Coach Jack Kammer argues the "patriarchy" narrative ignores women's actual power structures. He proposes calling female power "the Matrix" and says it operates through relational and social control that men lack, demanding accountability for its impact on men and boys.
Hi team, Coach Kammer here with Chalk Talk #1. This Chalk Talk is about calling out and naming female power. How many times have you heard this? Men have all the power. Did you ever wonder why women say it so much? It's really their bread and butter play, and they score huge points with it. Here's how it works for them. If men have all the power, women have no power. And if women have no power, they can't do anybody any harm. And if women can't do anybody any harm, then there's no reason to keep them accountable for anything. And if women aren't accountable for problems between the sexes, it must be men who are to blame. It's pretty crazy, right? How do women get away with this? Well, maybe they get away with it because they have created a narrative. They have a picture of the male power structure, and they've given it a name. The idea that they have is that men are united and organized in a huge hierarchical pyramid of power. The lightning bolt at the top signifies that power. Look at all the presidents and the congressmen and the CEOs of the big corporations, they say. It's men. Look, men have all the power. Of course, they're looking at the top. They don't want us to notice, and they don't want to talk about the far greater number of men at the bottom of the pyramid who have very little power. And they will say that women have no power, and they will point to this lowly pink line next to the vast male power structure. And that lowly pink line represents women's demeaned and powerless condition. And so what do men do with all their power? Well, we have— we oppress women, of course. That's their picture. People see it and people believe it. And it must be real because it has a name: patriarchy. So that's their offense. That's their play, and they've scored huge points with it. We have no counter-narrative. We have no equivalent offense until now. Let's see if we can't run our own offensive play about power structures. Let's see if we can't provide a picture of our own to convey what we perceive about the female power structure. So let's get into a helicopter and go up above these power structures and take another look at what's going on between men and women. Okay, we're in the helicopter now. We're going up. And now we're flying forward. So let's look down. What's this? The monstrous Pyramid of Male Power doesn't look quite so mighty from up here. It appears to be a kind of facade, maybe not very stable, kind of precarious. And that lowly pink line Well, it might not be very tall, but it sure is wide. It takes up a lot of precious ground, kind of like a fortress or the walls of an ancient city. And that big red heart? Well, it signifies a different kind of power from the lightning bolt, but maybe it's the most significant kind of power in human life. We are social creatures after all. We are relational after all. And maybe that big red heart is the most important thing that men want and need and don't have on a basis equal to the way women have it. Okay, so women have had their picture of male power. But we're making progress because now we have a picture too of the female power structure. But there's something else that women have that we need. They have that name, patriarchy. So we need to come up with a name too for the female power structure. And so maybe I have an idea of a good name for the female power structure. I'm going to suggest that we call it the Matrix. And there are 5 reasons why that term makes sense. So now we have a face and a name for the female power structure. So we can start to hold the Matrix accountable for the way it treats men and boys, for the harm that it does. We go on offense. We score our points And we start to turn this game around by focusing on and talking about what we see and feel and believe about female power in the form of the Matrix.
