We are seeing the rise of psychopatriarchy everywhere | V (Formerly Eve Ensler)

For those of us who have spent our lives trying to dismantle this endlessly destructive paradigm of patriarchy, it has become increasingly clear in recent months that something more terrifying is afoot.The wheels are off the cart. We are in the midst of a chaotic, demented acceleration of the most violent and cruel aspects of this system which has evolved into what I am calling Psychopatriarchy.Psychopatriarchy is a reaction, a backlash against the progress we have made on all fronts: women’s rights, civil rights, immigrant rights, workers rights, trans rights etc.It has birthed an authoritarian fascist reality, poisoning our social and psychological environment with terrorizing violence, cruelty and precarity. It has consolidated the billionaire class who are driven by the mindset summed up in the slogan “move fast and break things.” Or, one might say, grab things, rape things.Psychopatriarchy is found in the 120 people who own more money than half the population on earth, in the systems of oppression, surveillance and violence which become more and more sophisticated and widespread, in the few mainly white men with extreme wealth and power who are now merged with the government and own the systems of communication, AI, police or state militias like ICE.Psychopatriarchy is a sanctioning of extreme hatred and violence against women from the top, many of whom are rapists, batterers, pedophiles and abusers or men who openly support them.The president of the US is a civilly adjudicated sex abuser and has not only flippantly dismissed allegations of sexual violence made against others in his orbit, but made it fashionable and popular attitude for the men in his delusional cult.He has created a suffocating atmosphere of misogyny and predation. We only have to look to the manosphere, or the rape academies online where millions of men exchange best practices for drugging and raping their wives, girlfriends, sisters or deepfake pornography which is destroying thousands of women’s lives or sex robots.Or rape islands where some of the most powerful men in the world are alleged to have raped underage girls and not one has been prosecuted. Or universities where young men allegedly gang-rape an incapacitated woman or where young women can’t put down a drink at a party without fear of being drugged, where they are blamed for being assaulted.Psychopatriarchy is women dying preventable deaths because abortion care is denied or delayed or the introduction of extreme constitutional amendments such as North Carolina House Bill 1232, where men might be legally allowed to kill women who have abortions. This bill will hopefully not pass, but the fact that it is even being considered is an example of how deeply far we have fallen.Psychopatriachy is the open and unapologetic death of compassion; as Elon Musk said: “Empathy is the fundamental weakness of western civilization.” This means a kind of contempt for anything that appears to be emotional, alive, feminine, caring.Strength in the form of dissociation is revered. When you feel nothing, no guilt, no shame, no horror at your actions, you can better serve your goals and the state. When you are ruled by your blind devotion to the president, the boss, the father, you become capable of doing anything in his name.Psychopatriachy is renaming the Department of Defense the “Department of War”, well, the “High-T Department of War”, as Hegseth calls it, wanting all military personnel aged 30 and over to “have the right testosterone levels” to operate at their “absolute best” and to optimize “natural capabilities”, “longevity”, and “readiness”. Preparing a psycho army driven by chemicals beyond their control.Psychopatriarchy is wanting to livestream a firing squad. It’s the endless genocide in Gaza, the outright murdering of babies, toddlers, mothers, fathers, journalists, doctors. It’s the US bombing a girls school in Iran and murdering 120 girl children and 26 teachers, and no one ever taking responsibility for one of the worst war crimes since Vietnam.It’s illegally kidnapping presidents and randomly murdering people by bombing them in boats in the middle of the sea. It’s masked men dragging away wailing children from their parents.It’s killing activists in the streets: Renee Good and Alex Pretti. It’s intimidating and threatening deportation to those who disagree with you: Ilhan Omar. It’s creating the conditions for the lynching of Black people across the United States.It’s tearing down ancient grandmother trees to build walls to keep suffering people out or to landscape a golf course. It’s the coldhearted, discompassionate billionaire class taking everything, erasing everyone.Psychopatriarchy is the decimation of all forms of accountability. Infinite impunity. No supreme court, no Department of Justice, no leaders, no Congress. Withdrawing or refusing to be part of any international courts or abiding by international law. When there is no accountability, when there is no place to turn for justice, a society loses its moral footing and begins to fall.Psychopatriachy is not just a political notion. It’s a state of existence, a blight on the condition of humanity locking us into daily terror, cruelty, depression, malaise, a manufactured sense of powerlessness, alienation and a desire to disappear.It is a kind of low-level anxiety, an ongoing foreshadowing or feeling of imminent destruction coming from multiple directions at once, and rather than reducing these threats (AI, nuclear weapons, climate catastrophes, pandemics), the psychopatriarchs are accelerating all these things. AI is charging forward with no regulation, escalating the nuclear arms race, increasing drilling of oil at breakneck speed.Psychopatriarchy is jet fuel to all the other -isms: racism, colonialism, imperialism, capitalism.It is propelled by its own mad trajectory. We can try to block it (courts); we can starve it (strikes); we can remove it (vote and get them out office). We can name and shame it (speaking out, marches and rallies), refuse to normalize it (write about it, make art about it); we can prosecute it.We can create a parallel world that is so inviting, generous and caring that even those who are still struggling to break out of the cult will eventually be emboldened.But what we cannot do is go to sleep, become small and still, with the childlike fantasy that they will not find us. What we cannot do is succumb to it or become them – numb, selfish, hollow and cruel.Our feelings, our pain, our empathy, our rage, our love, our refusal to turn away will be our salvation. Psychosis is the inability to tell what is real from unreal. Our work is to say what we see and trust what we know, to keep speaking truth to power and go to any lengths to stay connected to reality and each other. V (formerly Eve Ensler) is a playwright and activist and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls