patriarchy and the counter-culture

My fishing friend and I talk, a lot, and about everything. But one theme seems to come up at a slant in our conversations, worming its way in, a tangled virus that at times derails the rest of what we were saying without ever managing to take centre stage: the patriarchy. Last time it came up, I said with a slightly alcohol-added defiance, “I wasn’t raised in the partiarchy. And I’m sorry that everyone else was. It was a bit of a culture shock for me out here, you know.”

Bravado aside, it is odd to consider that someone could be raised outside her culture. I mean, Jung would scoff, and Ockham’s razor would shred such a notion. But there it is, and I can’t seem to shake it. And this morning, while doing my routine of unloading the clean dishes while waiting for coffee to perk, a random stray comment from one of my graduate sociology classes came back. We had been discussing lifestyles, and the comment came up that the whole notion of lifestyle is itself very much a hallmark of the twentieth century. [Planned developments were followed by communes that refered to themselves as ‘nations,’ which were in turn followed by gated communities to keep the scary elements from messing with the goods of conspicuous consumption, the fruits of having left these very homes to process through the sacred ritual of wealth acquisition to the tune of the corporate calliope.]

What if lifestyle can trump culture? Has culture grown so weak lately? Perhaps it has. When was the last time that someone in your neighborhood was shunned for not attending the right church? Jax recently recounted a joke from Prairie Home Companion:

How do you run a Unitarian out of town?
Burn a question mark on his front lawn.

However funny the joke might be, there is, as in all good jokes, an element of poking fun at ourselves and what has truly happened in our world. Imagine the mere concept of Unitarianism in the middle ages. Go on; I dare you. I triple-dog-eat-dog-poop-if-I’m-wrong dare you. There are the examples of St. Francis, the movement of the Friars amongst the populace in the twelfth century, but come on, this was nothing compared to the feel-good wrap-sessions which have become Unitarian Worship Services. I daresay that the whole of the Unitarian Church would only ever run out someone who dared to say another person’s personal choices were wrong, somehow morally reprehensible, unless of course it involved helping elect a republican.

While lifestyle is truly the hallmark of the twentieth century (and asking “what diet are you on?’ would be the question to help determine if someone were truly a citizen of the U.S.), how is it that one’s lifestyle became more impotant than even a hegemonic partriarchy which has been our partner since time immemorial? And is such a thing a good move?

In the nineteenth century, one of the hallmarks of American society was the beginning of voluntary associations. It’s not difficult to see how one’s identity was gleaned, supported, and known by whether one participated in the sufferage meetings, the anti-slavery meetings, the anti-factory meetings, and political rallies. But the realm of voluntary associations expanded through that century. From the realm of the political, no social institution was left untouched: religious sects became minor and powerful institutions in their own right. Millerites, Christian Scientists, Shakers, Mennonites, Baptists sprang up out of the woodwork in the nineteenth century to change the American religious landscape forever. Even then the Unitarians were new, but the roots of religion-as-a-group-for-social-change are easy to see.

But what of those of us who were born late in the twentieth century, before the moon landing but after the kennedy assassination? In her forward to Wild Child: Girlhoods in the Counter-culture, Moon Unit Zappa writes, “Maybe my parents were trying out something new, but I never knew the difference.” These are telling words indeed, and ones I wish I had recalled when I was speaking with my fishing friend. From Mary Baker Eddy to Abbie Hoffman, the line of the partiarchy has not only been crossed: it has been denied.

And what of us who were members of Woodstock Nation, who grew up spending Hours instead of Dollars in Ithaca? For my part, I can only tell you that your partriarchy is not only new to me, it scares me. Scares me not only because it is perverse and wrong and hegemonic; it is all of those things, trust me. Mostly though, it scares me because I was so wholly unprepared for its existence.