My experience of the patriarchy

I am writing about my experience with the patriarchy because I can see now how very deeply it has affected my life and the life of other women in my family. After many years of self-exploration through therapy and upon joining the Esprit group I was ready to explore this issue because I could see that it interfered with my desire to heal my physical being in a holistic way and to develop a deeper connection with my ancient spirituality. I have come to realize that the effect of the patriarchy has filled my body and my blood with trash that is stored in my very cells. This rubbish tries to tell me that men are the protectors, saviours, the kings, and the gods. I was driven to give up a huge part of my soul, by living the fantasy that men are going to save and look after me. This message was given to me as an infant, and I was left to struggle continually with a dependency on the illusion that a man, once I found him would take care of me for the rest of my life.

Before I start my personal story I feel it is important to give you a few insights into the Latin American culture in which I grew up. I was born and raised in a working class family in a very small Latin American country. This country is run by a handful of affluent families that own and control most of the land, a most inequitable system. I was brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, which is a huge hierarchy of very wealthy men. Women are not permitted to become priests. They can serve as liturgical staff with limited roles and influence, but mostly, women serve as cooks, housekeepers and secretaries.

The following is a snapshot of my knowledge of some of the women in my family going back to my great-grandmothers circa the late 19th century to the present. These women were subjected to emotional, educational, physical, and financial rape:

One of my great grandfathers committed my paternal great-grandmother to an insane asylum so that he could sell her lands to pay for his gambling debts. This great grandfather repeated the same offence by marrying a second time and doing the same thing with his second wife, as he had with my great-grandmother.

My other paternal great-grandmother was born and raised as a rancher's maid. The owner of the ranch considered all female children born in the compound to be his property. These young girls were to do chores as well as pleasure him and his men. She bore twelve children.

My mom was the youngest sibling and was bullied at the age of six or seven years old to carry buckets of water from the well for her oldest brother's bath. When the task was completed to her brother's satisfaction he would then throw a coin at her feet. She was taken out of school by her parents in grade three so that she could go to work to help support her family.

One of my maternal grandmother's sons appropriated her house and the rest of the property when my grandfather died and he relegated my grandmother to a shack at the back of the property. He also made serious medical decisions about my grandmother's health against other family members' wishes.

Two years ago my aunt had a stroke. Her sons took her over to her sister's house and dropped her off there (like a sack of dirty laundry for her sister to look after her), and then both brothers went over their mother's possessions, split them up and rented her apartment.

The following is my story as seen through the eyes of a girl between the ages of 10 and 14. In my family structure my father was the head of the household. Growing up I knew that there were double standards, one for my brothers and my father, and one for my mother and me. The boys had the freedom to go out with their friends, play sports and hang out.

I went to an all-girl Catholic school taught by St. Vincent nuns (the nuns wore the head-dress like the flying nun on TV). The nuns taught me that girls must never shame their families and always respect their parents. This ingraining by the nuns only contributed to confusion and feelings of fear about hormones bubbling up in puberty and maidenhood. Washing dishes, laundry, cleaning house and cooking were part of my chores. We had no indoor plumbing. So washing dishes was a chore in itself as I had to bring water from the tap outside and heat it up on the kerosene stove. Clothes were washed outside in a tub, and hung on the line to dry. My mom would later iron them.

My home was a very humble place. The structure was brick and the roof was made of tin sheets that would leak during a rainstorm. My mom was obsessed with cleanliness and our house was spotless. I used to scrub the tile floors every day after lunchtime with bleach.

Both my parents worked very hard outside the home. My mom worked in a textile factory from the time she was fifteen years old, and my dad worked in the city's central fruit and vegetable market for twelve to fifteen hours a day. My father started to work at a very young age, and at fourteen he was working full time. My mother was very proud that she and my father could provide great food, nice comfortable furniture, and good clothing as well as private school up to grade five for me and my brother until grade two. After that we had to attend public school. Since my mom worked, I was expected to help with the bulk of the house chores and to look after a young sibling.

My parents had a dream that they were going to build a house on a piece of land that they had purchased. But my mom was disappointed that they could not manage to save enough money to start to build the house. Almost every weekend, we would walk over to the plot of land and dream of the house that we would build on it. We watched as other homes were being built around it.

In 1968, many of my mother's co-workers began to travel to New Jersey to find work in textile factories. My mother is a go-getter and a very courageous woman and began to work on my dad to see if maybe we could do the same thing, that is go to North America for a few years, work, save some money and come back to build our dream house. Our dream house would consist of a solid brick structure and indoor plumbing with our own garden. In November of '68 my father arrived in Montreal, and we followed the following September to Toronto. My life as an immigrant teenager begins.