.png)
This is perhaps a trippy question, but it’s just out of curiosity, as I am working on a multimedia piece on the subject.
For one friend, she sees patriarchy in her head as this overarching thing, I guess like a dome above, and misogyny/female oppression/objectification etc. as things that rain down and target women/femmes (feminine being perceived as…”weak”). If men aren’t straight up intentionally directing the shit from the sky at women, they’re still mostly indifferent to it. And its like something we have to get out from under the dome, or smash through to get above.
For another, she said it’s like it’s just in this very thick air, and we are walking through it, breathing it, seeking pockets of clean, woman-lead air to break from it, and we are trying to expand those clean pockets, until that’s just what air is.
I’ve heard it described as walls. Or as a surrounding moat.
For me it seems foundational, coming up from and poisoning the ground, and the shitty cultural factors kind of like roots trying to wrap around my ankles and slow me down or even keep me in place. Some women straight up lie on the ground and stop trying.
I am wondering how others here who might be visually-oriented think of patriarchy/misogyny, when they picture it in their minds.
A circus.
Where women are allowed to be only acrobats or clowns...and it's all a forced performance.
Every act must be to perform desirability or you are the scapegoat and the butt of jokes
Men are ringleaders, no script deviation is allowed, and any escape must be carefully planned in advance.
In this circus, animals get more empathy than women, and the owners get rich.
In this circus, there is always a secret tent where drunken abusive men pay other abusive men for the chance to abuse women.
Every woman must take turns being subject to this abuse, and there is no recourse legally, socially, emotionally and don't even talk about justice.
The circus pays the town fathers and the show must go on.
It’s like a walking around with invisible chains around our necks constantly weighing us down. No matter how high we climb or how far we go… they’re a always there for some man to grab any time they feel the need to yank us back “in place.”
The other way I see is like living In a game that no one wants to acknowledge exists and the rules are constantly shifting yet always designed to make you lose. One side has an alliance to prevent you from winning, but they’ll never admit that the game is real even though everyone is playing at all times.
I imagine women walking down city streets with errand-bags, full pregnant bellies, breast dripping milk, with men-children wrapped around her ankle, while she’s dragging him, he’s throwing a temper tantrum and screaming “pick me up mommy, pick me up. I am not your mama, little boy, but he insists.
I see it as an inverted triangle Class- largest tier/stratification Race- mid tier/stratification Sex- pinpoint on which other tiers rely on to further subdivide by
Everyone in society has puppet strings attached to them, it’s the emotional fabric of society that keeps us sane and makes us social creatures. Some men have cut off their own strings and rewoven that fabric of society to oppress and disadvantage women. Sometimes it feels like feminism, at least mainstream feminism, is just women going around and detangling the knots while the men who cut themselves out of the fabric keep making new knots, and are faster at it because they aren’t tethered to society, they have private islands where laws don’t apply and ways to move ther money so it doesn’t get taxed.
The patriarchy, affirmative action for men, all men, any man. We all know what affirmative action is- take that and apply it to all men regardless of age, race, gender identity, wealth or status- and the world begins to make sense.
I often picture a snake. Beautiful, elusive, and a slow creeping creature who relies on stealth and a well laid plan to trap it's prey. The prey being nature, women, the cycle of life, femininity. Some snakes choke the life out of their victim and others use poison. So much like the way men take our power away in small pieces that creep up on us, until we realize too late that we're surrounded and can't get away.
I visualize a large group of men looking down at you/the camera menacingly. And 2 men with their heads down, not making eye contact. Those 2 with their heads down are the "good" men.
And I'd title it either "what the fuck are you going to do about it?", or "The original satanism"
Mine isn't very creative, but lately, I imagine a large, manly hand wrapped around a women's neck. I think because of how often I've heard this be experienced by people in my family and friends. Suffocation/pressure is what I feel when i think about it.