ANS -- try matriarchy for a little while.

This was on Facebook.  I thoooooooought it was interesting.  

--Kim

Ana Del Castillo 

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I posted a reel the other day imploring that we just (fucking) try matriarchy for a little while.

The reel and frustration landed for people. But over and over, some men mentioned Margaret Thatcher as their proof that matriarchy fails.

People think matriarchy means women lead.

But that's not accurate. Thatcher was not a failed matriarch. She's one of the clearest examples of patriarchy there are.

She governed by domination, hierarchy, and by scarcity. She crushed what resisted her.

She treated empathy and care as weakness and "toughness" as proof of fitness to lead.

That's patriarchy's operating system. The fact that she was a woman changes nothing.

Matriarchy was never about women being in charge. It is not even really about gender. It's an operating system; a way of holding power.

Patriarchy runs on power-over: domination, fear, scarcity, control. A matriarchal mode runs on power-with: children are at the center; it's care, coalition, shared authority, the understanding that strength and tenderness are not opposites.

So both men and women can rule via patriarchy. Thatcher did. Gender is not the issue. Which system that gender is leading with is the issue.

Which means a man can lead through matriarchy.

Look at how Mamdani governs in New York. Rather than deciding from City Hall what mattered, he asked New Yorkers what was broken on their own blocks. They said potholes. So 100,000 potholes were fixed within 100 days.

New Yorkers voted on which neighborhood fix the mayor would do himself and they chose cleaning up illegal dumping in Soundview. On his 100th day, Mamdani showed up himself and did it.

It's small, unglamorous, maintaining work.

Matriarchal work. The keep-the-shared-thing-livable work that patriarchy has always coded as beneath real leaders (women's work).

It's power that asks instead of commands.

So when I say let's try matriarchy for a while, I'm not saying hand the same system to women and call it "new & improved." I'm saying change the system.

I'm saying we run our households, our cities, our countries, our world on care instead of fear. On coalition instead of domination and conquest. On power-WITH instead of power-over.

That's what I mean when I say, can we just fucking try matriarchy for a little while.

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