Throughout history, mankind
has always relied on a rigid patriarchal system, where men always lead while
women were relegated to just follow. This arrogance of men is shown throughout
history from ancient times where women weren't even considered citizens to even
the early 1900s in the U.S where women still couldn't vote, to now where in the
U.S we still haven't had a woman president yet. A patriarchal system is a
societal structure controlled and dominated by men. A patriarchal system
enthralls itself on the belief that men should have more power over women in
all aspects of society ranging from politics and economics to cultural norms
and religion. To get a better understanding of how patriarchy functions we can
look at Bell Hooks book “The Will to Change” where she defines patriarchy as:
“A political-social system
that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything
and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right
to dominate and rule over the weak and
the maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological
terrorism and violence.” (Hooks 18).
The most profound aspect of
patriarchy mentioned by Hooks is how patriarchy is maintained in society.
Patriarchy relies on psychological and physical violence to keep women in
check, restricting their freedom physically but also mentally preventing women
from reaching the same elevated power men have. Hooks also gives an example of
the physical violence within patriarchy through her own account when she was a
little girl who didn’t want to stop playing with marbles a “boys” game her dad
acted and Hooks recalls:
“Dad intervened to tell me
to stop. I did not listen. His voice grew louder and louder. Then suddenly he
snatched me up, broke a board from our screen door, and began to beat me with
it, telling me, ‘You’re just a little girl. When I tell you to do something, I
mean for you to do it.’He beat me and he beat me, wanting me to acknowledge
that I understood what I had done.” (Hooks 20-21).
As seen in Hooks own
experience the idea of patriarchy is established at a young age and even more
horrifying is some of the methods to maintain that ideology through violence
against your own blood. To bring even more context to Hooks’ own story, her
brother and mother just watched idly almost accepting what the father was doing
was right. This is so striking because it reveals how so engraved patriarchy is
in our society so that even violence to maintain patriarchy is considered
almost a social norm and something even more important than your own family. To
show how powerfully engraved patriarchy is in our society Hooks mentions a
story of a man, Terrence Real, who raises his sons in an anti-patriarchal way
for the betterment of them, but this is to no avail when Hooks reveals that
even Real couldn’t protect his son from a patriarchal system by saying:
“(Terrence Real) He tells of
how his young son Alexander enjoyed dressing as Barbie until boys playing with
his older brother witnessed his Barbie persona and let him know by their gaze
and their shocked, disapproving silence that his behavior was unacceptable.”
(Hooks 22)
Even with Real raising his
sons in an anti-patriarch way, society as a whole looks down upon as seen when
one of his sons dressed as Barbie and is put down for it. This story reveals
how patriarchy is so engraved in a society that it's not only an accepted norm
a young age to follow a patriarchal system, but actively going against such a
system puts you at a disadvantage in life and forces oneself to follow the
system or be ridiculed and ostracized.
Another aspect of
patriarchy that has always been accepted as normal due to patriarchy is the
idea of the male gaze. The male gaze is the heterosexual male perspective,
usually a perspective filled with objectifying and belittling women. A simple
and meaningful definition of the male gaze can be summed up by John Berger in
his book “The Will to Change” where he defines the male gaze as:
“One might simplify this by saying: men act and women
appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This
determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation
of women to themselves. The surveyor of women in herself is male: the surveyed
female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object
of vision: a sight.” (Berger 47).
This definition of the male gaze correlates perfectly with the
entire idea of patriarchy where men act and women. The power of the male gaze
lies within its idea of belittling women and objectifying them taking away
their humanity, basically turning them into an object that men control, which
lines up with the foundation of patriarchy. Another important aspect of the
male gaze is also the pleasure for the spectator which Berger mentions:
“She is not naked as she is. She is naked as the spectator sees
her.” (Berger 50).
Berger reveals that the male gaze isn’t only a tool to just
degrade women to objects, but must also serve men for their pleasure. This can
be seen in the painting “Susannah and the Elders” where Susannah is pictured
taking a bath while the elders are spying on her. This painting is so provoking
because it no only shows the male gaze in the perspective of the elders but
also the male gaze within the spectator as Susannah looks back at the spectator
acknowledging that yes we are also spying on her and viewing her as an object
for our desires. One of the most striking things about the male gaze is just
how normalized and even at times justified in society thanks to a patriarchal
system. The male gaze itself objectifies women making them view themselves as
an object as well, which some may think is normal to feel like thanks a
patriarchal society. The impact the male gaze not only makes women make them
feel like an object but forces them to try and live up to the perspective of
men or otherwise be put in their place if they act out against it.
Even though patriarchy
still exist combined with the male gaze, strides have been made to change our
society and one aspect of these strides leads to the female gaze. The female
gaze focuses on empowering women while also giving women their own perspective.
The female gaze is still a growing perspective that not only gives women power
but also allows for a change in a patriarchal society, the female gaze allows
women to express what they see and how they picture it, which was never really
considered or even deemed important due to patriarchy and the male gaze. The
existence of the female gaze is a good sign for society because it allows for
what most people want to happen nowadays which is equality for all no matter
race, sex, sexual preference, etc..
Work Cited
Berger, John. Ways of
Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books. 1972.
Print.
Hooks, Bell. "Understanding
Patriarchy." The Will to Change. Atria Books: 2004.
https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-the-male-gaze-mean-and-what-about-a-female-gaze-52486
https://organizingchange.org/patriarchy-persists-can-change/
http://www.aaulens.com/ph-692/2017/9/13/male-gaze-in-contemporary-art
https://www.thoughtco.com/patriarchal-society-feminism-definition-3528978
https://feminisminindia.com/2018/10/10/letter-daughter-patriarchy-privilege/
http://www.aaulens.com/ph-692/2017/9/13/male-gaze-in-contemporary-art
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