Some years ago, I wrote a text about whiteness and how, because it is infused in every part of western society- from Hollywood movie scripts to the industrialised foundations of our global economy, it is a bit like microplastics in the ocean. Because it is simply the way things are, we can’t see it.
Patriarchy, just like whiteness, has seeped into our pores and collectively become part of how we move through our lives, relate, live, choose. In small ways. In bigger ways. We try to survive in a polluted ocean.
We think this is just the way things have to be.
Normalise. Squash down. Don’t think about it.
Move on. Some men behave badly.
Boys will be boys, remember?
It drowns us from the inside.
It grinds us down and kills us slowly.
Men too.
Patriarchy is a system in which men suffer too.
Through emotional disconnect. Avoidance.
Through fear of other men.
Through fear of their own hearts.
But when we begin to see it, whether it is patriarchy or whiteness, or both or how they are related, we can get so overwhelmed we want to deflect and make binaries.
Good people. Not good people. Good men. Not good men. Not all men. Women too. Good white men. Not good white men. Not all white men.
The attachment to being good is precisely what stops us from looking at ourselves and the roles we play in the system.
What if we dared ask the question: where does colonial patriarchy live in me? In how I show up, relate, desire, invest, stay passive, bypass, choose?
Where do the microplastics of patriarchy inside me hold me hostage, make me uphold a system of harm?
In small ways, in bigger.
Just like in a narcissistic family system, the enablers appear innocent, but they did nothing to truly stop the perpetrator.
Often because they didn’t know how to, or were too afraid of what they would lose if they did.
And this fear means we make it the responsibility of girls and women to not put ourselves in harms way, instead of doing all we can to remove the threat of harm.
International Women’s Day 2026 lands just as the ugliest, most vile and degenerate sides of colonial-patriarchy are rearing their heads.
This year’s focus shines a light on our unequal justice systems: conflict, repression, and political tensions are weakening the rule of law.
Worldwide, women and girls have just 64 per cent of the legal rights of men. Yes, you read that right.
And for the 676 million women and girls living within 50 km of active conflict zones, justice systems are largely absent and perpetrators act with impunity.
Women are turned away, not believed, re-victimised, or priced out of legal support.
While women remain exposed to harm, forced to change their routines, jobs, and even homes – those who caused harm face no consequences.
Justice systems protect power and continue to rule against women and girls.
Yet it feels like something significant has happened over the past weeks.
A world where we teach girls and women that it is our responsibility to protect ourselves from boys and men –to stay alert, scan for signals, stay vigilant, be unassuming– has expired.
It has been shaken loose.
The bedrock has cracked.
Things are not what they were.
And the roar of this moment is a call to action.
A call for healing.
A call for radical responsibility.
A call to become better ancestors.
Become better great-grandfathers.
I sense the children of the distant tomorrowlands watching us.
They are demanding that boys and men learn to be in right relationship with girls and women – their mothers, grandmothers, sisters, daughters.
They are dialling us from the future inviting boys and men to practise what it means to be allies to women and girls here now.
They are urging us:
“Meet this moment: rise in courage.
Become the peaceful warriors we have been longing for.
Bring this life-depleting system down, brick by brick, so we can all live free.”
But as poetic as it may sound, the call for men to become ’the peaceful warriors we have been longing for’ is not a damsel-in-distress call for saviours, heroes or rescuers.
Those mythical archetypes of both our personal and collective psyches are precisely what has upheld colonial patriarchy for too long.
No, the call for peaceful warriors is a call for maturity.
Healing. Embodiment. Presence. Action.
Justice & equity not only depend on, but demand MATURITY.
Just like Black, Indigenous, and peoples of colour can’t dismantle white supremacy, women can’t ultimately transform patriarchy. Importantly, it’s not our responsibility. In a similar way to white supremacy being a white people’s issue, patriarchy is fundamentally a men’s one.
And just like white people both benefit and suffer from the system of white supremacy, men both suffer and benefit from patriarchy.
At the heart of it is immature, fragile, relational dysfunction. PROFOUND relational illness based on separation and othering along invented lines: More than. Less than. Better than. Not as good as. Less worthy. More worthy. Ever changing parameters dictating who belongs, has power and who it is ok to exploit.
These are all dreamed up degenerative constructs and contracts.
Illusions and delusions.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Just like the season of spring that Women’s Day arrives with reminds us : we can take a path that allows us to regenerate.
We can design another possible future if we choose to.
We can dream another dream.
We can create an irresistible vision of future wholeness where precisely all of us thrive.
And then act on it.
Make it happen.
And here’s what’s hopeful: the equitable economic, ecological and social models to make that dream happen already exist.
“So what are we waiting for?” says spring.
No, really, what are we waiting for?
Let’s not. Wait. Any longer.
“So what are we waiting for?” says spring. No, really, what are we waiting for? Let’s not. Wait. Any longer.
Today – this 2026 Women’s Day- is a call for MEN to say yes to becoming loving disruptors – peaceful warriors – by:
🟤 Learning about internalised separation: where it shows up in subtle bias and unconscious behaviours that uphold the system of harm.
🟤 Becoming intentional about healing wounds & fears inflicted by patriarchy by other men. It is more difficult to see where we ourselves contribute to harm when we simultaneously see ourselves as victims.
🟤 Practicing ”I am imperfect and I am an enough, AND there is room for growth”. This supports capacity building for both aspects above.
🟤 Taking intentional courageous action to disrupt the status quo: practising allyship, and role modelling a more secure, mature, ways of being in the world.
Humanity is moving through increasingly turbulent, violent times. In Wish Tree we nurture you as a changemaker to feel resilient, inspired, purposeful & connected so that you can lead yourself well, and create ripples of wholeness across our world.
Find out more about Wish Tree & how we can support you here.
