Perception and Reality

Thanks for the dedication! But I have to say my family is hardly a patriarchy. My mother is known for being able to out lift my father in the leg press, and outswim him too. My father’s advice on marriage is to basically give in to what my mother asks on all domestic things. That said he stands strong on the things that are important, but so does my mother. To me their partnership seems like the bonified rare equal marriage that worked.

At the end of the day what my father and mother espouse isn’t obedience and submission. Which is why I mention the fact that it may seem boring, but respect, comittment, trust and acceptance. My mother accepts when my father is vulnerable and thus gives him the strength to be strong. And so he is. He is strong because my mother is strong too, not because she serves him, but because they serve each other.

-Vasafaxa

And Penelope can beat me at step aerobics, but I can drink her under the table. Last night I scooped cat shit just because and this morning I changed a wet diaper as I was playing with the younger when I noticed she needed changing. I want a bigger vehicle, but I’ll discuss it with the wife before I make a purchase. I go grocery shopping. I vacuum. It’s not just that we both work outside the home, it’s that I don’t get my boxers in a wad over light cleaning and making sure there is food to eat. Being hungry and surrounded by filth is not my idea of a good time.

Nevertheless, I consider myself a patriarch.

Somewhere along the way, that word became, at least in certain circles, a pejorative. Patriarchy is oppressive. Patriarchy is subjugation. Patriarchy is slavery. Patriarchy is evil.

Yes, evil, but evil with cake and roasts because the matriarch was in the kitchen taking care of business.

Albert Einstein said, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one.” Patriarchy as an oppressive force of evil that demands subjugation certainly is a persistent illusion. Similarly, patriarchy which demands blind obedience and a dictator of the household instead of a head of the household is not patriarchy, it is an illusion of patriarchy.

To be a patriarch is to be a leader. To be a leader is to foment a partnership with your wife, not to enslave her. Equality is impossible, but fairness is not. Be fair, be the man. Shatter the illusions and create a new reality. Call this reality home.

Love, we’re going home now,
Where the vines clamber over the trellis:
Even before you, the summer will arrive,
On its honeysuckle feet, in your bedroom.

Our nomadic kisses wandered over all the world:
Armenia, dollop of disinterred honey:
Ceylon, green dove: and the YangTse with its old
Old patience, dividing the day from the night.

And now, dearest, we return, across the crackling sea
Like two blind birds to their wall,
To their nest in a distant spring:

Because love cannot always fly without resting,
Our lives return to the wall, to the rocks of the sea:
Our kisses head back home where they belong.

-Pablo Neruda