Something that Daly points out, although in not so many words of course, is that projection and distortion of women’s images is one of the perogatives of patriarchy. No wonder so many men do not want to be cured from this. They feel that curing them would also undermine their masculinity! But of course it is all fake to begin with, that sort of masculinity. I differ from some of the radical fem. school, however, in that I do not think that all masculinity is like this — socially constructed. When a man is not afraid to be himself, that is, when he refuses to be socially contrived, to put on an image and distort the images of others, he cannot help but be much more appealing. But I’m afraid that this takes genuine force of character and in some cases, guts. Daly doesn’t think males are capable of this, because she thinks they can only be masculine by artifice. But that is exactly the point at which I disagree with her.
On “projection and distortion of women’s images is one of the perogatives of patriarchy” … it’s still a chilling thought. I hate to believe it although of course it appears to be chillingly true.
It seems our library has the book after all. HQ1154.D312!
Well it is true, but you can also modify the analysis by realising that not every male is a patriarch — Mike, for instance, experiences neither desire nor thrill in distorting any female image or self-image.
anyway, I am now on a different footing with regard to women’s rights. Break Free is going to be written about in one of their papers. The drive towards freedom from abuse, injustice and violence has begun.
Oh good. In terms of violence, it seems that Western males are capable of a far shrewder capacity for psychological violence than are third world males — whose violence tends to be physical. The former tend to claim in various ways that they are castrated and that they are trying to get their penises back. But it is their misogyny that has castrated them. If you don’t like women, you will not feel virile around them, and no amount of gesticulating that women must return to you what is rightfully yours will serve to help the situation.
And when you try to tell these patriarchal males in any way, “Look, I think I know what the problem is and how to solve it,” they freak out because at some level they already know that all their patriarchal training is false — that it is smoke and mirrors designed to make them look good whilst making women look bad. In order to have a good conscience about maintaining this lie, they tell themselves that absolutely everything there is in the world is simply manipulation anyway — that nothing is really, genuinely true. So when you speak truthfully to them about things, they decide that the only way to take it is as if you (as the enemy) were trying an even shrewder form of manipulation (than that of the patriarchy) on them. They become genuinely threatened and extremely anxious.
..and then such frightened patriarchs start to speak in a kind of double way, where on the surface of their meaning is a demand that you conform to all sorts of rigid and violent authoritarian strictures. But, meanwhile, underneath these statements, and more in the ay that it is expressed than anything, there is a different kind of pleading and confession that the kind of societal violence that they, as patriarchs, have exposed themselves to, in demanding extreme conformity of themselves, has been too harsh. In a very weird way there is a kind of warning gesture that comes through underneath the demand of the patriarch for rigid conformity. He seems to be saying, “Whatever you do, don’t choose the path that I have chosen. Look what it has made of me, and consider the pain that I am in as I speak to you. This way that I have agreed to live is neither human nor humane.”
But over and above that, his voice is asserting the opposite thing: “Thy must conform!”
It’s a really strange contradiction that arises between implicit and explicit voice.
And it’s amazing how the patriarchs work, too, how they think, “you won’t respect me unless I put a hook into you to make you doubt yourself in some way.”
Really the opposite is the case — especially with someone like me. I am pretty much guaranteed to question all the more deeply, if the patriarch does that: “Why does he feel the need for such an artificial device of attraction — a hook? Is it perhaps because he is missing his natural devices? Isn’t is another sign of his castration?”
True and rather frightening, because given all of this it is hard to figure out how to talk to them or manage them.
I think I must ignore it all, except for my own impulse to heal these things. That has to be checked because it is exactly what they don’t want.
I think one of the things you can do is not to get sucked into patriarchal discourse at all, or to compromise with it. It seems that the patriarchs themselves recognise that this is a lapse in judgement whenever this happens, since to the degree that you engage with patriarchal discourses as if they might have some validity, but do not comply with them 100 percent, patriarchs read this as a sign of “mediocrity”. Actually it involves intellectual vacillation between two or more theoretical possibilities, but the patriarch sees all lack of commitment as a sign of weakness.
Also read Judith Lewis Herman. She describes the way that domestic and political prisoners are systematically broken down by their captors. The key aspect to avoiding this invasion of your mind, she says, is not to give small concessions to the would-be jailor. Holocaust survivors knew that it was those small tokens of identity — a ring or a memento — the meant the difference between having or losing your will to live. They are “transitional objects” between us and an often hostile world and are more important than we think. But of course this also applies as a principle to not making concessions concerning small internal aspects of identity. These are a barrier that protects us, that can be whittled away.
The Western culture of misogyny is impossibly crude. All exhortations are really extortations. Believe none of them.
In Zimbabwean culture, I can often get through to people by giving a racial analogy for the sexist treatment. This often produces the response: “Oh I suddenly see! I shouldn’t have been presuming to read your mind, or to make all women out to be the same, with the same sterotypical characteristics. And perhaps your grievances ought not to be simply swept under the carpet. You have a right to see things as you actually do.”
“Extortations,” yes! My current strategy is to refuse to consider them. It seems to be starting to work.
Fascinating that that dialogue takes place in Zim — that people “get it” so fast.
They get it so fast because many in Zimbabwe have had to grapple with the daemonic existence of the “Other”. And many of them have post traumatic stress disorder because of it. Both the whites and the blacks (and sometimes blacks on blacks) have tried to erase the Other — but he keeps coming back to haunt them.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Ok– I have a text reference for you to read. It is Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology. pp 251 ff.
OK — I’m away at a conference right now and I don’t think this book is in our library. I’ll do my best to get to it but it may not be soon.
Ok– just that there is a very long discussion about reeducation in that section.
I know, I want to reread it. I read it about 3.5 years ago but I need to read it again about now!!!
Something that Daly points out, although in not so many words of course, is that projection and distortion of women’s images is one of the perogatives of patriarchy. No wonder so many men do not want to be cured from this. They feel that curing them would also undermine their masculinity! But of course it is all fake to begin with, that sort of masculinity. I differ from some of the radical fem. school, however, in that I do not think that all masculinity is like this — socially constructed. When a man is not afraid to be himself, that is, when he refuses to be socially contrived, to put on an image and distort the images of others, he cannot help but be much more appealing. But I’m afraid that this takes genuine force of character and in some cases, guts. Daly doesn’t think males are capable of this, because she thinks they can only be masculine by artifice. But that is exactly the point at which I disagree with her.
Yes.
On “projection and distortion of women’s images is one of the perogatives of patriarchy” … it’s still a chilling thought. I hate to believe it although of course it appears to be chillingly true.
It seems our library has the book after all. HQ1154.D312!
Well it is true, but you can also modify the analysis by realising that not every male is a patriarch — Mike, for instance, experiences neither desire nor thrill in distorting any female image or self-image.
And, as you’ve recently noted, some women are patriarchs.
Most women are to some degree patriarchs.
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/2010/02/melanie-klein-and-splittinga-footnote.html
The book is a Google Book!
http://books.google.com/books?id=_Vhe2AgQYckC&printsec=frontcover&dq=gyn/ecology&source=bl&ots=hYViP6ncQJ&sig=Cvk2J6WCb0Pw50nVSVQkCbEwq8s&hl=en&ei=dP11S8qMHpWDnQej7oGhCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=&f=false
But it has no previews!
anyway, I am now on a different footing with regard to women’s rights. Break Free is going to be written about in one of their papers. The drive towards freedom from abuse, injustice and violence has begun.
Ah, yes it does, including pp. 252-33ff, which go right to your point.
I myself am only just waking up to the amazing violence of men.
Oh good. In terms of violence, it seems that Western males are capable of a far shrewder capacity for psychological violence than are third world males — whose violence tends to be physical. The former tend to claim in various ways that they are castrated and that they are trying to get their penises back. But it is their misogyny that has castrated them. If you don’t like women, you will not feel virile around them, and no amount of gesticulating that women must return to you what is rightfully yours will serve to help the situation.
And when you try to tell these patriarchal males in any way, “Look, I think I know what the problem is and how to solve it,” they freak out because at some level they already know that all their patriarchal training is false — that it is smoke and mirrors designed to make them look good whilst making women look bad. In order to have a good conscience about maintaining this lie, they tell themselves that absolutely everything there is in the world is simply manipulation anyway — that nothing is really, genuinely true. So when you speak truthfully to them about things, they decide that the only way to take it is as if you (as the enemy) were trying an even shrewder form of manipulation (than that of the patriarchy) on them. They become genuinely threatened and extremely anxious.
..and then such frightened patriarchs start to speak in a kind of double way, where on the surface of their meaning is a demand that you conform to all sorts of rigid and violent authoritarian strictures. But, meanwhile, underneath these statements, and more in the ay that it is expressed than anything, there is a different kind of pleading and confession that the kind of societal violence that they, as patriarchs, have exposed themselves to, in demanding extreme conformity of themselves, has been too harsh. In a very weird way there is a kind of warning gesture that comes through underneath the demand of the patriarch for rigid conformity. He seems to be saying, “Whatever you do, don’t choose the path that I have chosen. Look what it has made of me, and consider the pain that I am in as I speak to you. This way that I have agreed to live is neither human nor humane.”
But over and above that, his voice is asserting the opposite thing: “Thy must conform!”
It’s a really strange contradiction that arises between implicit and explicit voice.
And it’s amazing how the patriarchs work, too, how they think, “you won’t respect me unless I put a hook into you to make you doubt yourself in some way.”
Really the opposite is the case — especially with someone like me. I am pretty much guaranteed to question all the more deeply, if the patriarch does that: “Why does he feel the need for such an artificial device of attraction — a hook? Is it perhaps because he is missing his natural devices? Isn’t is another sign of his castration?”
True and rather frightening, because given all of this it is hard to figure out how to talk to them or manage them.
I think I must ignore it all, except for my own impulse to heal these things. That has to be checked because it is exactly what they don’t want.
I think one of the things you can do is not to get sucked into patriarchal discourse at all, or to compromise with it. It seems that the patriarchs themselves recognise that this is a lapse in judgement whenever this happens, since to the degree that you engage with patriarchal discourses as if they might have some validity, but do not comply with them 100 percent, patriarchs read this as a sign of “mediocrity”. Actually it involves intellectual vacillation between two or more theoretical possibilities, but the patriarch sees all lack of commitment as a sign of weakness.
Also read Judith Lewis Herman. She describes the way that domestic and political prisoners are systematically broken down by their captors. The key aspect to avoiding this invasion of your mind, she says, is not to give small concessions to the would-be jailor. Holocaust survivors knew that it was those small tokens of identity — a ring or a memento — the meant the difference between having or losing your will to live. They are “transitional objects” between us and an often hostile world and are more important than we think. But of course this also applies as a principle to not making concessions concerning small internal aspects of identity. These are a barrier that protects us, that can be whittled away.
I think these points are brilliant and essential. It is interesting how patriarchs exhort one to “compromise” so as to show “reasonableness” … !
The Western culture of misogyny is impossibly crude. All exhortations are really extortations. Believe none of them.
In Zimbabwean culture, I can often get through to people by giving a racial analogy for the sexist treatment. This often produces the response: “Oh I suddenly see! I shouldn’t have been presuming to read your mind, or to make all women out to be the same, with the same sterotypical characteristics. And perhaps your grievances ought not to be simply swept under the carpet. You have a right to see things as you actually do.”
“Extortations,” yes! My current strategy is to refuse to consider them. It seems to be starting to work.
Fascinating that that dialogue takes place in Zim — that people “get it” so fast.
They get it so fast because many in Zimbabwe have had to grapple with the daemonic existence of the “Other”. And many of them have post traumatic stress disorder because of it. Both the whites and the blacks (and sometimes blacks on blacks) have tried to erase the Other — but he keeps coming back to haunt them.