Walking with the Patriarchy — Essay
Over the years, I’ve observed how my thoughts and opinions on various cultural thematic have changed and evolved. Today, I bring you through my lived experiences while highlighting how the perpetration of oppressive and harmful behaviors often exceeds people’s understanding and control.
The complete picture of my family’s history and its underlying dynamics developed gradually for me. At sixteen, I left my home and distanced myself from my family due to challenging realities that were pushing me toward destruction.
My father, a traditional working-class man, couldn’t accept the fact that my mother was leaving us for another man, a musician known in town for his music and addictions.
This is a classic story of a woman raised in a patriarchal family, initially promised to her first and only teenage love, and years later, after meeting others’ expectations for so long, she finally stand up and decided it was time to find her independency and truth.
A couple of years later, her life choices left her human strengths trampled underfoot. I was placed under social protection, my sister was limited in spending time with her mother by social services, and my brother, a newborn child from my mother’s new relationship, was left to a patriarchal destiny.
This is a common context where mothers are labelled as crazy and unstable, though ‘oppressed’ is the right word I’d use rather than ‘crazy’.
A mother, a woman, who has lived her life according to others’ expectations, will be likely to take quick, impulsive and unhealthy decisions when will finally finds the courage to free her authentic self. The real issue isn’t the consequences of her choices, but the trap of the patriarchy into which a brave woman falls when she claims her independence.
Southern Italian towns, like many other rural areas, have dynamics vastly different from metropolitan cities, where people have the practical opportunity to start anew more easily, with greater access to education and job opportunities.
To reflect on the limited choices women have in Italy, I explored the global gender equality index. Italy ranks 14th among European countries and when breaking down the index, my eyes were captured by Italy’s lower score in Politics and its last position within the Work Section, behind Greece, Slovakia, and Czechia.
These statistics allowed the replacement of my anger for my mother with love and compassion.
How many opportunities could my mother, a woman in her 40s, realistically have had access to?
Inequalities don’t allow life mistakes. It’s like answering to a two choices rather than a multiple choices question. One wrong life choice can throw you in a hopeless limbo.
My mother ran away from a known destiny to find her authenticity. She found herself trapped in the vicious circle of a rock ‘n’ roll man. I believe she had a great time at beginning, before finding herself working every day to feed my brother while still unable to pay power bills.
Some years later, the outcome of her choice was zero financial stability, violence, drugs and illness, a child growing up in an insane place that has never learned to communicate his needs and emotions. Verbal threats of death if she was going to leave with my brother.
Ultimately, after fifteen years within these dynamics, she found him dead in the bathroom, and she found herself alone living marginalised within her mental health symptoms.
She should have left, many would have said.
But, you don’t ask for help and you don’t leave when the patriarchy surrounds your town.
You don’t leave when fear is consuming you.
You don’t ask for help and don’t leave when the the perpetrator gained, through his mask, the sympathy of everyone you know.
I have spent, probably, more than fifteen years trying to understand the reasons behind the whole dynamics, and while family members still wonder why a mother was unable to empower and educate her children, and why she has marginalised herself from the family, here, the learning outcome that they can’t see, yet:
- Women don’t leave because the culture surrounding them doesn’t allow a sense of safety and belonging, so, they prefer to stay in their comfort zone, even if unsafe.
- Toxic cultures runs deep, making it fundamental to address cultural issues before attempting to address visible problems such as domestic violence and addiction.
- Services solely focused on addressing these visible problems may be ineffective if no effort is made to address the underlying culture first.
- Cultural change need time and should starts from public institutions and corporations (e.g., schools, mental health services, workplaces).
- Individuals suffering from addictions and perpetrators of violence are often victims themselves of patriarchal cultures.
- Some women stay in toxic relationships due to understanding their partner’s oppression, tolerating harmful behavior until their own mental health is too compromised to ask for help.
- Patriarchal cultures perpetuate stigmatization of mental health, resulting in a lack of recognition of neurodiversity. This lack of awareness contributes to the increasing prevalence of disorders, which in turn engenders addiction and domestic violence.
- The resistance to change, inherent in patriarchal cultures, is not limited to men but is also upheld by women.
- Triggers seems to be created by people (partners) when real triggers come from external factors (over sensory, inflexible jobs …) and cultural dynamics (masking emotions ..).
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategies can lead us to holistic understanding and proactive strategies that can hold the potential to reshape patriarchal cultures, lessening domestic violence and addictions. These strategies can reframe education, empower communities through support groups, normalize mental health care-seeking, elevate women leadership, challenge gender norms, and engage men as allies.
A focus on equality, empathy, and inclusion can reduce the prevalence of harmful behaviors within these cultures. The blend of my lived, academic, and professional experiences prevented me from further addressing my family situation on my own ending up harming myself as I did in the past. Instead, seeing the big picture has lead my full commitment to DEI with the consciousness that toxic cultures can change, it only takes time, alliances and authentic commitment.
