Moving from rage to kinder engagement with patriarchy

December is here and with it, activism against woman and child abuse. I am aware of being a woman some of the time, yet for the most part I experience myself as a person, multilayered and with many qualities.

In 2000 I returned to university to do an honours degree and my mini-thesis was on the effect of motherhood on career high-flyers. One of the statements that still echoes from the research I did was that no-one says: “she is a family woman and he is a career man”, rather we hear “she is a career woman and he is a family man”.

In many ways, the gendered nature of careers was confirmation of what I already knew. Yet, learning that feminism has various theoretical constructs, including liberal, socialist and radical feminism, strongly activated me.

I became enraged that even though there was all this formal study to counter patriarchy and sexism, some women remain enslaved and violated in their own homes, often objectified and sometimes hardly thought of as people. I recognise now that knowledge does not necessarily bring change, it simply deepens understanding of the structural mechanisms through which social phenomenon remain entrenched.

My rage became uncomfortable — after all over-identification with being male or female can seriously get in the way of human relating — and so I started to look for a different way to be with male domination.

I also wondered what effect my rage might have on my boy child who was six years old at the time, and I knew I didn’t want to negatively impact his identity formation. I wanted to help him to grow into a strong and kind man.

A milestone for me of moving from rage to a kinder engagement with patriarchy occurred during my coaching training when we were invited to read poems that moved us.

Cape Town poet Finuala Dowling’s poem To the Doctor who Treated the Raped Baby and Felt Such Despair was the poem I selected.

In this gut-wrenching description of the night in question, she also speaks of fathers, uncles, brothers, grandfathers who are lovingly available to children and reminds us that amid the terror and harm that some men cause, there are many others who are nurturing and caring.

In addition, Thomas Moore’s call for a return to archetypal patriarchy in Care for the Soul was surprisingly resonate and not repugnant. Here he speaks of the notion of a father who is wise and who embodies powerful tenderness, rather than forceful fists.

Arguably the wise archetypal father is an idea we can lean into, because the absence of father in our collective psyche adds to our nation’s woundedness. I have seen many men care for their partners in respectful and recognising ways, and I hope activism can lead to building the space for more of this behaviour.

Another moment in a shift to a more compassionate awareness of patriarchy was a Carte Blanche clip about how many offenders in prison have experienced violence growing up.

While theoretically I may know that we re-enact what we experience, something about the clip watered the seed in my belief that in many instances people who do bad things to people are suffering too and in despair.

Kindness and understanding can help bring about shifts in behaviour, and this seemed an option that was a better fit for me.

Brené Brown, in Daring Greatly, writes about vulnerability and for Brown vulnerability is having the courage to say how it truly is for us. Men are mostly socialised to not say “I’m scared” and “I don’t know what to do” and therefore struggle on alone, and their shame at not having it all together remains unexpressed.

The adage that anger is the bodyguard of fear seems pertinent to my understanding of how the fear that arises, becomes anger and is sometimes unleashed through verbal, physical and sexual abuse.

We all have a primal need to feel safe, and so developing a belief in the value of expressing vulnerability may contribute to greater senses of safety which could curb fear, anger and violence. #Count me in on initiatives to bring about a safer world for us all.

Lorna Schofield has a professional coaching course qualification from the University of Cape Town and is a counselling psychologist. Her first degree was in journalism.