Name :Randhir Kumar Gautam

Submitted to : Dr. Arvinder Ansari

Topic : Patriarchy : the oppressive
ideology
Sub: Gender and society
Date : 04-03-2017
Patriarchy :the oppressive ideology
“woman unconsciously yields to the suggestion of a masculine thought”(Honey
,2000)
Ofcourse ideology does not work in the realm of politics but in the domain of patriarchy it works
significantly . ideology is to be understood as the system of representations located in the everyday
practices pf society. Tompson argues ideology is used in the service pf power. In this term paper I
will critical analyse the problem of patriarchy . as we know one of the big obstacle to women’s
empowerment is patriarchy . patriarchy refers to male domination both in public and private sphere.
Sociologist mainly used the term “patriarchy” to describe the power relationships between men and
women . even when I think about male identity I think in terms of male dominance . Think about
masculinity. “masculinity” is the biggest ‘red flag’ when it comes to structural violence. I think
patriarchy exists in the male identity . it is rooted in the concept of masculinity. Empirical studies
tell men are more socially valued. women are always identified in subordination to men’s desire
(Haskel 1999).

Patriarchy is an institutionalised system of male dominance that is expressed in social practices and
corresponding social ideology.since ideology plays an important role in a maintenance of social
stability. That is the social reproduction of society through role-internalization and role-management
. Margaret Mead ,who argues in sex and temperament in three societies (1963) that socialization is
the source of gender-based traits.like all social system ,patriarchy consists of economic,legal, beliefs
and norms . it grants privileges to men and encourage their domination over females. With the
advent of new kind of capitalism ,postmodern patriarchy has recently emerged ,it characterised by
the hyper development pf consumption and change in sexual consumption pattern of relationship.
Patriarchal ideology exaggerates biological differences between men and women, making certain
that men always have the dominant, or masculine, roles and women always have the
subordinate or feminine ones. This ideology is so powerful that “men are usually able to
secure the apparent consent of the very women they oppress”. They do this “through
institutions such as the academy, the church, and the family, each of which justifies and
reinforces women’s subordination to men” (Millett). Patriarchy is also harmful to men (Kamla
Bhasin ,2006) .she argues how men aren’t allowed to cry, how they are supposed to be
protrctors of women as soon as they are born . it is patriarchical mind-set who turns men into
a rapist,assaulter so and so forth.

Patriarchy and conflict

All conflict is patriarchal. It's kind of a shock to think of it that way, but even if you can find some
women soldiers, you don't see any other sort but patriarchal cultures attacking each other. Look
at any conflict happening today and generally the role of a soldier is connected to the beliefs of
what it means to be a man. Patriarchy and militarism go together like peanut butter and
jelly.Sexual reproduction is an objective thing. 'Masculinity' is not an objective thing. The concept
represents the story of what it means to be a man. Nationalism is the same thing. It represents
the story for your role in the social order of your country.

The energy that is put into those ideological systems organizes those systems, and the style of
thinking is perpetuated."Femininity' is also not an objective thing and an equal conspirator in the
perpetuation of the stereotypes of patriarchy. There is homeostasis between these socially
constructed terms, as there is between 'black' and 'white'.
I like to think of socially constructed terms as organisms of the imagination. These ideas come
alive through imagination, and have real consequences in the objective world.Like any system,
the energy put into that system organizes the system.
The concept of god is like that. I don't believe in god, but I see what the concept of god does in
the world. I realize that the concepts of masculinity, femininity, black and white are mostly
imagination, but I see what belief in those things does in the real world.
Those ideas come alive. They transcend centuries in the case of 'black/white', and millennia in
the case of patriarchy.i don't suggest a world in which all people are gender-less, but one that
understands what gender is. It is benign, because it is what we make of it. If our motivations are
benign, the consequence is benign. That's how humanity works.We need to look at these sorts of
concepts and flush out what is arbitrarily untrue, divisive and violent.as we know how patriarchal-
imperialist capitalism created a structurally violent culture .

Women and patriarchy

The category of women does not become useless through deconstruction, but becomes one
whose uses are no longer reified as ‘referents,’ and which stand a chance of being opened up,
indeed, of coming to signify in ways that none of us can predict in advance…it is a critique
without which feminism loses its democratizing potential through refusing to engage – take stock
of and become transformed by – the exclusions which put it into play.(Judith Butler, Bodies That
Matter).

We can think of the ‘category’ of woman not as what it says a woman is, but from what it
excludes a woman from being a Liberation is the elimination of exclusion. The question of what a
woman is cannot be answered until all of the exclusions are eliminated.i think the another way to
say that is we can only know what is real in the absence of stigma.it can be understood by
Social-Constructivism. What a women is in objective reality goes through a ‘transformer’ before
both herself and society perceive her.A transformer in this sense is not electronics, but a
psychological filter, which is how we are taught to see the world and ourselves in the world. It
creates the filter through which we perceive society and ourselves.

The ‘category’ is the transformer of the real into the perceived. Another way to say that is the
social-construct is the transformer of the real into the perceived.Only by removing the
transformer can we know what is real.the Intersubjectivity of this phenomena is that We can also
call the ‘category’ of woman an intersubjective concept: a shared belief that must be mutually
believed in order to exist.

That doesn’t mean women are invisible if you don’t believe in them, but that the concept of
women is something that is determined by society, not reality and not individuals. The ‘category’
is a shared story. That is to a great deal a fictional story. It’s the fiction in the concept that
3obscures reality.i think Whatever unreality is in the female category is in homeostasis with the
unreality of the male category. The entities exist as one dualistic psychological system for
exclusion.

The ideology of patriarchy creates a system of stigma. The same is true for any socially
constructed stigma. We can only know what is real about humanity in the absence of stigma.

Liberation in this context is the elimination of stigma and exclusion. The questions of what is a
women, and what is humanity cannot be answered until stigma and exclusion are eliminated.

Family and patriarchy

THE FAMILY AND THE PERSON You may know someone, perhaps a family member, or
neighbor, or someone at work who will blame you for not making a family in complete disregard
of your right to choose how you will live. I do not think that reproduction is necessarily a choice -
we respond somewhat involuntarily to circumstances, but if we do have a choice and we decide
not to reproduce then our choice is our right. Many believe that reproduction is not a choice but a
duty, that everyone is a slave and must form a family and live in a family, otherwise, they are
somehow harming others! No court in the nation, however, prosecutes anyone for not
reproducing. So, people who insist that you reproduce or marry are tyrants, tyrants who are
treating you as a slave, who believe in slavery. They are imposing a general contract upon you
under their dogmatic belief that they have a right to FORCE you and others to do what they
believe in and in so doing that they may harm you and interfere with you. They reject privacy and
they disturb you and others over the question of reproduction, sex, marriage and family
formation.
They are religious persecutors and they are violent - they wish you harm unless you comply and
enact their version of culture. They believe it is their duty to force others into marriage and
reproduction. Everything they do on this score leads to violence: haunting, shadowing,
monitoring, harassing, intimidation, bullying, menacing, etc. Each person has a right to their own
home where she/he can do what ever they like as long as they do not disturb their neighbors, but
these freaks do not believe that - they object to a person having a home without also having a
wife and child, and they spend their lives disturbing neighbors who do not live in a 'family.' These
are people who find it extremely difficult to accept others as equals in the sense of counting their
viewpoints, ideals, options, preferences, theories or wants as of equal weight One of the big
questions we all have to answer in life is "How should you raise your child?"
At some point during your child's early experience, the child will do something and you will tell
the child that it is wrong. Sooner or later, the child will ask "Why is it wrong?" And, you as a
parent or teacher may respond that there is something like a general contract or agreement that
makes doing that, say stealing or hitting, wrong. The child will then perhaps reply, "But I didn't
sign a contract, nobody asked me to sign a contract, why should I be bound by it?" There is a
general social contract and all children should be asked to consider it - it is composed of duties
and rights and includes how the government makes laws and enforces laws. The duties would
include the agreement to accept the nation's laws, to work, to defend the nation and to change
any laws by democratic negotiation. The rights would include the right to free speech, the right to
legal decision procedures to judge whether someone is guilty or innocent, the right to receive a
fair share of housing, food, money, healthcare, education, housing etc., AND the right to lead
their own lives and do what they want as long as they did not impinge harmfully on other people!
The problem is that we did not freely agree to the social contract nor to any particular contract,
like the institution of marriage or of education. So, we are told that there is a tacit agreement, like
traditions, but the items in these tacit "agreements" are not clear and can mean whatever anyone
who has a knee-jerk reaction wants it to mean. Any of the items in the social contract or the tacit
contracts should therefore be enforced, according to this logic, but they are not enforced
adequately: the right to a trial is denied, guiltiness is presumed without evidence, persecution is
endemic for believing in values that are different from others, like not reproducing or forming a
family - as if this process of family formation does not often require forcing others into it, a
violence, just like the violence of persecuting those who have not formed a family! These are
people who do not see others as equals in any sense; they prefer their own ideals to procedural
justice; they prefer to discomfort others rather than do business, rather than come to terms with
others - they are rebelling whenever they feel like it. Unless they are fought off, directly opposed,
the whole business of justice, negotiation and contract, of law and order, cannot succeed. They
have made up their own rules - that everyone, YOU, must reproduce and form a family, in direct
contradiction to the rules of the society - that each person has certain rights and may choose to
live as they see fit as long as they harm no one. But, these people will harm others for the sake
of their family cause!
I am pointing out here that it has nothing to do with legality, that family formation involves
promising encounters and free choice, and that if it is coerced it is blackmail. The govt however
does incentivize marriage and reproduction, as well as drastically restrict opportunities for family
formation and sex. The divorce laws that require/practice asset splitting is a clear opportunity for
both blackmail and coercion.

So, I really do think that misogyny (patriarchy) is the deepest structure of oppression. In other
words, anarcho-communism (Post-Scarcity anarchism) is simply impossible if we don't embrace
anarcha-/Marxist feminist critiques of society.
This is my effort to fully synthesize "Marxist economics" with "Feminist economics" ("The
personal is political"). (To be clear, there is a distinction between my social scientific framework
(Marxist-Feminist and my political ideology which is anarcho-communist......)This is especially
about the concept of social reproduction in both Marxist and Feminist thinking) through a
confessional biographical vignette.
Methodologically, it is very close to C. Wright Mills' ideas about the relationship between
biography and social structure (what I'm trying to do is build an "integrated social science" model,
that synthesizes both sociology and economics, overcoming the deep fragmentation in social
science due to a dysfunctional division of labour.Furthermore, this is basically an effort to identify
the "causal mechanisms" underlying misogynous preferences amongst significant portions of the
male population (and contra Milton Friedman, sexist preferences can be explained through "good
social science").
Furthermore, it can be read as a full blown critique of the "Rational Expectations" garbage that
Krugman et al. believe is helpful, which in fact it is the part of the problem because it can't
explain "emotional-psychologically driven" preferences. (Krugman depends on the assumption
that preferences are driven by "passions as slave to reason" ("reversing Humean ontology"),
which makes it impossible to understand preferences driven by "reason is the slave to passion"
(actual Hume—what misogyny is really rooted on).
The basic reason why I did this, is that I didn't have any "deep female/male" friends at the time,
who could have challenged my very disturbing assumptions on "female behaviour".
But most males simply can't make such "extreme" ontological conclusions. They want "female
companionship" (experience a degree of existential loneliness without female companionship)
even as they internalize the hatred towards their "mother" and project that hatred onto their
partner (or onto feminism (I think it is classical case of psychological projection. They hate their
("oppressive") mother (but there is a deep prohibition in our culture that prohibits males from
expressing their frustration ("Honour thy Mother" commandment), and they believe Feminists
who are trying to "undermine" crazy patriarchically organized female behaviour as where hatred
is directed at..."I can't hate feminist , bur I can hate those feminists......").
, I experienced a "communist educational experience"—"To each according to one's ability and
to each according to one's need".

Methodologically, it is very close to C. Wright Mills' ideas about the relationship between
biography and social structure (what I'm trying to do is build an "integrated social science" model,
that synthesizes both sociology and economics, overcoming the deep fragmentation in social
science due to a dysfunctional division of labour.
Furthermore, this is basically an effort to identify the "causal mechanisms" underlying
misogynous preferences amongst significant portions of the male population (and contra Milton
Friedman, sexist preferences can be explained through "good social science").
Furthermore, it can be read as a full blown critique of the "Rational Expectations" garbage that
Krugman et al. believe is helpful, which in fact it is the part of the problem because it can't
explain "emotional-psychologically driven" preferences. (Krugman depends on the assumption
that preferences are driven by "passions as slave to reason" ("reversing Humean ontology"),
which makes it impossible to understand preferences driven by "reason is the slave to passion"
(actual Hume—what misogyny is really rooted on).
Until I was 17, I had these very faulty/disturbing assumptions about my mom's behaviour as
"universal". So I experienced my "mom's behaviour" as painful, oppressive, bureaucratic and
authoritarian ("guilt-tripping me all the time", getting angry at me for nothing, and then the next
day apologizing for losing her temper" ("emotions prioritized above reason").
The basic reason why I did this, is that I didn't have any "deep female/male" friends at the time,
who could have challenged my very disturbing assumptions on "female behaviour"
.
Patriarchy imparts intersubjective ideas of gender. -- The key is to be able to have a process by
which we can tell what is objective, and what is intersubjective. And what is postive and benign,
and what is negative.

Constructivist view of Gender.

I'm speaking about transgenderism outside of any consideration of 'choice' . Choice happens in
society. In this view I'm looking at how gender-identity is innate to the body, before any
consideration of society.A general property of the species is that people get a set of needs.

The two significant needs regarding gender issues are the need for love and sexual relations. Those
two concepts connect in the concept of romance. Romance happens on the level of instinct. All
humans need romance, regardless of ones gender. That's our intersection.Follow what evolution is
doing. Evolution creates the body, and body has needs. Needs create instincts, instincts create
desires, desire creates behavior.There's an interplay between companionship and sexual relations
that create romantic relationships. That's all still on the level we share before gender-identity or
sexual biology come into the picture.

The romantic component is the same for all humanity, The logic for romance is universal. The sexual
attraction component is where gender-identity diverges. The logic for sexual attraction is more
complex.Diversity in brain wiring gives us a wide gamut of sexual preferences. The gamut includes
heterosexuality, bisexuality, polyamory, homosexuality, transgenderism etc.

Specific to transgenderism is an innate need to self-identity with the opposite gender. Other wise

.
transgenders have the same universal romantic component All of that happens before any 'choice',
social relations, socialization or conditioning. That's the universal, metaphysical layer of humanity

that is not socially constructed .

Where the socially constructed layer comes in is when people who have the need for romance
emerge in the world.That's where patriarchy plugs-in to the picture as cultural hegemony, teaching
all people irrational and archaic ideas of gender

Conclusion
we need to advocate we need to advocate the abolition of gender roles . The ruling ideology
normalizes systematic violance towards woman in all social group . I think it is the ideology because
it's what provokes all the behaviour .If men do not preach feminism to model dignified character
towards women for men ,dignity for men can not happen because It is an ideology that
discriminates woman . It teaches people that objectify men as "dominant" and women as
"subordinate .what a Irony !most woman of our culture also internalizes this ideology .Indian woman
is by virtue of a more pure concentraint of the ideology.let us change this .we should rise our voice
against this ruling ideology . I think the reality of gender identity is malleable . we are free to
construct a male identity focused on critical thinking and compassion, rather than the essentialist
,stereotyped version of patriarchy . we are free to teach a rational concept of gender identity on
order to foster social harmony . we have seen how feminism has emerged as a counter ideology
criticising the patriarchal subordination pf women to men, and calling for the eradication of systemic
gender inequalities in society.

References.
1. Coole, Diana ,2000. Threads and plaits or unfinished project ?, journal of political ideology
,new York
2. German ,L,1989, sex ,class and socialism , Landon
3. Cockburn ,2010, Gender relation as causal in militarization and war, international feminist
journal of politics ,uk
4. Judith Lober 2009 , social construction of gender , feminism.org