Breaking Free from the Patriarchal 24-Hour Clock

How Patriarchy Warped Science’s View of Women’s Bodies—And How to Reclaim Our Rhythm

WHY THIS MATTERS—RIGHT NOW

The lunar calendar was once the foundation of time itself.

For thousands of years, human societies honored the moon as a powerful, life-giving force—guiding the tides, marking the seasons, and syncing with the cycles of those who menstruate.

Then patriarchy arrived.

With it, the feminine, the dark, and the cyclical were demonized, dismissed, and ultimately erased. Death became an enemy to conquer rather than a natural part of the cycle—one our ancestors once honored through the feminine/lunar world.

The 13-month lunar year was replaced with a rigid, masculine 12-month solar calendar.

Women’s bodies, once worshiped as mystical and powerful, were rebranded as dirty, shameful problems to be fixed.

Fast forward to today, and we see the same patterns persisting.

Instead of studying and honoring the full scope of the female reproductive life cycle—from birth to grave — science continues to frame it as a deviation from the male norm.

Pharmaceutical companies push birth control not just to prevent pregnancy — but to suppress menstruation entirely, especially if there is pain and mental issues.

Biohackers and longevity scientists treat menopause as if it’s a disease to be eradicated.

Yet, in all their efforts to 'fix' the female body, I have to ask:

What if the real problem isn’t women’s biology?

What if the real problem is that patriarchy has warped the very lens through which we understand women’s health?

As we work together on Deconstructing Patriarchy here and on YouTube, this is ALSO part of our work. Deconstructing not just political, social structures — but also how we view our embodied health, individually and on the world scale.

Capitalism and patriarchy force all of us—women, non-binary folks, and men—into a relentless 24-hour grind cycle that was never designed for human bodies, let alone feminine lunar cyclical ones.

We have lost touch with the natural rhythms that once governed our ancestors’ lives.

Reclaiming those rhythms could be the key to better health, deeper rest, and a way of living that doesn’t feel like we’re constantly running on empty — or trying to solve a problem via a way that cannot be solved.

Let’s dive in.

Note: If you’re new here or need a refresher, I break this down in detail on my YouTube —watch the full playlist here.

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The “Science” of Erasure

For millennia, the elite men took the power to label and define "normal.” Everything else became the "deviation."

Aristotle declared that women were “misbegotten men.”

Plato claimed men who lived poorly would be reborn as women—a demotion.

The Biblical writers stripped the divine feminine of Her cyclical power and forced Her into servitude to the man and male god — as seen wtih the story of Lilith¹ throughout different Mesopotamian cultures.

Then came Darwin, Freud, and modern medicine — doubling down on the idea that women’s biology was inherently flawed:

• Darwin theorized that “Menstruation and menopause, even pregnancy, were regarded as debilitating, as diseased or abnormal states which incapacitated women and rendered them actually inferior.”² (hmmm…anyone still see this one in today’s thoughts?)

• Freud based his entire psychological framework on penis envy, making women’s entire emotional landscape about lack. “Frued’s normal human was the male; the female was by his definition a deviant human being lacking a penis, whos entire psychological structure supposedly centered on the struggle to compensate for this deficiency.” ³

Modern gynecology builds on all of this:

• It convinces women that not having a cycle is healthier than having one. That their suffering comes from menstruation itself, rather than from a society that forces their bodies into a 24-hour mold they were never designed for. Instead of deeply studying the vital role of a healthy cycle in women's overall well-being, medicine has worked to suppress, manipulate, or erase it.

• Birth control was first tested unethically on Black women, a history exposed in the documentary The Business of Birth Control by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein. Here’s a great video on this.

• Modern gynecology itself was built on brutal experiments performed on enslaved Black women without anesthesia—treating the female body as a problem to be “fixed,” rather than understood.

The entire scientific method was built within a patriarchal system—erasing millennia of midwifery wisdom in favor of making the less complex male body the default.

When we leave this patriarchal lens on, women are left fighting for equality within a system that was never built for them. We’re told to make our work lives, our home lives— and even our bodies — equal to men’s, as if that should be the goal.

But true liberation isn’t about making women equal to men.

It’s about recognizing that women’s bodies are their own norm.

Science must evolve to meet us—not the other way around.

The 24-Hour Lie: Why Your Body Remembers What Patriarchy & Capitalism Want You To Forget

Patriarchy & Capitalism tells us that humans run on a 24-hour circadian rhythm, but that’s only part of the picture.

The body also operates on ultradian rhythms (90-minute cycles within a day), infradian rhythms (monthly cycles like the menstrual cycle), and seasonal rhythms (our energy shifting throughout the year).

Women’s bodies are not broken. They are designed to cycle. Forcing female biology into a 24-hour schedule is part of what is making us sick.

• Our hormones do not reset every 24 hours — they shift over the course of a month — and the bigger cycle of our life.

• Our energy does not stay the same day in and day out — it ebbs and flows with the seasons and life span.

• Winter is biologically a time for rest, a time to gestate, pull in to the pregnant void — but capitalism demands the same and growing productivity year-round.

Ignoring these cycles does not simply harm women — it burns out everyone.

MY OWN PERSONAL WORK IS NOT IMMUNE TO THIS

Even after a decade of knowing this truth, I still get caught in the drive.

When I launched my business (Sept/Oct 2024), ADHD hyperfocus had me on fire. I was energized for the first time in years, if not decades, with a new formed purpose. Work did not feel like work for me now, it was simply my passion and purpose. As the election finished, I felt the conviction this work was urgent — needed now.

Deep in perimenopause, without a regular cycle, I did not align with the moon (as is the holistic wisdom for peri and post menopausal women). My ADHD kept me fueled and I ignored the still small whispers of my body.

Then I got an ADHD burn out. Then I got sick. Then I got sick again. All within the next seven weeks.

Even now, after slowing down, my body is still forcing me to take a longer pause than what my programed productivity story would like me to take. Daily — if not hourly —I hear the capitalist drumbeat: Push through. Produce more. Get this information out.

That drumbeat is loud when survival depends on production. I get it. Oh how I get it.

But if I do not embody my own work, if I do not break this cycle myself — what am I even fighting for?

The Rhythm of Everything: How the Moon, Seasons, and Our Bodies Speak the Same Language

If you take away nothing else from this, take this:

Your body is not separate from nature. It is nature.

Just as the earth cycles through seasons, just as the moon waxes and wanes, just as the trees and plants respond to the cycles of sun and moon, so do we.

For thousands of years — before the invention of electric lights — women’s cycles mirrored the moon and the seasons:

🌘 Fall/Harvest → PMS → Waning Moon
🍂 Energy begins to withdraw, preparing for deep rest. Energy begins to withdraw. Just as trees drop their leaves and fruit to conserve energy for winter, PMS reminds us to release what’s no longer needed and prepare for rest.

🌑 Winter → Bleeding Days → New/Dark Moon → The Pregnant Void
❄️ The most internal phase. Just as the earth turns inward in winter, the body enters deep restoration. The womb space—an ending and a beginning. A void full of potential.

🌒 Spring → Post-Bleed to Pre-Ovulation → Waxing Moon
🌱 Energy returns. Just as spring brings new growth, estrogen rises, creativity sparks, and movement flows with ease.

🌕 Summer → Ovulation → Full Moon
☀️ Peak radiance, peak energy. Everything is in full bloom and a party. This is the time of confidence, connection, and outward productivity—until the cycle begins to ebb into Fall once again.

Yet, modern society only values summer.

We’ve built a world that prizes constant production, extroversion, and output—trying to eliminate anything that slows us down, including the female cycle itself. Working at the same pace year summer, fall, winter, and spring.

No winter. No rest. No time to pause, reflect, or renew.

But anything left in the sun too long withers, breaks and cracks — blowing away into dust.

Constant exposure depletes us. Constant extraction exhausts the land.

We’re seeing it in our bodies. We’re seeing it in our planet.

Even the Farmer’s Almanac still teaches gardening by the moon.

Nature has never functioned on a 24-hour clock.

Neither should we.

Reclaiming the Lunar Flow

While I do not expect the world to change overnight — returning to a lunar cycle, starting a new branch of science based on these ancient truths about women’s bodies (though wouldn’t that be something?) — there are small shifts we can make, right now.

This is not about rejecting the modern world. (Believe me, there are so many things I can do without — but my computer and the sound of my typing ain’t one of them…or my warm bed on cold nights, hot showers, etc.)

Yet, we can learn how to live in the modern world without destroying ourselves. And when enough of us remember this, perhaps the world will start shifting back again.

Here are some ideas to jumpstart your exploration:

🌑 Honor the dark/death phases: instead of resisting rest, build it in. Lower expectations during times of low energy (nighttime, fall/winter, new moons, illness, bleeding for women). What we call “ending” is often a beginning in disguise. (Next week, we’ll explore new stories on how to reclaim death, and thus reclaim life.)

🌒 Track your personal cycle: whether it’s hormonal, energetic, or emotional — begin noticing your own rhythms. Your body is already speaking—are you listening? If you are in peri with irregular cycles or in menopause, you can use the lunar cycle as a guide.

🌓 Challenge grind culture: true productivity ebbs and flows with the day, month and seasonal cycles. Sometimes just brining awareness to this can comfort days and weeks where you feel and are less productive. We are not meant to operate like a machine — and even machines need to be plugged in, recharged, batteries replaced, and replaced.

🌕 Make space for ritual & the psycho-spiritual—set aside time for reflection, time to wonder and be in “awe” — whether through a weekly reset, a day without screens, or a new moon practice. These small acts reconnect us to something deeper —something patriarchy erased from our conscious awareness — yet our bodies still remember. (More on the psycho-spiritual in two weeks.)

The world does not need more exhausted bodies pushing through depletion.

It needs people who remember how to move within the larger cycles of life other than a 24-hour one. So we can revamp our science, our work places and our world.

It’s time to leave behind the whip of the 24-hour clock and reclaim the wisdom of the lunar flow.

🌙 Let’s Talk Lunar Living 🌙

• What was your biggest AHA moment from this post?

• Which of these shifts are you most excited to try—or do you have another tip to share?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts, dear gentle soul!

Holli

Note: Some of the links below are affiliate links. If you purchase through this link, I earn a small percentage which is put towards furthering this work. Thank you!

1. Many ancient “hidden” myths paint Lilith as the original wife of Adam in Jewish culture. She was most likely originally an equal Goddess in power to the male consorts or gods of the time, pre-patriarchy. However, as patriarchal ideology grew over those first 2500 years, the men needed to rewrite women’s place to fit their current views — and thus turned to reworking the ancient Goddesses stories into ones of shame and warnings. There is perhaps no other ancient figure this is best seen in than Lilith. The story goes she refused to lay down on her back to “submit” to sex with Adam in this position, so Yahweh cast her out into the desert where she became “a winged and wild-harid she-demon who flew through the night….As a Goddess of the Dark Moon, Lilith carries the patriarchy’s shadow projection of the defiant woman as seductress and child-killer. She has come to embody men’s fear of the feminine as dark and evil.” “Mysteries of the Dark Moon.” by Demetra George.

2. “The Creation of Patriarchy.” by Gerda Lerner. pp 18 -19. copyright 1986.

3. “The Creation of Patriarchy.” by Gerda Lerner. pp 19. copyright 1986.

Other great books to help you understand how modern science has hidden this invisible ideology of “men as norm, women as deviants to that norm” — blinding it and us to reality beyond that modern norm:

• Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free. by Wednesday Martin.

• Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. by Cat Bohannon.

• Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships. by Cacilda Jetha and Christopher Ryan