Читать книгу Faith Born of Seduction - Jennifer L Manlowe - Страница 9

Because I use the term patriarchy throughout this book, it is important that I first define it. I see patriarchy as

a familial-social, ideological, political system in which men—by force, direct pressure, or through ritual, tradition, law, and language, customs, etiquette, education, and the division of labor, determine what part women shall or shall not play, and in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male. It does not necessarily imply that no woman has power, or that all women in a given culture may not have certain powers. . . . The power of the fathers has been difficult to grasp because it permeates everything, even the language in which we try to describe it.¹⁰

If we read newspapers or popular magazines, go to the movies, look at how we allocate money for military spending as opposed to social programs and how we treat our natural resources such as earth, air, and water, it becomes clear that our system seeks domination. I believe there is a gendered quality to such destructiveness.

In North America, statistics of murder, rape, and incest are decidedly skewed toward the victimization of females. Over 150,000 females die each year of anorexia, which takes more lives than the AIDS virus.¹¹ In addition, one cannot help but wonder if the federal government’s cutting of seven billion dollars from food stamp programs is evidence that women are undervalued, since 85 percent of the recipients of food stamps in the United States are women and children.¹² In many parts of the world, cultural and religious tradition dictates that women are second-class citizens, and they should not question their status—men eat first, are educated first, and make decisions for women.¹³ As feminist philosopher Mary Daly notes,

All of the so-called religions legitimating patriarchy are mere sects subsumed under its vast umbrella/canopy. They are essentially similar, despite variations. . . . And the symbolic message of the sects of the religion which is patriarchy is this: Women are the dreaded anomie. Consequently, women are the objects of male terror, the projected personifications of “The Enemy,” the real objects under attack in all the wars of patriarchy.¹⁴

Because patriarchy assigns a secondary position to women, it creates a hierarchy, in which human value is determined by gender, race, class, position, religion, age, appearance, ethnic background, and physical ability.¹⁵ Thus it promotes the death of jouissance (where the pleasure of one is the pleasure of the other), because diversity is lost and people are rendered as objects.¹⁶ And an object is easier to abuse. Most of all, patriarchy has maintained the subordination of women for five thousand years, through manipulation, violence, exclusion from decision-making groups, and economic deprivation. Patriarchy is an ideology and a practice that is invested in keeping women and minorities immersed in self-hatred and apathy. As great numbers of women have bonded together to assume self-determination and equal rights in the past three decades, there has been a terrible backlash¹⁷—a virtual guerrilla war on women, including higher incidents than ever of rape, incest, battering, control of reproductive rights, pornography,¹⁸ and the feminization of poverty.¹⁹