NEW YORK CITY — When it comes to equal rights, the left is as guilty as the right. A lot of the states that blocked the ERA may wear red hats now, but back in the ’70s and ’80s they were blue, run by Southern Democrats. Same folks, too. So spare me the cartoon that this is just a Republican problem. It is a control problem. It is a Southern problem. And a Northern problem. And a religion problem. The parties change colors, but the attitude stays the same: MY WOMAN DOES WHAT I SAY (*including when she votes).
Men didn’t just wake up one morning as narcissistic, gaslighting assholes. They were bred into it by narcissistic, gaslighting fathers, by churches, pastors, priests, by religious media, Billy Graham, Jim & Tammy, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, CBN, by traditions that taught them control was masculinity and cruelty was order. Women were trained to submit, men were trained to rule, and both were told God signed off on the arrangement.
So when people start babbling about patriarchy like it fell from the sky, let’s be honest about where a lot of it came from: the Bible crowd, the tradition junkies, the moral scolds, and generations of families marinated in that poison. The sooner women stop treating religion like a side note and start seeing it as one of the main delivery systems, the sooner this conversation stops being polite and starts being real.
And here’s where it gets twisted—because the same righteous voices on both sides will tell me I’m the problem. That what I do promotes exploitation. Porn, sex work, blah blah blah. I’m contributing to it, to the abuse, whatever. They’ll say it with certainty, with moral authority, with that same old tone of knowing what’s best for everyone else. They’ll frame it as protection, as virtue, as progress… and if you question it, you’re the bad guy.
Sound familiar?
That’s the move. Dress control up as concern. Package judgment as protection. Swap one rulebook for another and call it liberation. It’s the same instinct, just wearing a different outfit.
And if you didn’t feel yourself nodding along at least once in that paragraph, go back and read it again — because that’s how easy it is to slip into it.
That said, fuck you, religion.
P.
Art: Marina Matus, Domination Painting, Lithuania (2023)
