The idea of a matriarchy scares and thrills me, because it implies power. If I try to bring to mind, let’s say, a powerful matriarch, the first image that arrives is of a stoney-faced woman, grey hair slicked back into an obedient bun, pointing a long nail at a group of little people and telling them what to do.
That this picture jumps to mind for me is a problem. The equating of power with domination is so strong in our culture, my imagination so limited on the subject, that it is difficult for me even to conjure an image of a different type of power, one not oriented around subjugation and control. This limited understanding of power is shared across our culture—Merriam-Webster’s primary definition of matriarch reads, “a woman who rules or dominates a family, group, or state.” Ruling, dominating. No, that seems wrong to me. The first synonym for “matriarchal” on thesaurus.com is “fatherly.” That seems wrong, too. If you Google the definition of matriarch, the top results box provides the example: “a domineering matriarch.” Even as we try to define a powerful woman, we cannot escape the language of subjugation and control that is so characteristic of a patriarchy. Given that I live in this context, it is unsurprising (but still sad) that, upon considering “power” and “woman” together, my mind automatically conjures a frowning lady in heels who towers over others, breathing fire down on the men, and so on.
No thank you, I do not strive to be her. And yet, I still find the word matriarchy compelling. What could it mean, other than, as it seems from these definitions, a woman instead of a man at the top of a patriarchy. For my part, I founded, ran, and sold a company, which would have made me, technically, for a time, “a woman who rules or dominates a group.” But, oh dear, that is not how I felt. I felt like I was a central receiving office for a sprawling, delicate network of needs and concerns; like I was a waiter trying to balance an enormous stack of dishes; like I was a herding dog trying to encircle every last sheep. I was tossed all the hottest potatoes, I cleaned things up, I mediated fights and apologized to him and him and him, and at times, begged for forgiveness. I felt hectic, dinky, unmatched to the task. The top synonym that thesaurus.com provides for “matriarch” is “matron,” for which other synonyms are housekeeper, administrator, housemother and superintendent. Yes, I think that about sums it up.
I was not a matriarch then, even though I was a woman with power over a group. Because intuitive to me is that, to be a matriarch is to elevate the set of typically feminine characteristics: collaboration, gentleness, nurturing, appreciation, acknowledging weakness, to name a few. When I was a CEO, in addition to feeling much of the time like an administrator, I also felt at times helpful, supportive, and well-liked, words we also do not associate with power. To be a matriarch is to be motherly, but a sort of rare, influential, respected motherliness. I like this idea. Furthermore, these are qualities that anyone can possess or practice, no matter their gender, and that gives me hope. I’d like to, over time, update my default image of a matriarch so that she (or he! or they!) leans towards these qualities. I want her to be someone I strive to emulate, someone I love.
I only recently started noticing little specks of matriarch glitter showing up on me: in my eyes, on my skin, most notably, in my voice. The matriarch glitter is glinting as I try out saying things that a good female participant in corporate America would never say. Things like: My experience is influenced every day by my menstrual cycle. I dislike letting people down, even when I’m negotiating against them. I have OCD and anxiety. I prefer to be overly kind in emails so that my words are not misconstrued as coldness on the page. I think growth alone is a bad guiding principle for a company. I think that many of the very rich men around me in Silicon Valley are naive. I am becoming more bold, encouraged by other women who are writing for bleed week, or sharing a #metoo story, or being brutally honest about the toll of their work on their health. I want to catch their boldness, to add my own. I’m noticing these specks of matriarch glitter, holding them up to the light and watching them glint. I hope that (like glitter) they never rub off.
Merriam-Webster offers a little factoid for us at the end of the entry for “matriarch”:
“Did you know?
A matriarchy is a social unit governed by a woman or group of women. It isn't certain that a true matriarchal society has ever existed, so matriarchy is usually treated as an imaginative concept”
Well, first of all, this is false, we are not talking about unicorns. There are hundreds of examples of matriarchal societies in different forms, mostly found in indigenous communities. Forms of matriarchal societies can be found today in the mainland US, Hawaii, Mexico, Panama, Ghana, South Africa, India, Indonesia, and China, to name a few. Academics in the (more or less acknowledged as real) field of Matriarchal Studies have focused on redefining the term to correct the error at the core of the dictionary’s confusion: a matriarchy is not a patriarchy ruled by women (which, as far as I know, has not existed), it is something else entirely. This is a subject we will explore more deeply in these pages, one about which I am still just beginning my education. As a starting point, (and if you will grant me permission to continue updating this over time), a matriarchy orients towards partnership over domination, reciprocity over transaction, and the fulfillment of needs over the acquisition of goods.
Despite my initial Cruella-like vision of a matriarch, I still feel warm when I whisper the word to myself, I feel an inner fullness, catch a whiff of jasmine in spring, imagine peering around a corner at something colorful and inviting in the distance. I want to love a powerful woman. I want to be a matriarch, but not the ruling, controlling, domineering type, some other type, defined on her own terms.
Let me try here, over and over, to figure out those terms, with you.
—Rae
Note: I cannot write about women without buffering myself with some protective, self-doubting caveats. I have, with great effort, banished the caveats to this footnote. (As Simone de Beauvoir wrote at the outset of The Second Sex in 1949, “I hesitated a long time before writing a book on women. The subject is irritating, especially for women; and it is not new.”) Even now, again, writing this, bringing up the patriarchy as an issue makes me feel stale, has-been, oh-this-again, its-been-done, like I’m nagging, like I’m a complainer, like I’m harping on something that’s old news, like I’m uneducated or missing some new point. It can’t possibly still be relevant, a conversation about the patriarchy, not after all this time, not with so many problems on the menu. I both feel this doubt strongly, and know with deep certainty that the topic is of course still relevant, that I can barely picture a powerful woman who is not a kind of well-dressed dark magic hag ruler wearing red lipstick, and that my doubt about the relevance of patriarchy is, in a fabulous hand-tying stunt, the product of living in a very strong, very deep one.
Header image drawn by brilliant illustrator Stephanie Davidson, instagram: @asiwillit