by Katerina Lorenzatos Makris ~
I might be tempted to quibble less with patriarchy if all patriarchs were pleasant. Or even if most of them were reasonable.
Some are both. Many are neither.
My quibble is that if you’re stuck under the thumb of one of the neithers, and under the vigilant eyes of their enablers, your life is misery. Your life might even be perilous. Or short.
Having grown up under such thumbs and eyes, in a family patriarchy that operated like a cult, and having survived beatings, verbal and emotional abuse, and childhood rape, I can attest to the misery and to the perils of the system.
To call patriarchy “toxic” is no stretch for me. It poisoned almost every part of my existence. It might have been what gave me cancer twice, or at least been a contributing factor.
My only shield against patriarchal plunder has been my mouth. To open it I must overcome the long-imposed, deeply embedded affliction of silence, but when I do, I can spit out the poison that tried for decades to dissolve my tongue, and finally say what I mean.
When a female says what she means, some folks get vexed. The unpleasant patriarchs, the unreasonable ones, and their minions tend to call an outspoken female sassy, disrespectful, out of control, crazy, or even dangerous, especially when she contradicts them.
I have been called all those things by patriarchs and wanna-bes. I won’t disagree. At various times I probably have been all of those things, or at least made a pretty convincing show of it.
My favorite label is “sassy.” The word was meant to discourage me, but had the opposite effect. Refreshing to be pegged as someone who talks back! Someone who questions! Someone who vexes! When sass became my reputation, and when the order went out that my spirit needed to be “broken,” I couldn’t have been prouder.
Today I’ve used that word to fashion a new one—”sassista”—one who sasses. Rhymes with “barista.”
Sass101.com is dedicated to all who have been poisoned by patriarchy, regardless of gender, race, or location, and to all sassistas and aspiring ones.
Are you a sassista? And/or working on it?
Please join us here at Sass101.com as often as you can for healthy servings of patriarchy detox, cheerfully mixed by your sassista baristas. 😉
Katerina Lorenzatos Makris, a career news reporter and fiction author, is Sass101.com’s founder and editor.
Her fiction includes 17 novels for Simon and Schuster, E.P. Dutton, Avon, and other major publishers (under the name Kathryn Makris), as well as a teleplay for CBS-TV, and a short story for The Bark magazine. She has written hundreds of articles for regional wire services and for outlets such as National Geographic Traveler, The San Francisco Chronicle, Travelers’ Tales, NBC’s Petside.com, RescueDiva.com, AnimalIssuesReporter.com, and Examiner.com (Animal Policy Examiner).
While specializing in animal and environmental issues, Katerina has covered a wide range of additional topics such as hurricanes, elections, 12 capital murder trials, and last but not least, women’s issues.
Her hundreds of interviews include HRH Princess Irene of Greece, Pres. George H.W. Bush, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Sissy Spacek, Ted Danson, the real Col. Sanders, and Benji the Dog.
Together with coauthor Shelley Frost, Katerina wrote a step-by-step guide for hands-on, in-the-trenches dog rescue, Your Adopted Dog: Everything You Need to Know About Rescuing and Caring for a Best Friend in Need (The Lyons Press).
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