I was surprised, this time last year, when my female clients shared they were nervous about our summer retreat. I had taken pains to ensure there would not be any strangers popping into our sessions; there would be NO uninvited guests. Due to the nature of my niche (helping survivors heal) and that all of the attendees were women, I specifically asked the retreat center to make sure there were not men around our meeting place, fixing things or dropping off food or towels. 

It wasn't the men my clients were afraid of -- it was the women. 

I then listened to story after story of betrayal by women in the sisterhood. In the SISTERHOOD! Women's church groups, sisters and sisters-in-law who turned on my precious survivors. Pastor's wives. MOPS women? I experienced deep disappointment. It was not just in my life that the women around me felt unsafe -- it was common in evangelical circles. 

The Shadow Side of Women

The shadow side of women (the least developed) appears as jealous, competitive, passive-aggressive or resentful. This is because we have often been taught that women are to be small, with no sense of adventure or leadership. We are taught to be quiet and submissive. This causes enmity between men and women. But it can also cause enmity between women and women — we create a fictional and mis-directed world of scarcity, rather than realize we are all our own unique and powerful individuals. EACH OF US is creative and capable and we all have our own “medicine” to offer.

Patriarchy can also penetrate the psyche of women, conditioning many of us to agree with and embody patriarchal values. Just as a man is not automatically patriarchal by virtue of being a man, a woman, by virtue of being a woman, is not precluded from being patriarchal.

As a white woman who has been brought up in a patriarchal society, I know all too well how I can be dazed by my conditioning. I know how easily many of us can be impressed by the patriarchy’s black-and-white absolutism and dogmatic self-assurance, and how susceptible we are toward becoming intimidated into giving up our power to a patriarchal authority figure and relying on him to tell us what’s right and wrong.

When women find ourselves powerless to identify abusers and protect ourselves from abusive masculinity, it is because we have (deep inside ourselves) the critical voice of a patriarchal male putting us down, diminishing us, making us feel inferior and wrong.  We then align ourselves with the world view of our abuser or oppressor.

This is why some of us women end up championing abusive leaders and supporting dogma that goes against our own equality, self-sovereignty, and safety as women. As a consequence, we end up embracing the very beliefs that disrespect women, endanger women’s lives, and diminish women’s worth.

There are many ways in which a woman becomes patriarchal, but I will quickly mention four main patterns that many of us are particularly vulnerable to, in the hope that our becoming conscious of these tendencies will empower us to transform them.

1. Women Who Embody a Patriarchal Type of Authority

The first way in which a woman becomes patriarchal is by completely disowning her identity as a woman and becoming “one of the boys.” This is a strategy to avoid belonging to a group that is considered inferior and subjected to discrimination and sexism. This requires a rejection of the feminine inside of us and, as you can imagine, is completely unsatisfying.

2. Women Who Become Submissive To The Patriarchal Male

The second way in which a woman becomes patriarchal is by accepting a position of inferiority and becoming subservient to the patriarchal masculine. She loses her power, her sense of self, and her better judgment, abdicating it all to a patriarchal authority in order to receive recognition and validation of herself by winning his approval. Again, very unsatisfying.

3. Women Who Are Privileged by Their Status in Patriarchal Structures

The third pattern by which a woman supports the patriarchal structure happens when she does not want to rock the boat because she would lose her privileged status. This is fear-based.

4. Women Who Are Looking for a way for a man to heal their wounds

This puts men in a place where they don’t belong, can’t function and will never succeed, creating a vicious cycle of female wounds running into male wounds that often manifest as someone who is pedastalized but is always failing. As many of us have stated many times, patriarchy is not good for men, either. 

All four of these (and others) cause broken relationships between women. We stop championing ourselves and others. We no longer honor each other. Our fellowship falls into the shallow, unsatisfactory places of how we can be MORE submissive or patriarchal — thereby worshipping these dogmas and laying our own selves on the altar of an imbalance of power within ourselves and outside ourselves.

Ladies -- we can do so much better than this! I would like to invite you to think about how you outsource your God-given power and remember that you are an "image-bearer" of God who is "created in His likeness". When we embrace these remarkable qualities in ourselves, we are able to feel whole, contributing to this society with our personal gifts unlike anyone else. This creates that feeling of "aliveness" and relieves us of the "hollow feeling" of living in the shadow of another human (who may or may not see us as worthy). 

I believe in your DNA; I believe that God has breathed into you LIFE. Let's live together, in support of each other, refusing to fall into a culture of scarcity. Let's uphold one another and celebrate each other. Let's acknowledge each other's contributions and honor each step each of us takes toward freedom. 

Let's do it together.

Love, Megan