Why patriarchy keeps us emotionally illiterate, and why feminism and matriarchy are the cure

We treat reading and math as required skills, and yet, we do not require anyone to learn how to apologize, set a boundary, or repair after a fight.

That is not a personal failing, it’s by design. It’s silos that ensure we cannot connect and risk the fragile power structure of the patriarchy.

Relational literacy is the understanding of, and the ability to practice, healthy ways of relating. Not vibes, not “being nice,” not never having conflict, but actual skills for being in relationship with ourselves, each other, and our communities in ways that generate dignity instead of damage.

If you were never taught this, you’re not broken, you’re simply living in a culture that benefits from your confusion.

Welcome to patriarchy’s most effective weapon: relational illiteracy.

Patriarchy runs on relational confusion

Patriarchy is not only about who holds formal power. It is also about who is trained to care, who is allowed to have needs, and whose pain is treated as an inconvenience. This is incredibly evident by the removal of professional classification to primarily female-dominated fields (https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-degrees-professional-trump-administration-11085695) 

Most of us learned relationship rules in three places: family, religion, and media. The curriculum looked something like this:

• Do not talk back.
• Do not be “too sensitive.”
• Do not rock the boat.
• Forgive quickly, even if no one really apologized.
• Stay, even when your body is screaming to go.

If you were raised as a girl or femme, you were likely handed the script of the endless caregiver. Be accommodating. Be understanding. Be nice. You become fluent in other people’s moods and illiterate in your own needs.

If you were raised as a boy or masc, you were often handed the script of emotional suppression. Be strong. Do not cry. Handle it yourself. You become fluent in shutting down and illiterate in asking for help.

Patriarchy then has the nerve to call the fallout “personal problems.”

Anxiety, chronic loneliness, emotionally starved marriages, weaponized incompetence, workplace drama that never ends, burnout from carrying everyone’s feelings on your back, the inability to say “no” without guilt, the inability to hear “no” without rage. All of it gets framed as individual weakness, rather than what it actually is: the predictable outcome of a system that never meant to teach us how to relate in the first place.

Relational dysfunction is not a side effect, it’s the scaffolding that holds up the patriarchy.

Loneliness is not a vibe, it is a public health crisis

We are living in an epidemic of loneliness. Large portions of adults report feeling alone, unseen, and unsupported. Health researchers compare the impact of chronic social disconnection to smoking many cigarettes a day.

That sounds dramatic until you look around.

We are more “connected” than ever, yet starved for being known. We scroll past curated lives, DM strangers, trauma dump in comment sections, and then freeze when someone in the same room asks, “How are you really?”

Most of us never learned:

• how to notice our nervous system before we snap or shut down
• how to say “I need” without apologizing
• how to stay at the table when conflict appears
• how to offer a real apology that names what we did, how it landed, and how we will change
  

Relational literacy is what fills that gap, which so happens to be right in the wheelhouse of feminism and matriarchies. 

Feminism as a relational literacy movement

Feminism is often framed as a political project. It is also a relational one.

Feminism teaches what patriarchy tried to bury:

• Your needs are not selfish.
• Consent is not just sexual, it is a way of moving through the world.
• Boundaries are not punishments, they are instructions for how to love you.
• Power matters in every interaction, and pretending it does not only protects the people who already have it.

Relational literacy takes matriarchal values and turns them into daily practices.

It asks us to treat listening, boundaries, repair, and accountability as skills anyone can learn, not personality traits that some magical “good people” are born with.

This looks like:

• Self awareness and nervous system literacy
  Noticing when your body is going into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Catching the story you are telling yourself before you send the scorched earth text. Learning one or two ways to regulate that do not involve savaging yourself or someone else.
  
• Needs, boundaries, and consent
  Saying, “I am available for this,” “I am not available for that,” and “Here is what I would be willing to explore if we both feel safe.”
  Refusing to keep relationships alive by slowly abandoning yourself.
  
• Listening and repair
  Moving from debate club to curiosity. Practicing, “Here is what I heard you say, did I get that right” instead of “Here is my closing argument.”
  Learning that a real apology includes naming the behavior, naming the impact, owning it without excuses, and offering change.
  
• Power literacy
  Asking, “Who has more power here. Whose feelings are treated as urgent. Who is doing the invisible emotional or domestic labor.”
  Recognizing that a manager apologizing to a staff member is not the same as a staff member apologizing to a manager, and that pretending those are equal is its own kind of gaslighting.
  

What matriarchy offers: a different center of gravity

When people hear “matriarchy,” some imagine a simple gender-flipped patriarchy where women dominate men. Not. Even. Close.

A matriarchal lens shifts the center of gravity from dominance to care, from control to responsibility, from “who is in charge” to “who is held and how.”

Imagine homes, workplaces, and communities designed around questions like:

• What do people need to feel safe enough to be honest here
• How is power held, shared, and checked
• Who is doing the emotional labor, and how is it valued
• What does repair look like when harm inevitably happens

In a matriarchal frame, relational literacy is not a niche hobby. It is basic infrastructure.

• Leaders are expected to understand nervous systems, not just numbers.
• Boundaries are seen as alignment, not insubordination.
• People are trained in how to give feedback, not left to weaponize silence or gossip.
• Community rituals, third spaces, and support constellations are treated as necessary, not “optional extras” for people who have time.

A matriarchal culture does not eliminate conflict or pain. It just refuses to outsource the cost to the same bodies over and over again, usually women, femmes, and the most marginalized.

It says, “We will not build our institutions on unpaid emotional labor and then call it love.”

Designing your relational ecosystem in a patriarchal world

Most of us are not going to wake up tomorrow in a fully matriarchal society that centers care. We are living in the messy middle, trying to build new worlds inside old ones.

Relational literacy gives us a map.

You can start small and still be doing radical work.

• Map your lineage.
  Ask yourself: What did I learn about conflict, emotion, and needs from my family, culture, religion, and media. What do I want to keep. What do I refuse to pass on.
  
• Track your patterns.
  Do you over function to keep everyone else comfortable. Do you disappear the second there is tension. Do you chase, fix, or placate. None of these make you bad, they just show you where patriarchy trained you.
  
• Practice one tiny boundary.
  No work texts after a certain hour. No saying yes on the spot, only “Let me think about it and I will get back to you.” No laughing along when someone punches down.
  
• Choose one relationship to practice repair.
  Name a small harm, own your part, and offer change, even if the other person never learned how to meet you there. You are building muscle, not performing perfection.
  
• Audit your labor.
  In your household, workplace, or community, list all the practical, emotional, and logistical tasks that keep things running. Who does them. Who benefits. What would change if that load were shared.
  

You do not need to do all of this at once. You are redesigning infrastructure, not rearranging throw pillows.

Relational literacy as feminist rebellion

Patriarchy would like you to believe that you are too sensitive, too much, too needy, too dramatic, too demanding, or too cold. Anything to keep you from asking, “Who taught me to relate this way and who benefits if I stay like this.”

Relational literacy hands that question back to you with a pen.

When you learn to feel your feelings without drowning, to state your needs without apology, to hear “no” without retaliation, and to repair without collapsing in shame, you are not just improving your relationships. You are disrupting an entire system that thrives on confusion, silence, and unpaid labor.

That is feminist work, matriarchal work. That is reclamation.

You deserve more than confusion, more than martyrdom, more than numbness. You deserve relationships rooted in consent, care, shared power, and the holy, ordinary work of showing up again and again.

Relational literacy is not extra credit, it’s how we learn to live, love, organize, and rage together without destroying each other in the process.

The system was not built to teach you that, but we are. So let’s start doing just that.