The Male Gaze and Patriarchy
Male Gaze is described by John Berger as how women used to attract a man. In the article, he portrays different paintings of dressed and undressed women's and how males are drawn towards them. We see how through his paintings he is trying to demonstrate to the public that women were seen as a pleasing object to men's eyes. They were treated more as an object without any rights and power in society. Gaze heavily hints at the fact that how “man act and women appear" (page 47). The relationship between man and woman was that woman was dictated by a man in every aspect of life, and she was just considered an object with the sole meaning of pleasing man without having any of its own identity.
Picture by the male of games
Patriarchy allows males to hold primary power in a majority of the roles such as political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of the property. Also, it primarily demonstrates the strict division between male and female roles as the majority accepts it. Patriarchy has unveiled itself in most of the situations in every culture when it relates to holding power in every matter of day to day life. Man is the one who not only dominates woman life but also expects them to be passive and submissive. Every woman is supposed to be pure and selfless creatures who can be a good homemaker and make their men happy.
Bell Hooks interpreted Patriarchy as a social, political system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak. In his article, he emphasizes on the fact “how patriarchal rules still govern most of the world's religious, school systems and family systems” (page 23). Hooks believes that patriarchy was created by religion which as a Catholic I also have witnessed it. Like how in the Catholic faith all the priest is a man and not women's which as Catholic I disagree is this approach, I feel that woman should also have the equal opportunity to be a priest. Simple things like this create Patriarchy in our society. Consequently, our political and religious system stems out the causes of patriarchy.
Patriarchy allows males to hold primary power in a majority of the roles such as political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of the property. Also, it primarily demonstrates the strict division between male and female roles as the majority accepts it. Patriarchy has unveiled itself in most of the situations in every culture when it relates to holding power in every matter of day to day life. Man is the one who not only dominates woman life but also expects them to be passive and submissive. Every woman is supposed to be pure and selfless creatures who can be a good homemaker and make their men happy.
Bell Hooks interpreted Patriarchy as a social, political system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak. In his article, he emphasizes on the fact “how patriarchal rules still govern most of the world's religious, school systems and family systems” (page 23). Hooks believes that patriarchy was created by religion which as a Catholic I also have witnessed it. Like how in the Catholic faith all the priest is a man and not women's which as Catholic I disagree is this approach, I feel that woman should also have the equal opportunity to be a priest. Simple things like this create Patriarchy in our society. Consequently, our political and religious system stems out the causes of patriarchy.
Work 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.
By Johan S Molina
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