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Sexuality and Patriarchy

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One of the foundational principles of the patriarchy is the appropriation of an individual’s sexuality by his or her family.

When a father feels dishonored by his unmarried daughter losing her virginity that is patriarchy.

When a grandmother does not accept her transgender grandson and thinks that he should “just grow out of it” that is patriarchy.

When a mother believes that her gay son should get treated and become heterosexual that is patriarchy.

When a father-in-law feels abused by his daughter-in-law’s affair that is patriarchy.

You cannot be a feminist and simultaneously assert a family’s right to have a say in how one of its members organizes his or her personal life. Because that is patriarchy.

Spouses and partners can agree and negotiate how they manage the sexual side of their relationship. But that is their relationship and nobody else has the right to participate or contribute opinions. Because when a couple’s sex life becomes a matter of communal discussion and management that is patriarchy. When a bloodied sheet was exhibited for everybody to see after a wedding night to prove that the bride was a virgin, that was patriarchy. And those who tarred and feathered women for being sexual in communally unapproved contexts were not feminists.

Nobody is forcing you to be a feminist but can you just pick a side and stick to it already? If you go into a fit of frenzy because somebody else’s sheets don’t offer evidence of a sexual scenario you can approve, that is not feminism.

That is patriarchy.

44 responses to “Sexuality and Patriarchy”

  1. el Avatar
    el

    // Because when a couple’s sex life becomes a matter of communal discussion and management that is patriarchy.

    When in FSU private sexual life could become a topic of party meeting (if that’s the correct name), was it patriarchy too or totalitarism? Can there be non-patriarchal totalitarism?

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  2. el Avatar
    el

    // When a grandmother does not accept her transgender grandson and thinks that he should “just grow out of it” that is patriarchy.

    It can be only homophobia too: she thinks gays are ill and her heart is breaking the horribly ill grandson doesn’t get any help.

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  3. Titfortat Avatar
    Titfortat

    Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrg, the big bad Patriarchy is behind everything……….lmao. 🙂

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      You’ve made this comment over 10 times on this blog. You probably find it valuable but nobody else does. It’s simply boring.

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  4. musteryou Avatar
    musteryou

    Excellent article.

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  5. musteryou Avatar
    musteryou

    Somebody on Youtube just wrote to me: Why use the term, feminism? A house divided against itself cannot stand.

    All up, I think this view encapsulates the patriarchal paradigm really well, at least on a psychological level. Consider that if my emotions cannot be appropriated for use by my family, that is “a house divided against itself”. But should I raise a protest that to appropriate my emotion as belonging to others is fundamentally unjust, then I am guilty of dividing the house. I am then deemed guilty of cutting myself off from patriarchal control, and do not deserve to stand. To claim for my own use what is my own is considered a hostile act — one that is divisive.

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    1. musteryou Avatar
      musteryou

      *I think in my case it was emotion, prior to sexuality, that was appropriated, thus it was very difficult for me to think using my own emotions.

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        Yes! You are absolutely right. First your right to feel what you do is gobbled up by the patriarchal family, then your right to make any decisions of your own, then your sexuality.

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        1. musteryou Avatar
          musteryou

          Thank you. And, as a result, I have become very aware of how contemporary ideological rhetoric has the capacity to get people who are still uncertain that patriarchy exists to think in terms of its structures. For instance, “Oh, I must be being very violent and warlike if I claim all of my being for myself. A house divided against itself cannot stand!”

          When people are still shaky and uncertain, they can fall for that kind of stuff. It takes a lot of psychological self-examination not too, and even then one may still have to fight the bad habits one has developed.

          I suspect, though, that my particular battle against patriarchy had this shape because I am from the third world, and because patriarchy was invested in a real war over there. One does not like to be the source of division, but to look at it more logically, the terms of the debate were already completely distorted because of the patriarchal appropriation of my emotion — my core being — for itself. The rupture is not really a rupture but a re-appropriation of what is mine. The battle is not really that bloody, either, but seems so.

          All the same, the anti-feminists go on and one with their distorted language. Since I have consolidated my gains this has no power over me.

          Once you have your emotions as your own, you have the internal consistency of thought that you were unable to develop before. Therefore assertions that there is no patriarchy seem insipid and absurd. I may have forgotten my battles, but I am still able to detect the lies and the distortions, which are evident in the fact that my truth claims are ignored. When people ignore what I present as fact and instead try to move the discussion onto an ideological level, I know they are interested in perpetuating distortions.

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    2. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      This is precisely the argument used in my own country against people who try to escape from patriarchal constraints- they are accused of causing divisiveness in the house.

      I have also realized that all of these chronophagues who keep trying to drag one into conversations about the terminology of feminism only want to sap the energy one could be investing into things these creeps find threatening.

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      1. musteryou Avatar
        musteryou

        “I have also realized that all of these chronophagues who keep trying to drag one into conversations about the terminology of feminism only want to sap the energy one could be investing into things these creeps find threatening.”

        It’s a boxing match, where just about everything is a feint. If you can get your opposition to lurch at your feint and use up her energy, then you are able to wear her down in the long term.

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  6. There is no patriarchy | Nietzsche's hairs Avatar
    There is no patriarchy | Nietzsche's hairs

    […] Sexuality and Patriarchy | Clarissa’s Blog […]

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  7. Titfortat Avatar
    Titfortat

    If you can get your opposition to lurch at your feint and use up her energy, then you are able to wear her down in the long term.(Muster)

    That might be an issue if the her is a he.

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    1. musteryou Avatar
      musteryou

      So if the male guy uses up all his energy trying to free himself from a net of ideological warping of reality, I assume that would be an issue.

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  8. Titfortat Avatar
    Titfortat

    exactly, the feint. 😉

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    1. musteryou Avatar
      musteryou

      Some kind of feint? Are you feeling all used up, as if the whole of life had no purpose?

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      1. Titfortat Avatar
        Titfortat

        Not quite yet. Im thinking there is still a little more to cum from life.

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        1. musteryou Avatar
          musteryou

          head pat.

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  9. Titfortat Avatar
    Titfortat

    That should do it.

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    1. musteryou Avatar
      musteryou

      And behold the masses muttered unto themselves, “Yay, pettiness and rampant moral censoriousness are mine. But the consequences of my actions shall matter not one mite. The most important thing for me is to reinforce my own feelings of what feel normal to me, replicating mom and pop in their tired old ways, without examining anything about what that means. I resolve right now not to attend to any consequences of my actions, but to go forth quite boldly smiting the intellectual knave who would cause me to think. Divorcing my actions from their consequences is the best way to maintain my inner sense of beauty. In avoiding any trace of thought, I am sincerely beautiful.”

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        And this is definitely the comment of the year. This is exactly exactly exactly how it works.

        People just repeat the meaningless old cliches that are no different from the cliches their parents repeated and so on. They just go on and on spouting these banalities and their eyes glaze over in enjoyment as they do it.

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  10. Lightning Round – 2013/08/07 | Free Northerner

    […] feminist defines patriarchy as the separation of private and public sphere by sex and the appropriation of individual sexuality by the community. She’s consistent on the latter. It seems like it might be the basis of a good working […]

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  11. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    So in order to be a feminist you need to be utterly self-centred and narcissistic?

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    1. musteryou Avatar
      musteryou

      So the opposite of unhealthy symbiosis self-centered narcissism? Shall I turn down the heat a little? Would you like to be under a lot of snow? Or are you getting warm and I can place you gently into a volcano?

      Reality and reason could kick in at some point, but I don’t expect that to happen soon.

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        Actually, narcissism does not exist without an unhealthy symbiosis. You can’t be narcissistic without an audience. The best approach to a narcissist in the throes of narcissistic rage is to withdraw the attention. The second you walk away, they stop ranting and raving. Narcissists are the most dependent of people.

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        1. musteryou Avatar
          musteryou

          I agree and I have experienced things that brought me to that understanding. When I mentioned the unhealthy symbiosis, though, I think it is what many who need to break out of patriarchy thinking will have to combat. They really need to address the basic assumption of automatic dependency that has become instinct and reflex. Once they do, they will have more of the self-awareness they need to resist getting caught up in other unhealthy symbioses.

          What I have seen in the past ten or fifteen years is first women waking up and trying to break the spell of warped perceptions that would keep them in an unhealthy state. Now the men are finding that the world no longer seems to be ‘rational’ to them, because it no longer accommodates their unconscious assumptions that reality must be symbiotic.

          I suppose it feels like an attack whenever one comes away from an experience disappointed at having failed to achieve a level of symbiosis with the other sex. As Klein said, a disappointed expectation at the level of needed symbiosis (the infantile state) is not viewed a neutral but as a hostile attack (the “bad” breast that does not have any milk).

          Consequently, those who refrain from unhealthy symbiosis APPEAR to be on the attack and it is asserted that they are “narcissistic” — but this is all projection at the most basic of levels.

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        2. musteryou Avatar
          musteryou

          There were some typos in my previous response.
          —

          When I mentioned unhealthy symbiosis, I think it is what many who need to break out of patriarchal thinking will have to combat. They really need to address the basic assumption of automatic dependency that has become instinct and reflex. Once they do, they will have more of the self-awareness they need to resist getting caught up in other unhealthy symbioses.
          What I have seen in the past ten or fifteen years is first women waking up and trying to break the spell of warped perceptions that would keep them in an unhealthy state. Now the men are finding that the world no longer seems to be ‘rational’ to them, because it no longer accommodates their unconscious assumptions that reality must be symbiotic.
          I suppose it feels like an attack whenever one comes away from an experience disappointed at having failed to achieve a level of symbiosis with the other sex. As Klein said, a disappointed expectation at the level of needed symbiosis (the infantile state) is not viewed a neutral but as a hostile attack (the “bad” breast that does not have any milk).
          Consequently, those who refrain from unhealthy symbiosis APPEAR to be on the attack and it is asserted that they are “narcissistic” — but this is all projection at the most basic of levels.

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      2. Steve Avatar
        Steve

        So the opposite of unhealthy symbiosis self-centered narcissism?

        No, it’s just the other side of the same coin — extreme either/or positions. The answer to unhealthy interfering relationships is not uncaring non-relationships, but healthy caring relationships.

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        1. musteryou Avatar
          musteryou

          I hope you find those relationships. Your answer sounds good!

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    2. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      I think my writing is pretty clear and there is no need to translate it. I said exactly what I wanted to say. Everything else is a projection that has nothing to do with me.

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      1. musteryou Avatar
        musteryou

        It’s amazing how people can actually think rationally when it comes to regulating many aspects of their lives, like turning the heat up or down, but get into a confused binary mode of thinking when it comes to something else.

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  12. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “One of the foundational principles of the patriarchy is the appropriation of an individual’s sexuality by his or her family.”

    It’s also one of the foundational principles of the species known as homo sapiens and likely to remain so as long as sexuality and the production of new human beings are intimately linked.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Actually, it has been almost completely dispensed with in the developed countries. And that is one of the greatest achievements of civilization. The religious fanatics who fear modernity still try to keep this model going but their efforts are risible.

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    2. musteryou Avatar
      musteryou

      slander

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    3. musteryou Avatar
      musteryou

      Can you say that again, but this time wearing an outfit looking like a slender elf, with certain parts exposed, and twirling on the table? I think whole societies should appropriate everyone’s sexuality, too. That way it could be much more fun.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        I’m being descriptive not prescriptive.

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        1. musteryou Avatar
          musteryou

          I’m being bored and wanting to see Americans dance.

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        2. musteryou Avatar
          musteryou

          Ah, I have the power to be prescriptive right here. It’s an unusual human feature. But I do want more.

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  13. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “I’m being bored and wanting to see Americans dance”

    Never say I never did anything for you:

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    1. musteryou Avatar
      musteryou

      Like

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  14. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    ” But I do want more.”

    Okay, but any thumbs down = no more dance videos.

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    1. musteryou Avatar
      musteryou

      Where are the yanks?

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        Doesn’t get any yankier (yankeer? yanker) than square dancing:

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        1. musteryou Avatar
          musteryou

          possibly not.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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