I remember when I was first talking with someone much more steeped in radical feminist literature than I, and I was talking with her about the idea that has had me baffled, “What is wrong with human nature that we did this to ourselves?” and she pointed out, “It isn’t human nature, it is male nature.”
Who wages war? Men, not women. Who rapes and pillages other villages, stealing women and horses, killing all the men from the neighboring tribes? Men, not women. Who has been at the forefront of raping and pillaging Mother Earth? Stealing her minerals, her trees, polluting her oceans? Men, not women.
I was at first a little startled by the boldness and bluntness of her observation, because I had so accustomed myself to thinking in broad abstract vague terms, like “human” nature, rather than thinking about male versus female nature.
And, as a fairly self-actualized, competent, self-supporting single woman, who had supported herself independently, putting herself through undergraduate and graduate educations, built a fairly self-sustaining multiple-decade career, I had lulled myself into thinking “We” because even if the men waged the wars, we women did not stop the wars.
Even if it was men who created the patriarchal religions, or engaged in rampant sexual abuse, sexual exploitation and sexualizing of women — including sexual abuse of children, we women seem not to have successfully stopped it. We did not stop the taking over of other peoples’ lands nor the stealing of people from other lands to turn them into slaves. So, to that extent I viewed myself as complicit in this ugly species called “human” rather than viewing myself as a powerless bystander to male predation.
Somehow, I concluded that because we did not stop it, we (as women) must be equally culpable as part of the “human race run amok.” But I wonder if that is not part of how we harm ourselves? Is the wife of an alcoholic truly equally responsible when he runs, drunk, into another car? Is the female business partner truly equally responsible if her male counterpart turns out to have embezzled from the company?
For sure, sometimes women are equally actively complicit. Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty for HER part in conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein. She was equally culpable.
However, I remember being active in the 1970’s and 1980’s against pornography.
Books:
Aurora Linnea, Man Against Being: Body Horror and the Death of Life, argues patriarchal culture is defined by a deep-seated fear and hatred of the body, leading to a destructive war against biological reality, nature, and life itself.
Susan L. Hermann, Breaking Up with Patriarchy (2026)
