Feminist Writings

Prof. Avishek Parui

Department Of Humanities & Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Management, Madras
Understanding Patriarchy – Part 3

So hello and welcome to this NPTEL course on Feminist Writings. We were looking at Bell
Hooks’ essay Understanding Patriarchy. We have already had some lectures on this text, and we
will just continue, we’ll just pick up from where we left last time.

So just to have a very quick rehearsal of what this essay does in terms of its content, in terms of
its function, in terms of its discursive analysis, and the reason why it is important, significant,
very very significant and urgently important for any course in feminist writings, is because it
looks at patriarchy as a condition, as an experiential condition. Something which affects men as
well as women.

And as I may have said, already said earlier that it entirely deconstructs this very blunt binary
between the perpetrating male and passively suffering woman and it looks at Patriarchy as a
condition which affects men perhaps more than women. And it affects men to the point of
making them different from what they really are.

So Patriarchy is defined very early on in this essay as a disease, as a medical condition and we
have a series of medical metaphors with which this essay is written. And now the other important
thing about this essay is, it gives a lot of anecdotal analysis, it doesn’t restrict itself into a dry
textual analysis, it actually gives examples of Bell Hooks’ own life, in terms of how experiences
in a middle class southern household and the differences, the discrimination which she suffered
as a female child in a very conservative household which then becomes the model, a micro-
model of patriarchal operation. And she said, if you remember from list time, she said that this
model is replicated in a more macro spaces, such as nation, religion, nationalism, etcetera. But
the micro model is the family in which patriarchy first operates as a constricting principle, a
dominating principle and she makes it very clear, at the very outset of this essay that Patriarchy
is something which is perpetrated my men as well as women, and there are covert and overt
enactments of patriarchy.
So there are overt ways in which one can enact patriarchy through physical domination, through
coercion, through abuse, violence, etcetera. And there are more covert ways in which you can
perpetrate patriarchy by sort of manufacturing consent, by making you consensual subscriber, or
consensual consumer of Patriarchy.

And she says that the covert model of domination, the covert model of patriarchal performance
works more surreptitiously, obviously because it’s covert, but it’s often times assumed by
women, it’s often times assumed by the female members of the household and we have an
example coming up of a very disturbing and unsettling example where, she talks about how
where she seemed to subvert a certain norm in the household, a certain norm of play, in the
household, she was punished.

She was taken to task by first the perpetrating father who takes her to task by beating her
physically, and then later subsequently by the mother who becomes equally patriarchal by trying
to convince her that this beating, this confinement that she was subjected to is meant to her good,
is meant to benefit her in the long run and that is important in our analysis as well.

So this is the section that we will look at today in some details, and we will study how, in terms
of how that becomes a very good example of enactments of patriarchy in the daily-ness, the daily
discourses around us.

(Refer Slide Time: 3:54)

So this should be on your screen where she talks about her own experiences as a female child in
a farm country, growing up in America in that point of time, in the sixties presumably. We lived
in farm country, isolated from other people. Our sense of gender roles was learned from our
parents, from the way ways we saw them behave. My brother and I remember our confusion
about gender. In reality, I was stronger and more violent than my brother, which we learned
quickly was bad. And he was a gentle, peaceful boy, which we learned was really bad.

So again, look at the way in which the attributes, peaceful, violent, gentle, these are very
conveniently mapped on to, gender roles. So the men, the boys in the household are supposed to
be, or meant to be more violent, and articulate, and assertive. Whereas the girls are more, sort of
meant to be docile, and submissive, and gentle.

So what happens when it becomes the other way round, when the girl becomes more assertive
and dominating, and violent, as is the case over here. So it becomes a bit of a problem in a
household, in a patriarchal household, and then it takes certain steps of measures taken to correct
it, correct the problem.

So, although we were often confused, we knew one fact for a certain: we could not be and act the
way we wanted to, doing what we felt like.

So in the very immediate sense, we have a crisis of agency over here, which has been described.
And she says quite clearly that you know, we learnt very early on in our lives, that we are meant
to conform to certain codes of behavior, certain manly codes of behavior, certain feminine codes
of behavior, which took away our sense of agency, we cannot be what we really wanted to be,
but rather we were expected to be something else, someone else in conformity to certain codes of
conduct.

So it was clear to us that our behavior had to follow a predetermined, gendered script.

So the word, script is very important over here. It is something which is pre-written, as a as a
narrative which is already written for you, and it is your job as an obedient boy or an obedient
girl to conform to the codes of narrative. So that pre-written script becomes a very important
metaphor of domination, a very important metaphor of subjugation of the human subject, which
is at to play over here. So patriarchy operates through a pre-written script, through a gendered
script, it is heavily gendered in quality because it sets out the codes of conduct, it maps out the
codes of conduct quite clearly as is the case over here.

We both learned the word “patriarchy” in our adult life, when we learned that the script that had
determined what we should be, the identities we should make, was based on patriarchal values
and beliefs about gender. So interestingly the word patriarchy and this is something which she
keeps on talking about throughout this essay, the word patriarchy rarely occurs in common
conversations, it rarely occurs in daily discloses of interactions.

She says quite clearly that we learned the word patriarchy much later in life, and then we
retrospectively realized that you know, we had all the time all long conforming to certain codes
of patriarchy, certain codes of conduct, set out by patriarchal principles, patriarchal values and
beliefs about gender. So you know, the word patriarchy occurs later, because another something
which as I said it talks extensively about quite extensively is that this reluctance to address the
question of patriarchy, this reluctance to pin point patriarchy as a core problem, which affects
men and women equally. Which affects abuse, which informs abuse which determines abuse
which causes abuse in various forms.

It can be verbal abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, but Hooks says quite clearly that you
know, it is this reluctance in academic discourses as well as in common conversations to talk
about patriarchy, to address patriarchy, to take the bull by the head, as it were. And this
reluctance to do that is a problem which she seeks to address, which she seeks to talk more
about.

So and then she talks about how as growing up as a girl child in a very patriarchal conservative
household, was a problem because she very quickly realized that she was not being able to do the
things she wanted to do, because those were not in conformity to the codes of behavior expected
of her.
(Refer Slide Time: 8:11)

And she says quite clearly and I quote ‘I was always more interested in challenging patriarchy
than my brother was because it was a system which was leaving me out of things I wanted to be
a part of.’

So there is a very clearly hierarchy at work over here, there is a very clear politics of privilege at
work over here. And the entire discourse of patriarchy, the entire narrative of patriarchy is
designed in a way to sort of benefit or privilege the male. And so leave out the woman from
certain things that she wants to do. Certain privileges that she wants to enjoy as a person, as a
human subject, and she very quickly figures out, figures this out in life that you know this makes
her more subversive, this makes her more disobedient, this makes her more questioning, in terms
of challenging the norms of patriarchy.

And she says quite clearly that I was angry, I was discontented because I found out very quickly
that this was a system which was leaving me out of things which I wanted to do in real life. And
now we come to the very interesting example of a game, or a play, a child’s play, in this
particular family. And how even something as seemingly innocent, seemingly innocuous as a
play, a child’s game can become deeply discursive in quality, in terms of being mapped into
certain codes of gendered behavior.
And she says over here, the example which she gives is the play of marbles. And she says quite
clearly that marbles was meant to be a boy’s game, something that men, little boys played with.
It was not something which was supposed to be appropriated by girls, I mean girls are supposed
to play with something else, dolls, kitchen utensils presumably.

And again, we have a very stereotypical regressive mapping of toys over here. So even, and this
is how patriarchy works that it starts from the very inception when the girl child is born and the
boy child is born, they are given very different instruments to play. And obviously the priority,
the intention over here is to map out the different kinds of activities expected of a girl child,
expected of a male child.

And she says over here in our family life of the fifties, this is fifties America, marbles was a
boy’s game. So marbles a very common game which we have even in our part of the world. And
she says quite clearly it was meant to be a boy’s game, it was meant to be played by male
children. My brother had inherited his marbles from men in the family, so again look at the sort
of patriarchal legacy at work over here. Marbles become a metaphor of that legacy.

This little boy, her brother inherits the marbles, the box of marbles from his father who
presumably had inherited that from his father, so it is like a chain of accusations, a chain of
agentic acquisitions. Something which is given to you as a male child, something which is
bestowed on you as a male child, something which you must have embody as a male child, it’s a
legacy that you embody, you are meant to embody as a male child.

So he had a tin box to keep them in, so the box of marbles becomes quite symbolic object over
here. And this is the interesting thing about this essay, it takes up different kind of discourse
analysis which often times forces us to look at objects as more than just objects. They transcend
or transgress, the literal value and take up symbolic signifiers, or symbolic registers of
significance over here.

So the marbles over here, they become quite symbolic in quality as we all very quickly figure
out. So the brother, the male child had a tin box to keep the marbles in. All sizes and shapes,
marvelously colored, they were to my eye the most beautiful objects. So, they were like the most
coveted objects, you know in the girl child’s imagination.
(Refer Slide Time: 11:54)

We played together with them often with me aggressively clinging to the marble I liked best,
refusing to share. So again this is not in conformity to the accepted or expected code of conduct.
So when a girl child is a, not supposed to play with marble in the first place. She is supposed to
play with something else, other things other toys, but she is more interested in marbles, and she
seems to be more assertive in terms of clinging on to the marbles that she liked best.

When dad was at work, our stay-at-home mom was quite content to see us playing marble
together. Yet Dad, looking at our play from a patriarchal perspective, was disturbed by what he
saw. So notice how the word dad is written in a capital D over here, so again like marbles dad
becomes a symbolic figure. A symbolically phallogocentric figure, a protector of patriarchy, a
promoter of patriarchy over here in this household. So Dad, big Daddy over here was not very
happy in terms of looking at the girl child playing with marbles. So, she he was a bit disturbed,
he was a bit unhappy about it.

So why was he unhappy, why was he disturbed, at what he saw. And this is what he saw, his
daughter, aggressive and competitive, was a better player than his son. And that is almost
unacceptable, so the son turns out to be a worse player, a more meek player, a less competitive
player of marbles, and the idea of being competitive, the idea of being hostile, the idea of being
aggressive, these are very stereotypically manly attributes, which the girl child here is seems to
be appropriating, so that becomes a problem to the very patriarchal father figure observing at
home.

His son was passive; the boy did not really seem to care who won and was willing to give over
marbles on demand. So the son was not really being very assertive over here, so the assertive
self, the assertive agentic self, seems to be the girl child which is a problem to the patriarchal
perspective. So Dad decided that this play had to end, that both my brother and I needed to learn
a lesson about appropriate gender roles.

So if you look at the sentence carefully, ‘Dad decided’ so there is degree of authority which is
being asserted over here, so there is no, it’s completely undemocratic, it is completely non-
consensual, it is a decision taken by the father figure, the patriarchal phallogocentric figure, that
is, that has an absolute authority to it. So dad decided that this play had to end, it must come to
an end, and both my brother and I needed to be to learn a lesson about appropriate gender roles.

So Dad decided to teach them a lesson in terms of telling them what to do and what not to do. So
in the process he would tell off the girl child, for playing with marbles, and he would tell off the
male child for not being assertive or competitive enough, as was the case over here.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:39)

One evening my brother was given permission by Dad to bring out the tin of marbles. So again,
look at the word permission and what it is doing over here, so the big daddy, the big father figure
permitted or allowed the male child to bring out the tin of marbles. I announced my desire to
play and was told by my brother that “girls do not play with marbles,” that it was a boy’s game.
So we have a scene of increasing indoctrination.

So male child has been thought that this is something which girls ought not to play with, so this
is not a play thing for girls, they ought to play with other things, dolls, kitchen wares, kitchen
utensils, etcetera. Marbles were very much a manly, boyish a boy game, a boy toy to be played
with. And girls should not indulge in this kind of an activity because it is something that they
ought not to do.

So there’s a bit of a moral mapping at work over here, so even the toy belongs to the male child
so it’s the boy who is supposed to play with that symbolic toy of marbles, whereas the girl is
disallowed or barred from any kind of an engagement with that. So the whole scene becomes
quite swiftly symbolic in quality, that is something which we will see very quickly.

Now she was told by the brother that you are not you are not supposed to play with marbles,
because it doesn’t belong to you. You are not you are not, this is not the right thing for a girl, this
made no sense to my poor five-year-old mind and I insisted on my right to play by picking up
marbles and shooting them, 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 do something, I
mean for you to do it.”
(Refer Slide Time: 16:27)

He beat me and he beat me, wanting me to acknowledge that I understood what I had done. His
rage, his violence captured everyone’s attention. Our family sat spellbound, rapt before the
pornography of patriarchal violence. After this beating I was banished – forced to stay alone in
the dark. Mama came into the bedroom to soothe the pain, telling me in her soft southern voice,
“I tried to warn you. You need to accept that you are just a little girl and girls can’t do what boys
do.” In service to patriarchy her task was to reinforce that Dad had done the right thing by,
putting me in my place, by restoring the natural social order.

So this is a deeply disturbing feel even as a casual reader of this essay, we feel deeply disturbed
by what is being described over here. It is unsettling, it’s depressing, it’s extremely disintegrating
as a reader to read. But what is happening essentially is the girl child is being chastised, is being
abused corporally, you know beating, so essentially her violence is targeted at her body by being
subversive. You know for being subversive. So she, because she insisted on playing with the
marbles, she doesn’t obey the words of the father figure, she is taken to task at first verbally and
then physically.
She is beaten viciously, and violently, you know almost pornographically by the father figure. In
a bid to make her conform to the codes that she is supposed to conform to. And it doesn’t stop
there, after the beating gets done and she is, she is sort of pressurized to acknowledge the
authority of the father and afterwards she is banished in a small room, confined there as a
continuation of the punishment. so all this is very very unsettling, very disturbing to us, as
readers today but this is the scenes which happens in several situations, in several households
and Hooks obviously is offering an example, a very graphic example of this very disturbing
quality of patriarchy at work, in operation over here.
And interestingly what happens immediately after is this, the mother figure comes and reinforces
the authority of the father by comforting the girl child by saying that, you know that we tried to
warn you, I tried to warn you but you wouldn’t listen to me. Dad has done the right thing by
beating you, by putting you in place, by telling you what to do and what not to do. This is meant
to, this is designed to do you a service in the long run.
So again we have, like I said it a while earlier, we have two different orders or patriarchy at
work, one the overt order of patriarchy as embodied by the great phallogocentric authority figure
of the father who is beating the girl child, abusing the girl child, you know meeting out violence
on the girl child, and then we have the covert patriarchal order, which is embodied by the mother
who is coming and, in a bid to comfort the girl child, is trying to reinforce the patriarchal
principle at play over here.

So she is as much a partner to this patriarchal disclose as the father is, both are perpetrators in
different degrees and that’s the whole point that is being tried to be, what Hooks’ is trying to
convey in this episode. So as she mentions quite clearly towards the end of this paragraph, in
service to patriarchy, her task was to reinforce that dad has just done the right thing by putting
me in my place, by restoring the natural, social order.
So as we can see by now there is nothing natural about this order, it is an entirely unnatural,
artificial order but this artificiality, this unnaturalness is naturalized and then nomativized by the
principles of patriarchy through acts of repetition, through acts of conformation and then
repetition.
So repetition becomes a very important principle for any grand narrative, so you need, you need
to constantly conform to certain codes, and this constant conformation becomes a ritual of
repetition, and this ritual of repetition then naturalizes, then nomativizes the patriarchal principle.
Which is in itself an artificial, unnatural principle, that is something which has been described
quite graphically in this, particular episode.
(Refer Slide Time: 20:40)

Then she goes on to say, I remember this traumatic event so well. So one can imagine the trauma
that the girl child had faced, had experienced when this was being done on her, first being
beaten, you know, corporeally, physically by the father figure and then banished in the small,
dark room in order to suffer, in order to continue the punishment that she had deserved by not
conforming to the patriarchal codes.

I remember this traumatic event so well because it was a story told again and again within our
family. So again look at the ritual of repetition at play, at work over here, and this is one of the
conditions of a grand narrative. As I just said earlier, repetition becomes a very important
instrument through which a discourse is consolidated. an artificial discourse is consolidated and
then naturalized and then nomativized.

No one cared that the constant retelling might trigger post-traumatic stress; the retelling was
necessary to reinforce both the message and the remembered state of absolute powerlessness. So
the entire repetition was meant to reinforce the patriarchal order. and so the word post-traumatic
stress, is normally used for war veterans, for solders from the war, but observe how this
adjective, this particular category is used in a domestic space.
So the family space, the domestic space the familial space, the home space, the homely space,
becomes quite dramatically de-familiarized over here. It becomes almost like a battleground, of
codes of conduct, and if you don’t conform to the codes of conduct you are punished, as a soldier
would be punished. And then you know the post-traumatic stress, that occurs to you is something
which is akin to the post-traumatic stress which happens to soldiers and to the war veterans.
So this becomes very much a battle ground, the apparently, supposedly tranquil familial space
becomes a battleground of gender roles. So the retelling the repetition was a necessary ritual, to
reinforce the message of authority, the message of domination, in a girl child’s imagination and
also to reinforce in her mind her own powerlessness, her own agencylessness in this patriarchal
authority space.

The recollection of this brutal whipping of a little-girl daughter by a big strong man, served as
more than just a reminder to me of my gendered place, it was a reminder to everyone
watching/remembering, to all my siblings, male and female, and to our grown-woman mother
that our patriarchal father was the ruler in our household.

(Refer Slide Time: 23:15)

So it almost takes up a primitive quality, where the ruler of the household is the male, is the
hunter male, and everyone else has to obey. It’s part of the ancient, primal kinship system, the
primal family system where the hunter male, or the strongest male in the pack, and everyone else
was to serve him or obey him in terms of his authority figure.
You know this, this spectacle of punishment which is enacted over here, in terms of beating the
girl child with a whip, essentially with a whip is meant to serve as a reminder, a visual reminder,
a spectacular reminder of the authority figure in the house, which is localized almost entirely in
the big strong father, and everyone else is supposed to watch it, and remember the figure of
authority.

And this was a reminder of what? We were to remember that if we did not obey his rules, we
would be punished, punished even onto death. So the brutality of the beating over here, the
barbaric quality of the beating over here is, is almost strategic in quality because it serves to
remind you that you can be beaten to death, effectively if you do not obey the patriarchal rules.
In other words, you don’t exist in this household, you can be made to vanish and disappear, and
you can be a disembodied person if you do not conform to the patriarchal rules of household

And it’s a very disturbing, unsettling, depressing episode which is being described over here but
it serves to convey the function of patriarchy in a household, that is how everyone becomes a
complicit partner, you know collusive to the order of patriarchy, so one could be the principle
perpetrator, the principle perpetrator over here is obviously the father figure, but everyone else
becomes part takers of this performance, partners of this performance, with their silence, and
with their benevolent reinforcement and the more comforting reinforcement which happens later,
as is the case with the mother over here.

So this was a reminder, we were to remember that if we do not obey his rules, we would be
punished, punished even unto death. This is the way we were experientially schooled in the art of
patriarchy. So again look at the last sentence over here, it’s a very loaded sentence, we were
experientially schooled in the art of patriarchy.

So patriarchy becomes the art, obviously it is a perverse art, it’s a performance, it’s a theater of
certain kind, of certain code of conduct and this theater of patriarchy, this theater of cruelty, if
you will, you know we have to be experientially schooled into this. So experientiality as I may
have already mentioned, becomes very important component of patriarchy over here. It is
something which is examined quite deeply by Bell Hooks.

So she isn’t really looking at Patriarchy as just a text, so this one sentence combines the
textuality and experientiality components quite skillfully. So the art of patriarchy is a textual
quality of patriarchy, the theater of patriarchy, the coded quality of patriarchy, if you will, and
the experientially of patriarchy is the actual embodied experience of living, or suffering, or being
subjected to that particular discourse.

So both combine together to make patriarchy what it really is. So this is something which is
interesting, and as Hooks keeps referring to the anecdotal episodes in terms of conveying to us
the entire idea of patriarchy and how it operates in different kind of spatial settings. So in a
family setting it operates in a particular way, in broader macro public space, it operates in a
different way, in a military space it operates in a different way, in a sporting arena it might take
over a different code all together. But underlying everything there is this authority of the father
figure which is constant in all the different settings at play.

(Refer Slide Time: 27:04)

So then she quickly goes on to say, there is nothing unique or even exceptional about this
experience. Listen to the voices of wounded grown children raised in patriarchal homes and you
will hear different versions with the same underlying theme, the use of violence to reinforce our
indoctrination and acceptance of patriarchy.

So it is obviously an indoctrination, an indoctrination which happens psychologically as well as

corporeally because you are trained to replicate it, trained to appropriate, and then replicate the
principles of patriarchy. And then she mentions, she alludes to a therapist’s work, by therapist
Terrence Real which is entitled How Can I Get Through to You? Which talks about how this
kind of a psychology of indoctrination is at play.

So in How Can I Get Through To You? the family therapist Terrance Real tells us how his sons
were initiated into patriarchal thinking even as their parents worked to create a loving home in
which antipatriarchal values prevailed. 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.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:07)

So we have an interesting case of cross dressing. We have Alexander who is presumably a male
child, so he enjoys dressing up as Barbie, the Barbie doll the Barbie doll persona. So he
appropriates the Barbie persona, but obviously that is subjected to a very, very disapproving
gaze, a collective gaze which doesn’t approve this persona at all coming from a male child.

So it was a gaze of shock, a gaze of discontent, a gaze of disapproval, in which he is subjected to

and that gaze tells him or conveys to him the unacceptability of this kind of appropriation. This
behavior is unacceptable.
(Refer Slide Time: 23:15)

Without a shred of malevolence, the stare my son received transmitted a message. You are not to
do this. And the medium that message was broadcast in was a potent emotion: shame. At three,
Alexander was learning the rules. a ten second wordless transaction was powerful enough to
dissuade my son from that instant forward from what had been a favorite activity. I call such
moments of induction the “normal traumatization” of boys.

So this is Terrance Real talking about his son, Alexander and how the son who initially enjoyed
dressing up as Barbie, initially enjoyed playing with dolls presumably is subjected to a gaze, a
collective gaze of silence, and disapproval which shocks them, and which makes them ashamed.
And shame becomes a very important sentiment over here, and that obviously leads on to
indoctrination and into the hegemonic patriarchal principle at play.

So it was a change from what had been a favorite activity, so he just drops it immediately and
Terrance Real describes such moments of induction, Normal Traumatization. So look at the
seemingly oxymoronic quality over here, normal traumatization, so it is the traumatization which
is meant to create a sense of normalcy. Right, so it’s a traumatization out of our desire, out of our
compulsion or a desire, a compulsion to be normal, to be normativized.
So it is a tyranny of normativization, it is a trauma of normativization which is at play over here,
so the normal order demands a certain degree of conformity, and that demand creates a sense of
trauma, a sense of shame, that then propels you to drop your agentic self and then go on to
confirm to codes that are demanded by the order of normalcy. So hence the, normal
traumatization is a very interesting and a very loaded phrase over here.

(Refer Slide Time: 30:45)

So to indoctrinate boys into the rules of patriarchy we force them to feel pain and to deny their
feelings. Feelings becomes a very important symbol over here, so Hooks would go on to say that
the real victims, the first victims of patriarchy are boys who are forced to move away from their
feelings, who are forced to move away from their feeling, emotional self and are made to
appropriate hardcore patriarchal selves in conformity to certain rules of conduct, in conformity to
certain codes of conduct.

So they becomes the first victims of patriarchy, so what this essay does among many radical
things, it entirely problematizes the ontology of victimhood. It says, it’s not, it’s a bit of
reductionist strategy to look at women being as women of patriarchy and men being as
perpetrators of patriarchy, the first victims of patriarchy are boys who are trained to do certain
things which otherwise they would not have done.

Who are trained to indoctrinate into certain kinds of discloses, into certain kind of ideologies,
which they would not have preferred otherwise. So that becomes the first crisis of agency, the
first real victim of patriarchy, and then they become perpetrators of patriarchy, they become
performers of patriarchy, and then they perpetrate patriarchy into other boys and girls, into
women everywhere around them.

Okay, and then Hooks says my stories took place in the fifties. The story about being beaten by
phallogocentric authority figure in the house, brutally being beaten until she had to acknowledge
the authority of the father figure and confined to a dark room as part of the continuation of the
punishment. So this took place in the fifties.

The stories Real tells are recent. So the more recent stories of Terrance Real is telling or
discussing as the case studies of this kind of condition. They all underscore the tyranny of
patriarchal thinking, the power of patriarchal culture to hold us captive. The word captive is
important over here because it talks is about the imprisonment which happens due to patriarchy.

So patriarchy imprisons you into some kind of artificial behavior which you are trained to regard
as normal, normative and natural in quality. Real is one of the most enlightened thinkers,
Terrance Real is one of the most enlightened thinkers on the subject of patriarchal masculinity in
our nation, and yet he lets readers know that he is not able to keep his boys out of patriarchy’s
reach.

So patriarchy becomes like an epidemic, again this is a medial metaphor again at play over here.
So everyone is affected by patriarchy, so even Terrance Real who is a very very progressive
psychologist, therapist, even he cannot keep his own sons away from the clutches of patriarchy,
from the reaches of patriarchy. They become consumed by patriarchal principles, which then
they replicate and perform in different settings.
(Refer Slide Time: 33:32)

They suffer its assaults, as do all boys and girls to a greater or lesser degree. No doubt by
creating a loving home that is not patriarchal, Real at least offers his boys a choice: they can
choose to be themselves or they can choose conformity with patriarchal roles. Real uses the term
“psychological patriarchy” to describe the patriarchal thinking common to females and males.

So patriarchy becomes first of all a psychological condition, whereby you are trained to think in
certain ways, you are trained to carry out your responses, your emotional responses, to certain
kinds of conduct, certain codes of conduct. Despite the contemporary visionary feminist thinking
that makes clear that a patriarchal thinker need not be a male, most folks continue to see men as
the problem of patriarchy.
(Refer Slide Time: 34:15)

This is simply not the case, women can be as wedded to patriarchal thinking and action as men.
So this is what makes the essay really complex and interesting because it takes, it offers a very
complex take on patriarchy, talks about how its reductionism is perhaps erroneous in many
levels, at many levels. It talks about patriarchy being something which is carried out by men
only, men being the problem of patriarchy, the perpetrators of patriarchy, which is simply not the
case.

As hooks argue is quite competently, she says again very compellingly that women can be as
wedded, and the metaphor of wedded is very important over here. It is part of the institutional
partnership, if you will. So its institutional partnership to patriarchy is carried by women as much
as by men. And they can carry out, they can enact patriarchy in more covert ways, in more
surreptitious ways as was the case with hooks’ own mother.

In the scene, in that situation where she was being brutally beaten by the father figure, instead of
coming and intervening in that barbaric pornographic scene of violence, the mother comes in the
end when the violence has been done and committed and the girl child has been punished. And
then she comes in the end to soothe her, to comfort her, and in the process of comforting her she
is actually consolidating the act of the father in terms of teaching the girl a lesson to confirm to
their right codes of conduct.
Okay, so then she refers to John Bradshaw’s book on creating this kind of a situation, creating
love. So she says Bradshaw in this particular book defines thus and I quote Bradshaw as hooks
mentions over here.

(Refer Slide Time: 35:57)

The dictionary defines ‘patriarchy’ as a social organization marked by the supremacy of the
father in the clan or family in both domestic and religious functions. The world “clan” is very
important over here because it has a primal quality to it. So it’s like an old clan, old tribes, old
pack systems, where the strongest male is the leader by default, the figure of authority by default.

So patriarchy is categorized by male domination and power. So domination and power becomes
very important instruments of patriarchy. He states, Bradshaw, he states further that patriarchal
rules still govern most of the world’s religious school systems and family systems. So religions,
schools, families the different institutions or indoctrinations, they all consume, they are all
embedded in patriarchal principles, right? So, as result of which children grow up, being
indoctrinated consuming, those principles by default unquestioningly.

Describing the most damaging of these rules, Bradshaw lists “blind obedience” –the foundation
upon which patriarchy stands; the repression of all emotions except fear; the destruction of
individual willpower; and the repression of thinking whenever it departs from the authority
figures ways of thinking.
(Refer Slide Time: 37:09)

Patriarchal thinking shapes the values of our culture. We are socialized into the system, males,
females, as well as males. Most of us learned patriarchal attitudes in our family of origin, and
they are usually taught to us by our mothers. These attitudes were reinforced in schools and
religious institutions.

So there is a degree of compulsory effacement of all the emotions, you are not supposed to be
emotional, you are not supposed to have feelings; fear becomes the governing principle, and the
governing emotions, and the governing sentiment over here. If you are not confirming to
patriarchal codes, then you know, you can fear punishment, you can fear shame, and then women
over here becomes very covert carriers of patriarchy.

And which is reinforced in schools and villages and institutions. So the family becomes the first
micro space where the first indoctrination takes place, and then there are more macro spaces such
as schools and institutions where these attitude are reinforced and replicated.
(Refer Slide Time: 38:09)

The contemporary presence of female headed household has leaded many people to assume that
children in these household are not learning patriarchal values because no male is present. So
again we are moving away from the sense of biological determination or biological essentialism
so this is something which is a very radical move, a very radical departure, which is offered by
hooks over here.

So she is saying just because the male is biologically absent in the household, doesn’t make the
household more progressive by default, so there are instances, many several instances of
household which are run entirely by women, where no male is present at all, either because they
are dead or absent, that doesn’t make the household less patriarchal in quality, in some case it
makes it more patriarchal in quality, as we will see in a moment.

So its erroneous to assume that the children of those households are not learning patriarchal
values just because no male is present. On the contrary they assume that you know the
assumption is that the men are the sole teachers of patriarchal thinking, yet many female headed
households endorse and promote patriarchal thinking with far greater passion than two parent
households.
So, you know this would not appear shocking at all because we have just seen how patriarchy is
something which is perpetuated by men as well as by women, in different forms and different
disguises and different activities. So it doesn’t just make it progressive by default just because
the male doesn’t happen to be there physically.

The women can be as patriarchal perhaps more patriarchal in some occasions than the father, the
father figure, the biological father figures. So because they do not have an experiential reality to
challenge false fantasies of gender roles, women in such households are far more likely to idolize
the patriarchal male role, and patriarchal men, than women who live with patriarchal men every
day.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:09)

So, in households where there are no patriarchal men, women sometimes tend to romanticize or
idolize the patriarchal absent male. So the absent male becomes a figure of idolization, figure of
reverence and as a result of which what was just produced out of that affect is a complete
conformity or perhaps a reinforcement of patriarchy in a way which is more intense then in a
normal household, with a father figure as well as a mother figure.

So single parent households were run entirely by women and can be more crudely or more
oppressingly patriarchal than households which have a mother as well as a father as is the case
which hooks is examining over here.
So, the degree of idolization which is at work over here, idealizing the absent male, the absent
patriarchal figure who becomes something like a spectral presence, that makes the patriarchy
more unquestionable over here, you can’t really question patriarchy because it is not real male
present. The real male will make errors, the real male will have lapses but the absent male, the
unreal male, the father figure who is not there will be the perfect idolized father figure and hence
that particular household will have that affect, emanating out of it, which will make it more
patriarchal in quality.

So that is something which hooks is very quick to discern and make a dissention so we need to
highlight the role women play in perpetrating and sustaining patriarchal culture so that we would
recognize patriarchy as a system women and men support equally even if men receive more
rewards from that system.

So women become more, as complicit partners to patriarchy as men are, so we need to look at
the complex model of patriarchy not just the model where men perpetrate and women suffer, but
as a more complex model where women and men both become partners of patriarchy in different
degrees, dismantling and changing patriarchal culture as work that men and women must do
together.

So this is the final bit with which I wind up this lecture. So what she is offering over here, what
she is so urgently calling for is a more inclusive model of feminism, a more complex model of
feminism where men and women come together as collaborators to question patriarchy. Right so
this is a move away from a very blunt feminist reading, which looks at women as just sufferers,
and men as cruel perpetrators, or perverse perpetrators, so it moves away from that blunt feminist
binary and takes a more inclusive feminist model, a more inclusive gender studies model where
men and women become equal partners of patriarchy, an equal sufferers of patriarchy as well.

She says quite clearly that if we are dismantling a system, if we have to deconstruct the system,
that dismantling, that deconstruction can only take place if men and women come together and
collaborate together. They become collaborators in examining patriarchy, in questioning
patriarchy, and deconstructing patriarchy.

So the move is towards a more collaborative, a more inclusive model of feminism, a more
inclusive model of gender subversion, rather than retaining the binaristic, the dualistic model of
patriarchy, dualism model of feminism, which actually can become patriarchal in quality,
because it retains a structural divide, because it retains the functional divide, it retains the pre-
suppositions that patriarchy enjoys and promotes.

So we need to break away from pre-suppositions altogether, and we can only break away from
those pre-suppositions if we take a more collaborative and more dialogic relationship and more
dialogic principle at play. Where men and women come together as sufferers of patriarchy, as
people who are trying to subvert patriarchy, as collaborators, only then patriarchy can be
dismantled as a system, that is what hooks is arguing at this point.

So we will stop at this point today and we will continue with this text in the next lectures to
come. Thank you for your attention.