The Empty Throne of Wannabe Antigones

The Empty Throne

A Pervert’s Guide to Feminism series poem

They say He rules.
They say His name in every tongue—
Patriarchy—as if it still commands.
But the throne is cold.
The scepter, rusted.
The Phallus gates, unmanned.

Still they march.
Still they shout His name.
As if to make Him great again?

They call it resistance—
But it’s devotion in disguise.
Outrage to stave off despair.

He is a fetish they can’t bear to part with.
The Name-of-the-Father, invoked again and again—
Not to be dethroned,
But to anchor their signifying chain.

What is Woman?
The Oppressed
What is Man?
The Oppressor
What is Oppression?
Male privilege
And the path to Freedom?
His Fall

But this Master does not return.
So His name suffices—
To sustain a politics of accusation.

The Feminist rails against Him,
Not to break His rule.
The complaint is a conjuring.
The accusation, an offering.
Every slogan, a seduction—
Beckoning the absent Master.

They disavow His absence,
Act as if He reigns still.
Knowing He is gone—
They perform for a corpse.
Weekend at Patriarchy’s

Beneath “Smash the Patriarchy!”
Lies not the wish to destroy—
But a disavowed trauma:
He’s already dead.

Without Him, the feminist is unmoored.
Her lack—not caused, but constitutive.
Her suffering—without a culprit.

What is Feminist, if He is gone?

And so, Feminism speaks Him into being—
Again and again.
In podcasts, in op-eds,
In endless panels on male violence.
He is conjured, symbolized,
Cast as the cause of every injury,
Every limit, every lack.
Not because He rules—
But because He lacks.

But the wound was not caused by Him.
Patriarchy was but one name.
It has many others.

And so, Feminism chases the shadow
Of a shadow.
Mistaking symptom for sovereign.
Fantasy for Father.
Absence for oppression.

The Fatherless Throne rules.
The Patriarchy discourse repeats.
And the perverse subject enjoys—
Smashing what is already broken,
To avoid freedom’s abyss.

Wannabe Antigones—
Faithful not to justice,
But to a ghost.
Not burying the Law,
But circling its empty tomb.
Their cry: “Smash the Patriarchy!”
Their act: to preserve it—
As fetish, as specter, as sacred wound.

Every cry, a séance.
Every accusation,
An invocation.
Not to overthrow—
But to conjure.
To keep Him potent,
By railing against His ghost.