Patriarchy Has A Kill Switch, And We Already Know What It Is (Updated for 2025)

By Ajax the Great (Pete Jackson)

(Originally posted on the Vive La Difference! blog)

PART ONE

(Original version of Part One from 2020 can be found here)

Author Yuri Zavorotny wrote a great article four years ago for Medium, in which he articulates something that we all intuitively know (but often don't want to say out loud) about the patriarchy and how to end it.  After first establishing that patriarchy is inherently evil (and thus cannot be redeemed), he then goes on about what holds it all together.  This thing that holds the entire construct all together is its sine qua non and thus is it's own Achilles' heel, and that thing is control of female sexuality, and the primary tool used to control that is slut-shaming.  That is, the shaming of Women for expressing their sexuality in the way they choose.  And thus the "kill switch" is to put an end to this utterly toxic and outmoded practice of slut-shaming.

Wait, what?  There is still slut-shaming in 2024?  Absolutely.  It has diminished somewhat since the (largely male-defined) "sexual revolution" half a century ago, to be sure, but it is still there.  The double standard still exists, and it has in fact become more of a double bind in which Women are expected to be "sexy" (as defined by males) but not sexual by their own definition.  And ending it is thus the unfinished business of both feminism and the real sexual revolution for Women.

(Most ironically, even today to some extent, some Women often still enforce it on each other as well--talk about being one's own worst enemy!  At best, that's NOT a sisterhood, that's a cartel, driven by an internalized misogynistic slave mentality.)

That's not the only double bind here, there is also the historical one in which Women are expected to both obey men as well as be the "gatekeepers" of sex, with no way to opt out of either contradictory requirement.

As Yuri Zavorotny himself says:

So here is our kill switch: we stop telling women when, where and with whom she is allowed to get involved romantically. Her body, her choice. And she is perfectly capable of making it a responsible choice, thank you very much.

And lest anyone misunderstand his words, read too much into it, or try to put words in his mouth:

NOTE: This is not to suggest that anyone should change their own behavior. We do whatever we are comfortable with. That, of course, includes staying monogamous, still a perfectly valid choice. But it can not be justified as a moral choice anymore -- rather, it is a personal preference.

Female sexuality (or more accurately, female-defined sexuality) is an extremely powerful force to be reckoned with, which is why the patriarchy has gone out of its way to suppress it (and/or supplant it with male-defined sexuality).  As I have repeatedly noted before, the suppression of Women's sexuality was not entirely about maintaining control over the male bloodline (though that was originally a major part of it), but more generally about power and control over Women directly, as well as over other men indirectly via artificial scarcity.  Ditto for patriarchy's equally peculiar prohibitions against self-pleasuring and homosexuality as well.  Let that sink in for a moment. 

In a similar vein, patriarchy's favorite brainchild, capitalism, needs scarcity (whether real or artificial) to function.  That is how the oligarchs control the serfs.  And the kill switch of capitalism is thus to give it the one thing it cannot surivive--abundance.  The analogy should be apparent now.

Ending slut-shaming will not end patriarchy overnight, of course, but is nonetheless necessary for it to end sooner rather than later.  And if we wait until we return to full-blown Matriarchy before liberating Women's sexuality, we will never be ready, as Women's sexual liberation is a key step on the path to Matriarchy.  That is, if we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither.

Furthermore, as I have noted in another article, any attempt at a reactionary "sexual counterrevolution" is of course doomed to backfire and ultimately fail to benefit Women on balance.  Ditto for any conservative, reactionary, neoliberal, anti-modernist, primitivist, or pseudo-feminist attempts to dismantle the social welfare state as well, by the way.

One thing needs to be crystal clear.  As hard as we fight for the right to say "yes" to sex, we must also fight at least twice as hard for the right to say "NO" as well.  The LAST thing we want is for sex of any kind to be perceived as mandatory in any way, so enthusiastic and mutual consent must be a precondition for all sexual acts, period.  And that is true for both Women and men, by the way.  Also, we must be careful not to fall in the trap of the "reverse double standard" that has become in vogue in some circles these days (Oprah and Dr. Phil, I'm looking at YOU!), in which men are the ones vilified for their sexuality while Women are ignored (if not celebrated) for doing the same exact things.  Doing so is a sure path to a sort of "reverse patriarchy", not the Matriarchy proper that we should be aiming for.  The same goes for a "reverse double bind" as well, which is also infantilizing to Women.

(Note that there is in fact NO proven precedent in all of recorded history where Women had sexual freedom but men did not, or at least not for long enough to ever be recorded, probably because doing so is mathematically impossible without creating a massive "black market" for sex per the iron laws of supply and demand.)

Put simply:  Women should have the absolute right to be as sexual--or not--as they themselves want to be, without the need for justification or apology to anyone, period.  To quote the legendary Guru Rasa Von Werder:

My associate Ajax the Great & I agree, sexual freedom is the KILL SWITCH FOR PATRIARCHY.  When Women do whatever they want sexually, & no longer fear men, men will have nothing to fight for.  Consider a ram with his harem. The harem runs off & mates with the other guys in the woods.  No more head banging, lol.  We will end war by being sexually free."

Liberty (sexual or otherwise) is NOT a zero-sum game.  In fact, liberty is like love:  the more you give, the more you get. 

So what are we waiting for?  Kill Switch Engage!  Let the planetary healing begin!

PART TWO

In Part One above originally from while ago, I had discussed how Women's sexual freedom would be the ultimate kill switch to end patriarchy.  But one aspect of this topic had been a bit neglected in that article, unfortunately. 

Basically, I have gotten into some online debates from time to time about the "incel" (involuntary celibacy) problem.  Many self-identified incels are of course misogynistic trolls with an entitlement complex, but not all of them are.  And even some genuine ones seem to think that the "permissiveness" resulting from the sexual revolution has made their situation worse, and give various "evolutionary psychology" arguments.  So here is my response to all of that:

First and foremost, equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are mutually exclusive, and trying to force equal outcomes on everyone by fiat has a way of backfiring hard, as many have learned the hard way throughout history.  That is true for economics as well as for sex and relationships.  So aim for equal opportunity as your North Star instead. 

And in any case, since there are really only two ways to attempt to force equal outcomes on everyone in terms of sex and relationships, either 1) treat all Women as "private property" of individual men, or 2) treat all Women as "public property" of all men collectively, that means that there is absolutely NO ethical way to do so whatsoever.  (The late Andrea Dworkin would have a field day with that!)  That is because Women are, you know, full human beings, NOT "property" in any sense of the word, period.  Capisce?

Any ethical solution must, at the very minimum, fight twice as hard for the right to say "no" as for the right to say "yes".  After all, rape culture with a smiley face is still rape culture. 

Furthermore, most "evolutionary psychology" is, in a word, BS.  With NO apologies to Jordan Peterson at all.

"Hypergamy" (dating or marrying "up") by Women is really NOT natural, but is rather a socially constructed effect of capitalism and a hangover of patriarchy, for obvious reasons.  Ditto for the bandied-about "80/20" rule, which itself is grossly exaggerated.  But to the extent that the sexual revolution has anything at all to do with it, it is basically the opposite of what the manosphere claims.  If anything, slut-shaming only makes Women that much MORE picky and/or superficial in regards to men than they would otherwise be, and thus MORE likely to prefer high-status men over low-status men, because if they are going to take such a risk, they might as well make it as "worth their while" as possible.  (After all, despite their actually higher sex drive overall, Women's demand for sex is far more "elastic" than men's is:  for Women, no sex is typically better than bad sex, for obvious reasons, whereas for men, it's typically the reverse.)

And since the sexual revolution in the Anglosphere, especially the USA, was half-assed and did NOT go to completion, thanks to the "culture wars", what has resulted is that our society is now JUST barely permissive enough for Women to go all-in with high-status men, but still NOT quite permissive enough yet for them to do the same with lower-status men, lest they get shamed for it.  And in parallel with that, when high-status or elite Women hook up with many male partners it is considered "classy", provided those men are also high-status, while many of those same Women hypocritically consider it "trashy" when lower-status Women follow in their footsteps, because reasons. (News flash: that is NOT what a sisterhood looks like, that is a CARTEL.) Thus, the real solution is NOT to roll back the sexual revolution, as that would only further deepen this quagmire, but rather to let it finally go to completion like it largely has in the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, and also Brazil to some extent. 

(Now, the Nordic countries are NOT perfect by a long shot, of course.  Three out of the five Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, and Iceland) currently practice some flavor of the Entrapment Model for sex work, and one of those three (Iceland) even bans strip clubs.  And like all societies, they all have their own set of problems too.  But otherwise they seem to be the healthiest in terms of sexuality as well as economics, especially Denmark, the land that the temperance movement, and their ideological descendants, forgot.)

There are indeed lots and lots of otherwise very prosocial and community-minded Women out there who are unfortunately deterred from doing what they really want to do sexually, and would otherwise do largely for mutual pleasure in a sexually free society, due to all of the slut-shaming that still exists even in 2024, especially when also combined with the relative lack of a Nordic style social safety net in the USA as well.  This is yet another way that the patriarchy has a nasty habit of backfiring on men, and especially when it is combined with the brutal logic of capitalism and neoliberalism.

(That's simply "erotic plasticity" put another way, with no apologies to Roy Baumeister.)

As for the thinly-veiled misogynistic manosphere canard that when Women (but not men, because reasons) have many sex partners, they supposedly "lose their ability to pair-bond", kinda like how adhesive tape becomes progressively less sticky the more times it is re-used, well, that utterly specious claim of a causal link has never actually been proven.  The supposed observational evidence they cite can be very easily explained away by reverse causation, namely, those of either gender with a low capacity (or paradoxically, a very high capacity) to pair-bond to begin with are more likely to have many partners, NOT the other way around. And sometimes, you may simply need to "kiss a lot of frogs" to find the prince, as the saying goes.  Either way, we all need to stop slut-shaming, yesterday.  It serves NO valid purpose whatsoever. 

And we certainly do NOT need a "price floor" for sex.  Rather, what we need is a DIGNITY floor, where both genders treat each other as ends in themselves, not solely as means to an end, per Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative in general.  (Too bad he was so antisexual himself, otherwise he would have had a great model of sexual ethics too.)

There are also ecological benefits to sexual freedom as well.  Once the sexual revolution is fully complete, hypergamy has withered on the vine, and the "cost" of sex has thus been rightsized, maybe then the men of the sci-tech persuasion wouldn't feel the need (as much, at least) to keep raping the Earth to build more ever-larger phallus-extending "Towers of Babel" (i.e. frivolous, destructive, and/or inappropriate technologies) of mindless aggrandizement to impress Women just so they can get laid. (Even nerdy men tend to have one-track minds, lol.)  Maybe men of the warrior persuasion would be less likely to want to start wars or go to war, for the same reason.  And, God willing, maybe men in general in the rich countries would be far more willing to reduce their outsized "standard of living" (in terms of material and resource consumption) to one that the Earth can actually afford in the long run, and not one that requires multiple Earths worth of resources, for the same reason.  Conspicuous consumption as a thinly-veiled, plausibly-deniable mating ritual would thus be far more likely to desist.

And thus this whole silly game of "king of the hill" writ large will finally end, God willing.

Freud's Civilization And Its Discontents thesis has really long since jumped the shark!  It's not the 19th century anymore. 

(And to any angry incels reading this:  seriously, lose the entitlement attitude, yesterday.  It is really quite unbecoming.  Or to put in your very own lingo:  stop simping for Stacy, and give Becky a chance.  Let Stacy and Chad have each other.  And take a long, hard look in the mirror as well.  Think "internal locus of control, NOT external". Oh, and bonus points if you are fortunate enough to find an older Woman as a "mentor with benefits" willing to "show you the ropes".)

To reiterate from my previous article:

As Yuri Zavorotny himself says:

So here is our kill switch: we stop telling women when, where and with whom she is allowed to get involved romantically. Her body, her choice. And she is perfectly capable of making it a responsible choice, thank you very much.

And lest anyone misunderstand his words, read too much into it, or try to put words in his mouth:

NOTE: This is not to suggest that anyone should change their own behavior. We do whatever we are comfortable with. That, of course, includes staying monogamous, still a perfectly valid choice. But it can not be justified as a moral choice anymore -- rather, it is a personal preference.

Female sexuality (or more accurately, female-defined sexuality) is an extremely powerful force to be reckoned with, which is why the patriarchy has gone out of its way to suppress it (and/or supplant it with male-defined sexuality).  All the more reason to unleash it in like fashion, and put an end to the toxic "commodity model" of sexuality.

Until then, we will have 1) too many men chasing too few Women overall, AND simultaneously 2) too many Women chasing too few high-status men, with the latter having plenty of options and taking full advantage of such bargaining power.  And both low to average-status men, as well as Women in general, get screwed (and not in a good way!) in this stagflationary quagmire.  It's "musical chairs" both ways.  The song "Land of Confusion" by Genesis comes to mind.

So what are we waiting for?  Kill Switch Engage!  Let the planetary healing begin!

P.S.  If anyone still thinks that Jordan Peterson's idea of "enforced monogamy" is a real solution to the incel problem, well, I've got a nice bridge I'd like to sell you.  As for the jealousy problem, the best his "solution" can do is to "flatten the curve" of jealousy in the short run, while in the long run, that green-eyed monster will unfortunately still be there waiting to pop up and strike at any moment, and thus the area under the curve will be the same or even greater.  Better to deal with it head-on instead, and try one's best to sublimate it as much as possible into its antithesis, known as "compersion", or "frubbly" in the vernacular.  In other words, think "abundance mindset", not "scarcity mindset".  Liberty is like love:  the more you give, the more you get.  It's not pie.

And speaking of jealousy, for those Women who are worried about men choosing AI girlfriends and robots over them, worry not.  Remember, "it is the SPIRIT the quickens" (i.e. gives life), NOT the flesh.  And AI has neither.  Thus, any man who is even remotely worth your time and energy will not choose AI over you (unless you literally bring nothing at all to the table, but even then, they would choose another real-life Woman instead, not AI).  If anything, AI and robots would be good for keeping the misogynistic miscreant trolls happily occupied so they (hopefully) stay far away from real-life Women, and since they would be less likely to procreate, that problem is thus largely self-correcting in the long run.

(Mic drop)

Patriarchy Has A Kill Switch, And We Already Know What It Is

(Original version of this article from 2020 can be found here)

Author Yuri Zavorotny wrote a great article four years ago for Medium, in which he articulates something that we all intuitively know (but often don't want to say out loud) about the patriarchy and how to end it.  After first establishing that patriarchy is inherently evil (and thus cannot be redeemed), he then goes on about what holds it all together.  This thing that holds the entire construct all together is its sine qua non and thus is it's own Achilles' heel, and that thing is control of female sexuality, and the primary tool used to control that is slut-shaming.  That is, the shaming of Women for expressing their sexuality in the way they choose.  And thus the "kill switch" is to put an end to this utterly toxic and outmoded practice of slut-shaming.

Wait, what?  There is still slut-shaming in 2023?  Absolutely.  It has diminished somewhat since the (largely male-defined) "sexual revolution" half a century ago, to be sure, but it is still there. The double standard still exists, and it has in fact become more of a double bind in which Women are expected to be "sexy" (as defined by males) but not sexual by their own definition.  And ending it is thus the unfinished business of both feminism and the real sexual revolution for Women.

(That's not the only double bind here, there is also the historical one in which Women are expected to both obey men as well as be the "gatekeepers" of sex, with no way to opt out of either contradictory requirement.)

As Yuri Zavorotny himself says:

So here is our kill switch: we stop telling women when, where and with whom she is allowed to get involved romantically. Her body, her choice. And she is perfectly capable of making it a responsible choice, thank you very much.

And lest anyone misunderstand his words, read too much into it, or try to put words in his mouth:

NOTE: This is not to suggest that anyone should change their own behavior. We do whatever we are comfortable with. That, of course, includes staying monogamous, still a perfectly valid choice. But it can not be justified as a moral choice anymore -- rather, it is a personal preference.

Female sexuality (or more accurately, female-defined sexuality) is an extremely powerful force to be reckoned with, which is why the patriarchy has gone out of its way to suppress it (and/or supplant it with male-defined sexuality).  As I have noted before, the suppression of Women's sexuality was not entirely about maintaining control over the male bloodline (though that was originally a major part of it), but more generally about power and control over Women directly, as well as over other men indirectly via artificial scarcity.  Let that sink in for a moment. 

In a similar vein, patriarchy's favorite brainchild, capitalism, needs scarcity (whether real or artificial) to function.  That is how the oligarchs control the serfs.  And the kill switch of capitalism is thus to give it the one thing it cannot surivive--abundance.  The analogy should be apparent now.

Ending slut-shaming will not end patriarchy overnight, of course, but is nonetheless necessary for it to end sooner rather than later.  And if we wait until we return to full-blown Matriarchy before liberating Women's sexuality, we will never be ready, as Women's sexual liberation is a key step on the path to Matriarchy.  That is, if we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither.

Furthermore, as I have noted in another article, any attempt at a reactionary "sexual counterrevolution" is of course doomed to backfire and ultimately fail to benefit Women on balance.

One thing needs to be clear.  As hard as we fight for the right to say "yes" to sex, we must also fight twice as hard for the right to say "NO" as well.  The LAST thing we want is for sex of any kind to be perceived as mandatory, so enthusiastic and mutual consent must be a precondition for all sexual acts, period. And that is true for both Women and men, by the way.  Also, we must be careful not to fall in the trap of the "reverse double standard" that has become in vogue in some circles these days (Oprah and Dr. Phil, I'm looking at YOU!), in which men are the ones vilified for their sexuality while Women are ignored (if not celebrated) for doing the same exact things.  Doing so is a sure path to a sort of "reverse patriarchy", not the Matriarchy proper that we should be aiming for.  The same goes for a "reverse double bind" as well.

Put simply:  Women should have the absolute right to be as sexual--or not--as they themselves want to be, without the need for justification or apology to anyone, period.

So what are we waiting for?  Kill Switch Engage!  Let the planetary healing begin!

The Four Biggest Casualties Of (Gender) War

Every war has casualites, and the 7000 year long gender war (which we call "patriarchy" to make it sound nicer) is certainly no exception.  There are many such casualties, and the four biggest ones are as follows:

1. The first casualty is TRUTH.  And that is not just a clichéd statement, but is practically axiomatic.  If people really knew the truth, the continuity of the war will be called into question.  So the truth is deliberately hidden and replaced with lies, half-truths, and omissions whenever possible.  Eventually it leads to a "post-truth" society and world, in which the truth becomes essentially irrelevant in what passes for discourse.
2. The second casualty is INNOCENCE.  Not as a euphemism for ignorance (for which there is still plenty), but in the most general sense, which includes the capacity for trust.  And that is a result of the first casualty, truth. Not to mention all of the actual and horrific atrocities of the war itself as well.  This results in jadedness, bitterness, and cynicism, which in the case of the gender war seriously poisons the relationship between Women and men, and also vitiates what remains of the sisterhood between Women as well.
3. The third casualty is LOVE.  And not just in the romantic sense, but in the most general sense to include all forms of love, all the way down to and including friendship.  In fact, friendship is probably the biggest casualty of all.  When both primary genders regard the other as being inherently dangerous/evil and needing to be controlled, that kinda precludes all but the most superficial and/or authoritarian relationships between the two.
4. And the fourth and final casualty is HUMANITY, in both senses of the word.

Thus, the gender war, like all wars, ultimately hurts everyone and thus needs to end yesterday.  And the only way to end it (without the entire planet being killed) is for us fellas to, paraphrasing the late Emperor Hirohito, "accept the unacceptable" and surrender to Women.  The sooner we finally cap the game, the better.  So what are we waiting for?

Smash The (Adulto-)Patriarchy!

One of the most vexing questions about the origin of patriarchy is how did men take over in the first place, if Women are the superior gender and were already in power to begin with in the last Matriarchal age?  And the question is not merely academic, as the answer will at least partially inform us on how to prevent men from taking over again in the future.  History may not always repeat itself exactly, of course, but it does rhyme nonetheless.

Some theorists would say that was because Women were too lenient with men and allowed them too much freedom ("give them an inch, and they take a mile") while others say the opposite, that Women were too harsh and strict and did not allow men enough freedom, so they rebelled ("forbidden fruit" or "reactance theory").  (Note also the parallels with today's discourse about teenagers and young adults, as this foreshadows the rest of this article.)  Still others, such as Riane Eisler and many others in the Goddess Movement, put forth the Kurgan theory, namely that a few patriarchal cultures formed in central Asia and the Arabian peninsula, and violently conquered their peaceful Matriarchal neighbors and eventually the world.  These cultures, called Kurgans, were semi-literate or illiterate nomadic sheepherders who really had no culture of their own, but they did have superior weapons technology, and aggression was rewarded in their culture.  But that does not fully explain how those cultures came to be patriarchal in the first place, except for the fact that aggression is wittingly or unwittingly rewarded in nomadic pastoral societies, and men are generally more aggressive and competitive than Women.

I generally favor the Kurgan theory myself, but then when Googling the title of Robert Jensen's most recent book "The End of Patriarchy", I inadvertently discovered a similarly-titled book by Claudio Naranjo, titled, "The End of Patriarchy: And the Dawning of a Tri-une Society", which led me to a new theory on the matter.  And while I don't agree with everything that Naranjo says, he does make some good points nonetheless.  He posits that young people were the ones in charge in the Paleolithic age, then Women were in charge in the Neolithic age, and then men took over in the Bronze Age and remained in power since.  And as the title implies, he looks forward to the end of patriarchy and the beginning of a new, "tri-une" society that combines the best of all three past ages, with women, men, and children all being equally valued members of society.  While I agree with him for the most part, I do think that he sells the idea of Matriarchy a bit too short and often mischaracterizes what it really is, and I also think that the best way that his tri-une society or something like it can be created is with Women in charge.

But one thing is certain.  Adultism (i.e. the systemic oppression and subjugation of young people) can theoretically exist without patriarchy, but patriarchy cannot exist without adultism.  To wit, men would never have been able to disempower women as much as they did if young people had not been thoroughly disempowered first by adults of both primary genders (even if done more so by men).  Kind of like how the rich would never have been able to torpedo the middle class as they did from Reagan onward if the middle class hadn't also helped the rich by throwing the poor under the bus.  That is my latest insight after coming across the work of Naranjo.  After all, it took thousands of years to remove Women from power and subjugate them, and it looks like adultism was one of men's secret weapons to accomplish this nefarious and perfidious act.

 Thus patriarchy should really be called "adulto-patriarchy", and any self-proclaimed feminist movement that is not on board with the youth-rights movement as well is indeed a major intersectionality fail.  Much like how brocialists and manarchists are towards Women, and how White Feminists (TM) are towards people of color.  The entire edifice of kyriarchy must come down at once, as piecemeal approaches are ultimately doomed to fail.

So smash the adulto-patriarchy, yesterday!

UPDATE:  We would be remiss not to give credit to Naranjo's inspiration for his thesis, fellow Chilean Totila Albert.