Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Rage Against the Patriarchal Machine



It's the third day of it and I don't know what triggered it. Perhaps an accumulation of patriarchal rights and ownership over and of women. I hesitate to write here as I wait for it to subside. I mean the rage of course. And it hasn't. So here I go. The journal isn't doing it for me so maybe the blog will.

I asked a friend this morning, she's 83 today, does she feel rage? A rage that leaks angry hot tears, a rage that trembles the hands and falters the feet. Yes, she said. Her younger husband, second, love of her life, five years younger, died a few years ago. Some disorder of the blood, the body. they had just bought their Newfoundland home. Had B&B plans, he was a great cook, she a wonderful host. All smashed to bits in a four week hospital stay.

Oh good then, I'm not alone in my rageful week.

My rage is against male ownership of women. Triggered in no small part by what's happening in Iran. A young woman, showing a few stray bits of hair beneath her hijab jailed and killed. The protests are mighty. More women killed for protesting. For not covering their heads properly.

And this all whirled me back to my own adolescence in the fifties and my hair becoming an "occasion of sin" for leering men and boys unless I covered it with a mantilla for mass or confession or hell and damnation retreats or.....Catholic Ireland where women had no voice. 

An occasion of sin. I imagine this twisted logic is applied by Iranian men. Women with uncovered heads tempting men who are otherwise pure and unsullied by sinful thoughts.

The Machine of the Patriarchy. Making young girls and women feel dirty and ashamed and the object of unbridled desire from male human animals who can't control their baser instincts, their desire to rape, at the sight of a stray hair on a woman's head. All her fault if she's gang-banged then. She and only she has released the male rampaging raping monster by not covering her head. Only herself to blame.

So I was taught. So I believed. I lived in fear of men having been molested by an old fellah when I was barely six. My fault. I sat on his lap. I released his carnal instincts. Life long trauma submerged until I had therapy in my forties.

Raised like this, objectified because of our sex, women bury their rage. My mother had ulcers in her forties. Ulcers are repressed rage (as many have it). Some exhibit depression, the internal mirror of rage (looking at myself). I knew she was angry for many valid reasons. Because she was a woman with no voice. Except to me. And she died young.

Women are taught, were taught, I speak for myself, not to show anger, not to show discomfort, not to show hurt.

Rage is the best weapon we have. My sheroes are in Iran and other cities now. Protesting loud and long. Not afraid to show the rage.

I am hopeful the rage spills out over the USA for the mid-term elections and the declaration of ownership of women's bodies by their "Supreme" Court. Note quotation marks. That it spills out all over the world to right the grievous wrongs that have been done to all girls and women, second class citizens, victims of a patriarchy intertwined with religions that deem them unworthy of equal status.

Rage. 

Own it. 


29 comments:

  1. YES. Interestingly, rage is an emotion that in my family and I suspect many others was yet another thing that was reserved for men. They were allowed to feel and show it (while suppressing other emotions). Wrong, wrong and wrong. On so many levels.

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    1. My father was full of rage, EC, and yes showed it just about daily. Women? Verboten.
      XO
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  2. RoisinNY here. The priests in Ireland were like ayatollahs back then and we were literally afraid of them. I stand with the Iranian women and women everywhere in their fight for autonomy and respect.

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    1. I owe you a long email my old friend, haven't forgotten. I remember standing, trembling, at the age of 5, parrotting to the filthy old parish priest covered in smelly cigarette ash, reeking of whiskey (in the morning) the catechism answers. "Who made the world?" to pass the test for communion. He was as bored as me but he the "divil dhrink" to sustain him.
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  3. This "not voting" thing really makes me rage. Every woman, every person of color, every immigrant (which is pretty much all of us) should be casting a ballot. Those who came before us sacrificed and struggled for us to have that privilege. I hear women say, it won't make a difference (yes it will), or I'm too busy (doing what?), or they are all alike (no, there are differences, but you must investigate). Find your rage, harness it, use it, go vote, speak up, take a stand.

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    1. I do believe DKZ there's a massive distrust now of the electoral process (and when, on earth do you guys get rid of the Electoral College?). We have the same cynicism in this province. Ennui, a sort of giving up. It all needs revitalization everywhere and more women running. And yes day care systems in parliament, etc.
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  4. The "rights" of men have expanded these last several years, snatched from women and men who don't have a clue. This year we must vote blue; snatch back rights, expand our use of and access to equal rights. Men can do every thing women can, including making babies. It's time they began taking care of those rights. Rage boils in my chest every minute of every day.

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    1. Sister in rage. It's a wonder our hearts hold up against the tyranny and abuse.
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  5. Having never been molested or abused as a child, I don't know this kind of rage, but I do feel anger for these women who are not allowed to "be". They are mere possessions and that is so wrong. I heard about the woman in Iran on the news but didn't get the full story as that's my dishwashing time. Somehow it is all religion based and that is something else I don't understand. What I feel, instead of rage, is despair at the way things seem to be going backwards for women these days. What is it in men's brains that thinks this is right??

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    1. Religion= a tried and true methodology of keeping women in their place. Breeding, compliant and silent.
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    2. Yes, I know that part, but why do people STILL go along with that after all these centuries? We know better by now and it shouldn't be allowed.

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    3. River cults have enormous power, they programme children from a very early age to believe there will have eternal damnation if they don't. I know many women out here who are compliant with the firm belief they will be rewarded in the "next life" and send birthday wishes to parents in "heaven" etc. It's childlike and so very hard to witness.
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  6. Patriarchy is so widespread and so entrenched it's hard to see how it can ever be changed except by a mass uprising of women all over the world. Men certainly aren't going to change voluntarily, they have too much to lose. No wonder women everywhere are so enraged and frustrated and bitter. I despair at the sort of sadistic patriarchal discipline that killed Mahsa Amini.

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    1. The only male on the page so far Nick. I am glad you see it all so clearly. Women should weaponize, it seems to be the only thing that works. Many more women dead following in Mahsa's footsteps. We should be arming Iranian women.
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  7. I very regularly say in derision something like " what you'd expect from a white man"
    Or, as the case may be, Iranian men.
    If I raged enough it would kill me

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    1. I feel the same Kylie, holding it back when my head feels like it would explode. Venting is good. Action is better. We desperately need more women in power.
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  8. Here they do it in the home.

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  9. When did Aristophanes write "Lysistrata"?!
    Not that women necessarily are "better" human beings – see, to give but one example of many: Thatcher –, but I think it's about time for a new most powerful Lysistrata.
    I could give hundreds of examples for my "hatred" (don't like hate) , but leave it at this one: After Hürriyet, Turkish yellow press, had (surprisingly) written a few articles in favour of women, in Germany a few Turkish men were asked for their opininion. I shall never forget an elderly man's answer: "A man who does not beat his woman is not a man."
    And the young(er) men standing around him, were smilingly nodding: Yeah!
    Ah, Mary, don't get me started. The peace of the night!

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    1. Sean, I was brought up in a home where if my mother expressed an opinion or dismay at something my father said/did she was told in no uncertain terms it was his house and he could do/say what he wanted.
      Peace indeed Sean and backatcha :)
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  10. Yesterday, I listened to a female lawmaker here in the U.S. rage at her male counterparts who were adding an anti-abortion condition to a veterans' health bill that had been long sought and where she and some of her male counterparts had worked hard to find bipartisan support. "None of you are medical doctors! You're politicians!" she cried out. Yet they wanted to insert language that would lead to doctors judging when a woman had an incomplete miscarriage had bled enough and had a high enough fever that they could justify a procedure to help her due to the threat to her life. She warned them they had no idea of the consequences of their political decisions. You betcha I felt rage then.

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  11. It's incomprehensible Linda how old men are making these decisions jeopardizing so many women's lives. I was reading somewhere that they haven't even figured out women's biology. And clueless that every pregnancy carries untold risks to the mother. It's shocking and deadly.
    XO
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  12. Oh yes, rage is a burning hot coal in my stomach. So much in our world, especially concerning the treatment of and expectations for women, is incomprehensible because it's wrong, unfair, cruel, stupid, pointless. If I blew even lightly on that coal every day, my life would be miserable. But it's there. -Kate

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    1. Glad we're not alone Kate, seems every headline lately tried to put us in our place. We are regressing......I had such great hopes in the seventies.
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