Patriarchy and the Male Gaze

The case for feminism and gender equality stems from the dismantling of the social structure of patriarchy. While it may be easy to place the blame on men who have had the advantage in the “power struggle” between the sexes it is not that simple to be rid of the patriarchal system we have come to know.

First, we must come to understand what patriarchy actually is and how it works in our everyday lives, affecting the way we socialize with others and how we view the world around us. Bell hooks provides her definition in the following quotation from her book “ The will to change”:”Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through psychological terrorism and violence” (Hooks 18).  Patriarchy is best described as a social script both sexes adhere to their appropriately named “gender roles” since individuals may feel like they are not being genuine by following them and continue “acting” for most of their lives. Hooks’ includes some examples of the upholding of the patriarchal structure in her book starting with her own as a child playing marbles with her brother and winning, yet since marbles are considered a boy’s game her father didn’t like this and corrected this behavior by beating her. This display of violence established her father as the “alpha” of her family showing the full extent of his rage. This is the way roles are maintained through generations and the fuel to the fire seems to be the fear of shame. This becomes clearer as Hooks continues to give examples of the social implications of patriarchy. She then writes about another man that was close to her and his change from a gentle quiet man that criticized male dominance to later adopting patriarchal characteristics into his personality in the pursuit of moving forward in a “man’s world”. Resisting patriarchy as a male may be thought of as difficult because that would mean forgoing the promise of power and bring forward the shame of being an effeminate man. Hooks provides an example from Terrence Real portraying how powerful this label could be: “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 was a potent emotion: shame. A ten second wordless transaction was powerful enough to dissuade my son from that instant forward from what had been his favorite activity”(Hooks 22).

Even in children's games such as Mario patriarchy persists because he is always rescuing "helpless" Peach from Bowser

In my personal experience, I can’t say I haven’t been guilty of similar behavior. As an older brother I always try to look out for my little brother and I can remember a couple times where I have seen him watching my little pony on Netflix, he probably had just stumbled upon it through the recommended list, I intervene telling him that this was a show for little girls and I see how this upsets him sometimes. In my mind I just imagine someone besides me telling him this, someone with ill intent to actually make him feel bad. At the time my mental justification was that if I was able to draw this line for him he wouldn’t cross it outside of the house in a more public display of shame that I would not want him to go through. As I analyze my thought process further I suppose I would rather my brother be teased by me a little bit instead of probably more than one of his friends since children can be particularly judgemental. I feel like I do have a decent understanding of these roles and while most would describe me as kind and passionate; I would not let someone push me around. If someone did try to tell me that I am weak because of it, they couldn’t  be any more mistaken. I cherish my ability to feel strong emotions and express them and my ability to be emotionally strong by letting my feelings play themselves out as they should.

Bullies tend to reinforce patriarchy and it spans to way more than just locker room banter

However, this mental filter that seems to be in play where feminine characteristics are meant to be admired by men while beholding a woman, this “line” that shouldn’t be crossed has a name: the male gaze. The male gaze is defined by John Berger in his work “Ways of Seeing”: “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight” (Berger 47). Particularly this is seeing things as a man in a man’s world where women must conform to the ways that men want to see them and if they do so they may be rewarded with the closest thing to success for a woman is being appreciated by others, but always through the eyes of a man.

Women competing in this battle to impress men may be the most successful in the patriarchy we live in but they are also promoting patriarchy by doing so. Since patriarchy is nothing new it has been incorporated into our culture so much that we are blind to it. I agree with Hooks in the fact that if we do want to see a change in this system we would need support from both men and women and of course we must be willing to change in the first place.

Works Cited

Hooks, Bell. The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Simon & Schuster, 2004.

Berger, John. Ways of seeing: based on the BBC television series with John Berger. British Broadcasting Corp., 2012.