Patriarchy is an Environmental Issue

A force that threatens our survival

March in Portland, Oregon, 2017. Photo by Karney Hatch, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

“Patriarchy” isn’t a very common word in mainstream US American discourse. When it does come up, it usually refers to the inequities of power between women and men in terms of rights, opportunities and outcomes within our socio-economic system. Such inequities are very real, and issues like access to safe abortion are vitally important.

However, Patriarchy goes deeper than the particular struggles of our time and place. 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. Patriarchy is a framework of values. Everything is gendered—qualities, ideas, objects, living things and even colors—and anything feminine is relegated to secondary status. Competition is elevated over cooperation; authoritarianism over agreement; muscle over emotion.

So, Nature itself—because we perceive it as herself—is debased.

The result is what we see all around us: widespread environmental destruction. Habitat is wiped out. Wildlife is in decline. Chemical and radioactive pollution degrades earth, water and air. Top soil is depleted. Aquifers are overdrawn. The ocean is blighted with dead zones. The climate is disrupted.

Historically, Patriarchy dates back to the Agricultural Revolution in western Asia. After this pivot point, human health suffered, society was stratified, and the environment came under assault. Lifespan was reduced, stature and strength were reduced and novel diseases spread. Slavery, war and private property became institutionalized. In the landscape, forests were razed for the plow and the kiln, the ground was ripped open for mines, and rivers were throttled for irrigation. This isn’t to say that, previously, trees were never cut for lumber, earth never dug for flint and water never guided to plantings, but the impact was far less, and not merely because the human population was smaller. It’s because the philosophical worldview was fundamentally different.

Monotheism also emerged from the Agricultural Revolution, with its very patriarchal “God”: a male with no mother, wife or daughter, who did not exist on earth or in its (her) matter or creatures. With this separation, the planet was drained of its (her) divinity and became just a thing for humans to rule, reign or have “dominion” over (see the proclamatory verse in Genesis). Nowadays we talk about “natural resources” and whether we want to exploit them or conserve them, it’s the same relationship of us over them (her). We no longer recognize that the essence of “wild” is to be “self-willed” (h/t Peter Michael Bauer) and that all life on this planet has agency without us; that our world is brimming with “all our relations” (h/t Winona LaDuke).

The “we” here is agricultural-industrial human civilization. Not all humans. I’m not one of those folks who believes it’s “human nature” to be dicks. Rather, Patriarchy has made a lot of us dicks. The cynical AF claim that greed is the driving force of our species can too easily become a dodge to do better. Plus, the insistence that humans are preternaturally flawed sounds a lot like “original sin” to me and I’ve got a hard “no” for that. I left the Catholic Church over that kind of bullshit.

Patriarchy drives the machinery—material, social and spiritual—that is destroying everything. So dismantling Patriarchy is necessary for the survival of our species and the health of the planet. Because Patriarchy holds sway at so many levels, from the macro-economic and geopolitical to the familial and the personal, we can lever against it basically anywhere and anytime, and any chipping away we can do is meaningful.

And nothing lasts forever. In Prof. Riane Eisler’s classic book, “The Chalice and the Blade,” she talks about dominator societies and partnership societies, and how the historic conquering of partnership societies by dominator societies resulted in the state of the world we are suffering through today. Prof. Eisler also sees Patriarchy as a temporary stage that humans will inevitably transcend, which is a refreshing perspective. (I had the honor of interviewing Prof. Eisler on my old podcast in 2020, in conjunction with Patrick Farnsworth on his podcast Last Born in the Wilderness.)

I do think she’s right about that. Sooner or later, one way or another, agricultural-industrial civilization will not be the dominant force among humans anymore. At some point the fuel runs out, literally and metaphorically. If we can avoid an extinction-grade cataclysm like nuclear war (a danger that’s far too possible atm) we will eventually find ourselves living at a simpler level of technology in social arrangements that are more cooperative than competitive. Witness how people in Appalachia turned to mutual aid in the wake of Hurricane Helene (see “After Helene” and “Disaster Compassion is Real in North Carolina” here on Substack). I believe we are capable of carefully and consciously bringing our system down for a soft landing in a planned manner rather than letting it crash. We shall see!

Protest in Seattle, 2017. Photo by Mitchell Haindfield, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons