This piece is written from the lens of a woman — since I am one — but the insight transcends gender.
The patriarchal program runs deep. And ironically, it completely opposes the laws of true nature, by its nature. Which is why, within it, even gender feels like a carefully coded illusion.
What follows is an unravelling of:
· Personal and collective programming (our software)
· Systemic illusion (silent scripts passed through culture and media)
· Accidental subscription (unconscious ways we internalise shame and hierarchy)
· Generational inheritance (and the pruning of it)
· And the subtle ways we’re all trained to comply, conform, and question our worth.
It’s unsurprisingly littered with coding metaphors. (I’m a UX Designer — I can’t help myself)
Let’s begin where most programs do:
Unconscious Installation.
The Reality Of Personal Programming
Each of us carries opinions accumulated over a lifetime of exposure. To gender roles. To moral rules. To family dynamics and collective beliefs about worth.
Who deserves what? What’s right? And what’s wrong?
Our worldviews are programmed. Not just personally, but systemically.
Collectively, we are like lines of code inside a larger body of script.
A system. A culture. A collective consciousness.
Humanity.
Systemic thinking is powerful. It enables one to consider the whole and naturally evokes empathy. When we zoom out, it becomes easy to see that what most assume to be personal blocks are actually indicative of collective programming.
Low self-worth, unconscious bias, and identity fragmentation are not personal, but system-fed.
What many don’t realise is that our personal beliefs are a small part in a much larger story. That programming is inherited, normalised and often completely unconscious.
It becomes an agreement — embedded in the psyche, played on repeat.
Some of us run inherited script through an internal bullshit radar and reject it. Others take the socially accepted ‘dominant code’ and treat it as an infallible guide. And many aren’t even aware of their ability to accept or reject it at all.
But all code has bugs.
Systems can be infiltrated with them — just ask any developer.
Humanity itself is a system. A parental class system.
And running beneath it?
Varying levels of sub-systems in an attempt to control cohesion — and compliance.
One of the most invasive?
The patriarchy. (it’s full of merge conflicts)
Debugging The Patriarchy
The patriarchy has maintained its grip through a masterful gaslighting of intuition. Perhaps this is because intuition is considered a feminine trait, though this is wildly incorrect (a topic for another day.)
To consciously subscribe to the patriarchy requires a lot of common-sense overrides. Especially for women.
But it knows this. It’s devilishly clever.
That’s why its survival is dependent not on its power, but its invisibility.
Patriarchy doesn’t just live in the obvious.
It hides in your self-doubt. Your silence. Your people-pleasing.
Routine habits you run on autopilot daily.
It has implemented multiple streams of side-track code designed to keep you from questioning the program.
If you are busy questioning:
Your weight
Your age
Your beauty
Your place in society
Your worth
Your bank balance
Your relationship status
You’re signed in — but you didn’t sign up.
If you are busy decoding the micro, you are not decoding the macro.
That subscription is costly.
And you’re paying for it.
Every. Single. Day.
The patriarchy is thriving on the insecurity of women. Insecurity asks women to require less and to give more. It inherently implies a lack of equality.
The most powerful and rebellious act of a woman is to love herself wholeheartedly.
Your greatest weapons against the patriarchy all begin with self.
Self-belief
Self-confidence
Self-love
And an essential byproduct of those three?
Boundaries.
Lots of them.
You’re going to need them.
The Ripple Effect Of Personal Change
The beauty of being a small part of a collective consciousness is this:
The changes you make within start to reflect without. Your refusal to adhere to outdated code?
It triggers the system to question itself, too.
It’s like the nearby code goes,
Wait a sec,
Is this code from 1992?
How did we not see this before?
Let’s purge it.
Like a lightbulb regaining power — reminding the other bulbs that off was never permanent.
And lately? The patriarchy is getting ready for a full system override.
It’s giving ✨delete✨
And women?
We’re pressing Ctrl + alt.
We’re not switching it off and on again.
We’re going full reboot.
Where one woman rejects her place in a system, five more start to question if they, too, belong. And bad reviews? They spread like wildfire. So that five becomes fifty, five-hundred and five-thousand before the patriarchy can push an update.
The Quantum Shift: Women and Reclamation
When women release the pressure to perform, to be anything other than who they are — the real override begins.
Women are figuring this out.
They are going to therapy.
They are decoding ancestral trauma.
Facing the bugs head-on.
Refusing to settle.
Reclaiming their bodies.
Taking up space.
Refusing to be silenced.
Confronting the gaslighting of their emotions.
Learning the power of the somatic body.
Seeing that their worth is not based on societal approval. It is inherent.
If you’re in the middle of this deconstruction, it helps to observe personal programming with detachment. The ability to love yourself, whether you adhere to cultural standards or not, is hard.
It’s rebellion.
It’s passion.
And it’s painful.
But inheriting code does not have to be a life sentence. Over-identifying with opinions can also be a hindrance. What you believe today does not have to be believed tomorrow. The ability to let go of what once served you in favour of lighter software?
A superpower.
Know you are not alone. Women all over the globe are doing this.
404: Patriarchy Not Found
When one resolves contradicting loops within, you will transcend sub-set subscriptions.
And the collective? It’s moving at quantum speed — decoding self-imposed limitations like never before.
The more sub-sets you smash through?
The closer you are to the beast.
The beast doesn’t fall through the fight.
It falls through self-reclamation.
And the patriarchy?
It can’t compute.
Where in your life are you ready to refactor some code?
Thank you for your passion, and channeling it through these many buffers. It is so resonant