The Feminist Big Sister Regime
Feminism today isn’t an oppositional force—it’s a governing ideology, a totalizing normative order (or governmentality, if you prefer) disciplining both men and women. It moralizes (Big Sister ain’t just in HR), polices tweets, follows, and followers, and generates new cultural hierarchies—real vs. fake feminists, good vs. bad women. It infantilizes women, as seen in the Russell Brand moral panic, and supports imperialist wars and outpost colonies under the guise of female liberation.
The Patriarchy claimed women need protection because they are women. Feminism insists they need protection because gender is a social construct. The old order shamed women for stepping out of line, while the new order cancels them for wrongthink. Just ask the TERFs, the trad-wives, the pro-life women, or the anti-Zionist feminists who have been excommunicated for ideological noncompliance.
Feminism needs to keep The Patriarchy fantasy alive because without it, its bureaucratic and cultural power vanishes. This isn’t resistance—it’s part of the regime. Big Sister usurped the Father. She operates differently but disciplines more thoroughly.
Neurotic Big Sister vs. Authoritarian Father
At first glance, Big Sister and the Rule of the Father might seem like mirror images—both enforce authority, punish dissent, and maintain ideological order. But Big Sister represents a new regime with distinct forms of control.
The Father was an overt Master—he commanded, prohibited, and laid down the Law. His power was vertical, flowing from the top down, enforced through institutions like the family, church, and the state. His authority was explicit, tied to his position—king, priest, head of the household etc.
Big Sister, by contrast, does not operate through explicit authority but through diffuse, networked control. Power is no longer concentrated in the household or the church but has shifted to HR departments, DEI offices, public intellectuals, social media mobs, NGOs, corporate boardrooms, and media institutions.
Where the Father ruled through direct commands, Big Sister rules through self-censorship, emotional blackmail, and ideological coercion. Instead of enforcing rigid roles, she wields guilt, shame, passive-aggression, purity tests, and the weaponization of vulnerability. Her hierarchy is not fixed but fluctuating and unpredictable. The rules are constantly rewritten, creating a climate of insecurity—who or what will be deemed problematic today?
One day, you’re in. The next, you’re out. Dare to question the contradictions? Step out of line? Big Sister will accuse you of misogyny, homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, heteronormativity, internalized white supremacy, ableism, transphobia—whatever fits the moment.
The charge doesn’t need to be consistent, only effective. Big Sister doesn’t need to punish you directly—she just signals that you are suspect, impure, or fake.
Big Sister Power
Under patriarchy, the Master was known, and the expectations were clear. Big Sister, however, keeps you perpetually self-censoring, second-guessing, and anxious about social punishment. Power has shifted from direct coercion (law, force) to psychological manipulation (shame, exclusion, professional/social blacklisting). In this new order, appearance—signaling the correct beliefs—is everything.
The Father punished overt rebellion; Big Sister cancels people preemptively—policing thought and speech before real dissent even occurs. If patriarchy demanded submission, Big Sister demands constant affirmation and loyalty. The Father cared about actions, Big Sister is concerned with belief and emotion—Do you really support women? Are you truly anti-racist? Do you really want what I want you to want?
The Father’s rule was fixed. Big Sister’s rule thrives on rendering morality, identity, and victimhood fluid. What is coded as progressive this week may be flagged as reactionary the next. The boundaries of acceptability are always shifting; you are likely always already guilty of some slight or transgression. You can be held accountable not only for what you do or say but for what you don’t do or say, or for not doing or saying it in the right way.
And because Big Sister’s power depends on this uncertainty, she must constantly reinvent, conjure, or redefine problematic behaviors, non-behaviors, and thoughts.
The Truth About Feminism
This Big Sister regime disciplines women and men more than traditional patriarchy ever did.
The totalizing gaze of Big Sister Feminism makes the Taliban jealous.
The power to anoint victims and villains, sinners and saints isn’t held by priests or patriarchs—it’s now controlled by a batch of mean girls and it-girls with gender and cultural studies degrees, embedded in Human Resources, Public Relations, Corporate Responsibility, and DEI offices. This institutional apparatus of power is flanked by public intellectuals, media personalities, and the gatekeepers of popular X accounts and podcast fandoms.
This regime doesn’t rule as much through laws or decrees, as it does through fear of being marked with a scarlet letter. It enforces ideological compliance through public shaming on social media, ideological policing via “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “hate speech” policies, and various sensitivity trainings and awareness-raising workshops.
You don’t need to be punished directly. You just need to be marked as guilty.
So, Now What?
Do we let Big Sister feminism collapse under its own contradictions? Or is there an opening for a counter-position—one that refuses the false choice between an authoritarian Father and a neurotic Big Sister?
This will be addressed in "The Feminist Morbid Symptom."
🔥 Out next week. Stay tuned. 🔥