Why I won't stop using the word "matriarchy"

In over two years of writing publicly about matriarchy, I’ve noticed some patterns in how this word is received by different people. Some love the power it holds, others think it’s too controversial.

When I published my first essay, “The next wave of feminism is matriarchy,” on my Instagram page to hundreds of thousands of followers, I was genuinely terrified. But the positive response was overwhelming, and the essay went viral.

When we understand the true meaning of matriarchy, it activates something ancient within us. We remember a time when children were protected as sacred beings, when the maternal principle organized our societies, and when the Earth was in balance.

This remembrance is exactly what patriarchy cannot survive.

Patriarchal systems have a vested interest in obscuring and discrediting the word “matriarchy”. It’s why no major university offers a course in Matriarchal Studies and why Heide Göttner-Abendroth, a PhD, had to found her own institution. It’s why archeologists studying female power in history are ridiculed by the discipline. It’s why I couldn’t get a book deal for Matriarchy, despite having been published already.

After originally proposing the book title Matriarchy: The Path to Liberation (which the publishers still could not handle), I dropped the ending completely, relishing in my newfound freedom as a self-publisher. I was tired of watering it down. After all, no one bats an eyelid when men write books called Sapiens and Capital.

My loudness in using this word has been intentional. To actually dismantle patriarchy and its oppressive elements, we will need both passion and precision. The term “matriarchy” gives us both.

Those who truly understand its meaning are passionate about spreading the word. To those who want to join the movement, the word describes exactly what it entails.

“Mother beginning” is about respecting and honoring that we all come from a mother, and that we are all continuously mothered by the Earth. This core belief emanates through all aspects of matriarchal life.

It’s a loaded word, and for good reason. Any other name: partnership society, egalitarian, Earth-based, doesn’t fully capture the worldview of a matriarchal society.

When we understand matriarchy as “mother beginning”, the political, economic, social, and cultural structures that emerge are coherent with this worldview.

We don’t need to make it up: it’s already embedded in the way human beings survive. None of us can be alive without being grown in the womb of our mother, without being mothered by the Earth. None of us makes it to adulthood without continuous and intense mothering by those around us.

Under patriarchy, many of us make it to adulthood, which shows that matriarchal logic is already foundational for human beings. But we are not thriving because matriarchal logic does not extend to other aspects of society. It stays private and underresourced.

Mothers are given the bare minimum, and the Earth is out of balance. Building a matriarchal society and using the word “matriarchy” is about restoring honor and wisdom to motherhood (both human and planetary).

The political organization of a matriarchal society is one that, like a wise mother, includes everyone’s viewpoint equally. That’s why matriarchies are egalitarian societies of consensus.

The economic organization of a matriarchal society is like a wise mother: it gives everyone what they need to survive and thrive. That’s why matriarchies are gift economies.

The social organization of a matriarchal society is like a wise mother: it sees the mother-child connection as the blueprint of all relationships. That’s why matriarchies are matrilineal, matrifocal, and matrilocal. These societies understand that healthy and supported mother-child relationships serve everyone.

The cultural organization of a matriarchal society is like a wise mother: it sees life as sacred and cyclical.

When we truly understand matriarchy, we can also see with sharp clarity the mechanisms of patriarchy in our lives. Matriarchy is not “women rule”, and patriarchy is not “men rule”. They are “mother beginning” and “father rule”. Neither society is really about gender. They are about how our society treats the origin of each person. Do we begin from a mother, or are we owned by a father?

When we believe we are owned by a father, we are giving 100% of the credit for our very creation to a person who contributed less than 1%. Doesn’t that sound like the economic system we live in, that rewards billionaires for the value workers create?

When we believe fathers are the “head of household”, the logic of hierarchy and uneven power distribution extends across our whole society.

When we believe fathers are central to the human family structure, we justify the under-resourcing of mothers and children, who, instead of a large community, have to rely on one man for their livelihood.

When we believe children are owned by a father, this logic of ownership extends to nature itself.

These two systems are fundamentally at odds, and one holds the key to dismantling the other. Patriarchy has to obscure what matriarchy truly means, because it understands on some level that human beings are matriarchal. Patriarchy has to work against something already lived and known by every person.

This is why it has to keep redefining matriarchy as something it isn't (female domination, fantasy, chaos). The accurate definition is too legible and too recognizable to too many people.

And this is exactly why, at this stage of patriarchy, it’s important to be loud and clear about what matriarchy truly is. The more people understand its true meaning, the more people will feel inspired to create structures that follow its logic, and the quicker patriarchy and its destructive elements will be neutralized.