patriarchy

The opening song of the Rolling Stones’ 1968 album Beggars Banquet kicks off with a screech and an insistent, hypnotic beat. “Please allow me to introduce myself / I’m a man of wealth and taste,” Mick Jagger sneers. A taste for violence, it turns out: “I rode a tank / Held a general’s rank / […]

It’s a common misconception that lap-dancing clubs, or gentlemen’s clubs, as they are otherwise (and somewhat euphemistically) known, sell sex*. What they actually sell is an invisible boundary between fake sex and real sex. The purpose of lap-dancing clubs is to give men the impression that they are sexually attractive and proficient when the reality […]

In Saharasia, geographer James DeMeo demonstrates that patriarchy arose between 6000 and 2000 BC when desertification of the Sahara, Arabia and Central Asia created competition for food sources between previously peaceful hunter-gatherer and early agricultural communities. Capacity to trust The effect on the human psyche was catastrophic. In addition to the rise of masculine-dominant warrior […]

I have written extensively on this site about unconscious shame in general and sexual shame in particular. In my Are YOU ashamed? toolkit I’ve listed some of the common effects of shame—such as a fear of public speaking—which are so widespread they are simply considered to be normal human behaviour. Yet if shame is both […]

I recently attended a grass roots environmental meeting at which an older lady, a staunch activist, spelled out various things we should be doing to protect the environment. A young man, owner of an eco-something start-up, argued that none of her suggestions would be effective because they were inconvenient. Who was right? They both were. […]

I have written a lot about shame, and I have written a lot about patriarchy. But never before have I articulated the connection between them so clearly. Shame is the lock that keeps patriarchy in place. This realisation came to me after reading Proverbs chapter 7, verse 13, in the bible (Contemporary English Version): “She […]

Over the Christmas period I was offered a chocolate with the rider that “you can only have one if you’ve been good.” The admonition was no doubt intended as a joke, but it fell flat when I realised the emotional implications of the traditional Christmastime division of children into naughty and nice. Naughty or nice? […]

Amid all the jollity of Christmas—much of it genuine, some of it forced—it’s an awkward question to ask. It disturbs the glossy patina of pre-Christmas rituals. Putting up the tree and decorating it, Christmas markets, cups of hot mulled wine, an ever-accelerating carousel of small but high-calorie indulgences. All of this leads us, almost imperceptibly […]

  In A brief history of shame, I wrote how patriarchy arose some 6,000 years ago, giving rise to male dominant, anti-female, anti-sexual societies. Here I’m going to examine the way that the unconscious psychosexual programming of these societies continues to shape modern behaviour around sex. The control and shaming of sexual behaviour is a […]

Some years ago I wrote how Pink Floyd’s 1979 epic double album The Wall was a complex 26-song cycle about patriarchy and its institutionalised sexual shame. I don’t know why it’s taken so long, but I have belatedly realised that Meatloaf’s 1977 debut album Bat out of Hell is exactly the same—only it covers this terrain […]