Leaving Patriarchy, Writing New Stories

It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I understood patriarchy as a negative word. As I was growing up, patriarchy was my way of life. Like Christian, middle-class, white, or homeschooling, patriarchy described my world. My family subscribed to the magazine Patriarch, attended patriarchy-themed conferences, read and listened to books and audiotapes from patriarchy leaders. Patriarchy, or rule of the father, was the will of the Lord, according to the patriarchs.

For young women, like me, this meant we did not go to college or have jobs outside the home or go on dates. We practiced homemaking skills like baking fresh bread and sewing quilts. We did not move out of the protection of our fathers until our wedding day. We were transferred from one man to another, patriarch to patriarch, like property. Patriarchy, after all, is about power and ownership.

Feminism, on the other hand, was something akin to the antichrist. It conjured infant death, brazen women, effeminate men. It meant harm to families, and patriarchy was the ultimate protector of family. Masculinity was presented not only as powerful, but also as the ultimate good: God was masculine, pastors were men, fathers made the decisions.

Now that I have left the patriarchy movement of conservative Christianity (and embraced feminism for its belief in equality), I find myself drawn to books and essays by others who have written about leaving it: leaving family, religion, home, loved ones, community, church. Perhaps, I have told myself, reading others' journeys out of patriarchal systems is a way for me to practice healing, to imagine a future where I have left it all behind and moved on. The truth is, I have left the world of my youth, but I am still always leaving, never quite arriving, because I'm not sure where I will end up.

Very few were talking about Christian patriarchy when I was living it. I felt alone, but now I realize that there were many of us who wanted out, each isolated from the rest. When I first left, the only way to read others' stories was in personal and exposé blogs like Homeschoolers Anonymous, No Longer Quivering, Spiritual Sounding Board, and Love, Joy, Feminism. But over the past five years or so, more stories have been coming to light about this movement. Perhaps the #metoo and #churchtoo movements have opened the gates, allowing for broader conversations about patriarchal systems and how they harm women. Of course, feminism and discourse around equal rights have been doing this for a long time, and the Christian patriarchy movement is only one of many iterations of misogyny.

When Educated, by former Mormon Tara Westover, was published in 2018, it felt to me like something shifted. For once, a story like mine was getting national attention. The memoir was on the New York Times bestseller list for 132 consecutive weeks, and it seemed like everyone was talking about it. Before, when I had told my story, people would sometimes compare me to the Amish or survivors of kidnapping, both of which didn't quite resonate with my experience. Now, with a memoir about homeschooling, social isolation, and religious extremism in the mainstream cultural conversation, people seemed to understand me better.

But perhaps these stories are not as rare as we might think. In the creative nonfiction world, essayist Terry Tempest Williams addresses the patriarchal system of the Latter-day Saints Church in her most recent collection, Erosion: "For the Mormon Church to continue to preserve this spiritual patrimony is to affirm its organizational misogyny. Why is it apostasy to ask for half of its membership to have equal power under God?" And in popular culture, the popularity of television shows such as The Handmaid's Tale and...