my experience childless women are never willing to make the sacrifices necessary for partnership with mothers – but that’s another blog post), who wants to move somewhere remote and not overly warm to live off of kelp popsicles and penguin roadkill and marvel at a majestic sky full of stars – until one day all of our “issues” (as installed by mutants) come out and we end up stabbing each other to death with four foot icicles. Which is roughly my understanding of the final outcome of the women’s land movement.

I do have a plan, actually, which I won’t share in too much detail here for obvious reasons, which are evidenced by the fact that I’m writing this blog anonymously as opposed to shouting it aloud on the street corner… Which I also haven’t ruled out, and which I have reason to believe could prove highly rewarding, provided circumstances were such that nobody could follow me home and kill me. I’ve actually been evangelizing about male parasitism to almost every woman I meet. Surprisingly, most of them AGREE. I’m serious – I have found very few women who will argue against female supremacy in person, especially in a one-on-one convo. One even cried because she was so happy to finally hear someone telling her the truth about men. I’m telling you, women KNOW. It’s very exciting.

Except, this knowledge somehow doesn’t in itself provide women with sufficient motivation to revolt. Haven’t figured that part out yet… It may take more time than I am willing to invest in consciousness raising, and lots of false hope I am too emotionally vulnerable to withstand, seeing as how I am very lonely and therefore hardly able to do this work without some measure of self-interest. So while it’s great to connect with women in person on this topic, it’s equally frustrating that nothing comes of it, that we can have an incredibly explosive, radical conversation, and yet, taking action is a whole nother level. I’ve never been a patient person, but there are also real external constraints on taking our damn time reaching conclusions about what needs to be done. It’s getting to the point where I’ve done nearly all I can do where I am now, and will have to move on soon to avoid backlash from certain women’s mutant captors.

With that said, I will leave you with this parting thought: you can’t burn a witch if you don’t know where she sleeps at night.

Girls should be taught to avoid males.

Men Find Ingenious Solution to World’s Worst Problem!!!

I just peeked into a Voluntary Human Extinction Group on Facebook, in which the phenomenon of starving children was attributed to “humans that won’t stop fucking”… of course they mean, MEN who won’t stop RAPING WOMEN. And the men’s best solution to this is… wait for it… VASECTOMY. so they can go right on FUCKING without worrying about the one particular consequence of this behavior that could potentially eat into their paycheck. Or not, apparently, since the alternative was going to be starving children, and not child support payments. So, vasectomy really solves one problem only: men’s GUILT about starving children. Wonderful. Great job, guys. Keep up the good work.

Good Men

Men are terrifying, and this is the only reason why women are sexually, physically, emotionally and spiritually attracted to them. Women’s fear is eroticized, that’s called romance. Women picking one man to fear for the rest of their lives, that’s called love. The game is, you better get one or you won’t feel safe with any. You won’t necessarily be safe with the one you marry, but at least you will feel safe from all the ones you didn’t. Men who women truly are safe around – whether his means for a moment or a lifetime the absence of belittling, raping, or beating – are still part of the reign of terror orchestrated by violent males. Their violence is invisible because their campigns of terror are fought by proxy. Women are all looking for good men to marry, the ones who they aren’t scared of. That’s what it means to be a good man – you don’t scare women. Other men scare them into marrying you.

The Good Woman

“I’m 64 years old and I’m STILL looking for a good man!” said Linda this morning, surprising me by speaking these words with no humor whatsoever. This was in response to my question, “Have you ever met one?” Which was in response to her assertion that there are, in fact, “good men.”

Continuing to look for a good man against all evidence to the contrary is evidence, to her, and to society, of HER goodness. In patriarchy, losing faith in men is the real crime. If there are no good men, it’s women’s fault for not believing in them. For not waiting long enough. For not looking hard enough. For not giving him a chance (or him, or how about him, over there! He’s a Buddhist/loves kids/loves his mother/loves cats/does volunteer work).

Irrationality and blind faith are highly prized traits in women, but also severely punished. They beat her, they rape her, they yell at her and call her names, they order her around like a servant, they treat her like a child, they treat her like a piece of property. They abuse her and lie about it to everyone, even to her face. She’s an idiot for going out with that jerk, but a bitch for giving up on him.

The focus must stay on her, always. She goes to church, prays to God, reads self-help books, sees a therapist. She quits church, gets a boob job, dyes her hair. Considers going back to church. “Yes, she says to herself, “I should definitely go back to church. That was surely where I went wrong.”

One day she marries a man she describes as “wonderful,” whose only observably wonderful characteristic is that he doesn’t beat her up. He is very selfish, a complete moron, and a total bore, but “at least he will never hit me,” she tells herself. He never does hit her, but she thinks of suicide every day for the rest of her life. She pushes away the thoughts and just focuses on being of service to him and his extended moronic family.

When she dies, her obituary praises her neverending love for her husband, father, brothers, uncles, sons, her charity work with the homeless. She lies in the casket, nails perfectly manicured, makeup flawless, the picture of goodness herself: a woman who never stopped believing in good men.

Myths of M-Otherhood

It’s been a while since I last posted, as I have been hesitant to share my experiences of parenting as a radical feminist. Basically because I don’t want to risk be categorized as a “mommy blogger.” But everything I am exploring now about radical feminism is through the eyes of a person who has been m-othered (see what I did there?), and so it’s certainly relevant. Another reason is that I have been pressed for time, being a single disabled parent and all that entails. In this post I will talk about how these issues have both deepened my analysis of patriarchy and changed my relationship to radical feminism. In this post I will also begin using hyperlinks.

So to get right into it, I was flat-out lied to about motherhood. Here’s what I’ve been learning in the last 2.5 months:

1. Bonding with your new baby happens magically at the moment of birth as you get to know each other and heal from the trauma of birthing in a hospital.

2. When you have a child, nothing else in your life seems important anymore there is time for little else.

3. Love your desire to avoid imprisonment will get you through the hard times.

To elaborate: I had been wondering endlessly whether my shitty birth experience was the cause of my not feeling instantly bonded to my baby. To summarize, I was kicked out of the house, taken forcibly to a hospital, and pestered to the point of requiring drugs, all during the course of a 30 hour labor, when what I had hoped for and attempted to execute was an outdoor solo unassisted birth. I definitely still feel traumatized from the experience, and have almost completely blamed myself for things going other than planned, although coercion, both economic and physical, was present every step of the way. Now, particularly during times when I am thinking about what an awful place the world is, bonding still does not seem to be possible. Fear interrupts the process, because the body is signaled that it isn’t safe to let go of happenings in the outside world and to just focus on the baby. I honestly don’t know to what extent this can be ameliorated, considering global male dominance and my constant awareness of it. Basically, I feel like I would have to lie to myself in order to bond with the baby, and that doesn’t feel too smart. I already feel like I have had to lie to the baby by even having welcomed her into this sick, cruel world. This pisses me the fuck off, more than almost any other violation I have experienced at the hands of men. It’s almost too much to think about, because of how disappointed I am with the whole thing, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Only just earlier today, I read FCM’s series on intercourse, and in one of the comments it is pointed out that mother-child bonding is an experience exaggerated and twisted by males to guilt women into motherhood on men’s terms. The assumption of Mother-Child Bonding as some ultimate, supreme, essential connection sets women up to prioritize their children above all else, which evolutionarily speaking, doesn’t make sense. A child can not survive without the mother, but the reverse is not true. In the event of an emergency, affix your oxygen mask first, then the child’s. Etc. My point being, it is seen as a sign of neglect and even sociopathy when a mother does not make their child the central and sole focus of her life, because womb with legs, but I really and truly feel that reading radical feminist blogs and making lesbian separatist community is more important than reading some asinine male-authored book on childrearing (to give an example of the kind of things other people think I should be doing with my time besides, for example, writing this blog post).

Which brings me to the pressed-for-time issue. My confession is that sometimes I am reading radical feminist blogs while my child is fully awake and gurgling, when I could choose to stare and make googly eyes at her instead. And sometimes I am writing a blog, but really paying more attention to her, which is what made my last post a bit lacking in the completely-formed-original-idea-with-interesting-conclusions-drawn department. It is just more difficult to follow your thoughts to their very end, and to speculate as endlessly as is desirable, when a child is literally thought-stopping you with their cries and needs. This at first embarrassed me, although I was glad later to see that the post sparked a commenter to ask me questions which made me feel useful. I am thus coming to terms with being whatever kind of radical feminist I am best positioned to be, which is both necessary and liberating. So here I am, juggling an active presence in the psychic world of online radical feminism and a role in the physical realm as a mother. Of course, I won’t undermine men’s intention to busy and isolate women with childrearing to the extent they don’t have time or space to talk to other women about the state of Things, nor will I minimize my dislike of this manufactured scarcity of both time and space. And while being a single disabled mother isn’t really “myself,” since it is an imposed situation, but it most definitely IS. At the risk of misogynistically “putting myself in my place,” I think each of us does have a place in radical feminism, which can most accurately and succinctly be described as “just being ourselves.” I mean really, haven’t we all “worked” enough in our lives? So I’m not going to bust my ass to accomplish anything radically feminist, unless there is something I really want to do, for ME and women I actually personally care about, and it can be done playfully and in harmony with my other interests and responsibilities.

It really does feel like I am passing between two worlds, writing, reading and then tending to child. I so wish I could bring her with me to the internet, it’s so much nicer here. But we share consciousness on a plane that computers can’t capture, and by that I do not mean that it is deeper than radical feminist connection, just that she can’t type or read. I enjoy parenting while feeling connected to other radical feminists, it is how I draw my strength. But I do feel as though I am plugged into the matrix, with whoever is my internet provider sucking up my precious energy to power the machine, and it being only a matter of time before my daughter plugs in, too. That said, I am fully prepared to parent her without the refuge of the internet, not only because it might fail someday but also because she deserves my full attention, and so does my own life. So I relate to my daughter upon the foundational assumption that she is too precious for this world, at least for what it has become. And that feels both authentic and loving. It is the appropriate attitude towards a child who may comprise the last generation of humans on a planet that is being raped and murdered before our very eyes, and who will surely witness and face tremendous upsets in resource availability, but who is still capable of experiencing and sharing joy in life’s less brutal moments.

I did anticipate my emotional and temporal resources would be strained, as both a newly radicalized feminist lesbian separatist and new mother. It was less than a year ago that I woke up in my camp on the side of the railroad tracks next to a bush and realized that everything I had ever thought of as being “God’s will” in my life, had in fact been the will of men. The next morning I woke up craving pickles. Despite being strongly advised by a couple of radical feminists I spoke with to have an abortion (“for the sake of the baby” being one of the more dignified arguments), I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to do it or not. I actually went to get an abortion, and backed out of it because I felt that something inside of me wanted to live. I couldn’t tell if it was me or the baby, so I did nothing, and that’s why I’m now a mom. And I went into this knowing that the Earth’s resources are already strained by humans (males), and that mine would likely be as well, but not willing to miss out on this wonderful experience of motherhood I had heard so much about. It was very selfish of me and I probably wouldn’t have done it if I had been better educated about the politics of abortion and reassured of the possibilities I would soon find to develop friendships with women.

I had already left my abusive, tweaker boyfriend a month earlier, having told him I was now a lesbian and no longer interested in his bizarre, noir-esque tweaker melodramas. I spent the next eight months alternately devouring everything radical feminist I could find on the internet, and looking for a suitable place to carry out my elaborately primitive birth plan. I knew my time was limited, and I was racing to build real-life radical feminist community before I had the baby (and what a beautiful fantasy it was!). So, you see, all of this has happened rather quickly. And now here I am, raising a child while trying desperately to make friends, and I don’t mind admitting to desperation because I am only interested in making friends with women who are as desperate as I am to connect with other women, as women, in a world gone completely mad, or male, I guess would be more accurate. I feel pretty conflicted a lot of the time. I have never once regretted my decision to become a mother (as much as we can say that there was actually a decision for me to make), but I do sometimes resent the time and energy I have to spend on a person who can, and should, give nothing back, when what I need most is sisterhood on an equal basis, or often, sleep. And I’d be lying if I said I did every second of the day what I do as a mother out of love. There simply isn’t anyone else around to pick up the slack, so I do things for my daughter even when I don’t want to.

My dream and goal at this point is to have a radical feminist and separatist commune, where I can raise my child with other women who have female children, and with other women who we can rope in to pick up the slack. I want us to be able to see the stars at night, to hear a river flowing, breathe fresh, cool air and maybe look out and up to a mountain in the distance. I want us to write our own songs, and sing them for each other. I want us to do nothing at all, and to luxuriate in each other’s company. It is unclear to me now whether and how much the internet will play a role in assembling this community. I tend to overmanage things like this which are better left to develop organically, and alternately, undermanage projects having vaguely surrendered them “to the Goddess,” so hopefully I’ll be receiving some guidance soon as to how to effectively and gracefully participate in the creative process. Ideally, this will leave me with plenty of time to both idle away with my little one, and to socialize plenty with women, and hopefully this project will grow naturally out of these activities. In my experience, the good things in life can’t be rushed or forced, or they will be lost.

Soul-Sucking 101

Males are mutants, females are humans. Males hide this truth and seek soulfulness by projecting their soullessness onto females, thus getting women to fear and hate each other, disrupting their ability to connect with one another. It is a gross denial of women’s humanity and a reversal of male demonism.

Because it drives women into hopeless soul-seeking relationships with males, this projection is the propaganda of soul-theft itself. The woman retrieves her soul when she discovers the lie, in understanding that males only pretend to possess our souls, and she finally walks away from men without looking back.

For most of my life when i met a woman i doubted whether she was real, good, like ME at the core. What is this i wondered, the tendency i have to suspect another woman is EVIL? That even when I am with her, I am alone, and furthermore, in danger? I dont trust her. I dont see myself in her. How else can i describe this beinglessness i project onto her… then, when i give her a chance, she proves me wrong. She is human. Parts of her soul may have been sucked away by males, but she is essentially “there.”

Men are NOT “there.” They act. They pretend. They mimic. They suck.  This soulless non-existence is essentially MALE. Men project it onto women and women onto each other. But it belongs to MEN.

We, as women, evolved to be able to mistrust because of men. Mistrust is ESSENTIALLY women’s innate sensing that males are demonic mutant parasites. Meaning, in case that isn’t clear, that the experience of mistrust *exists* for the purpose of females protecting ourselves from males, it is an emotion with an essential purpose that males subvert for the purpose of confusing women about who the enemy is.

On Heide Goettner Abendroth’s book, Matriarchal Societies

Let me start by saying I was really excited to start reading this book. If matriarchies truly have existed, I thought, then they can surely exist again, or at least what is left of them can be protected and preserved while the rest of us continue to flounder about as we progress perilously through the advanced stages of patriarchal cancer, blogging obsessively, if we choose, on the topic of the Great Matriarchies that Once Were, as if in doing so we could turn back time.

But being an optimist at the time I started reading this book (more accurately being under the psychological control of a male with Blackfeet ancestry who had been named an indigenous elder at some multi-tribal pow-wow at Stanford University and who claimed to have interest in building, and in fact running, a revolutionary new matriarchal society, which I’m sure will make a great story when I am fully recovered from his abusive programming), and being an excessively abstract thinker almost wholly intellectually satisfied with the theoretical brain candy presented in the Introduction, I had been evangelizing about the virtues of indigenous matriarchal societies to anyone who would listen. I spoke of a wonderful world in which women have real decision-making power, there is no rape, and the life-creating power held by females is honored by men and centralized in every facet of the culture. To me, the existence of such societies was proof that patriarchy is only one possible social arrangement of males and females, that masculinity is socially constructed, and that there still may be hope for us all to turn this man-made trainwreck around before humans go extinct.

In between reading the Introduction to the book and digging into Chapter 1, I had a series of disturbing/enlightening conversations with friends and in the blogosphere on the topic of gender as a social construct vs. biological essentialism, through which I had been invited to think more critically about the prospect of females ever living in harmony with males. Yes, I conceded, patriarchy is made by men… but… but still, I insisted, it’s all in the book!!!

So then I had to actually read the damn book.

The author, like many advocates of a return to matriarchal society, makes it clear in the beinning that matriarchy is not the reverse of patriarchy – patriarchy is a system of power over and matriarchy is a model of non-hierarchical power centered on life itself, rather than weighted towards either sex.

When I first heard this description of matriarchy, I remember feeling proud:

“Yay! I DO have value! I am not just a dirty, stupid, worthless bitch who needs to be told by men what to do every second of the day in order to avoid falling out of favor with God.”

Deeply internalized misogyny is obviously not a good place from which to arrive at the negotiating table.

But thanks to having had a solid week of radfemming it up with a new friend in between reading the Introduction to the book and Chapter 1, the very first example given by Abendroth of a matriarchal society made my eyes bleed in horror and sadness at what suddenly and irreversibly struck me as the enormous level of psychological denial required to maintain this mass hallucination that men have any value whatsoever.

Ok, details: So the author introduces the Khasi of Northern India. To summarize, Khasi women take responsibility for all of the important economic, cultural, political and spiritual functions in society because, it is implied, men just can’t be trusted with them… Wait a second, that sounds familiar:

“But honey, it’s just that you’re so much better at running ceremonies and distributing goods fairly amongst clan members. You are just so impressively strong, I admire the way you carry a child on your back while hauling unimaginable burdens over mountains and across rushing rivers to the market… why, I bet you’re as strong as any man! And, as the youngest daughter, you’re also naturally really good at raising the kids while providing for our dying elders as well as for any clan member who is ever in need, anywhere, at any time, even if you are dirt poor.” 

I shit you not, all of this was in the fucking book. The dramatization is obviously my own, but I have accurately represented Abendroth’s description of Khasi society. And this is supposed to inspire us. To give us hope. To guide us. But it just made me angry, because I am supposed to accept that in matriarchal societies, honoring women = manipulating them with flattery. How is this any different from patriarchy, in which men write Mother’s Day Hallmark cards, praising woman slaves for their sacrifice and virtue?

It is true that Khasi women do hold the final authority in the clan, own all the property, are in charge of all the food, and can even kidnap males for procreation. And the men say they are all cool with it. This is indeed reflective of the greater power women have in matriarchal societies relative to men, and men’s consent to such an arrangement proves the necessity of depriving men of such power. But instead of making me feel all empowerfuled and excited for women, it just made me ask: If only women can run a functional society, and men can only run a dysfunctional society, then isn’t matriarchy just a big apology and cover-up for men’s inherent inferiority as human beings? And who benefits from these awkward arrangements that keep this basic reality of humanity a secret? Who has the most to gain from silence and complicity in the global Testigate scandal?

Men, duh.

Matriarchy is for men. Men are inapable of functioning as equal* members of society and as such, can only be a drain on women. Women. Do. Not. Need. Men. In a society of only women, even one in which males are periodically pulled from the swamp for reproductive purposes (which, based on current polulation levels, is not even necessary for women to exist), the word matriarchy would be redundant because it means “a system of society or government ruled by a woman or women” and donating sperm is not a sufficient definition of social membership. So aside from its inclusion of Amazonian women, who were more straight up separatist than “matriarchal,” the whole field of matriarchal studies is an excuse to justify men’s parasitic existence at women’s expense and I’m through with it. That concludes my book review.

*Since I have made use of the word “equal,” it’s worth pointing out to anyone who may not previously have considered it, that women who want equality between the sexes have been majorly duped into begging for the return of crumbs when males have stolen from females the entire batch of cookies. Men are not equal to women in value, on a biological level, and so offering us equality is a concession and a bunk deal loaded with what men must consider in private company to be hilarious and ingenious levels of irony. 

Making Mothers: A No-Fail Recipe

How did I get here? I feel like I’ve failed at everything I’ve ever tried. It’s all lead nowhere. Motherhood has literally been my only option for fulfillment because every other path in life I have set out on has been thwarted by the patriarchy. There has been literally no avenue open for me to be as big as I have wanted to be, as powerful as I could be, as successful as I have dreamt. So now I’m a fucking mother. You all pushed me into this, even those I expected more from because of your stated ideology, political stance or social position. You made me into a god damned mother. And yes, I am a fucking victim and not ashamed to say so. I thought it was my fault but it is not. I tried to be “more.” I could maybe have tried harder, but was discouraged beyond self-motivation. How humiliating. How depressing. How confusing. I have no idea how to reconcile the person I envision myself as with the person I am allowed to be. I do not identify as the person patriarchy has painted me, sculpted me, directed me to be. And now I’m going to have this kid and everyone is going to guilt-trip me into being a full-time mother with no life, no interests, no initiative of my own. Another way life happens to women in the patriarchy. I never even knew for sure what my desires were, until they became impossible. I am still coming out of denial about what motherhood in the patriarchy means for my future. Still trying to negotiate with the powers that be so that I can still be a human being when I have a child. I could have prevented this. And yet, it was inevitable. Motherhood itself is not a prison; the patriarchy has constructed walls around the mother to imprison her. Turning the most beautiful creative act into the basis for the ugliest oppression.

How to psychologically coerce an otherwise capable, bright, passionate female into motherhood:

• When she speaks, interrupt her as frequently as possible
• Ignore her for as long as possible
• Deliver her detailed instructions on how to live
• If she initiates or originates anything, criticize the hell out of it
• If she leads, refuse to follow
• Dismiss and minimize her accomplishments and contributions
• Only approve of her when she is servicing others’ needs
• Make sure she knows her feelings and perceptions are invalid
• Ridicule her for keeping company with other females

When she falls into pieces on the floor as a result of this socialization process, get her to believe it is all because she is crazy, at fault, or just born that way.

Then say to her:

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

What are you having?

Codependency Recovery & Anti-Patriarchal Solidarity

I have a major objection to women being told that they have codependency issues in recovery groups where no context is given to demystify the true cause of this so-called mental illness, which is patriarchy, pure and simple. In fact, women are specifically told NOT to worry about why they are codependent, and condescendingly instructed just to focus on the individual task of self-transformation. “‘Why?’ is not a spiritual question,” say our sponsors sternly, and then, with a rubbery smile, “it sounds like you’ve been doing that stinkin’ thinkin’ again!” Why is, of course, an important political question, but we are told we must keep our groups free of political discussions to prevent controversy. Which means, of course, that women must be kept ignorant and quiet about their oppression as a class, lest men in the group be offended or “hurt,” or (God forbid) women actually consider taking power in the public sphere. So many women are in such a vulnerable, desperate state when they go into 12-step recovery and psychotherapy after decades of suffering in silence from the system of male domination that they often accept this abuse just because they have had it so much worse. It makes me sad and angry that people these women come to trust, sometimes the very first people they have ever met who are actually willing to listen to them, give women only just enough validation that they still continue to hide and protect the man behind the curtain.

I belong to a codependency group on facebook where one woman expressed that she felt pathetic about being “diagnosed” as codependent. How sad is that – we are forced to take on a set of personality characteristics in order to survive in a man’s world, and then we are shamed for having those traits. We are not pathetic, we are oppressed! If anyone is pathetic, it’s a group of people who systematically overpower, control and enslave another group of people in order to meet their own narcissistic needs, greed and selfish desires. It is no coincidence that the psychiatric industry would rather have us on anti-depressants (created by the 300 billion dollar pharmaceutical industry) prescribed by male or male-trained psychiatrists (paid $150 an hour), and visited by male police officers (salaried $90,000 a year) with tasers and guns (400 billion dollar arms industry) in our homes when emotion-phobic, deluded and male-identified friends and relatives determine we have a “mental health crisis.” Rather than expose to us the shameful system of male-domination in its entirety, men take the opportunity to re-invest in our suffering for a profit. We are divided and conquered, misinformed and misled for decades, and then told that the way out of this mess is for each of us to grab ahold of a flaming ladder of ignorance, sold to us at a premium by the same assholes who threw us in the pit to begin with.

One of the challenges in making it clear that male domination is at the root of codependency is that there are also men in codependency recovery. So how could men be the problem? The reality that men are also oppressed by this system is mistakenly understood to be proof of the non-existence of male domination. Men are subjected to the structural violence of other men through capitalism. They are ordered around by mostly male bosses, their time and energy is extracted by a male-controlled government or a corporation in exchange for a relatively measly paycheck, and the meeting of their basic needs is withheld until they satisfy the techno-industrial earth-destroying machine’s lust for their labor. Most men are not part of the 1%, the ruling class that dominates 99% of the world’s wealth (or whatever the statistic is); but most of the 1% are male and so most men in the world are also subservient to other men. Capitalism is a pyramid scheme promising males privilege over other males, all of whom have privilege over women through patriarchy. This is true even though not all men are world rulers, or because some women have higher socio-economic status than some men, or because some women are CEOs and some men aren’t. A system built on domination and subordination would never, and could never, have been created by females in the first place, and every man on Earth within this system has power over at least one woman, or easily could, whereas the reverse is not true. Men exploit other men, as well as women, because that’s what men do. The nuclear family is a creation and microcosm of patriarchal society as a whole. Everyone in the family has a role within it to enable capitalism, thus the family system oppresses and grooms everyone in it – females most of all, but also male children. It doesn’t matter whether the wife or the husband makes more money or cheats or whether the wife as well as the husband beats or sexually abuses the children or whether a single mother emotionally incests her only child who happens to be male. The system still serves the larger system of male domination because it is a unit of the capitalist system which is the economic structure of patriarchy. So that’s where male codependents come from. Male violence.

In my experience, some women want to see the man behind the curtain, and some just aren’t ready, even when they have not been brainwashed specifically by the victim-blaming culture of 12-step programs. More often than I would like to admit, I’m still not ready. We are so used to blaming ourselves for our own misery, because that’s what men have intentionally gotten us to do, whether through traditional patriarchal religion or the rising popularity of the “it’s all your fault because negative thinking” new age movement (patriarchy’s way of oppressing women through post-it notes that it ingeniously convinces women to affix to their own bathroom mirrors). Some of us take masochistic pleasure in obsessing over our so-called “character defects” simply because we aren’t aware of any other choices. If we could just be good enough, and could believe in ourselves enough, they wouldn’t hurt us anymore, right? And if we could just recover enough from our dysfunctional family “issues,” we would be deserving of the new lives and perfect futures that await us in the beautiful world just outside of the meeting room…. Right? This is another part of the victim-blaming dynamic of 12-step groups – the whole premise is that there WAS a dysfunctional system that affected us as children, or within a marriage, and that we now somehow have the option of escaping those dynamics entirely. The psychological traits of codependency are cultivated within us because of the trauma bonding that requires us to accept a role in our own subjugation in order to believe we live in a just world. This process starts when we are children and are psychologically and materially dependent on our caretakers – children have a stronger need to believe their parents are sane than to love themselves, even if the adults they live with are abusive and otherwise completely bat-shit crazy. But even after the dysfunctional family system and its effects on us are externalized, recognized and despised for what they are (oppression, if anyone dares mention the word to us), we are still living in a patriarchal society and so behaviors of codependency such as people-pleasing, approval-seeking and self-sacrifice are still required of us in order to pay the bills. This hurts us whether we are doing it sincerely and eagerly, or detached and cynically. So much for “recovery” as a once-and-for-all healing process.

Unfortunately, patriarchy is everywhere, and we can only gain power in our lives by accepting a more privileged or tolerable position within the system. I can be free from my abusive father by marrying a less abusive man who nevertheless dominates our children by pressuring them to be sports heroes and who financially supports patriarchy by following the World Cup. Or I can get a job and work for some guy who profits from the exploitation of mine and others’ labor. Or I can start my own business and receive the blood money more directly. Or I can claim to be the picture of anti-patriarchal perfection as a lesbian separatist while collecting disability insurance from a government that works on behalf of multinational corporations to systematically exploit women both in my home country and overseas. We must not rest under the illusion that to escape some part of our own oppression is to escape, change, or resist the system of patriarchy in its entirety. Not because we are to blame for benefiting from system, but because nobody is to blame for their subjugation within it. We are all part of the system in some way, though not by choice, and to convince ourselves otherwise is to tighten the chains binding our lives and those of our sisters in slavery to men. Codependency can not be fully overcome as long as patriarchy exists, because someone in the system will always be forced to value another person’s feelings, thoughts, values, goals and priorities above their own in order to survive. And let’s be clear: not just someone, but some woman.

Where to go from here? Attend codependency recovery groups (if we can stand to do so) and take every opportunity to highlight the bigger picture of male domination woven throughout each of our problems as women? Start our own groups that explicitly connect codependency with patriarchy, and for that matter, all psychological diagnoses with the structural forces that cause them? Write books and articles on the subject? Become psychotherapists and bring a radical feminist analysis into the office? Whatever we do, let’s remember that solidarity with all women requires us to have an analysis of the entire patriarchal system, and not just the parts of it that hurt us personally and individually. Not all women are feminists, and many will drag us through the dirt behind the vehicle of their own oppression, as we have likely done to other women before we began to awaken. If and when we confront other women, as we must continue to confront ourselves, the language of codependency will do us little good unless we also create opportunities to collectively challenge the material reality of patriarchy. We are facing much more than a bad psychological habit occurring within an apolitical vacuum. All women have been hurt by men, whether at home, at school, at work, on the street, or in jail. On the basis of each of our individual experiences, and through awareness of their connection to the larger system of male domination called patriarchy, we can all come to understand and support the struggles of all of our our sisters. Whether the instrument of our sisters’ oppression or our own be a fist, a knife, a gun, a voice, a locked door, a price tag, or a pair of handcuffs, may we stand alongside one another in fiercely determined resistance, knowing that any woman’s oppression is our own, that any man’s power is every man’s power, and that one woman’s liberation comes only through the liberation of every other woman.