Leaving Patriarchy: A Course for All Genders

This is a creative writing course for writers of all genders who are interested in thinking about patriarchy and how to resist it. Our course will aim to complicate the idea that men benefit from patriarchy and are its primary enforcers, while the rest of us are simply suffering under it. We'll ask ourselves how patriarchy is bad for ALL of us, and how ALL of us are implicated in its perpetuation. Do we ALL have the reasons and the resources to leave patriarchy--and can we start to leave it right now? We'll read works of scholarship and literature that investigate patriarchy as a human relational problem. We'll write fiction and nonfiction in which we explore the ways patriarchy has shaped us, challenge ourselves to resist its manifestations in our relationships, envision a future without patriarchy, and begin to live that future right now. Most crucially, we will practice creating a space in which all of us can speak without fear of judgment about our experiences of a fraught topic.