Few things are more distasteful to the delicate feminist sense of justice than instances of women harshin’ on other women. This women-bashing-women crap happens as often within “the movement” (such as it is) as it does among the unenlightened tighty-whitey anti-feminist collaborators. It’s bad enough, feminists lament, that men feel entitled to abuse us; how will we ever liberate ourselves when so many members of our own class seem so determined to enforce our, and their own, oppression?
We are all aggrieved by feminist infighting, “infighting” being the derogatory, male-framed way of describing the inevitable result of multiple intersections of multiple class struggles — the struggles of women of color, of poor women, of middle class women, of Jewish women, of prostituted lesbian intellectual women, et al — each of which classes has been engineered, it goes without saying, by patriarchy. But that’s another essay.
Today, by way of an excursion into the exotic, cut-throat world of Greek sororities, we take a look at the self-oppressing tendencies of anti-feminist patriarchy collaborators. For it seems that the DePauw University chapter of the Delta Zeta sorority, perceiving as detrimental to its “recruitment goals” the continued inclusion of constituents whose physical and intellectual deviation from the Barbie standard makes them too unbearable to look at, gave all un-slender, un-white, un-stupid members the boot. That’s right. Because Delta Zeta had acquired an undesirable reputation as a repository for unfuckable ugly smart chicks, and since a sorority’s ostensible raison d’être is to provide suitably sex-ay receptacles for fratboys, the sorority’s national office had no choice but to purge the rolls of all who were not up to specs bodaciousness-wise.
The New York Times reports that the ethnic cleansing “left a messy aftermath of recrimination and tears” and “battered the self-esteem” of 23 women whose appearance and braininess was deemed an effrontery to the straight white American feminine fuckbot beauty ideal, to the extent that some of the rejected girls withdrew from classes.
And thus we see how patriarchy often masquerades as sisterhood in order to bite you in the ass. The message of Delta Zeta is the message of white male supremacy: a woman’s value is strictly reproductive.
It turns out that this story is Top o’ the Pops at the New York Times today. This development will hardly surprise the veteran patriarchy-blamer. Stories about women fucking each other over are irresistible, because (a) dudes love a ‘catfight’ and (b) such stories relieve male anxiety over participation in patriarchal culture by suggesting that women willingly engineer their own oppression.
But women didn’t create misogyny, and don’t benefit from it. Even so, unrelentingly they find their choices bound by it. When women hate women, it is only men hating women by proxy.
[Thanks Sue]
“When women hate women, it is only men hating women by proxy.”
This cannot be stated often enough. Once again, the mind of Twisty has come up with another razor sharp observation and molded it into beautifully succinct words. I come here for the blaming, but I stay for the pie (and tacos).
People will be hearing this phrase from me often. I will happily credit you.
That is so beautifully and succinctly put, I just had to point it out.
The message of Delta Zeta is the message of white male supremacy: a woman’s value is strictly reproductive.
Well, yes, but at the same time strictly ornamental. Irrespective of actual efforts at reproduction, a woman’s value is enhanced when her outward appearance conforms closely enough to the declared ideal du jour to render her eligible to serve as a prized ornamental trophy, announcing and confirming the high status of her owner.
Twisty,
When you make this oddly specific reference to “prostituted lesbian intellectual women” I have to wonder if perhaps you might have been an angelic presence accompanying my ex girlfriend and I when we were in the midst of adventures eventually blogged in this post: “Counter-terrorism†as defined in patriarchy-blaming terms, ca. 1993; fragments from my “Patty Hearst†years.
At the time - before our relationship became another casualty* of the ‘divide and conquer’ forces you’ve referenced in such an erudite fashion here - we were all about articulating (and actualizing) a specifically radical feminist agenda of liberation on behalf of prostituted lesbians as a class.
Of course, as Sarah Schulman has noted (in The Sophie Horowitz Story), “Lesbian liberation and the mafia mix like scotch and prune juice. You don’t try it unless you have to.”
Maybe you had to be there to get why I’m invoking this particlar Schulman quote, but let me just say that once one has had the experience of grocery shopping with a mafia pimp (after a hitchhiking experience on I-35E, during which time there was some discussion of whether said individual could possibly provide one with a ride to Kate Millett’s St. Paul, Minnesota flat so that one might return said Famous Feminist’s car keys to her), dystopian novels by the likes of Schulman begin to take on further dimensions of meaning impossible to relate to those who haven’t been so precisely there.
But (as usual) I digress. Mostly, I’d like to call folks’ attention to this poetry fragment (first published in Common Lives, Lesbian Lives - complete cite on request, if you can give me a few days) by Amy Edgington. Here, she is writing specifically about lesbian battering, though the dynamic she invokes extend to less literal woman-on-woman violence:
When a woman beats a woman
the Old Husbands laugh
and admire their unbloodied hands…
Seriously Twisty, you rock.
*For whatever it’s worth, I described this dissolution as best I could in a poem called “How the Fugitives - Two Women Writers - Tried to Love Each Other and Survive,” published in Violence Against Women: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 6, No. 11 (November 2000).
Maybe I’m an ignoramus, but was there ever a higher purpose for sororities? I thought it was typically about catty faux-sisterhood, sexy hazing rituals involving the frat dudes and alienating other girls.
The only decent sorority at the college I attended (U of Oregon) was the lesbian sorority (we did not speak of its obvious orientation though, shhhh) who ran the SafeRide program. Those girls rocked, and actually performed an irreplaceable service for campus women. But I’m sure they weren’t looked favorably on by the Greek System/included in Greek Weekly (or whatever magazine of appraisal reviews such things) because most of them didn’t strive for the beauty mandate.
I used to hear about how it looked good to have a Greek denomination on your resume, but I always figured that trick only worked if you had a scrotum.
I think it’s just dandy that their “reason” for kicking out the majority of the members is because recruitment rates are down. So, they’re attempting to increase the sororities membership by purging it. I *totally* by that line of reasoning.
Is it patriarchy by proxy that makes me hate sororities?
This no doubt did the brainy girls a service. Brainy girls need to learn to stand alone.
My sister, against all odds, joined a sorority her junior year in college. It had some of the trappings of historic faux-sisterhood via strict dress codes and mild (at least compared to the frats) hazing. We wondered why she would do that when the true purpose of sororities on that campus–university-mandated altruistic mission aside–was to introduce budding freshman sexbots to their male counterparts in the Greek tragedy.
Luckily, she had not suffered a horrific and feminism-ending head injury. It was a sorority dedicated to recruiting academically excellent women of color and providing networking opportunities for them to actually do altruistic acts (they tutored and ran debate teams at local jr. highs), swap career advice, and occasionally go out to a party or two. Her sisters are a fantastically diverse group that, while officially part of the Greek system, provide an alternative meaning of sisterhood.
The best sorority experiences I’ve heard about from friends who participated were those that were not approved by the national committee. I’m glad half the women who were approved to stay quit in solidarity. I hope the remaining six follow suit.
My mom was the only “tall” member of her sorority, even telling me how they rejected other girls because they already had a “tall” one. Sororities only like variation like the Republican Party does - tokens to prove they are not _really_ discriminating.
Against my better judgment, I rushed in college (cause I wanted to make my mom happy) and was summarily rejected from every sorority on campus - even hers, the one I was a legacy to.
I have come to see it as a badge of honor and wore it with pride during college and since. I figured my freak flag didn’t hide well enough, and their small mindedness was my good luck.
I say to the women kicked out - Congratulations! You have just been freed from an oppressive organization! Take pride, your humanity, individuality and brilliance shine brightly and illuminate all of us.
Furious. I am FURIOUS! I can’t say more than that now, because I’m incapacitated with sputtering rage. Fuck those fucking fuckers!
“But women didn’t create misogyny, and don’t benefit from it. Even so, unrelentingly they find their choices bound by it. When women hate women, it is only men hating women by proxy.”
I suspect that I may be too close to the trees to see the woods, but I’m having a hard time getting my mind around that one. It gives the impression that women can’t hate each other unless there is a patriarchal reason for it; to my ear it sounds a little dehumanizing.
Granted, most Twisty-isms make me wanna leap out of my chair and shout “YEAH!” at the top of my lungs.
As to the sorority question (and the fraternity question as well): why would anyone want to be a part of a group that purposely insults and degrades them prior to be admitted as a member?
BubbasNightmare, there are many culturally conditioned unconscious mechanisms at work in all of us. That is how come we have a society where everybody seems to find their part as if naturally, except for those people who come from elsewhere and have been culturally conditioned to think differently. For these people it is very hard to find their “natural” place. Louis Althusser’s theory of interpellation is that we are all educated (or left relatively uneducated) in order to fit us to take our respective places in the cultural machine. So, the general situation is that women are primed to compete against each other for secondary places in the machine, dividing between themselves scant remnants of male resources. In terms of a totally different metaphor, we are all lobsters in the cooking pot of culture. When one tries to climb out, immediately another climbs upon its back and thereby pulls the former, more adventurous one back into the pot to be boiled for others’ delight.
I did find it heartening that half of the sorority women deemed “acceptable” by the national bigwigs resigned from the sorority in protest.
So it’s not actually a story about women being catty and hating each other, is it? It’s about those in power oppressing the ones who don’t fit a specific set of parameters.
Now where have I heard that before?
I don’t think it’s that “women can’t hate each other unless there is a patriarchal reason for it.” Can women be hateful? (Hate-able?) Yes - women run the human spectrum of likability. And even in a patriarchy-free utopia, some people will probably still be assholes. But you are embedded in this patriarchy. How much of why you hate a woman, and why she’s hateful, is due innate assholeishness and how much to patriarchal imperatives?
I figured you’d get around to this one as soon as I saw it yesterday.
The women-hating-women=men-hating-women-by-proxy argument is interesting. I know you like to say that, in a patriarchy, women have no agency (and I apologize if that’s a mischaracterization of your thoughts on this). If that’s the case, then what’s the point of doing anything? Doesn’t one need agency to fight (or even blame) the patriarchy? But as soon as one allows any agency to sneak in, then there’s the pesky question of who’s doing the hating, and under what conditions hating (or blame) is/are acceptable. I’m not suggesting that I have the answer (or that you do), I’m merely suggesting that the question of agency ought not be addressed by saying that women ain’t got none.
“Few things are more distasteful to the delicate feminist sense of justice than instances of women harshin’ on other women.”
Fully agree. But I’d suggest reviewing the last few comments on the “Recognize this Knob” thread and then maybe looking closer to home for harshin’. People in glass houses…
“Irrespective of actual efforts at reproduction, a woman’s value is enhanced when her outward appearance conforms closely enough to the declared ideal du jour to render her eligible to serve as a prized ornamental trophy, announcing and confirming the high status of her owner. ”
Agreed. The origin of the whole outward appearance mandate is to suggest fertility, and the ultimate goal of all patriotic dudes is to reproduce themselves, ergo, the arm candy is ultimately a symbol of virility.
“But you are embedded in this patriarchy. How much of why you hate a woman, and why she’s hateful, is due innate assholeishness and how much to patriarchal imperatives?”
This is comes down to a question that extends much broader than patriarchy, which is what has interested me most about this blog. If you are within an ideological system, and you want to resist that system, is your resistence something you really generate apart from the ideological system, or is your resistence always already determined from within? In other words, is there an extra- or non-ideological vantage point we or anyone can claim, from which some True and Undistorted view can be expressed?
Perhaps once upon a time in another country before the wench died, sororities, like fraternities, were in some ways a support system; especially those with housing on campus, I am supposing. Of course, whenever it was that they became mere auxiliaries for the frats they became also useless as support for anything but weight loss and “self-improvement.”
In the south they used to start them in sororities young: in high school. Anything more useless and stupid than a greek system in high school I cannot imagine. Well, I don’t want to imagine, anyway.
Octo, I rather thought that was you.
“If you are within an ideological system, and you want to resist that system, is your resistence something you really generate apart from the ideological system, or is your resistence always already determined from within? In other words, is there an extra- or non-ideological vantage point we or anyone can claim, from which some True and Undistorted view can be expressed?”
I’ll bite on this.
I would think that depends upon the type of resistance one wishes to engage in. If just a negation of what one experiences or knows as reality, then one obviously is simply drawing upon the existing reality and has not developed another set of parameters; that is another way of looking at the way the world is organized. So that I would think would be strictly determined from ‘within’.
But then, if one were to develop a vision of reality that takes peices of the existing, or leaves a lot in place and assumes the possibility of changing or altering pieces of it, then that’s different. Different, only assuming that one has developed a vision seperate from what they know now.
I would also assume that we only know what we experience, therefore, whatever concept one develops for a utopia, one would use their own frame of experience, or extrapolate the observations of others (history/philosophy) to meld a vision of their own.
Therefore, when one states that the patriarchy must fall, it could be interpreted in a strictly negative vein, meaning that the opposite of patriarhcy (bad) would be good. That’s the zero-sum game if I am correct? Or is it called binary?
I think that we can alter our social system/reality in order to come closer to an ideological system that incorporates feminist values, out of what we have available now. We don’t have to go shopping for the tools, we already have them here. So yes, we’re working from within.
Thebewilderness: thought who was me? I did not participate in that thread.
“I think that we can alter our social system/reality in order to come closer to an ideological system that incorporates feminist values, out of what we have available now. We don’t have to go shopping for the tools, we already have them here. So yes, we’re working from within.”
This still doesn’t get my point though, which is that if we are always *inescapably* working, creating, existing within the ideological system, then there is no idea nor value we can generate that does not at once originate from and give credit to that system– misogyny and feminism alike.
To try and avoid this, we might scale down the charge of patriarchy as the Grand Ideological Narative to something more modest, like it just being a thread of a greater ideological fabric. If we do this though, then we can easily question the charge that when “women hate women, it is only men hating women by proxy,” by pointing out that when “women hate women” it could be for a great number of ideologically driven reasons besides (though still perhaps including) patriarchy. A couple other people already started to go here when they asked how we can explain women hating on each other as starting in men without throwing female agency out the window in much the same way that we would otherwise find the patriarchy doing. Even Twisty herself took note of the conflicting ideological identifications (race, class, religion, etc.) that can fuel this “women hating women.”
What I’m just not so sure of is how, in the end, the identification with being woman is the most fundamental to understanding (their) oppression, when such a gesture is no more grounded than any other ideological claim.
Maybe the point is to see the patriarchal encapsulating system as less of a metaphysical postulate which can be which can be opposed or conformed to according to logical principles, and to consider the issue from the point of view of the vitality that one has under different social conditions. My point is that in a situation which is very ideologically suffused with patriarchal ideals, I end up feeling very devitalised and tired after a short while. In a situation which allows me greater spontaneity and avenues for self-expression, I find myself feeling very alive. So, it is important to become sensitive to one’s own reactions in order to overthrow the patriarchy. This is difficult enough for most people to do, as learning to ignore one’s own feelings is the process by which they are inducted as patriarchal subjects.
Scratchy, you’ll have to explain to me some of what you mean by vitality. I think I understand you, but it’s one of those slippery topics. At any rate, I’m not sure what it could have to do with resisting or ultimately over-throwing the patriarchy in any sense that could be called from without it.
This is where the really tricky part emerges, and what I’m trying to point out: resistance to the patriarchy is wrought from the same ideological fabric as the patriarchy itself; in other words, if we’re still leaning towards grand ideological naratives, resistance to the patriarchy (the dominant ideology) is possible only because the patriarchy (the dominant ideology) creates a space for it.
So, unless we admit a decentered role to patriarchal narative in the greater ideological system of our lives, how are we to understand these feelings of “spontaneity” and “self-expression” except as fundamentally the same ideological feelings underpinning the experience of others, who we accuse of being misogynistic? If women can only hate women because these feelings originate in men (aka The Patriarchy), it seems problematic to say that non-misogynistic values (feminist values don’t also come from The Patriarchy. The ideological dog-collar that makes it possible that when “women hate women, it is only men hating women by proxy” necessarily predicates all female agency, over which other people have shown a concern.
Ultimately, patriarchy either is or is not the dominant, over-arching ideological narative, which is not to say that there has to be an over-arching ideological narative any which way. If it is though, then we have huge problems for how a female subject, a woman, can resist patriarchy without constantly employing it. If it isn’t, then there is more room to understand the ways in which people become interpellated, and how they can resist this or that ideological mandate. That also means, then, that not all misogyny is necessarily patriarchal.
I thought I posted a comment here and it was all up here and stuff and then I come back and its gone. I don’t get it. I wonder if this will come through.
thank you so so much. about 15 minuets ago I saw a report on the news about this sorority issue. after it ended I promptly turned on the computer and came to your site. and low and behold you had blogged about it. thank you. It has helped me controlled my rage and probably saved me from punching out the next frat boy looking guy I see . you see I am in college and frat boys (the mascot for patriarchy…at least in my mind) are easilly found. it’s a big comphort to know other people who share my opinoin. because there certainly aren’t any people are here who do. sorry that my post wasn’t exactly on topic with the other posts. I’ll stop my rambling and go back to lurking now.
This post is fascinating.
It makes my brain fry. I don’t think it denies women agency to say that they are operating inside the patriarchal systems so they can’t see that their actions collaborate with the patriarchy. That’s all it is: women behaving in a woman-hating way simply don’t see that their actions are woman-hating, such is the all-consuming nature of patriarchy. Each woman has the (potential) agency by virtue of being a human being, to find out about feminism for themselves and realise the patriarchal order blighting their every move. Do we blame those who don’t do so (for whatever reason)? That approach sticks in my throat.
I am sure I often miss the effects of patriarchy on my own behaviour, and thus take actions which affirm the patriarchy. Yet I read this site and try hard not to behave in a woman-hating way. I would not argue that my agency is somehow denied because someone pointed out that I might not have fully thought through the implications of my actions: rather I would say that I retain the agency to make the decision to affirm or react against patriarchy once fully informed. The empirical state of being ‘fully informed’ in this way is what has me confused and wondering. Is it ever possible? Maybe not. Maybe all that can be hoped for is a sliding scale of awareness. Some women are more aware, some less so. The women who are less aware take actions which the women who are more aware recognise as having woman-hating characteristics. But the women who are more aware can, precisely because they are more aware of the social cultural construct environment, empathise with that behaviour because they see it for what it is. The women who are less aware are not able to do this, so do not think of their behaviour as woman-hating. I can acknowledge that fact and recognise that the less-aware women are less aware maybe because nobody has ever encouraged their feminist education.
I guess what I’m saying (in a really long-winded and I hope not at all patronising-to-women way) is that every woman has agency, but some women operate in a feminist-education vacuum while exercising that agency and thus should not be held morally accountable (where moral accountability is on a scale, not an absolute) to the same degree for her behaviour as though she were a feminist who undertook women-hating actions. I don’t think it denies women agency to recognise that fact, nor does it necessarily follow that it is not possible to take exception to a particular individual on account of them being an asshole.
I am very interested in reading other thoughts on this because I’m struggling out loud here. I don’t wish to deny women agency but I do want to recognise that not all women have advanced awareness regarding patriarchy (including me, though I’m working on it). I don’t think that puts me between a rock and a hard place but I’ll await others’ more informed and philosophically able opinions.
J., if I may attempt to interject, then does that not mean that one must examine what exactly patriarchy is and what goals its development set out to acheive? And could these goals themselves not be co-opted by women as well and then patriarchy becomes women dominant and not male dominant?
In other words, those who support the existing system claim that it survives because it is evidently the most successful system for human survival. To counter that, one must look to smaller groups or other animals, no?
If patriarchy is not over arching, then why has there been no other system successfully developed for human survival, or has there been?
It would seem to me that if patriarchy were not all encompassing then another system would have developed to counteract it and overpower it, no? It seems that patriarchy, while some consider it successful, is the antithesis of the human ideal?
I noticed when reading the article how supportive the sorority members were of each other, generally speaking, and that it was the tools at the top who sent this directive.
I mention this because I’ve often heard the supposed truism that women are backbiting and catty toward each other. I’ve also heard women state, proudly, that all their best friends are men, because it’s “just so hard” to get along with women.
I call bullshit. It has never been my experience that my friends who are women are less supportive than my friends who are men. In fact, most of my closest friends are women.
As a public high school teacher, I decided to test my hypothesis in the classroom. I developed a survey that asked one question: In your experience, have your female friends been generally kind and supportive, or mean and backbiting?
“Kind and supportive” won by a 4 to 1 ratio. And I was not a bit surprised. That other lie is just another club the patriarchy gives us with which to beat ourselves up.
J– What I was getting at is that, whilst recognising that there probably is a system called patriarchy in place (in other words, as at least one of the major, dominating value systems of most societies), I choose not to adopt the paradigm of “a system” in my practical affairs. To try to make this clearer: Intellectually, I acknowledge that there is a system called patriarchy in place, but practically my approach to every situation is a cautious (because ideologically alert) empiricism. Now, I’m not denying that what will make one woman feel “vitalised” — if only temporarily, I presume — is to get her claws stuck into her sister’s neck, whereas another may feel vitalised by managing to avoid just precisely this sordid eventuality. Yet the vitalisation feeling of the claw-digging sister is assuredly only temporary. This kind of adrenal fix does not feed the human soul, so generally, I would say that the long term effect of this kind of behaviour is de-vitalising.
But how does anybody get to know what is or isn’t de-vitalising? There are some people who, presumably don’t mind being de-vitalised as long as they get a chance to stab their claws into somebody at some point. They probably have intrinsically different values than I do (perhaps at least as much a result of temperament as of the patriarchal forces in their lives). I admit that there are probably people like that. I can’t answer for them, but only for myself.
There are bound to be differences (temperamental and beyond) which cause one woman not to wish to free herself to the degree that I feel necessary to free myself. For instance, not being treated as an intellectual causes my hackles to rise, whereas other women don’t seem to mind if they are spoken to in ways which seem, to me, less oriented towards the qualities of their minds.
IN any case, what I am saying is that I am proposing a paradigm shift — at least in terms of practial behaviour and attention to experience — so that one is not reliant upon metaphysical constucts and narrowly-based logic (a priori postulates) in order to determine whether or not the patriarchy is exerting its force upon one at any particular time. I am saying that you can jump out of the problematic of the patriarchal paradigm and whether or not it is overarching, by making oneself the yardstick for one’s estimation of the nature of freedom. This doesn’t mean that you disregard logic or history or indeed, knowledge about the patriarchy as a probable system. But one can live with a greater sense of freedom if all of one’s violations of its strictures are done with a sense of indifference to it in the first place — rather than if one attempts to oppose it as a project in itself.
The two sides — critical thinking and active experimentation and indifference — are both necessary.
I’m not sure if anybody’s mentioned it yet (I only skimmed the comments — it’s late), but, in defense of sisterhood, we should note that six of the twelve young women deemed “acceptable” quit the sorority in protest.
“That’s all it is: women behaving in a woman-hating way simply don’t see that their actions are woman-hating, such is the all-consuming nature of patriarchy.”
I get stuck on this point. What you are saying is that ideology is mere knowledge, or rather mis-knowledge. In other words, if these women simply *knew* that what they were doing was misogynistic, then they would stop *doing* it. What this means is that women, in general, are profoundly ignorant.
Despite the colourful voice that she brings it to us, Twisty’s observations are not profound in some abstract, intellectual sense as much as in how mundane they really are. There is nothing esoteric or otherwise hidden from view in the examples of misogyny and otherwise oppression we read about and discuss on this blog. Suffice it to say, this blog isn’t the only place we see it, because as I read it, the point of the blog is that the misogyny it reports is frickin’ everywhere!
So, it seems, in the most ordinary sense of the word, unbelievable that women everywhere and through-out history have universally been unaware of misogyny. Women aren’t stupid, no more than men, especially when it comes to such straight-forward facts like the through and through misogyny endorsed in most cultures recorded through-out history. What this means is that women, as well as men, participate in patriarchy not because they are duped by it, but precisely despite the fact that they know very what’s going on. In other words, what people do does not necessarily reflect or come from what they know about what they are doing, because generally it’s hard to believe that for many ideologically conditioned behaviors people don’t understand the basic fact of what they’re doing.
“…then does that not mean that one must examine what exactly patriarchy is and what goals its development set out to acheive? And could these goals themselves not be co-opted by women as well and then patriarchy becomes women dominant and not male dominant?”
Patriarchy is an ideology, which is something we do whether or not and often despite the fact that we know what we’re doing. Of course, ideology has its intellectual representations; these are accessories to it, and not its substance. Feel free to offer something else if you think differently, or add to what I said.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at with “goals.” That makes patriarchy sound like a game-plan, which has an telos, an end-point, after which we live in a post-patriarchal world. This game-plan aura also makes it sound like, as you put it, it was developed by a handful of conspirators.
As I’ve seen it and learned about it, patriarchy is the programmatic submission of woman to man (both interpellated and not natural identities). To add a Lacanian twist to it, patriarchy is also the everyday and yet Spectacular practice of misogyny, which is a backlash against woman for embodying in her relation to man, man’s (everyone’s though) fundamental lack– i.e. for reminding man of how he can’t have everything he wants, especially woman.
The problem with the above analysis is that if we are all “in it” (patriarchy) then we surely cannot talk about it. We are, after all “it’. So, to act as if to step aside and talk about it is a little odd, indeed. One should refrain.
word.
I said: “That’s all it is: women behaving in a woman-hating way simply don’t see that their actions are woman-hating, such is the all-consuming nature of patriarchy.â€
J said:
“I get stuck on this point. What you are saying is that ideology is mere knowledge, or rather mis-knowledge. In other words, if these women simply *knew* that what they were doing was misogynistic, then they would stop *doing* it. What this means is that women, in general, are profoundly ignorant. ”
I don’t believe I said or implied that ideology is mere knowledge. All I’m saying is that you can either be aware of or ignorant of the ideology you grew up in/are a product of, to varying degrees. And, as I see it (though I acknowledge this might only demonstrate my own need to read more feminist work), patriarchy is a sort of ’super-structural-underpinning-ideology’, and thus relatively difficult to spot: more difficult than, say, the obvious structures of a capitalist ideology. Or maybe I’ve just been stupid my whole life and every other woman has noticed patriarchy, and made a conscious decision to embrace it with open arms whereas I have tooled along in ignorance of the profound way it affects my every thought/feeling/action/reaction.
“Profound ignorance” on the part of “women in general” was not what I meant to imply, but I appreciate that my comment might have led you to believe this. If you read further down in my comment, what I’m saying is that I think there’s a sliding scale of awareness (which, I suppose, means there’s a sliding scale of ignorance, if you wanted to frame it differently). I’m not saying that all women are stupid: very far from it indeed. But I think that it is objectively true that some women are more aware of patriarchy and its effects on them than others. Would you agree? I say this because I used not to be aware of it at all. I used not to see the effects of patriarchal system/ideology. I like to think I have become more aware. Thus, I used to be ignorant, now I am less ignorant. In my book, ignorance is not synonymous with stupidity.
Maybe, given your point, I need to rephrase slightly. I am not saying that women don’t recognise examples of misogyny when they see them. I meant that there is sometimes a lack of awareness on the part of some women, of the patriarchal system/ideology, and how it promotes misogyny in women as well as men. This leads women to take such actions as banning the ‘ugly’ from sororities. They are a product (excuse the crude term) of the system/culture and as such cannot be the overarching cause. The cause of women hating women qua women (generally, not individually) is patriarchy.
Which is, I believe, Twisty’s point. Which is to say that I agree with her (I think). This is all quite difficult for a young onion such as myself to get her head around. Am I really that far off track?
Oops. I messed up the code. Only the words “patriarchal system/ideology” should be in quotes. Sorry.
goddamn it, I didn’t mean quotes; I meant italics.
“When women hate women, it is only men hating women by proxy.”
Ah.
Yes.
I extend My Pink Sparkly Girly-Girl Eyeliner of Truce to you for this Twisty, to with whatever indeed you like.
To rest of us: what do we do about ending it, indeed within “the movement?”
Wow–I wish I didn’t have to go make croissants; this is a great thread and i could write all day. I think that, just as knowledge of mysogyny and patriarchy varies across women/men/time/space, so the patriarchy varies in its intensity. When one manages to have a lot of (male and female) friends who all, in their own ways, find the patriarchy oppressive and try to change it, one is in a less awful-feeling and perhaps more vitalizing place than when one is surrounded by (male and female) patriarchy-supporting tools.
“to DO with.”
Ay!
I gave up struggling for acceptance at an early age because I had been a fat kid and accustomed to rejection. Anyway, by the time I got to college I didn’t care two farts in a high wind for greek silliness. All I wanted was my piece of paper so I could get the hell on with my life.
Non-compliance with the Beauty Ideal will force you to develop other ways of attracting people to you. Since these things don’t dry up and blow away with advancing age (thanks, Blanche DuBois), it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“the conflicting ideological identifications (race, class, religion, etc.) that can fuel this “women hating women.—
J, my contention is that race, class, religion, etc are all symptoms of patriarchy, which may be defined as not just as “male supremacy” or “dominant culture” but (most accurately) as “universal paradigm predicated on dominance and submission.” I describe in the FAQ that this paradigm encompasses a hierarchy with white dudes at the top and women of color at the bottom (although I need to amend that bottom rung to “children of color;” my latest observations suggest that children are the most oppressed class on the planet, and I’m currently ruminating on how this contingency causes patriarchy to reproduce itself); within that matrix there are instances in which some women have higher status than some men, depending on the class associations you list, and some men of color have higher status than other men of color, and some white guys have higher status than other white guys. But the concept of “status” itself exists merely because everyone has agreed that — never mind, I’m turning this into a post. To be continued.
Just a quick interjection to explain why these women probably rushed in the first place: DePauw is in a very small, semi-rural town, and there is very little off-campus housing, and virtually no social life for students off-campus (unless they want to drive an hour to one of the two major cities).
So the Greek system is the heart of the campus; I believe something like three-quarters of the student population is in a frat or sorority (and that’s including freshfolk). It used to be worse - a few decades ago 90% of students went Greek, and the social repercussions for offending members of the system were horrendous. (I recall one woman whose biological sister offended some sorority or other, and so when she herself came to campus, she was shunned by the sorority and by the fraternity most closely associated with it; when she ended up dating a man from that fraternity, he had to pay fines for doing so!)
So I don’t blame those young women for rushing; I’m more appalled that, practically speaking, one doesn’t have much of a choice about going Greek at DePauw.
I wonder the extent to which women seem to comply with the patriarchy, as these sorority women have, is due to, not merely misogyny, but the self-loathing that is the result of being raised to despise the class to which you were born? In other words, being a female having been raised to regard the female as the inferior, it’s difficult to be female and ambitious without internalizing the misogyny message.
Thanks so much for this post, Twisty. It’s timely for more reasons than just he DePauw sorority incident.
I would not be acceptable because I’m too smart. I used to cringe when I was labeled the “smart girl.” Ouch!
I joined a coed service fraternity instead. I met a great group of people who participated in community service projects. We also had fun partites. I recommend a service organization to other young women in college. It also looks good on your resume (IMHO, more impressive than a social organization).
I don’t understand fraternities and sororities. They don’t really exist in Canada (except in a few places). They seem both patriarchal and antiquated. Sorta like daughters of the american revolution…
I love the discussion generated by Twisty’s comment “When women hate women, it is only men hating women by proxy.†Thanks to you all for a mentally stimulating and emotionally vitalized morning.
My metaphorical take on patriarchy is that it is the sea we swim in, but it is getting pretty polluted, so we better evolve the capability to escape and create an alternate reality — and women are best suited to do this because we are the ones most poisoned by patriarchal pollution.
But to become motivated enough, we need to become aware of the sea and its pollution. We need to raise our consciousness(es). So, to turn to Scratchy’s lobster pot analogy which points out that attempting to crawl out is not easy, I would point out that those lobsters who stay in get their goose cooked, and those who manage to crawl out survive — and perhaps provide a bridge for others to crawl across. I think Scratchy is absolutely right in describing anti/non-patriarchal actions (crawling out of the pot/sea) as vitalizing. They point the way to survival.
Like Scratchy, I have found that making myself aware of my emotional reactions to a given situation (am I feeling vitalized or depressed?) has been an extremely valuable guide in helping me identify the many faces of misogyny in our culture and have often prevented me from colluding with it. Blogs like this one make me feel good because they are truly consciousness raising.
So, even though our actions may be dictated by patriarchy because we are reacting to patriarchy, it is at least a step in the right (left?) direction. I think the idea of some sort of completely free (human?) agency is a snare and a delusion. For that matter, we don’t even know what “human” is, as it, like everything else, has been defined by patriarchy to mean male. That is, those characteristics usually defined as human are associated with male humans (as male is defined by patriarachy, that is.) I guess that’s enough of that.
Perhaps it has something to do with patriarchy’s demand that women produce as many offspring as possible?
Fascinating discussion, and damn, I’ve got to go to work. Let’s see how quickly I can write.
Lately I’ve been pondering this:
Patriarchy = human culture
Definition of “human” depends, in part, on a definition of “nature”
Patriarchy is destroying/may have already destroyed nature
Hmmmm. This fits in nicely with the notion that every system contains an element that cannot be contained within the system, which, I believe, has been proven in mathematics and in the Matrix film trilogy.
It implies that we’ll have to wait ’til “human” goes away before we get rid of “patriarchy.” But we’ve already waited a long, long, time. And doesn’t it feel like the end is near?
Hi all,
I LOVE this blog and agree with just about everything I’ve read herein. I just had to comment on this topic as it makes me especially angry to see young women (for whom the hard line feminists of the 1960s and 1970s fought a long and difficult battle to gain reproductive freedom, educational opportunities and better lives all the way around) tossing their hard-won gifts away like so many pearls before swine, (the swine in this case being the fraternity/patriarchy). It’s too bad there isn’t a Betty Friedan or two out there these days to enlighten these young women as to what things were like in the bad old days and what they have to lose (quite a lot) if they continue to suck up to the patriarchy (figuratively and literally in some cases) without making a better effort to develop their own minds and inner qualities. Kudos to those girls who were kicked out of the sororities, now they will be able to use their God given intelligence to better their lives and the lives of those around them instead of painting their faces and starving their bodies in hopes of becoming some Greek idiot’s trophy wife.
Twisty, you ROCK!!! :)
Best wishes from bookyone :)
“But the concept of “status†itself exists merely because everyone has agreed that — never mind, I’m turning this into a post. To be continued.”
Yes. I’ll be very interested to read it. I will be especially interested in how you address the arguement that “sex” is as much a socially constructed (and in a certain sense chosen) status as much as race, gender, religion, age (as in categories like child or adult, not numerical age) and so forth.
Twisty said, “But the concept of ’status’ itself exists merely because everyone has agreed that — never mind, I’m turning this into a post.”
Not to trample on Twisty’s impending post, but, yes, this is it exactly. This is why it’s so hard to talk about the patriarchy, let alone to do anything about it. “Status” comes from agreement, but the basis of the agreement is faulty. The patriarchy isn’t merely a system that oppresses women, it is a symptom of a pathological system of thought, which system is characterized by false dichotomies, artificial hierarchies, and primitive linear thinking. Everything that we think of as being a “natural” dichotomy or hierarchy is in fact entirely constructed: food chains, segregated restrooms, kids’ meals, private property, human vs. animal, city vs. country, homelessness, marriage, classification of species, yin and yang, profit, fences, vocational vs. college prep, weed killer, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
One might say that these hierarchies and classifications are necessary, but that’s only because we are all so steeped in this this-or-that, us-or-them nonsense that we can’t see past it. Maybe the ability to divide the world into “good” and “bad” was at one time a helpful survival skill, but it’s an extraordinarily poor thinking skill. It’s an imposition of human needs and human values on the non-human world. Shockingly, the rest of the world exists for its own purposes, not for ours, and each human exists for her own purposes, not for society’s. Why don’t we look at commonalities rather than differences? Why should society have a hierarchical shape, rather than any other shape? Don’t accept the answer that it’s “natural.” “Natural” is just another way of saying “I don’t know.” Nothing in society is “natural.” It’s not “natural” to wear clothes or drive cars or brush our teeth, but here we are. Neither should we accept any argument about hierarchies in animal groups, either. We are animals, but we are reasonable animals. What is the reason that a man should be “higher” than a woman? What is the meaningful difference between a man and a woman? There is none, and there’s no reason for any other hierarchy or dichotomy, either.
“The problem with the above analysis is that if we are all ‘in it’ (patriarchy) then we surely cannot talk about it. We are, after all ‘it’.”
Yes and no. My point is that, if patriarchy is the over-arching ideological system, then you face the problem (or rather, the impossibility) of getting outside of it to speak “objectively” about it. So, one option is to junk that idea and accept a decentered role to patiarchy. If “it” isn’t the ultimate “it”
Twisty brings up how her view of patriarchy is a bit more general than simply a system of suboridination between men and women, but of dominance and submission period. This is interesting, and I’d like to see how she develops it. It reminds me of, as spoken through a lens of psychoanalysis, the buddhist problem of ever having anything we desire, where the flawed method for practically everyone has to been to create a personal fantasy of dominance of everything.
In this sense, our infantile experience of getting what we want seemingly as our desire for it arises (a questionable premise, I know), what Lacan calls the Imaginary, without having to use language to ask, forms the basis of our flawed grasping for dominance. Because once we learn to talk, and our desires become mitigated by this maddening requirement to ask and hope our requests are satisfied, we embark on a quest doomed from the start to regain that original sense of satisfaction. This leads to a hierarchy of domination within the symbolic order (primarily based in language), which then generates social forms of domination, like patriarchy, racism, etc.
My second option will have to come later today, though it already is constituted from the above paragraph, Foucault’s reasoning that ideology and discourse at fundamentally on our bodies and not simply our minds, and the use of “practice” in the idea of “buddhist practice.”
My previous comment is still hung up in moderation. Oh, well.
Robert Jordan wrote a series of books called the Wheel of Time, and in it he described some people as having fate direct their actions. They were imbeded in the fabric of time but were acted apon from outside forces to complete the necessary threads by which their lifes directed.
This follows reality in quite an interesting way, in such that certain people regardless of their ability to see the patriarchy, they directly and purposely are acted apon to conform. Others such as Twisty, those in this thread and myself see these threads and can see the effect they have on those around us, and inso doing have become resistant to the pull of the patriarchy.
Something in our past, or present setout of reality so harshly that it’s pushed our reality away from the fabric. We can feel the pull, and we can point to instances where this pull is so great it brings with it our most feared oppression. Otheres have experienced this in greater or lesser degrees but it’s there none the less. It’s directing a great number of people. Call it fate, or call it something else, but it’s definately there.
Twisty happens to be one of those people that fate has chosen to wrap around and events just happen around her whether she notices them or not, the ripples are sent out wards and are felt by those who recognize the same things she speaks about.
If you have read the Wheel of Time, it’s familiar in SO many ways that it scares me sometimes. Robert Jordan just doesn’t realize that what he is speaking of is something else entirely.
Still others are able to pull on the fabric and change it. Their whole lives change the fabric and change the way it moves.
I had something going, and lost my train of though forgive me, I am bowing out now. hehe
I like to look at things from an economic perspective: who benefits economically from a cultural arrangement?
I was going to say that those brainy math-and-engineering sorority members would have the last laugh, as being presumably more able to contribute financially to the organization in middle to later life. Woe betide the sorority that kicks out too many of those gals!
But then I remembered that patriarchy confers economic rewards on sexbot sisters — and, with near total control of society’s overall financial resources in the hands of patriarchy’s minions, these economic benefits are likely to be far in excess of anything a mere electrical engineer could conjure during her working lifetime.
Sexay women land the resource-controlling men; sexay women can donate more patriarchal dollars to the organization. It follows that if the organization can recruit sexay-er sisters into the Ponzi scheme — it will win big.
Forget “cherchez la femme”; follow the money!
Thanks for this post, Twisty. Been frothing at the mouth with sudden onset rabies a lot lately; appreciate your coherence and wit today even more than usual.
“When women hate women, it is only men hating women by proxy.â€
Twisty, you are brilliant.
This has made me reflect on all the woman-on-woman mean-ness I have witnessed (and suffered) over the years. Petty situations: the “older” secretary who would constantly “lose” my work orders when I was a young dept. head. Stupid stuff. Old chicks vs. younglings. Cute chicks vs. “uglies”… When women hate women, they are battling for scraps.
Long-time reader, one-time poster. I’ve been lurking and chewing over what I’ve been learning.
The below-linked letter to The Depauw, the Depauw student newspaper, contains a defense of the national sorority that basically illustrates, again, how the patriarchy operates. Somewhat awkwardly I note that the defender of the sorority system is - no surprise - a man who doesn’t have any investment in or right to speak out on sorority issues. The letter’s worth reading, however, just to see how well the theory of patriarchy explains and predicts its actual practices.
http://media.www.thedepauw.com/media/storage/paper912/news/2007/02/27/Opinion/Letter.To.The.Editor.Dz.Coverage.Not.Balanced-2745369.shtml
What’s worse, I’m smitten with remorse and shame at the woman-on-woman meanness I’ve been responsible for in the past.
“If women can only hate women because these feelings originate in men (aka The Patriarchy), it seems problematic to say that non-misogynistic values (feminist values) don’t also come from The Patriarchy. The ideological dog-collar that makes it possible that when “women hate women, it is only men hating women by proxy†necessarily predicates all female agency, over which other people have shown a concern.”
A hating B for cutting him/her off on the highway is different from A hating B because B is female, gay, black and/or not acting in ways approved by the male-devised, and male-benefiting patriarchy. In the latter case we can say that “when women hate women, it is only men hating women by proxy.”
Anyway, in neither case is anyone’s agency denied. Just because something is induced by the patriarchy doesn’t mean it is determined by the patriarchy. And living within the patriarchy definitely makes it more difficult to acknowledge, critique and erode the patriarchy, but it doesn’t make it impossible. Just as living in polluted waters may make it more difficult to see and change the pollution, but not impossible. Feminism is an example of resistance to the patriarchy. In the sense that feminism is a response to patriarchy, it “comes from” patriarchy. In this sense justice comes from crime, light comes from dark, etc. However, it does not mean that feminism is conducive to the patriarchy or vice versa, any more than crime and justice are conducive to each other.
Betsy said “I like to look at things from an economic perspective: who benefits economically from a cultural arrangement? I was going to say that those brainy math-and-engineering sorority members would have the last laugh, as being presumably more able to contribute financially to the organization in middle to later life. …But then I remembered that patriarchy confers economic rewards on sexbot sisters …Sexay women land the resource-controlling men; sexay women can donate more patriarchal dollars to the organization.”
I disagree. For one thing, the math/engineering members might be sexay too. Even assuming the dichotomy that you suggest, I think the smart woman would have more economic rewards than her sexay sister, because she wouldn’t be dependent on a man. Any man who picked someone just because of sexay would transfer her out for a younger model, leaving her economically vulnerable. The smart ones can make their own money. I was at a nerdy dorm in college — at my school, pretty much all dorms were — and some of my female college friends, some married and some single, control mucho resources irrespective of any men in their lives.
The same thing happened to my sorority at Duke. Since this is my first post, I should probably defend my decision to even join a sorority. I didn’t want to join one. I didn’t even do that silly “rush” thing until I actually had to recruit new members myself (and trust me, I did not have a good time at that either). But I happened to fall in with a bunch of cool women who (for the most part) didn’t buy into the Greek beauty system and were interested in forming a real female sisterhood. The group was actually still reeling from the fall out of accepting the first openly gay member the year before. For me, that was one of the reasons I joined, thinking that an inclusive group like that was worth being a part of. Little did I know that our National organization was not nearly as happy with the strong, supportive, intelligent sisterhood we put together. I’ll never forget one of the first meetings with our national rep who suggested we wear bows in our hair to help our image and boost our recruit numbers because we were falling behind. We didn’t have housing (no sororities at Duke do), so I still can’t figure out why we had to have a certain number of members to begin with. Shouldn’t a sisterhood consist of people who enjoy spending time together? How can you put a number on that or even recruit through some arbitrary rush process? Anyway, we all showed up to the next meeting with the most hideous bows you can imagine. The look on our rep’s face was priceless. In the end, our National decided to do the same thing as the sorority in the article. They gave us all alumna status and recruited a “beautiful, popular” freshman legacy candidate to restart the chapter in the right mould. I’m still proud of one of the three recruits we got the last year who had the guts to look our National president in the face and say “Bullshit”. Now, that’s someone who fit in! Needless to say, we were devestated that they pulled our charter. Luckily, our relationships were based on more than the stupid rituals of the sorority and more on the fact that we really liked being with each other. In the end, we didn’t miss the sorority except that structure of meeting regularly and holding group events helps keep people together amidst busy lives. I still consider those women my sisters but would never dream of calling myself a member of that national group. I still get the alumna magazines and try to throw them away before anyone sees them.
Blue95–thanks for sharing that story–I am still giggling imagining the bowes on y’alls heads. Tee hee.
Shouldn’t a sisterhood consist of people who enjoy spending time together? How can you put a number on that or even recruit through some arbitrary rush process?
This highlights the truth about the sorority system–it is a competition, not a community. Even worse, it is corporate, so numbers and quality control are key. And they must be a “quality product” or they will be shuffled out the back door.
Once again, the woman is both the product and the exploited worker.
Just another tired commodification of women, worse than most because it’s women reinforcing other women to follow the patriarchal norms or suffer real world penalties; financial, social and academic.
Kali: Thank you for your post: That is exactly what I was getting at, but couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Octogalore, great point. I was aware in writing the post that someone could be both brainy and a sexbot (though it still is the case that every hour a woman dedicates to making herself over in the image of the patriarchy is an hour less to excel in studies, or accomplish anything else worth while), and it did give me hesitation.
My illustration was inexact and the objections you raise seem valid. I’d only say, the greater point I was trying to make is this: It’s worth looking at the way resources flow through a system. It’s worth examining how the patriarchy and its participants ensure that a greater proportion of resources flow to itself (versus to dissenting persons, life patterns, and social systems).
Ecosystems biologists trace the flow of energy through an ecological system; how does the flow of resources through our social system support and perpetuate the patriarchy? what steps does it take to ensure that dissenters are disadvantaged economically? how does it arrogate resources to itself?
Insert analogy to cancer cells here; I have ventured far enough afield.
Thank you Twisty. You are brilliant and an inspiration for novice blamers like me.
Betsy–Context is all, and your analogy works perfectly in the context of this article, where “smart” students are punished (at a college! the mind reels!) for not being sexy enough and the sexbots are rewarded for being less scholarly.
You hit it on the head with “follow the money and see who benefits.”
(though it still is the case that every hour a woman dedicates to making herself over in the image of the patriarchy is an hour less to excel in studies, or accomplish anything else worth while),
Yes. Where you put your energy determines what you make manifest in your life. This sorority’s insistence on enforced compliance with arbitrary female beauty standards keeps women focused on trying to please someone outside themselves for their approval, affection, status and even livelihood.
It is particularly self-defeating in this case because the dictates of sexbot-hood are diametrically opposed to the dictates of scholarship and intellectual inquiry.
We could write it off with a headshaking, except that once again, real women are encountering real dangers due to compulsory femininity.
PS the “sexy and smart” engineer isn’t neccessarily going to be “dependent on a man”–why should she be?
Insert analogy to cancer cells here;
Blame it, sister.
Betsy said “Ecosystems biologists trace the flow of energy through an ecological system; how does the flow of resources through our social system support and perpetuate the patriarchy? what steps does it take to ensure that dissenters are disadvantaged economically? how does it arrogate resources to itself?”
Interesting. I agree, there are many ways in which patriarchy ensures (or tries to) its continuation through resource flow. I think if we reach an equilibrium in the ecosystem in which an equal number of women are economically independent from men as vice versa, a number of other more advanced issues will, if not fall into place, at least resolve into a less oppressive dynamic. Patriarchy definitely benefits from different factions stemming from different schools of feminist thought being at war with one another and less focused on the common goals.
Here are the NY times letters to the editor responding to this story. The last one, by a guy, is particularly interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/opinion/l27sorority.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
“If you are within an ideological system, and you want to resist that system, is your resistence something you really generate apart from the ideological system, or is your resistence always already determined from within? In other words, is there an extra- or non-ideological vantage point we or anyone can claim, from which some True and Undistorted view can be expressed?â€
Yes, it’s called schizophrenia.
Well, people do call us crazy.
I’m looking forward to Twisty’s future post alluded to above. Race, class, religion and status are all socially constructed, but I cannot go there with J who seems to be saying that sex is just as socially constructed.
We’ve been through the femininity thing (redux), and I accept that the way gender is defined is socially constructed, but blood, birth and lactating breasts are not mere constructions. Bitey is right that there are artificial hierarchies that are oppressive, but to say that nothing is natural is oversimplifying.
If we really want to get rid of misogynistic ideologies, I suggest we start with Marx, Lacan, and Foucault who cared little and understood less about the uniqueness of women’s oppression.
Regarding the forthcoming (and eagerly awaited) post on children, and in response to Vera, I would suggest that the patriarchy appears to have different demands/rewards/punishments for breeding based on the race of the woman. (or that different patriarchies place different demands? or that other things besides patriarchy make demands?)
Octogalore — It *does* open up a whole new world when you start looking at it in terms of energy flow (resource flow, or economics) — at least, it did for me. (I like your hypothesis about equilibrium. I wonder if there is a situation somewhere on which we could test it!)
Re: the economics of patriarchy — I have my feminist law professor to thank for opening this particular window for me. Now I see a lot of things in terms of how law & policy place additional resources in the hands of the Patriarchy-obedient.
For example, I have this little idea that the real reason we won’t calm down and just enact a sensible national health insurance plan is that it would remove a major remaining incentive for women to marry breadwinner males: that is, they often come with health insurance.
Interestingly (and tending to bear out my theory), the benefit only accrues to those who emulate the patriarchal ideal as closely as possible. Working-class males don’t often have health insurance. Thus, if you’re acting as a *rational* fembot, you seek out white-collar, high-earning, breadwinner types: the top of the patriarchal heap.
Thus, from a resource/economics viewpoint, “availability of health benefits” (the resource in question) is linked both to “high-class employment” and “marital status” (the social systems in question) in a way that helps to perpetuate multiple patriarchal ideals:
– it tilts women’s choices in mate selection toward top-ranking males, and away from black/poor/blue-collar males;
– it ties women’s well-being to their continuing attachment to a male, tilting their investments in relationships toward men, and away from other women;
– it links women’s well-being to their continuing attachment to a male SPOUSE specifically (since you can’t get health insurance from your brother), thus tending to focus women’s investment in social attachment on romantic relationships (rather than say, investing in long-term friendship, or sibling attachment, or committing to any other household paradigm than a heteronormative one);
– it ties children’s well-being to their mother’s continuing ability to please a male spouse, thus leveraging the strength of the mother-child bond in the service of the wife-husband bond; …
I’d go on, but it’s late, and I think I could spend half a lifetime discussing the patriarchal incentives within other examples — from social security survivor’s benefits, to child care tax credits, to unemployment insurance.
Betsy – great example on health insurance. That makes a lot of sense. Not only does the limited access through workplace put a premium on white collar (and predominantly white) guys, but also a premium on full-timers, who are a higher percentage male than the male percentage of the entire workforce.
I think the economic independence equilibrium idea fits in there, as it would render irrelevant such motives and maybe, if your hypothesis is correct, remove a key obstacle to universal healthcare. I really think this is the key step that will then lead to a significant lowering of oppression in all the more nuanced ways that we often debate here, such as femininity requirements. If women had equal access to the power aphrodisiac, we wouldn’t be so dependent on the femininity one.
“(I like your hypothesis about equilibrium. I wonder if there is a situation somewhere on which we could test it!)â€
I can’t think of any statistically sound ways to test it, but maybe families or small communities are a way to get a peek. In families I know in which the woman has economic independence (the ideal, of course, is equal or greater economic power), there does seem to be a more equal balance of power in matters of financial decisions, housework, childcare, sex, etc. There also seems to be more of a balance in terms of age, expectations of one another vis a vis appearance, and other issues that are typically unbalanced in a patriarchy. Of course, this is flawed because my analysis is only anecdotal and also these families are within a context of the patriarchy in which the norm is different from their example. So they are still plagued with some patriarchal elements. But it’s a start.
How to get there is a different topic, of course.
whoa, this whole “inside vs. outside” the patriarchy debate is so Hegelian it hurts, but I’m not the person to describe how… I’m sending my Hegel scholar friend over here so she can have a whack at it.
But pathetically bare bones, what I’m talking about is:
If Thesis=patriarchy, our Antithesis=feminism, what’s the Synthesis?
If there were no patriarchy, there would be no feminism, because there would be no dialectic partner for it.
Or something. Does a fish know it’s in the water? That’s the other version of the question being asked. I don’t know about the fish, but I’m pretty damn sure I know I’m drowning in my environment.
“though it still is the case that every hour a woman dedicates to making herself over in the image of the patriarchy is an hour less to excel in studies, or accomplish anything else worth while…”
Exactly, but as you said and others said, many women still see the rewards of making a good ‘catch’ far more stable than tending toward intellectual or skill development to acquire independent earnings.
I see the economic path as the large vein that runs through the entire system, it is indeed a large part of what keeps the structure in place.
“Not only does the limited access through workplace put a premium on white collar (and predominantly white) guys, but also a premium on full-timers, who are a higher percentage male than the male percentage of the entire workforce.”
This is certainly something seen only in one context. Working class women strive to find guaranteed earners, but not necessarily white collar earners. The division of class is so distinct that rarely do women or men move upward in class and most often it is women who have the best chance and only then, by virture of offering themselves as probably trophy wives, who must either be taught to navigate through their new cultural system, or at least keep quiet so as to not expose themselves. Said exposure can quickly move one back down to where they started, or freeze them from moving further forward. Anyway, working class women do in fact find their own traditional bread winners. Why the hell do you think the trades are still male dominated?
When we speak of whether women have agency, that is have a choice as to whether to engage in the patriarchy and to what degree, we cannot ignore economics. Economic oppression has been the heart and soul of oppression of women and still the threat of falling downward on the heirarchy serves to keep many women compliant.
I would think that agency is indeed an individual development as experiences among women vary widely. Some women pick up peices of independence from older women, some as a reaction to extreme direct oppression and others from formal education. ALso, in each type of learning experience, a different angle of observation is taken, which is easily done in when we’re talking about a social system as all encompassing as patriarchy.
So therefore, when a woman I may have worked with for an entire year on feminist issues and shared with me mutual disgust at the patriarchy, turns to me one day and proclaims, “You aren’t the high maintenance type, you know, not feminine.” can say this without flinching at all. I mean, not only was she wrong in her assumption, but her willingness to define my women quality based on some artifical construct of something which she claimed all along to be aware of and disgusted with made no sense to me. But later, it did.
I would think that those whose entire construct of self orginates from a paradigm which from the start labels them as evil, is going to have some conflict along the way of coming to terms with herself as a woman, clean and free of original sin.
Betsy: excellent example of the US health insurance imbroglio. I am the patriarchy’s poster child, their Look What Happens If You Don’t Follow The Rules negative role model that they wave like a flag to keep other women in their place. I dared to be gleefully single, to quit a high-paying job that I loathed, to turn 50 and to have a few pre-existing conditions that caused my individual health insurance premiums to skyrocket beyond my means. And then WHAM! Just like they warned, just like everybody’s worst nightmare, I was diagnosed with stage IV cancer and lost everything I’d worked for all my life. And yet, you know what? If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t do a damn thing different. Especially not marriage.
It would be interesting to know how many people in the US, women and men, stay in miserable marriages and/or jobs they hate just because they can’t afford to lose the health insurance. Tightening the reins of access t