Good start to solutions.

I’d like to point out that you’re friend’s Christian upbringing, even a ‘legitimate’ one, likely conditioned her for low self esteem. From the interpretations of the creation myths, through the scriptures of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the letters of Paul, and ending up with the apocalyptic metaphors employed in Revelations women are described as evil, insolent, untrustworthy, unclean, impure, lustful, corrupting, and weak willed beings to be ignored and exploited.

If this is the religion you were raised with and your family was actively faithful, how could you arrive at adulthood and not have a very warped perception of your self worth and place in this world?

It sets you up to both expect and accept abuse because you believe you’re unworthy of better.

Secondly, I’d like to point out that I’ve got problems with your psychologist’s breakdowns too because he makes them with everyone on the same footing. They are not. To be clear, we’re not talking about power structures. We’re talking about mental headspace. Our mental landscapes are built upon the history of our respective peoples or identities.

Specifically, he never considers the psychological impacts of genocide that play out across generations. There are studies on genetic memory theory in rodents and primates. It’s worth a look.

To put in context with humans, for example, the holocaust of WWII was not the first genocide of the Jewish people. It was not even the first one committed by the German people. The Bible tells of the Hebrew people being slaves of Egypt. It also tells of Moses’s father slaughtering all Hebrew babies under 2 years old to reduce their population. Both of those things are genocides. 1000 years before the Holocaust Jews were driven into fires by Germans upset over usury. As I understand it, Christian strictures over financial lending forced them to take out high interest loans from Jewish bankers. Instead of changing the laws, they decided to burn the bankers and their families and all the other Jews for good measure.

And there were others.

So, you can see that a population that has been through countless genocides is not a population that is likely to respond with commensurate pushback when abused. They’ve learned long hard lessons on enduring to survive. Those who fought back did not survive.

We should remember that the Patriarchy was built on multiple genocides where men were killed and women and children were captured, uprooted from their land and people, and enslaved. Just because it happened before most of recorded history doesn’t mean there is no evidence that it happened.

Christianity also perpetrated genocides against women via the Inquisitions and Witchcraft trials that were used to strip women of property, knowledge, and freedom as well as terrorize them.

The Roman empire committed genocidal acts against the Picts and other peoples of the British Isles, the Thracians, the Gauls, the Judeans, etc whereupon after conquering a territory captured women were enslaved and their infants were slaughtered to be replaced by master’s spawn.

So it’s not just the Patriarchy that is between female ears. It’s the psychological effects of multiple genocides against women through the ages.

And yes, the American empire is engaged in acts of genocide that specifically target women and children even today.

Break the women and you break a nation. It’s a tried and tried concept.

There are literal manuals.