Trista Hendren

How to Live Well Despite Capitalist Patriarchy Trista Hendren

Capitalist Patriarchy sucks for women.

We are taught to blame ourselves incessantly for everything that is wrong in our lives--without looking at the bigger picture of structural inequality at play. My hope is that as more women begin to wake up and share with each other, we will heal ourselves and weave our way out of this hellish maze together.

Capitalist Patriarchy thrives when women shut up and do as they are told. While it would appear (for some of us at least) that if we play by the rules, we will be safe--those of us who begin to rock the boat with our questioning and refusal to STFU know how easy it is to be thrown off the boat altogether--children and all.

Everything within Capitalist Patriarchy is designed to keep your inner-knowing and body wisdom suppressed. Therefore, in order to thrive despite this system, you must come back into contact with the deepest parts of yourself. As females, we have been taught to deeply hate those parts of ourselves, so they are often the most hidden--buried deep within.

When we examine how we are contributing to Capitalist Patriarchy with our own time, money and energy--we can reallocate our funds for things that contribute to our liberation instead of our subordination. Many of us repeat the patterns of our families without questioning whether they serve us well. As poet Mark Gonzales asked, "Who told you the stories that taught you what it meant to be human, and did they have your best interests at heart?"

This book will serve as a starting point to challenge some of our societal assumptions, in hopes of helping women become stronger and breaking their chains. As we begin to heal collectively, we can overturn this system altogether.

It is time to break the silences which enslave us. It is patriarchy's goal to keep women exhausted, ill, on-guard, ashamed, numb, distracted and defragmented so that we don't have the time or energy to battle the giant Himself. We must return to ourselves--and to Goddess consciousness--to regain our strength and overturn this abomination.

There was once another way. Let us begin to remember.