A Reflection on Abuse, Personal & Planetary

Patriarchy at the individual and systemic levels

Clear-cut in Humboldt County for a legal Cannabis operation, 2016. County regs actually required this clear-cut for the operation to be in legal compliance.

I didn’t want to write this piece because it felt difficult to do so. Then I decided that I must write it for that very reason.

Back in October, I posted an essay entitled, “Patriarchy is an Environmental Issue.” In it, I said:

Patriarchy is not only the oppression of women as a class by men as a class—and the resulting abuse of individual women by individual men—but also the suppression of that which is considered feminine by that which is considered masculine.

What I did not say then, but am revealing now, is that my sensitivity to this issue is due in part to my own personal experiences with abuse from men.

Let me stress the caveat that I do not and cannot understand what it is like to be a woman in this society. Because I am male, I have been accorded all the privileges that come with that, including being sheltered from most of the social and professional downsides of Patriarchy that are daily experienced by women in their relationships, jobs, online, at the gym, or just walking down the street, etc., etc.

That being said, because I’m gay I have experienced sides of men that straight men—the majority of them—have not. Recently I had a date with a man that went awry, and was reminded once again of abusive male behavior. I’m not going to get into any of the details here at all, but here are some of the things that I experienced, which too many women will be overly-familiar with:

• How pushy men can be when they’re horny.

• The fact that there are grown men out there who still don’t understand that “no means no.”

• The terror of realizing that, if the man doesn’t decide to do the right thing and stop when you say “stop,” that he has the physical strength to force himself on you anyway.

• The shame, afterwards, of blaming yourself. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have led him on.”

• The beating yourself up of “Why did I let that happen again? I should know better!”

I escaped physically unscathed but it was pretty darn sketchy in the moment.

This was definitely not the first such experience I’ve had, and I dearly hope it is my last, but men are socialized to be sexually manipulative and a charming presentation is often a cloak for selfish desires, so I might end up being caught by surprise again unless I choose a life of celibacy. (Which, I’ll also say from personal experience, is underrated and has its own value as a phase.)

The fact that men abuse women individually is, as I mentioned above, a mirror of how our system abuses Mother Nature. Just as a man aims to extract personal pleasure from a sexual target (of whatever sex) without consent and too often with violence, our system extracts “resources” from the planet without permission and nearly always with destruction. It’s all about domination, just differing in scale.

Sexual abuse and environmental abuse can be perpetrated concurrently, as with the “man camps” that are established to support mines, oil fields, logging or other industrial operations. Man camps provide housing and other amenities for work crew [see this and this] and are notorious for sex trafficking and violence. Plus, as noted in this article, they are often set up on or near indigenous land. This was one reason that the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada was opposed by some at the nearby Fort McDermitt Reservation; their lives are already challenging due to poverty and marginalization, and now the safety of their daughters, sisters, mothers, etc., will be threatened.

Given the reality of man camps, it’s literally true that rape and sexual assault are currently inherent in the production of fossil fuels as well as the mining of minerals needed for “green” technologies like solar panels and EV batteries.

So my opposition to Patriarchy, though moral and intellectual, is also personal and visceral because I know firsthand the abuse and harassment of men individually. In their vile behavior I see the insatiable greed of our system, which rips up the earth, cuts down trees and sprays pesticides.

Just as I said about personal behavior—that “a charming presentation is often a cloak for selfish desires”—rationalizations for environmental destruction are routinely dressed up too, most commonly in terms of necessity, economics or national security (concepts that are rarely interrogated with any honesty). The one word excuse of “jobs” is perhaps most often trotted out, though of course there are no jobs on a dead planet.

Even worse are the appeals to “sustainability” or “conservation” and the like. It’s just a hippie instead of a frat guy and he’s still just trying to get in your pants when you’d really rather he not. I especially see such vocabulary in the popular narratives around “green energy” development and “invasive plant” eradication, which seek to justify habitat destruction and mass killing for some claimed greater good, but which look to me like more Patriarchal ecocide.

This is one of the shortest pieces I’ve posted, but it was indeed one of the most difficult to write. I hope it sheds some light on my perspective. Thanks for reading!