The Solution to Patriarchy

I have often wondered why patriarchy cannot make women happy if submission is God's ideal. The answer: because submission works only if everyone submits.

Obedience is a one-way street; submission is more like a circle. The more perfect the submission of all participants, the more perfect the circle. When some of the participants begin to pull away, the circle becomes distorted and eventually breaks. This is why marriages, in which the man refuses to submit to his wife, become distorted and often break.

Submission creates healthy relationships, for submission causes all parties to seek also the interests of others. Self-seeking cannot co-habit with submission, for at the very heart of submission is the desire to please others, not one's self.

Patriarchy, with its insistence that only women should submit, inflates the male ego and suppresses women's self-esteem. It is a recipe for disaster, as men believe they are allowed to do as they please to women, who no longer know how to defend themselves. If men believe they are gods and women that they are worth less than the dirt they walk on, do we really believe that somehow, by some unforeseen miracle, men will treat women well?

Why does patriarchy convince women that they are worth so little, and why does it tell men that they are worth more than this world? Is this really God's ideal?

When we look at the creation narrative, we find that the woman was created for the man, because the man was alone. The same narrative tells us that the woman was created from the man to make the woman a human. If the woman's creation for the man and from the man makes her the man's equal, what makes her the man's subject? The simple fact that she is a woman.

There is only one thing the man cannot do: he cannot bear children. Without the woman, he would die without having left his genes behind; an unbearable idea. Hence we find in patriarchy the idea that the woman exists only to have children. Her "role" is that of a wife and a mother; the first named being necessary for the latter. This accords well with Genesis 3:16, which tells us that childbearing would become painful, the man would rule over the woman who would nevertheless turn to him as one turns to a friend for help, for how is she supposed to feed herself and her other children, while caring for an infant in a hostile world where food must be produced through hard labor? It is motherhood that is the source of the woman's subjection.

That a woman is also a human is not found in this scenario. Since the man can accomplish all other things on his own, why should he include the woman in his pursuits? The more people, the more competition; the more competition, the less opportunities to acquire power and prestige. Of course a woman can have power too - but only through a man. Hence whom she marries becomes of paramount importance, and to attract the right kind of man, she must play her role to perfection. Docility it desirable in a woman.

But if all humans are created in the image of God, is patriarchy God's ideal? If all humans are humans, why should half of the world be denied human rights. Rights such as education, the right to choose whom they marry, the right to inherit, the right to choose an occupation. Why should half of the world be confined into a box that didn't exist in the garden, while the other half calls it "biblical womanhood."

Motherhood is a wonderful and challenging season in a woman's life, but it's not the only season. Even the earth has four. The woman was not created only to bear the man's children. She was created to talk to the man, to be with him as his friend and companion. She was created to be another human, with whom the man could attain the fullness of the human experience. If the man needed a docile, silent partner, he would have chosen a dog.

The only cure to patriarchy is human equality. When men see women, and I mean see women, instead of just looking at them, they will see themselves in their eyes, and that is when humanity reconnects.