We Will Never Successfully “Smash the Patriarchy”

So here’s what we can do instead

Photo by Amie Roussel on Unsplash

It feels very right to be furious at what is going on with the world today. Fury is the body’s alarm. It is the blood’s red flag. A spirited refusal to sit still in the presence of harm. If you are not angry, then perhaps you have not been watching.

We carry this rage

Not just for ourselves, but for all beings who have been strangled by the cold hands of systems that claim to be “too old to question,” — but in reality are perhaps just too cruel to name.

This is about injustice against women, yes. But also against black and brown bodies. Queer folks. Neurodivergent minds. Non-conforming spirits. The poor. The tender. The soft boys, the feral girls. All the fluid ones who won’t fit into tight little boxes the systems of control demand.

To accidentally become what we hate in an attempt to defeat it is not true revolution. It is infection. These systems do not care who they break. They only care that they stay standing. And yet…

We will never successfully smash the patriarchy. It simply won’t work. Not because we don’t want to get rid of it. But because smashing is the patriarchy’s native tongue. Breaking is its game. And violence is its favorite song. We cannot simply…