How Can We Smash the Patriarchy If We Can't Stop Breaking Each Other's Hearts?
How Can We Smash the Patriarchy If We Can’t Stop Breaking Each Other’s Hearts? The Origin Story of Undoing Patriarchy
Undoing Patriarchy began from a place of heartbreak. I was coming out of a dysfunctional five-year relationship with a cisgender man that had within it a whole lot of what I’ve come to term “unconscious patriarchal gaslighting.”
One way this actually looked for me, for instance: I suffered from panic attacks for nearly all of said relationship. My partner, though well-meaning, was often functionally unsupportive of me in these moments of extreme anxiety. Throughout the relationship, I attempted to teach him how to better help me through the anxiety attacks, but his efforts did not improve over time.
I regularly reported (to him and to my friends) that I didn’t feel emotionally supported in those moments. His response: I didn’t see all the ways he was supporting me. I only noticed the ways he wasn’t. There was no way for him to please me. He could, he felt, never do enough.
Then, some months post-break-up, I had a conversation that blew my mind.
I was talking with a friend who identifies as genderqueer, was assigned male at birth, and uses they/them pronouns. Let’s call them Kai. At the time, Kai was partnered with another genderqueer person who also uses they/them pronouns but was assigned female at birth.
I say all of this for two reasons. One, because in order to make clear the gendered dynamics that were happening, you need to know a bit about who these humans are. And two, because I want it to be abundantly clear that these dynamics can exist across gender identities and are not the exclusive purview of cisgender men.
In it, Kai relayed a conversation from their relationship in which their partner complained of not feeling emotionally supported by Kai. Kai answered back with a response that mirrored my ex’s, nearly verbatim. “I do so much for you. Why do you fixate on the one thing I didn’t do instead of seeing all the ways I do support you? I feel like I can never do enough for you.”
I was floored. I had felt intuitively that something was amiss in my own relationship with regards to patriarchy, but hadn’t yet connected the dots. Now, however, I was certain there was more to it than just my own personal dysfunctions. The fact that these two humans, influenced by a lifetime of patriarchal privilege, related to the AFAB people in their lives with the exact same dynamics, in the exact same language, made me sure:
Something systemic was afoot.
In retrospect, I see this clearly as the language of gaslighting--- “The problem isn’t me; it’s your perception of me. The issue isn’t my behavior; it’s the way you see things. Things are different than you perceive them to be, and if only you would sign on to my version of reality, there would be no problem.”
To be fair, I don’t think my ex was consciously gaslighting me; I think the dynamic between us, (and, I suspect, the dynamic between Kai and their partner) was an example of unconscious patriarchal gaslighting (UPG). I define the term thus: one person (often, though not always a man) controlling the narrative of reality in a relationship in a way that benefits him and is upheld by unconscious patriarchal patterning.
Men+ inside of patriarchy are conditioned to relate to themselves on a pedestal above all other people. They’re encouraged to see themselves as infallible, above reproach, and inherently good and innocent. Their willingness to agree with this positioning of themselves is a prerequisite to maintain themselves as men, to uphold their interior identity, and to uphold their belonging among other men.
But deep down, a vast majority of them know this couldn’t possibly be true. Deep down, they know they’re simply messy humans, just like everyone else. So this tension between who they’re taught they ought to be and who they’re afraid they might actually be creates a house of cards that’s threatening to topple in every moment. This tension is at the root of male fragility, defensiveness, and unwillingness to receive feedback. It creates an armored posture that most men+ are never able to put down in any relationship, even with themselves.
It creates the conditions for unconscious patriarchal gaslighting to happen over and over, in tiny, unconscious, subtle ways. The logic of UPG looks like: “The problem cannot be me or how I’m acting. My identity hinges on being above reproach, so your feedback freaks me out on an existential level. Because I couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong, the only other logical possibility is that your perception of me is inaccurate.”
In the throes of my relationship with my ex, this was his position, so not unsurprisingly, I felt consistently spun out. Perhaps, I thought, the problem really was me and my expectations, not him and his behavior. Maybe if I appreciated him more, gave him more credit, cultivated more gratitude, then his efforts would be sufficient to meet my needs. Maybe I really was needy, ungrateful, high-maintenance. He never said any of those things explicitly, mind you. He didn’t have to. Patriarchy had conditioned me thoroughly enough that I said them to myself.
So in September of 2017 (nearly 10 years ago now!), following the dissolution of my relationship and the mind-melting conversation with Kai, I started chasing down the truth. I put out a call for people to talk to me about this shit. I wanted to discuss their experiences of patriarchy, relationships and dating. I interviewed more than forty people across lines of gender, race and age. Basically, I did a PhD thesis project without going to school.
I’m a writer, not a scientist, so my research was far from scientific, but these interviews helped me glean further insight into how patriarchal patterns negatively affect relationships for everyone, and where those patterns originate from. And while I’m far from having cracked the code, I have much more clarity about how we can start to take them apart to begin to build equitable, dare I say, feminist relationships across lines of gendered power.
Out of the research, I crafted a curriculum and started teaching men+ about emotional skills from a feminist perspective in 2018. Nearly 100 people have taken this class in the years since, and the two most common pieces of feedback I get about the class are: “This class changed my life” and “I think about something from this class nearly every day.” The other common reflection is that they signed up for class thinking they didn’t really need it, and they left at the end of class knowing how much more they have to learn.
The next round of Undoing Patriarchy begins on April 1, 2026.
I would love to have you there.
Here are all the details.
Undoing Patriarchy
6 week online course teaching relational skills for feminist men+
April 1-May 6, 2026
Wednesdays from 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm Eastern time
Limited to 15 students
$600
Payment plans available for all
Limited need-based solidarity discounts are available too