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| Painting by Cheryl Braganza |
Capitalist Patriarchy sucks for women.
I
used to blame myself incessantly for everything that was wrong in my
life. As I grew older and began to speak more openly and honestly
with other women, I began to connect the dots that make so many of us
miserable. My hope is that as more women begin to wake up and share
with each other, we will heal ourselves and weave our way out of this
hellish maze together.
Capitalist
Patriarchy thrives when women shut up and do as they are told. While
it would appear (for some of us at least) that if we play by the
rules, we will be safe—those of us who begin to rock the boat with
our questioning and refusal to STFU know how easy it is to be thrown
off the boat altogether—children and all.
Everything
within Capitalist Patriarchy is designed to keep your inner-knowing
and body wisdom suppressed. Therefore, in order to thrive despite
this system, you must come back into contact with the deepest parts
of yourself. As females, we have been taught to deeply hate those
parts of ourselves, so they are often the most hidden—buried deep
within. As Monica Sjöö
and Barbara Mor wrote:
“Once
we thoroughly understand how and why patriarchy acquired its power
over us—the power of an entrenched mistake over the minds and lives
of all people—once we understand and feel clearly that the fight of
witch women is also the fight of earth’s people everywhere against
mechanical subjugation and exploitation—once we reestablish the
magic link between the individual psyche and the earth’s vital
energy flow, between all-evolving matter and all-evolving spirit, and
learn to encourage and teach others to do the same, in a loving
return to what we always were—perhaps then, in the final time of
crisis, the Serpent Goddess will shake herself loose from her deep
exiled sleep in the earth’s belly. Perhaps the serpent of life’s
flowing energy will begin to rise again, all luminous and of the
earth, and the children of the Great Mother will rise up with it, and
the universe will be our home again, as before. This flight is not an
escape, but a return. The only way for human beings to survive the
end is to return to the beginning.”
We
must reconnect to that Serpent Goddess energy in order to regain our
vitality.
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| Painting by Cheryl Braganza |
I'm
not a financial guru by any means—and I don't believe women are
financially disadvantaged by accident. I did, however, spend 13 years
as a mortgage broker and earned my MBA in my younger years, so I do
know a thing or two about money. I also spent many years as a broke
single mother, so I know how to stretch a dollar better than most
people. Being poor requires a sort of creativity that those who are
middle class and above cannot begin to imagine.
But
happiness isn't all about money. You can be happy with or without it.
I've lived with just about every variation there is except the very
far extremes
on either side. I have come to believe in the importance of naming
and claiming our own reality— instead
of passively accepting the labels and perceptions of those in power. As bell hooks wrote nearly two
decades ago:
“Women
need to know that they can reject the powerful's definition of their
reality—that they can do so even if they are poor, exploited, or
trapped in oppressive circumstances. They need to know that the
exercise of this basic personal power is an act of resistance and
strength. Many poor and exploited women, especially non-white women,
would have been unable to develop positive self-concepts if they had
not exercised their power to reject the powerful's definition of
their reality.”
When
we examine how we are contributing to Capitalist Patriarchy with our
own time, money and energy—we can reallocate our funds for things
that contribute to our liberation instead of our subordination. As
Arundhati Roy wrote:
“Our
strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to
it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art,
our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance,
our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories.
Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to
believe.”
One
of the best things that living in a different country
has taught me is to question my assumptions. Many of us repeat the
patterns of our families without questioning whether they serve us
well. As poet Mark Gonzales asked, “Who told you the stories that
taught you what it meant to be human, and did they have your best
interests at heart?”
There
is always a reason to worry and there is always something that you
can be unhappy about. The last years have taught me to forget all
that—as much as you can—and focus on what is right in your
life and brings you joy. When you find that place in your being, it
is much easier to give to others. You help no one by being a
miserable person. The world has enough miserable people. Capitalist
Patriarchy was designed with that very thing in mind. So, dig
through all that nonsense—turn it upside down and on its head and
kick it as far down the street as you can. Then, find your bliss and
share it.
While
this book is dedicated to the memory of Cheryl Braganza—whose words
and art inspired me immensely—it is also heavily influenced by the
memory of my grandparents, who taught me that you can live well no matter how little
money you have in the bank. My Nano used to often say that it was rich
people who were poor—poor
in spirit. She taught me that no matter how much you have, if you are
selfish and nasty about it, you are the opposite
of rich. As my dear friend Andrew Gurevich wrote:
“A vitally-important and unspoken message of this failed American
experiment is that even the so-called 1% do not seem to be comprised of
balanced, fulfilled people most of the time. It seems that it's not just the
'losers' of this current system of unbridled, savage capitalism and its
attendant institutions of repression and control that suffer all of the
psychological, physical and spiritual fallout these systems produce. The elite
themselves seem increasingly insecure, addicted, paranoid and discontent.
Indeed, it is just as George Orwell warned us so many years ago when writing
about British Imperialism in the Far East, 'When the White Man turns tyrant, it
is his own freedom he destroys.' The ennui hits them with an unrelenting force
because it exposes the lie they have believed for generations: namely, that all
they possess will make them whole. The Hindus have rightly diagnosed this
psychosis by claiming a person can 'never get enough of what they don't really
need.'”5
I have had to learn how to
redirect my energy and beliefs. That said, I have seen how New Age
thought can be dangerous for women. We simply can't will
ourselves out of this existence into a commune filled with rainbows
and unicorns. Genevieve
Vaughan did a brilliant job of explaining the subtle, but important
difference in thought.
“It
has become commonplace in the US New Age movement to talk about the
co-creation of 'reality.' It is said that, by our thoughts, we cause
certain things to occur and others not to occur. I hope to be able to
show how we are collectively creating a patriarchal reality, which is
actually bio-pathic (harmful to life), and I propose that we
dismantle that reality. Our values, and the self-fulfilling
interpretations of life that we make because of them, are creating a
harmful illusion which leads us to act and to organize society in
harmful ways. This is one sense in which our thoughts do make things
happen. If we understand what we are doing, however, patriarchal
reality can be changed. First, we must have the courage to change the
basic assumptions which serve as fail-safes to keep deep systemic
changes from occurring.”
This
book will serve as a starting point to challenge some of our societal
assumptions, in hopes of helping women become stronger and breaking
their chains. As we begin to heal collectively, we can overturn this
system altogether.
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| Painting by Cheryl Braganza |
When
we are separated from our sisters by secrecy, we lack the keys to
unlock our cages. As
Beatrix
Campbell wrote:
“Capitalism
does not do life. And that lie is never more exposed in the
twenty-first century than when we bring to it the light of gender and
the unsaid—the silences and secrets that are knotted in the
articulation of capitalism and patriarchy.”
It
is time to break the silences that enslave us. Just as Goddess was dethroned thousands of years ago by
outright lies and defragmentation, many of the same weapons are used to weaken
females today.
It is Capitalist Patriarchy's
goal to keep women exhausted, ill, on-guard, numb, ashamed, distracted and defragmented so that we don't have the time or energy
to battle the giant Himself. We must return to ourselves— and to Goddess consciousness—to regain our strength and overturn this abomination.
There
was once another way. Let us begin to remember.
Endnotes:
1 El Saadawi, Nawal. Memoirs from the Women's Prison. University of California Press; Reprint edition, 1994.
2 Sjöö, Monica and Mor, Barbara. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. HarperOne; 2nd edition, 1987.
3 hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. South End Press, 2000.
4 Roy, Arundhati. War Talk. South End Press; 2003.
5 Gurevich, Andrew. “In Goddess We Trust: America's Spiritual Crossroads.” Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess. A Girl God Anthology, 2016.
6 Vaughan,Genevieve. For-giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange. Plain View Press; 1997.
7 Campbell, Beatrix. “Neoliberalism: The Need for a Gender Revolution.” Questia, Spring 2014.
