Patriarchy, an artificial, rigid construction, places men superior to women.  This construction is now prevalent in most cultures, whether democratic, authoritarian, liberal or fundamentalist, throughout the world.  Gerda Lerner in The Creation of Patriarchy claims that patriarchy is the initial and foundational caste system out of which all other caste systems, including racism and genocide, colonialism, slavery, and other divisions, are formed.

Under patriarchy rigid binaries and rankings are enforced: gender is divided strictly into male and female denying any spectrum that includes transgender or intersex; heterosexuality is the only permitted form of sexual relationships, homosexual and bisexual behaviours are controlled socially though shaming and exclusion and/or legally with severe punishments including imprisonment and death in some countries; the range of human qualities are divided into masculine (strong, hard, stoic, logical, protective) and feminine (emotional, empathic caring, tender, intuitive, good, dependent), behaviour (“walk like a man”) and dress.  Even colours have been given genders: pink for a girl, blue for a boy.

For either girls or boys, the suppression of a subset of human qualities and the restriction from expressing the other qualities leads to a loss of a full humanity and a disconnection from the Self or Soul.   It is accompanied by a loss of an embodied intelligence, such as gut feelings.  This loss is necessary so as to be included or accepted in the family and society.

By primary school age, boys learn to be boys and men by not being girls and by being in opposition and superior to girls and women, and are shamed and ridiculed out of any behaviour or quality considered feminine. This is policed by men, other boys, including boys of the same age, and girls and women who are complicit in maintaining patriarchal boundaries. bell hooks, in a 2004 article “Understanding Patriarchy” writes that to indoctrinate boys into patriarchy “we force them to feel pain and to deny their feelings.” And to quote Terry Real, a family therapist, “The forces of traditional [patriarchal] masculinity rest on two pillars: the rejection of vulnerability and the delusion of dominance.” This invulnerability and ‘delusion of dominance’ further dissociates boys and men from the spectrum of human emotions, feelings, and their embodied intelligence.

For girls and women this confining conditioning is maintained through misogyny, through shame and humiliation.  While chivalry may be seen as men being respectful of women, it is another form of misogyny as it presumes a woman to be weak and dependent on a strong man. Rather than honouring women, chivalry enforces misogyny. For boys and men, misogyny re-enforces the illusion that men are superior to women.  This privileged masculinity is rewarded by male peers for “joining the club” of disrespect for women.

In patriarchy, families, societies and institutions are organized into top-down dominance (pyramid) structures. These organizations include political governing bodies, bureaucracies, corporations, educational institutions, religious organizations, and enforcement bodies such as the military and the police, to name some.

A major force in the maintenance of these dominance structures, including male privilege over females and racism, is through shame and humiliation. This is frequently seen in reaction to the growing empowerment of women in Western societies.

While feminist movements, starting in the nineteenth century, have led to many changes in the inclusion of women in the political and work spheres, patriarchal attitudes still operate in those spheres and are unconsciously transmitted through the generations.  While consciously wanting to change patriarchal dominance, we are all constrained by the unconscious perpetuation of patriarchal attitudes.

In this program we will be exploring the maintenance of patriarchy through social and institutional structures that condition boys and men to perpetuate a dominance over women, condition girls and women to submit to an inferior status,  and the unconscious way we, women and men, perpetuate this dominance structure. To quote bell hooks again: “We are socialized into this system, females as well as males. Most of us learned patriarchal attitudes in our family of origin, and they were usually taught to us by our mothers.”

In experiential exercises and using the constellations process of representing we will explore:
– Recovering embodied (somatic) awareness and intelligence
– Recovering embodied autonomy, embodied consent and assent
– Reclaiming energetic boundaries
– Recovering connection to the Self or Soul
– Exploring gender, racist and other prejudices
– The neurobiology of trauma – Attachment styles
– Parentification or role reversal
– Shame – individual and systemic
– Grief – inhibited or disenfranchised

I am looking for 6 participants, men and women, who are  willing to commit to the full 20 day program. Please contact me [jonathan@soul-guide.com; (780) 426-1508) if you have any questions and to register

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