Patriarchy Unbound by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Some new terms in our language have been after people. Both the terms sadism and masochism were so named according to etymologyonline.

Here is what the site says about sadism: “love of cruelty,” especially as evidence of a subconscious lust that the cruelty satisfies, 1888, from French sadisme, from the name of Count Donatien A.F. de Sade (1740-1815). Not a marquis, though usually now called one, he was notorious for the cruel sexual practices described in his novels.”

And here is what the site says about masochism: “The word masochism originates from the name of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian novelist best known for his 1869 novel Venus in Furs, which explored themes of submissive sexuality and domination.”

I have a new term to add that I would like to add to our vocabulary: Robertism to be named after John Roberts. Here is my definition: love of cruelty, not just cruelty by itself but by spreading cruel acts as widely and far as possible while giving them the authority of legality. Robertism encourages the most base and ugly parts of human behavior, brings them to the surface to be expressed in actions that are given permission through legal cover. 

Of course Robertism can also be Alitoism, Thomasism, or even Trumpism. If we go back in history, it can also be Sprenger and Kramerism (of Hammer of the Witches fame). I chose Roberts in this instance because I do think in his heart of hearts that he knows what he is doing and is doing it anyway. That takes a special kind of cruelty. As Chief Justice, he holds ultimate responsibility for the legal twists and turns that allow cruelty into the fabric of daily life. It’s not that we haven’t have many cruelties before, in fact, this country was founded on them. But one would think we’ve grown. Instead we’ve grown into Sado-Robertism. 

Although not a lawyer myself, I have written about the Supreme Court a number of times because of their blatant patriarchal tendencies. It appears that when they have the choice of different directions, they will choose the one that causes the most disruption, the most cruelty, the one most likely to increase the death count. In May 2022, I wrote about the Dobbs decision when it had been leaked to the public. I was and am still angry that women’s healthcare is deemed a sidenote to their agenda of conservative, patriarchal values. This was a devastating decision to the freedom of women to control our own bodies. It is hard to get data about how many women have died or been left infertile due to delayed or non-existent treatment for pregnancy complications that are easily treatable. Many states that have banned abortions also make their data hard, if not impossible, to find. That is not by accident.

In April of this year Johns Hopkins did a study that indicated a 9% increase in maternal mortality. That’s an enormous increase. These women are people’s wives, mothers, daughters, friends, aunts, they are not just data points. And that doesn’t even cover rape survivors who may find themselves pregnant.  Can you imagine being pregnant with your rapist’s child with no recourse? This is what the Dobbs decision unleashed. 

In September 2025, I wrote in a blogpost titled: Patriarchy Thy Name is Cruelty, in it I wrote how Andrew Young famously said that ‘anything is legal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.” I added a more modern take. Nothing is too low, too immoral, too illegal if 5 or 6 Supreme Court justices decide to allow it. 

The Sept 2025 blogpost was in response to decisions the Supreme Court made about immigration. In that decision they gave legal cover to racial profiling. They also went out of their way to give permission to send immigrants to countries to which they have no connection don’t speak the language. Many of these destinations  are places of known human rights violations and poor medical systems. In this latest term, it has only gotten worse. Now the SadoRobertists have OK’d the removal of TPS approval from Syrians and Haitians even though the countries in question are still in upheaval and still have human rights violations galore. One of previous tests for deciding on the legality of such decision used to be whether racism played a part in the decision. The majority on the Supreme Court said no racism was involved. For this I quote Justice Kagan who wrote her dissent in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado decision:

Kagan pointed to Trump’s statement in a 2024 presidential debate that Haitians were “eating the dogs . . . . They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live [in Springfield, Ohio].” She went on to say how Trump’s numerous statements “fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country.”

Sotomayer added, “Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980 because it did not want this country to repeat the mistakes of its past. Yet if the refugees on the M. S. St. Louis” – a ship carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees seeking to escape from Nazi Germany, who were turned away from (among other countries) the United States and eventually returned to western Europe, where many of them died in the Holocaust – “were to walk up to a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority’s interpretation would allow immigration officers to refuse even to consider their asylum applications by physically blocking them from stepping foot onto U.S. soil.”

Meanwhile while the Supreme Court was engaging in SadoRobertism, a federal judge in Ohio was issuing a ruling (on July 6^th) that was virtually the opposite, noting the President’s preference for white immigrants.  U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley of the Southern District of Ohio blocked three U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policies that had frozen green card and work permit applications for people from seven countries.

Mabley wrote, “This general hostility to immigration contrasts with an apparent interest in and preference for the migration of white people aside from a stated desire for more Scandinavian immigration, President Trump has sought to welcome white South Africans. . . In sum, both the President and the Vice President have publicly and repeatedly expressed outright hostility toward immigrants, both before and after the 2024 presidential election,” the judge wrote, finding the pattern impossible to ignore.

Meanwhile, and in making the decision all the more harsh, Justice Alito wrote that the homeland security’s decision to end  TPS is not subject to court review. In other words, the Supreme Court shut the door on any possible recourse for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, many of whom have been living and working here legally for over a decade.  

The withdrawing of TPS, removes all legal status including the right to work, renew a driver’s license among other indignities. It will likely split about mixed status families. A pastor in Springfield Ohio put it this way, “This is a decision that will cost people their lives.”

Add to these the immigration cruelties, the SadoRobertists on the court found time to take rights away from trans-athletes, block lawsuits against the weedkiller Roundup, and expand gun rights into more and more vulnerable aspects of society,

Patriarchy in the guise of Sado-Robertism indeed.