Why feminism won't survive without matriarchy

Feminism's next wave is matriarchy, and it needs to happen now.

When I consider the state of feminism today, I see a beautiful garden but with patriarchal weeds creeping in, ready to choke everything we’ve grown. From the rise of ‘soft life tradwife’ culture to the rollback of reproductive rights, combined with feminism’s own overemphasis on individual empowerment, the movement has reached a point of stagnation.

In 2024, I wrote an essay called “Why the next wave of feminism is matriarchy” that was shared and read by millions. In the piece, I said that feminist movements had so far focused on securing equal rights within patriarchy, but that it was time to create a system beyond patriarchy.

Until now, we have been pulling the weeds of patriarchy as they popped up. As any decent gardener will know, pulling weeds is not enough. If we want a garden that will nourish us for generations, we need to enrich the soil and collectively transform the entire ecosystem so that these weeds never appear again.

Feminism cleared the weeds. Now we need to transform the ecosystem.

In the current political climate, my conviction in the idea of matriarchy as the next wave has only become more urgent. Patriarchy persists in our institutions and relationships, and only an entirely different social structure can heal the gaping wounds of this violent system. What’s worse is that the right-wingers and red pillers of the world can capitalize on the unfinished work of dismantling patriarchy, convincing women to embrace oppression, telling them that feminism “failed”.

Charlie Kirk is a perfect example of this. When he spoke, he said repeatedly that feminism had made women miserable, and that women “deep down have an urge to have children, but we’re telling them to forsake that and become CEO of a shoe company”.

I recognized his name when his death made headlines, but I was shocked when I realized the scale of his influence and that he’d been powerful enough to help put Donald Trump in the White House. His extravagant memorial, where US government officials compared him to Martin Luther King Jr. and Moses, indicated he may be even more influential in his death. In light of this, I’ve spent a good amount of time watching him speak, trying to understand why his message struck a chord with so many. It’s more complicated than pure hatred, even if that does explain some of it.

Though I disagree with everything Charlie Kirk stood for, I still think it’s a useful exercise to understand why he believed what he did. As a young matriarch, I am deeply committed to a compassionate and empathetic way of life. Life is sacred, and there is always an explanation for even the most heinous beliefs or violent acts.

Not only does believing this keep my own heart open, which is essential for creating a kinder world, but it also hones an inner source of power that patriarchy cannot penetrate. My ability to have empathy for Charlie’s viewpoints allows me to hone how I talk about matriarchy in public, which strengthens my contribution to dismantling patriarchy. The point isn’t to excuse harm, but to move beyond the limits of judgment.

What I have learned is that patriarchal people like Charlie Kirk are deeply afraid, so they cling to bloated, illogical, and ultimately fragile power structures. Underneath the bravado and strongman personalities that characterize patriarchal “leaders”, there is unaddressed existential fear.

Because patriarchy is a system that is not designed to sustain life, it also ignores death. Death is inherently part of the cycle of life. Matriarchal societies have always honored death, folding it into their societies through rituals, daily customs, and spirituality. They understand that when you ignore death, you actually make the fear of it much larger.

Where there is an unaddressed fear of death, there are also psychological coping mechanisms. For patriarchal people not to drown under the weight of this fear, they must try to control everything and everyone around them. That’s why they outsource their decision-making to rulebooks like the Bible. That’s why they cling to rigid hierarchies and gender roles. That’s why they must appear all-powerful and dominant. This gives them the illusion of control and makes them believe they can overcome death, which is the ultimate loss of control.

Seeing the system of patriarchy as upheld by terrified people doesn’t make it any easier to dismantle, but it does give us insight. Understanding that fear fuels the system reminds us that our task is to choose courage instead.

Empathizing with someone like Charlie Kirk has allowed me to see that he was effective and persuasive because he was able to exploit the gaps in the feminist movement. His debate questions were designed to be misleading, coercing people to engage with him on his terms only.

He asked questions to make his worldview seem inevitable, a classic patriarchal tool.

One of his favorite questions to ask was “What is a woman?”, which he defined as “an adult female with XX chromosomes”. Never mind that the answer to this question is only relevant in a system that assigns roles and power based on gender. Outside of this system, it doesn’t actually matter what we define as a woman. His questions were not about healthy debate or changing minds. They served the purpose of confirming his worldview and playing into his patriarchal game.

From what was shown in these videos, many of those he debated humored him by trying to answer the question. This is exactly why feminist movements need to evolve beyond the terms patriarchy has set. Patriarchy has infiltrated our societies and psyches so deeply that we struggle to imagine how to live outside of these norms.

My book-in-progress explores this in depth, but here I want to highlight two unaddressed gaps in the feminist movement that the right exploits to further its own cause. These gaps exist because patriarchy is still the system we live in, and because we haven’t yet named the alternative clearly.

Problem 1: The capitalist workplace double bind

The first gap is the system of capitalism, which remains deeply embedded in society and which could not exist without patriarchy. Patriarchal systems are hierarchical by design, concentrating wealth in the hands of a few. Capitalism is the latest iteration of elite control over resources and labor that has existed since the dawn of patriarchy ~6,000 years ago. Patriarchy reinforces capitalism by undervaluing care work and designing workplaces around male lives and male bodies. Capitalism then feeds patriarchy by concentrating wealth and power in male hands.

Thanks to feminism, most women in the West now have equal access to participate in the system of capitalism. But the structure of capitalism is such that the majority of people are exploited and continually drained while receiving less and less in return. Since patriarchy also persists in the domestic sphere, women are doubly exploited: both in the market and at home.

This makes many mothers specifically vulnerable to the rightwing idea that “feminism failed”. Under this system, the trad wife appeal makes sense: why kill yourself at work only to pay someone else to raise your kids, when the system is rigged anyway? Right-wingers exploit this exhaustion by promising “relief” through a return to “traditional roles” that sound comforting but that actually strip women of autonomy.

The trad wife ideal sells women the idea that exchanging workplace exploitation for submission to a husband is liberation.

Erika Kirk, who is now the new CEO of her late husband’s nonprofit Turning Point USA, espoused these beliefs even at her husband’s memorial. Her role is to make oppression look shiny and inviting to women.

In one video addressing young conservative women, she says that women’s biblical role is to be wives and mothers, to submit to their husbands. She insists that this does not mean women are less than men, but that our roles are complementary with different functions, like eyes and ears. This rebranding is a story that serves to preserve women’s self-esteem while enforcing obedience.

Capitalism has become so exploitative that right-wingers know that many women will feel relief at leaving behind the exploitation of the workplace and embracing the domestic sphere, where they appear to have more control. They will make this choice seem noble, and as the “natural order of things”.

This is the primary way patriarchy keeps going: by making itself seem inevitable and natural. Many extreme right-wingers justify it by using religion or claiming it is the “will of God”, but even the most secular people buy into patriarchal ideology.

In the current stage of patriarchy, we are presented with two choices: serve a CEO or your husband. This is framed as the only way, because capitalism and the nuclear family are deemed as natural, as if no other way of living or working could ever exist.

Matriarchy is about building systems outside of the hierarchical, male-dominated norms that patriarchy told us were natural. Rather than seeing the husband and wife as the only legitimate family unit, we can normalize living in large egalitarian communities. Rather than accepting exploitation and transactional exchange, we can create gift economies that reduce our reliance on patriarchal economies. Rather than relying on global supply chains that poison the Earth and exploit vulnerable people, we can grow and share food, exchange skills and time, and create our own energy and water sources. We don’t need to create this out of thin air. We already have everything we need in each other and the Earth.

In my book, I go into more detail about what building matriarchal systems could look like in practice. But the first step is daring to imagine it, and then normalizing it as a goal within mainstream feminism.

Feminist movements pulled up the weeds that said “women don’t belong in the workplace”. They cleared space so women could grow careers and compete in the capitalist marketplace. But the soil never changed, so new weeds of exploitation and exhaustion sprouted. Matriarchy is about enriching the soil with reciprocity and care so that no woman ever has to choose between her livelihood and her autonomy again.

Problem 2: The motherhood and care gap

The second problem feminism needs to evolve to address is the motherhood dilemma. In securing reproductive freedoms and workplace rights, feminism gave us the ability to delay or refrain from motherhood altogether. This allowed women to explore ourselves outside of motherhood. But since patriarchy persists, many women still feel cultural pressure to become mothers, and stigma if they don’t. When they become mothers, they are stripped of support and left to do the work alone. This feeds patriarchy, because women who are burned out and isolated are easier to control.

Though modern feminism has fought for freedoms to allow mothers to slot into male-shaped systems, the domestic labor of motherhood remains invisible, and care is still not deemed valuable. That leaves a gap behind for right-wing voices to claim, rebranding leaving your career behind and submitting to your husband as the only way to honor motherhood.

Through my research, I noticed that Erika Kirk repeatedly referred to the sacredness of motherhood. She claimed that “childless leftwing women think children are a nuisance and a burden”, painting a caricature of feminists as people who hate motherhood and children.

As a mother, I agree with Erika that motherhood is sacred. But where we differ in our thinking is that I don’t believe every woman should be a mother, and I don’t believe I must mother with a man. In fact, motherhood is so sacred that it should be a choice, and forcing it on every woman removes its sacredness. Mothers are much better off raising their children within a community and being supported by experienced mothers, rather than being forced to mother in isolation with one man who will never experience what she does.

Forced motherhood and domestic servitude have been so crushing for women that earlier waves of feminism focused on getting women out of the home and into the workforce. Care was then outsourced to others, including hired help who were more likely to be immigrants or women of color. Neoliberal feminism framed empowerment as not doing care work. But the truth is that care is what sustains life, and care is what our entire societies should be built around. Feminism must now imagine how care and mothering can work beyond patriarchy.

Since ~80% of women become mothers, whether by choice or pressure, there is an opportunity for feminism to redefine motherhood on its own terms, and matriarchy gives us the framework to do this.

Feminism pulled up the weed that said women exist only to bear and raise children, and cleared space so women could decide if and when to become mothers. In some places, feminism planted supports like affordable childcare and paid leave. But the soil still supports patriarchal weeds, because motherhood is treated as a private burden inside the nuclear family rather than as a role held in community.

Instead of commodifying care and trying to adapt to patriarchal structures, matriarchy creates new structures that center care as the infrastructure of daily life. That means we honor all forms of creation, including art, healing, teaching, gardening, and the countless other ways we create and sustain life together. It means motherhood is a sacred choice, undertaken only by those ready and willing. It means allowing mothers to be whole beyond their role, which is only possible when non-mothers stand alongside them in support.

We are all creating and caring, all the time. Matriarchy honors this.

Once again, we don’t need any special technology to achieve this. We already have all the tools to start changing our social structures to become more matriarchal. If you’re curious about more ideas on how to start, I wrote a guide on how to start living a matriarchal life within the context of patriarchy.

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Creating matriarchal social structures not only creates a better world but is a powerful form of resistance. Matriarchy can also provide safe havens for the hard times that will come.

It’s less about convincing others and more about preparing ourselves and our communities to weather the collapse of patriarchal systems. The less we rely on patriarchal structures, the more resilient we will be.

Feminism is the through line because when applied intersectionally, it’s the one movement that can deconstruct patriarchy piece by piece. Patriarchy directly subjugates more than half the world’s population and indirectly subjugates the rest. It is a system both universal in its reach and intimate in its grip.

Until now, feminism has been reactive to patriarchy, fighting for rights and protections within the system. Matriarchy is what feminism looks like when it grows beyond resistance into creation. It is the social structure that fully realizes the goals of feminism.

Patriarchy has everything to gain from suppressing matriarchy and its history, and denying that matriarchal societies can ever be powerful. If people (especially women) knew that there was another way, one that did not require choosing between different kinds of exploitation, the whole foundation of patriarchy would collapse. That is the power of matriarchy. By simply existing as a possible social structure, it is a huge threat.

Feminism cleared the ground and planted the garden, but patriarchy is a stubborn weed. Unless we evolve our strategy toward matriarchal systems, the weeds of patriarchy will keep creeping back.

We have each other, and we have the Earth. They want us to think that’s not enough, but it is everything. It’s time to restore our power.

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Thank you for reading LFAYM.

I am a full-time writer on matriarchy, and this work is how I support myself and my daughter.

Everything here is offered freely, in the spirit of the matriarchal gift economy. I give you what I can offer. You give me what you can offer. You nourish me so I can keep creating. I create so you can feel more nourished. And the trust between us continues to grow through this.

If you have the means and find value in my writing, please become a paid subscriber. As a supporter, you’ll also receive a digital copy of my upcoming book, Matriarchy, upon release.

We’re not waiting for permission from patriarchal systems, we’re building the world of matriarchy together. 🌼