Girl Boss Feminists: this week was really hard. Patriarchy is so strong! Whatever should we do?
Me: There is literally an entire intellectual record of solutions.
GBF: I don't want anything too hard.
Me: Fuck all of you.
Without sharing the reading list I just emailed to a friend, here's what various feminist writers/thinkers have posited as ways to smash the patriarchy.
IOW, we *have a roadmap.* We don't need to flap our hands and say, Oh noes....the Patriarchy is too bigs!
intersectional collective action.
align feminism with global anti-capitalist movements.
build power through difference, not by flattening it.
abolitionist frameworks as gender liberation
integrate feminist choices into everyday life.
reclaim maternal power while rejecting compulsory roles.
collectivize care; de-privatize parenting
wages for care, refusal of unpaid reproductive labor.
reproductive justice = autonomy + material conditions, not just “choice.”
chosen family as infrastructure.
abolish biological family as destiny; redesign kinship.
1/
women must be materially independent to be free.
remove state privileges from marriage; build alternative contracts.
collective labor organizing, not individual “leaning in.” NO GIRL BOSSING.
strike, unionize, redistribute, decommodify survival.
if patriarchy was built, it can be dismantled—especially via economic systems.
build alternative knowledge systems + community-based resistance.
expose domination embedded in “normal” sexuality.
understand coercion + build conditions for refusal.
build new sexual ethics rooted in consent, joy, and autonomy.
dismantle domination-based relationship models.
2/
reject patriarchy AND white feminism
structural change, not just legal rights.
queer existence as political resistance, not just identity.
dismantle moral regulation of sex.
expand what counts as a “livable life.”
dismantle administrative enforcement of normativity.
rebuild sexuality around self-defined power and connection.
autonomous organizing + naming intra-community patriarchy.
live in the “borderlands”—refuse imposed categories altogether.
Resistance is collective, or it fails (individual lifestyle tweaks ≠ liberation.
3/3
There.
You're welcome.
Now you can't say you don't know what to do.
One of the most important ideas drawn from hierarchy in the forest, which is an anthropology book. I read recently about the consensus view of the factors that lead to egalitarianism or hierarchy, the former is built with support networks.
If you want equality for some group, they have to have a support network of some sort that’s economic and social. I think it’s useful to emphasize it to those of us in the US because of the overwhelming over emphasis of individualism.
Diligence Jones
GhostOnTheHalfShell