Hello everyone and welcome back to season five of the Awaken Together podcast.
I'm Kat.
I'm Jen.
And we're so happy to be back with you all.
We hope you've had an amazing summer.
We missed you.
We've missed you so much.
And we are jumping back in with some really juicy, really fiery content and we're going
to kick it off with patriarchy.
So there's so much that we can say about this being two cisgendered women living in this
day and age.
But really the inspiration for us covering this topic today is because we are coming
off just seeing the Barbie movie.
Fresh off the Barbie movie.
And if you haven't seen it yet, spoiler alert, there's going to be some things we talk about
that might give some things away, but we just thought this was too prevalent and too present
in our souls not to talk about it.
Yes, the Barbie movie was such a deeper processing than I think a lot of people anticipated when
they went in to see it.
And I'm just so hoping that this was kind of like a little nugget or a little seed for
so many people that maybe would not be exposed to the world of unpacking patriarchy, your
own self-love and all the things that we talk about on this podcast.
It could have started some people's journey when they just thought they were going to
see a basic movie.
Exactly, right.
And so we figured just to start it off super high level, what is the patriarchy in case
any of us aren't super informed of the definition?
And if you just do a quick Google search, it literally says, a system of society or
government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.
So whether or not that word is one that is commonly in your vocabulary or if it's a newer
concept to you, you have been living in this society your entire life.
So we'll kind of unpack that today.
Yes, we're going to go over how it's personally impacted us, ways we contributed to it, and
then also talk about how this kind of manifests in society and what we can do from there.
But the themes of the Barbie movie, it's really going over the experience of what it means
to be a woman and how complex that can be in the society that we have created.
And it does it in such a casual way at first to where I think it can get you thinking.
And then I love where the movie goes where eventually they realize that just by sharing
and talking about your own personal experiences on how impossible the system is, it can wake
other people up to knowing how ridiculous and impossible the system is so we can actually
change and get out of it.
So Kat, I would love to hear your journey with the patriarchy, how you feel that influenced
your you growing up and where you've kind of ended up being able to land.
Yeah, thanks.
Oh man.
I mean, it is brainwashing at its core essence.
It really is.
It is.
You're like put under a spell and we're put under the spell of believing that we are less
than as women from really as early as we can understand that as a topic.
So when thinking about this for myself, I go all the way back to childhood and I think
about like something that my grandmother who she was 17 years old when she had my mom,
she moved here from Greece and she was married off at 18 to my grandfather.
It was an arranged marriage and he was 11 years older than her.
So I mean, even thinking back to that, that right there, like older Greek times, it was
very prevalent there as well.
So arranged marriages, the youth being seen as like the ideal older men going for younger
women, all of that.
But she like I love her so much.
My grandmother, she's still alive.
She's my last living grandparent and we're very close.
But in growing up and just kind of understanding patriarchy and like kind of my gender and
my responsibilities in the family and how I was treated different than my little brother,
I started to kind of unearth some things that I was like, hmm, I'm going to think about
that some more.
I don't really like how that feels.
So one example of this is so I'm three years older than my brother and my Yaya would say
to me, oh, like how was she would pick us up from school every day.
So she would say, how was last night?
Did you feed your brother dinner?
Like I know mommy got home late from work, did you feed your brother?
And I was like 13 at the time.
He was nine and I don't know, I didn't want to cook for him.
So I was like, no, he cooked his own chicken nuggets.
And she was like, why didn't you cook for him?
I'm like, he wanted chicken nuggets.
And so he popped them in the microwave.
Like I don't have to cook.
I was 13, you know, I was like, I don't have to cook for my little brother every time.
And that was just kind of the expectation.
And it wasn't just me.
I noticed how this was all of the women in my family.
It was, oh, why don't you go see if your cousin George is hungry?
Why don't you go see if your dad wants a beer?
It was just like, we were there to serve them.
And that was never explicitly said, but that was of course the message that was received.
It was very clear to me that the women were there to make babies and care for the babies
and the children and the men.
And that was like our place in society.
So that was one example that I thought about.
I also, when I kind of picked up on all of this, I started to more resonate with being
a tomboy because I really didn't like that idea of women being there to serve.
So I kind of took on this approach of wanting more power and in that made myself act more
masculine.
Wait, okay, patriarchy, here we are again.
It seems like it's not, but then it sneaks right back, you know?
Uh huh, right?
Yeah.
And I actually used to shit on my little cousin, Maria, who is like a little sister to me for
loving Barbie.
So it's like full circle because she loved pink.
She loved Barbie.
She loved shopping and shoes and all of the really feminine things.
And here I was thinking like, oh no, like we need to be strong, independent women.
We need to be manly.
We need to act like we like sports and just like own that side of us or else we're never
going to be taken seriously.
We're going to be seen as unintelligent.
And so I remember like deciding really early on that I would dress really conservatively.
Like even in middle school when girls, you know, frequently are kind of pushing the boundaries,
I really didn't want to do that because I felt really uncomfortable being catcalled,
just like walking down the street as a teenager, you know, being catcalled on the street and
like being so uncomfortable, just feeling this heat rising in me and my face would be
red.
And I just felt like, you know, what the hell?
Like I am not here for someone else's enjoyment.
I'm not here just to be catcalled and stared at.
And so I would purposefully dress in ways that were like more masculine, just to try
to avoid that, to feel safe.
Yeah.
So just even body language, like my shoulders would cave in, my throat chakra was super
blocked.
I would talk really quietly at school and stuff.
And then at home it would all get kind of pent up and I would like get just so upset
and I had this kind of anger as a kid.
And I know that it was all built up from that way of feeling like I needed to act a certain
way to be taken seriously.
Like I remember having these thoughts of like, one day I'll show you all.
That was my little Aquarius self.
Like one day you're going to take me seriously.
I'm going to be really successful and you'll look back and be like, oh, I never should
have doubted her.
Do you know when it kind of started changing for you?
What was some of the turning points?
Yeah, honestly.
Like, ah, man, I think I started to kind of embrace my feminine energy when I was like
midway through probably early on in high school actually.
But then again, it was like maybe that was part of me just kind of succumbing to it and
seeing how others were accepted and popular and leaning into that.
Yeah, because I remember you got into your shoe addiction.
Yes.
Yes, exactly.
So like young times I went the other way, but then I think I started to dip my toe in
the waters and say, well, hey, if this is what's working for everybody else, maybe I
need to fit that mold too.
And so I did kind of swing the pendulum in the other direction and just kind of made
myself dumb down and just, yeah, I don't know.
Which is ultimately letting the patriarchy win.
You start realizing like, OK, well, maybe I will just go into this box because this
box gets me things a lot easier and then I'm not labeled and judged and looked at in this
way.
So yes, exactly.
And there's such there's an example of that in the movie, too.
Like, do you remember when Barbie almost gets back into her box to be put away because it
was more comfortable and then she has that freak out moment of like, no, this isn't actually
what I want to do.
So I feel like I had that moment really when I found yoga, like really when my spiritual
awakening began of like, OK, I don't need to be someone that everybody else wants me
to be, that society tells me I need to be.
I'm going to start to understand who I am at the core.
Right.
And breaking down like both extremes of these like gendered presentations.
Like, you know, you lose a lot of that on the yoga mat because you start to see yourself
as a soul and it gets a lot easier just to be like, what does my internal compass want
beyond all this other bullshit?
A hundred percent.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm so grateful for that and for that practice.
I feel like for both of us, a lot can be traced back to to yoga and the mat.
But how about you, Jen?
What was your experience like?
Yeah, thank you for sharing yours as thinking even.
Yeah, like so much.
I can see some similarities.
My starting point is like very unique, like yours in a way, because my parents growing
up in a very strict Christian household, evangelical Christian, I'm sure some of you have heard
in other episodes.
But my my parents were very against all the things that were kind of like hyper feminine.
So I was not allowed to paint my nails.
I was not allowed to wear makeup.
I was not allowed to wear most like clothing that would have been, you know, popular like
in the time I wasn't allowed to have my ears pierced.
So a lot of the like.
Kind of like standard feminine presentation was like forbidden for me, which.
You know, in a way, it could have been seen as like my parents kind of breaking that mold
and not wanting me to go there, but it also made me deeply like see that presentation
very sexualized and as very dirty.
So it definitely had me like resisting a lot of people, like you said, with your cousin.
Like I pushed a lot of people away from me that were into those things.
So it led to me having this kind of very judgmental lens where I thought anyone who embraced any
of that stuff was just like, yeah, doing the absolute like worst thing.
So it took a lot of healing around that.
So I was very much raised a tomboy.
I was raised to like watch a lot of sports growing up and really to follow what my dad's
passions were.
Good question on that, too.
What was your parents reasoning for not letting you like paint your nails and do the thing?
Yeah.
So to them, they thought that that was a very like sexual thing.
It was a way to kind of seduce and to like, yes, just sexualized stuff.
So to them that if they raised daughters that way, we were going to turn into someone that
would attract all these like men and be seducing.
So it was so kind of grimy because even at a young age, it had me thinking in this like
dirtier way because of it being restricted and viewed that way.
So it kind of shows my parents own like own stuff that they were going through where they
were still like really being fueled by patriarchal thinking of like women are seen kind of objectively.
And this is, you know, instead of dismantling that and kind of educating through it, it
was like just forbidden, which ended up being like really weird to like unpack.
So I think growing up, we leaned into a lot of my dad's passions, which my mom really
struggled with a lot of self-esteem issues and a lot of self-hatred because I think for
her it was really hard to find like identity beyond.
Yeah, there is this hard for her to find identity, I think, in a lot of ways.
And then you add that into the layer of the church, which, you know, we went to churches
where they believe that women should never be pastors, that women shouldn't be a part
of the elder team of the church making some of the decisions.
Women were very much used in church to be of service, like prepare meals for after church
and to lead the nursery and do things like that.
So I was very much still put into a gender role in completely different ways.
And this like feminine, like you need to be self-sacrificial was definitely still a very
strong influence.
It was just all done through the church.
And I remember, you know, starting at a very young age in the church, which I think is
messed up for so many reasons, but they start having, you know, these talks with you at
such a young age about how us girls can tempt the boys and we can cause them to send from
God and that we need to be really careful about how we dress and that every single thing
we do is a reflection of like how much we're willing to keep people on the path of God
and heading in the right direction.
And so I just remember, you know, I was always like pulling at my clothes, making sure like
if I dropped something that I was holding my skirt, like don't, you know, don't accidentally
like do anything scandalous, like making sure my shirts were always like not revealing anything,
like watching my body language like so much.
And then I think I had kind of like a hyper rebellion stage also kind of hit more closer
to high school of like realizing how much I just did not, you know, I felt so behind
in so many ways.
I was still piecing together like these rules from my household, like my dad was very much
encouraged and took on the role very gladly of being in charge of our households.
My mom couldn't have too many opinions and everything always had to go through my dad
and I hated that.
I always felt like a burning fire for that a hundred percent.
And I just remember as I got into high school, just being like, I want to experience everything
for what it is and I will have to just like learn to make my own judgment calls.
But that did end up still taking a darker direction because I was still at that point
program so much that like the highlight of my life was going to be to get married and
have babies that like I still was just so happy when I was getting attention from guys.
I wasn't even thinking about my own needs.
So I wasn't thinking like, okay, maybe this person doesn't make me the happiest.
I was going, oh, he thinks I'm sexy.
He's kind of hot.
Like I resonate with that so much.
God damn.
Yeah.
And you're just like so thankful that someone is giving you a piece of like, like the moment
you've been built up for.
And then it just ends up still feeling so empty.
And I think it takes a long time to piece that in, but it turned into me.
Like I think I look back and a few stories that like stand out, like it was hilarious
in the Barbie movie when they're trying to take down the patriarchy.
They listened to all of their partners, like play guitar for like hours and then they,
you know, they have this whole grand plan.
But right when I saw that in the Barbie movie, I just thought like I was engaged to a pastor's
son.
I was so thankful that my life was going to be just as my parents wanted, like in the
church I was going to be able to be of service.
And he would play the guitar for so many hours without even a check in on how I'm doing.
I didn't have a thought to say, and I was just wasting these hours, not finding my own
ambition and instead just letting my main focus be to just admire this guy just performing
his guitar, which makes me so sick.
And I really thought I know how I felt in those moments.
And I was like, wow, this this should be exactly like I'm I think I have it right.
But like no check in on my own need everything at like this kind of comparing myself to the
checklist, right?
Of like everything I had been taught.
And one other story that really comes to mind, I mean, I really still had such little self
respect for myself in college, which led to a lot of like reckless sex and like, yeah,
giving a lot of people power that really had done absolutely nothing to, you know, earn
it in any capacity.
And it just like is so a mirror of how little I cared about myself.
And I know that once I had gotten into doing my career in physical therapy, I moved from
Florida to I don't know if we even want to say it's a more backwards place, but I was
I was right on the cusp of West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, where there is so much
toxic masculinity.
These men really there's so many patterns of abuse there.
And abuse has become kind of so normalized for a lot of these women because they're not
exposed to as many other cultures.
It's a lot of white families and there's a lot of that men's in charge, lots of churches,
lots of this like play out of this exact problem.
And I started working for a company that was fully ran by men.
They hired me in management and I was the first woman that they had in that kind of
like position.
And I saw all of these problems with the company.
Like there was a lot of legality stuff I was worried about.
I was seeing a lot of problems with the employees and I was so happy to be creating this list
of stuff that was a problem because they had hired me to be in management to help fix these
things.
And I remember I presented all of the stuff to one of the guys who did not have a high
school diploma or any college degree and was running this entire company.
Not that that's always a huge judge, but should have been noted more for what it was.
And he looked at me and said, after I read him the list, I look up and he's like, listen,
you're a 22 year old female.
I don't need you coming in here telling us what we're doing wrong.
You listen up.
This is something we've been doing.
We don't need you to come in with stuff like that.
And he's like, you know, I think why don't, why don't we go out to Ponderosa, this, this
buffet restaurant.
We'll talk it out.
And I just think maybe management's not for you.
Like let's get you a place where you can be a little more comfortable.
So right there is the embodiment of the patriarchy tries to offer me something to soothe these
like feelings.
Cause God, we don't want you emotional.
Why don't we just put some food in?
Yeah.
Then you can shut up and stop talking to me about the problems.
Calls out my age, calls out my sex, calls out like every single thing I pointed out
as being something that they didn't even want to look at twice.
And in that moment, I feel like I had the most clarity on how the patriarchy really
was like, I was shocked that that was thrown at me.
And I think from there, the spite and the fire to awaken people to how screwed up this
was, I didn't really, I think fully grasp how much that was limiting problems from being
fixed in our reality.
And then that moment, I think it finally clicked for me.
So there's some of my takeaways.
Oh my gosh.
It's insane that that happened like in your lifetime to you.
That wasn't 50 years ago.
Like that was present day.
That's insane.
10 years ago.
Oh my gosh.
Unreal.
Yeah.
It still blows my mind.
And I mean, age is so prevalent in the patriarchal conversation.
Yeah.
You're valuable only when you're young and fit this also very like disgusting and unrealistic
look that is really hyper fantasized with Photoshop and editing.
And it's just so clear these people are taking in images and have this viewpoint that's not
even realistic to what the average person looks like.
Yeah.
And the crux of patriarchy, I mean, it's deeply rooted in capitalism.
It's all so intertwined.
But really the crux of it is that we are not okay and acceptable the way that we are.
There's always this notion of needing to chase and change and be someone different and younger
with less wrinkles and no cellulite and high arches.
That's what we talk about in the Barbie movie.
And it's like, what the fuck?
And I think feminism is it gets such a bad rap in this patriarchal society because people
think that we are trying to turn this all into a matriarchy.
And I mean, that would be beautiful.
But that's not what we're going for.
Right?
We're not saying that men should have less rights than women.
We're just simply saying that we all need to be treated equally with respect and put
on an even playing field because it's so far from that right now.
So when thinking about how to rebel against the patriarchy, I think it's really simple.
It's loving yourself and accepting yourself exactly the way you are right now.
So so so true.
And I think, too, that you see so commonly, like the very people bashing feminism, they
don't even know the depths of what is even being asked.
And I think it shows once again that a lot of the men that will be against feminism and
that are usually in higher positions of power, they like to view any type of demand for change
as this giant emotional crazy burden when they are just not being inconvenienced by
half of the stuff that especially female presenting people have to experience and go through.
Like the fact that we have like the shittiest maternity leave in the entire world, like
we don't have there is no respect to be able to handle any of the experiences that are
happening to 50 percent of the population.
And we yeah, we're still behind in pay.
We're still behind in representation.
We still have less people in leadership that are female bodied.
And it's yeah, it's so clear that beyond it is like I remember agreeing with this framework
when I was so brainwashed that like women are very emotional.
No, it is human to be emotional.
It is the repression of emotions that ends up creating a very dark and messed up energy.
And that is where a lot of these men in power are.
They don't know how to handle any emotions like truly war literally.
And they are so uncomfortable.
Like clearly I couldn't even say like a list of things that were objective problems without
it provoking my my boss at that time.
Because any time you voice something, they they don't know how to deal with being uncomfortable
because a woman has always filled in that gap for them.
And I want to share that like I think a few other ways patriarchy kind of presents is
like you said, the earn it mentality is like you do more to earn respect.
And then, you know, if you don't put in this certain type, you're you're not valued when
in reality, we're all humans on the same planet and there's really not even a fair shot.
Some people this is where racism comes into play and how it like plays out.
There can be groups of people that can try at level 100 and still not get ahead in the
current system that we have.
And another way that I think it presents is you have all of these baby men adults because
these moms will come in and instead of teaching their son how to work through emotions, they
only the moms only know how to copy what their life experience was, which was to cater to
men.
So you see these moms like cleaning the boys rooms for them completely, picking out what
they're going to wear, like doing all of this stuff where those action steps help you learn
to process emotions and it gets filled in by a woman.
And then when the guy gets put into adulthood, he has no ability to unpack a lot of his own
emotions and then tries to find a wife with that mentality.
And then usually the mother-in-law puts down the wife and says, why can't you do more?
Like look at what I did for him.
Once again, we have to give space.
All of us need to be processing tough emotions and know it's not easy.
And yes, it would be amazing if someone could fill in the gap and do all that for us, but
it doesn't make us actually deal with the human experience we're all going through.
And we know that vulnerability actually leads to authenticity and connection and positive
change.
And we know that repression leads to anger problems, punching a wall when you have a
basic emotion, driving off, slamming the door, not knowing how to sit and deal with one uncomfortable
sensation.
And that is the end result of a patriarchal society at its finest is that as the problem.
And then women blaming themselves for it and hating themselves even more, which is the
saddest takeaway.
Truly.
It's that masculine fragility and the learned women's response of like coddling that, right?
And making it okay and making it better.
And oh, if I don't do this, it's going to get violent and things are going to get bad.
And it's like living in that fear mindset.
It's just it's harmful not to care about this.
It's harmful to just go along with it because we're perpetuating the toxicity of that.
And it's turning abusive.
Right.
Exactly.
And not encouraging people to do better and demanding that people do better.
So a big part of this is healing the mother line and like lifting other women up.
Right.
It all starts with us, of course.
But once we feel like we've done some healing work and can understand these patterns within
ourselves, within our families, it's lifting others up.
So rather than leaning into the rhetoric of like, oh, yeah, she that one, she's a bitch.
Like she speaks her mind.
She's so crazy.
Like she doesn't.
Like her emotions are all over the place.
Like what the fuck?
Like I used to talk women down.
Yeah.
So easy to do.
And it's like talk that way.
Like anyone who shows too much like they're the problem and everyone else is normal and
they're like really fucking crazy.
Yes, exactly.
Or the whole notion.
How many times have we heard certain women say, oh, I get along better with guys.
Right.
Like that whole unhealed like a sister wound and whether it's like a biological sister
or not.
What I mean is like having a wound from another woman.
We've talked about this before on the pod, but like just believing that that they get
along better with guys.
And it's because somewhere they were scorned by a woman and they just don't want to get
that deep.
And oftentimes in male relationships we see things a little bit more surface level, which
can be a little bit more approachable for some people who aren't comfortable with the
depth.
But I mean lifting each other up, praising women who speak their truth, elevating female
voices, sharing other women's content, right?
Being intentional about that.
It's all starting with the love and that's how I think we can truly change this.
And I mean, I have so much hope.
Like our generation's doing badass stuff and the generation's younger than us just continue
to amaze me.
And so I truly believe that in this wave of Aquarius, like the future is female, but it's
not just going to happen that way.
Like we need to continue with the hard work and just loving ourselves the way that we
love each other.
Yeah.
And if you deeply love yourself and you also realize that these things that get labeled
as flaws or bad, that only creates patterns of shame where you're desperately trying to
hide actual things that are happening to you, actual feelings you are experiencing, which
is valid in itself.
No explanation.
Your human experience matters.
Every single bit of it is relatable and you are not alone in anything you're feeling.
And when you deeply, deeply believe that and you lead with even your weaknesses and realize
that it's nothing more than you just being a human, you get to share that message so
easily.
So I think of like even having children, like when they get to see you living in your flaws
and just owning like all the parts of who you are, they also won't feel so much shame
when they experience their own, you know, roller coaster emotions because this life
is always going to produce that.
And the important part is that we hold each other through that and we hold space and acceptance
for all of humanity.
And this is so what we're lacking in especially the USA, there is so much that's still built
on privilege and so much that's still built on white supremacy.
And it's all of this has to collapse.
And I think a huge part of being able to do that is owning the full truths of who you
are very radically so that it can be passed down that anyone and what they're experiencing
is safe to also voice that and hopefully those voices get so loud that it becomes very clear
who's not doing that.
And those stop being our people that are in leadership positions.
That's exactly right.
We can do whatever the hell we want.
And that is what I want to pass along to the next generation of badass females.
So I'm feeling stoked.
I'm empowered, Jen.
I got a flame.
The flame.
Barbie flame.
Yeah, honestly, I looked out the window and we started recording this and it was really
cloudy and now the sun's out.
And I just feel like that's a beautiful representation of how this conversation has gone.
I'm feeling just so much more clear and inspired.
And I hope that our listeners are feeling that way too and just ready to love themselves
and conquer the world.
Yes.
We love you guys and we're so happy to be here for another season.
We want to continue to thank you because the podcast is really growing and it's been so
fun to look at all of our statistics and see just like how much this podcast is reaching
people all around the world and how with each season we continue to grow.
So we just so appreciate you guys listening to all of our thoughts and conversations.
We have such an exciting season ahead with so many cool episodes lined up for you.
So continue.
Every week.
Yes, every week for this second part of the year.
And so make sure that you're always listening in on Fridays, that you are sharing the podcast
to anyone in your inner circle.
And yeah, you go rate us on Spotify, like our Instagram and we will keep it coming.
We love you all so much and we'll see you next week.
Bye.