Patriarchy

Patriarchy is the seemingly ubiquitous system of sexbased oppression that is incorporated throughout society. It refers to the power differential between men and women in society that allows men to dominate and control women. It is not the unanticipated consequence of capitalism or some other social arrangement but rather a purposeful system held in place by those who are reaping the benefits of its unjust systematic abuse of women.

Several types of feminism have grappled with the issue of patriarchy. Psychoanalytic feminists believe that all men everywhere are responsible for enforcing patriarchy in their daily lives and that women do little to challenge them. This branch of feminism offers two reasons for the dilemma. First, they posit that men strive to maintain the system because they fear death. Women do not have such an intense fear of death because they are more closely linked to the process of reproduction and life-giving. This causes men to try to control the reproductive abilities of women and women themselves to try to create objects that will immortalize them (monuments, belief systems, nuclear bombs, etc.) and to distance themselves as far as possible from signs of their own mortality (sexuality, disease, birth, etc.).

The second explanation for patriarchy put forth by psychoanalytic feminists is related to the experiences of early childhood personality formation. They assume that people are forever attempting to balance (but never quite can) their own quest for individualism with the need to belong to something larger than themselves. They also assume that the earliest, and most crucial, stages of emotional development occur primarily with the mother figure (whether the biological mother or not is irrelevant). At these early stages, especially prior to the formation of linguistic skills, infants are dependent upon the mother for happiness as well as frustrated and angered by her punishment or lack of cooperation in satisfying desires. Infants have ambivalent feelings toward the father figure since he is only an occasional being with whom they have interaction and on whom they rarely depend to satisfy some need. This causes males to grow up and use women for emotional fulfillment and to also seek to manipulate them for their own satisfaction.

[Page 556]Women grow up with ambivalent feelings about themselves as women and seek to reenact the role of mother with their male counterparts. Hence, psychoanalytic feminism explains patriarchy as rooted in the anxious energy exerted by men out of fear of their own death as well as their ambivalent feelings toward their mothers. Women are not inclined to oppose the system because they lack a similar emotional energy to resist.

Radical feminism is another branch of feminist thought that seeks to explain patriarchy. They hold the belief that women everywhere should be valued positively and that women everywhere are violently oppressed by the system of patriarchy. They see patriarchy as the most oppressive system of domination in society, even more so than racism, heterosexism, or class. They believe that patriarchy manifests itself violently throughout society, whether it is through the physical infliction of harm or more ideological violence such as the idealized and nearly unattainable image of the perfect female body, ideas about women's sexuality, practices related to motherhood and pregnancy, or in the devaluing of household labor. Overt physical violence, however, is the most important of these forms to radical feminists. They believe that rape, prostitution, hysterectomies, and other forms of physical violence against women are at the core of patriarchal oppressive practices. Men maintain this system because of the advantages it brings to them. They are able to use women to pass on their genes, do their household labor, and serve as signifiers of their own social status. Radical feminists suggest two strategies for resisting patriarchy. The first is to band together in a “sisterhood” and oppose domination wherever and whenever it is present. The second is to retreat into all female communities. This latter alternative represents the particularly vibrant strand of radical lesbian feminists.

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