= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Multiheaded comments on Politics Discussion Thread December 2012 - All
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (136)
I think that, without the larger social and cultural structures that people call "patriarchy", it's incorrect - mostly connotatively, but it's a denotative inaccuracy too - to call any given private relationship "implicitly patriarchal". It would be like calling the relations between an officer and soldiers in a modern army "implicitly fascist".
Meaning that even if superficially there's a lot of similarity (e.g. if you provide financial support and it is understood to "entitle" you to companionship, you engage in d/s play on an emotional/intimate level, you're counted upon to make decisions, etc), it's still a perfectly voluntary, healthy relationship, absent some latent psychological issues or hidden manipulation. After all, your girlfriends wouldn't be shamed, coerced or economically pressured if they decided to break things up or reevaluate the power balance - so there's no "-archy" at work.
I'm only saying this because I also think that power play is a healthy and important part of most people's sexuality, so it would be good to define it correctly, not letting... anyone frame it as immoral/pathological/inherently abusive.
You are ignoring the much of classical New Left thought in this response. As an exercise put on your Gramschian glasses and consider how in a personal relationship based on informed consent, mutual satisfaction and without much support from the rest of society patriarchy exists in a meaningful sense. Bonus points if you see how even with the first two conditions in place this might be something feminism and regular Joe would strongly object to.
Well, I did say:
-but I see where you're coming from with this elaboration, yes.
I do indeed think that the seeming presense of informed consent and mutual satisfaction can become a cynical, ethically meaningless fake when society and culture have a chokehold on your awareness, your sense of self, your very epistemology. In regards to patriarchy and gender oppression we can see those structures in the Arab world today.
I should've specified that in this comment I was only talking about 1st world liberal capitalism, which for all its potential insidious tendencies is contradictory enough that we can assume a degree of individual autonomy and meaningful free choice in private life.
I'm not sure if you're just playing the devil's advocate or genuinely trying to share my views on sex and autonomy, but I must say I'm delighted :) As a further example, have you considered that matrial rape has been so pervasive and accepted in the West that first-wave feminism made very little headway against it by the turn of the century? That no patriarchal society even bothered to account for it? That it was first criminalized in 1965, after female suffrage has been achieved in every Western democracy?
Edit: spelling