Henessey Hussey

Professor Serhiy Metenko 

FIQWS Killer Stories – Writing

19 October 2022

The Supreme Court under the patriarchy”

   The patriarchy is the social hierarchy, government led, and systems that are traced back to a man and usually continued to be led by men. Under a patriarchy, it is common for men to dominate almost every government position and make decisions that dictate the lives of everyone living under that nation, like the United States’s Supreme Court, that can influence an individual’s human rights. Every individual in the United States has been impacted by the patriarchal system of the Supreme Court through major constitutional decisions made in some shape or form. 

    Not too long ago, the Supreme Court reviewed and made the conscious decision of overturning Roe v Wade, a decision made by the Supreme Court of 1973 to legalize abortion. Women since then have been able to have access to safe abortions provided by the government and their health care. Now, that access has been limited, since states could change their state laws regarding abortions. Women’s rights under the patriarchy took a step forward and then recently took a step backwards by a predominantly male collective obtaining more control over women’s bodies and overall freedom. 

The recent overturning of Roe v Wade has sparked the female uproar in attempts to take action against the Supreme Court and put numerous women and girls in the United States at risk of unwanted pregnancies and possibly fatal abortions attempts. A 6 weeks pregant, 10 year old girl’s parents had to travel across Ohio state borders to access safe, legal abortion for their daughter in Indiana due to her being raped by an older man and Ohio having a six week “trigger ban” on abortions. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade demonstrates the patriarchy’s lack of humanity for women and young girls that may need abortions to spare their current lives from distress and go onto the path to success. The Supreme Court doesn’t care about women’s rights or unfortunate little girls, the Supreme Court cares about having control of women’s human rights to accommodate patriarchal policing of women’s bodies and their sexuality.

    Speaking on women being mistreated by the patriarchy, two Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Brett M. Kavanaugh, have multiple sexual misconduct accusations from multiple women. This has been brought back to light by the #metoo movement, where a collective of sexual assault victums that mostly consisted of women and young girls, came out with their experiences of sexual assault/harassment that they suffered majority of their oppressor being a man. 

“Most prominently, professor Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers, locking her in a room and pinning her down on a bed.

Kavanaugh joins Clarence Thomas, who has been on the bench since 1991. He is there even though Anita Hill testified that he sexually harassed her while she worked for him. In 2016, another woman spoke out and said Thomas had groped her at a formal dinner party in 1999.”

     Two women surface to tell their stories of being sexually assaulted by Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Brett M. Kavanaugh on occasions going back two decades, even longer.  For the United States government to allow men that have actively abused women to hold one of the most powerful and influential law-making positions of the nation silences victims of sexual assault/harassment that include not only women, but children and even men, though it is rare for those victims to come with their story. Now, it’ll be more rare for male and young sexual assault victums and more difficult for women to come forth, since they’ll continue to feel unsafe and suppressed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The United States government failure to not take these sexual misconduct accusations seriously displays the patriarchal power the men in the Supreme Court and men of the United States in general possess over women and their human rights. Since Supreme Court justices, Thomas and Kavanaugh, have so much power over Americans’ rights and have partial power to influence laws regarding sexual assault in the long term. 

     Following after the overturning of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court started to reevaluate the decision of legalizing gay marriages from 2013 during the presidency of Barack Obama. When that decision happened, queer people all around the United stated celebrated, knowing that their love would no longer be in the dark and have the opportunity to marry their significant other that may be their same sex.

“Justice Clarence Thomas argued the court should reconsider other landmark cases establishing the rights to obtain contraception, engage in private sex acts and marry someone of the same sex.”

For the Supreme Court to even consider reevaluating legal gay marriage means that queer people are not fully accepted or allowed to live their lives their way peacefully under the United States’s patriarchy.

      Members of LBGTQ+ community’s rights were never recognized by the United States’s government up until the 1990s to present day. Individuals faced being the scapegoat for the AIDS epidemic, discrimination, and violence from society, most in particularly from men, some that rejected their homosexuality and some that were taught to accept homophobia. Queer women can hardly exprese their sexuality without being fetishized by men or bothered by men for not finding the right man and those trying to fit queer women into heterosexual women that entertain men. That revaluation alone could regress the queer community and reinstate the patriarchy by the Supreme Court being a predominantly white heterosexual male group using their supreme power to advocate their role of the oppressor of queer people and limit their human rights due their own personal accommodation of their beliefs. 

      One side effect of the Supreme Court’s reviewing gay marriages is it’s impact on men. The idea of gay marriages being illegal again would strictening the self expression of men questioning their sexual identity and men apart of the LBGTQ community by reinforcing the man box theory. The man box theory is a visual representation of society pushing men and boys to correspond to an “ideal” masculinity. Due to this man box that men and boys are expected to fit into, these individuals are influenced to hide parts of themselves from the world to avoid being ridiculed and for some, violence from others. This then also leads to gender based violence by men and boys harassing other man boys for being “too feminine” or gay, misleading them to subconsciously become aggressive towards women and LBGTQ individuals. 

     The man box theory fuels the patriarchy by keeping men close minded and the oppressor of everyone who isn’t a straight cis, especially white, man. The man box influences these kind of men to abuse everyone around them to support their uprising and keep laws and systems that only accommodate straight cis white men, while everyone else suffers trying to please. Men in the LBGTQ community will continue to have trouble finding comfort within their masculinity because they won’t feel man enough because of their supposed feminine characteristics, their attraction to men, or lack of male physical traits, failing to fully accept themselves for the man they are. The inability to accept their masculinity and who they are causes men often to be an assailant of women and young girls. These kinds of men belittle women for being in the feminine essence and for trying to make themselves seen as equal to men, which occurs from a young age in the classroom. These men influence women to see themselves as an extension of men and look down on other women for living their lives freely in social, work, and even sexual settings. As the United States supreme court aligns more with the patriarchy, the more patriarchal men become due to the laws being instituted. Therefore, the illusion of the man box theory remains persistent.   

    As has been said, the United States Supreme Court under the patriarchy instead of instituting laws to protect the human rights of all americans, has become the oppressor of any individual that is non-white, non-hetereosexual, or of a non-cis man living in America. Even the oppressor, themselves are oppressed by the patriarchy through the ideal expectations they’re held to.

Works cited:

Brennercenter,Roe v Wade and Supreme Court Abprtion Cases, Brennancenter, 2022

Martini Judaism, Why Roe v. Wade must stand, Religious News Service, 2022

Adrian Cole, Wisconsin doctor consider options for abortion patients if Roe v. Wade is overturned, The American Independent, 2022

Black Burn Center, Breaking Out of the Man Box, Black Burn Center, 2018

Keith Edwards, Man in a Box – The Traditional Definition of Masculinity, keithedwards, 2012

Kevin Breuninger, House passes same-sex marriage protections in response to Roe ruling, with murky Senate path ahead, cnbc, 2022

Edward Helmore, 10-year-old rape victim forced to travel from Ohio to Indiana for abortion, theguardian, 2022Amanda Terkel, A Third of The 6 Men On The Supreme Court Now Face Sexual Misconduct Accusations, Huffpost, 2018