Pop-culture is a bit of a plague and a blessing for the deconstructive among us. Everything, every single thing can be popularised and there’s a very widely available formula for doing this. But this is a different phenomenon altogether, it’s old, traditional, versatile and in the very core of human evolution – patriarchy, this time, disguised as the popular feminism.
Patriarchy, as a meme, seems to be incredibly persistent and eternally topical. Feminism is not about voicing the views of a repressed minority, but about the disillusioned majority. Now, with all the feminist literature, art and lobbying, a lot of men, considering themselves of higher intellectual foresight than the general population, express radically feminist opinions and a lot of these men deeply believe in what they’re supporting, or at least believe they do. The same goes for a lot of women and does not leave the queer community outside.
However, it’s not before you get to know them intimately and their relationships to women or other women, that you realise it’s all fabricated and in fact they’re replicating the very issues they believe to be addressing. This gives additional value to the patriarchy meme, which seems to be like a virus no one can find the cure for, in fact one that maybe almost symbiotic to human existence, considering the various intricate ways, in which it penetrates intimacy and has done throughout human history.
What’s interesting about this type of post-patriarchy, modern societies are plagued with, is that it usually manifests itself as something as intimate as sexual vice or recreational drug use-related behaviours. Thus, addressing it, is almost like one is a puritan, trying to corner people for enjoying themselves or “opening their minds”. Not all people who feel horny or high, however become sexists, that state of low inhibition and liberation, only helps in releasing past traumas in people having been subject to some kind of emotional or sexual abuse, with patriarchy being in one way or another the ultimate cause. Partying for many people is a way of dealing with trauma and exploring uninhibitedly their darkest deepest sides.
However, having seen people being horny or high and exhibiting no sexist behaviour, I am convinced that the pseudofenists usually have something to get out of their system. I’ve seen people shatter relationships, just because they felt like flirting or being out of their heads or resorting to abuse and violence as a final patriarchic state of decompression. The next day everyone might be willing to cut them some slack and it’s not that any damage is irreparable, it’s that their deep faith in the patriarch motives of the past actually manifested itself, yet making it somewhat difficult to pinpoint the underlying traumas and memes in the post-modern setting of bars and clubs. It’s that the lowering of their feminist intellectual facade and their coherance to patriarch prototypes of behaviour left them bare.
Everyone sees it, but everyone hides from it, is it because everyone has something to hide? Is it because judging someone strictly and based on political values makes people fearful that they might be judged some day as well? Is it because patriarchy is the vice of the masses? Is it because we’ve all been somewhat molested through a look, a touch or a more violent act by a pseudofeminist when we were children? and is it because our mothers were too afraid to speak-up? And if we’re all sick, then what is sick? Is it the hurt feelings of a mother who thought it best to shut her mouth and move on? Embrace it or address it?
whatevahwhatevah 