How is Patriarchal Violence Naturalized?
Patriarchal systems of power depend on the naturalization of hatred and violence against women. How do these toxic beliefs emerge in culture? In the tape, Violence Against Women, two women discuss how societal structures continue to teach the toxic belief that a woman's body inherently belongs to men. They go on to pinpoint the politics behind why people think women were put on this earth as functional objects to be used by men and raises the question of what reclamation of power looks like. They state reclamation first involves naming these harmful systems and acts; recognizing how common it is for men to violate the boundaries of women and young girls.
In the tape, The 1st East Coast Conference on Women and Pornography, notable feminists highlight rape culture as it relates to pornography that largely represents men as aggressors and women as submissive and without agency; former child actor Robin Morgan speaks about the startling experience she had at six years old when she was brought to an adult party, where the adults sexually harassed her and made her read a story outloud about gang rape.
Under the patriarchy, the way we are taught to conceive of sex, to relate to sex, and to have sex is charged with violence. It begins with the assignment of sex at birth, in which the abstract concept of binary sex is enforced as a biological fact (assigned sex at birth) and modeled through a heterosexual relationship in which men are understood to be the creators and subjects of life while women are at best an object of desire or a means of reproduction. This repressive conception of sex reigns over the patriarchy, distorting everybody’s understanding of their bodies and selves.
In the late 60s to 70s, some radical feminists pledged their allegiance to said binary sexed divisions. When trying to imagine a feminist liberation, they limited feminism to the liberation of only cisgender women and equated maleness with inherent evil and violence. In 1973, Beth Elliot, a trans woman, was subject to violent accusations by aforementioned Robin Morgan at the West Coast Lesbian Conference, a conference Elliot herself organized. Morgan demanded Elliot leave, calling her “an opportunist, an infiltrator, and a destroyer-with the mentality of a rapist.” The same year, the lesbian feminist organization Daughters of Bilitis kicked out Elliot on account of her being a trans woman. Ti-Grace Atkinson, a prominent member of DOB, went on to sign an open letter in 2013, arguing for the removal and exclusion of trans women from feminist spaces.
Today, we associate this behavior with trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs). Though TERFs were not yet conceptualized in the 1970s, trans exclusionary politics were emerging within radical feminist spaces and conversations. For example, some of the tapes regarding spirituality feature women whose logics are guided by the concept of binary sex and the patriarchy’s enforcement of it.
In the tape, The Goddess and the Origins of Patriarchy, guest Grace Chanel talks about violence as if it is a natural part of male development, rather than intentional power-seeking behavior awarded by the patriarchy. By reducing violence against women to a symptom of male biology, Chanel ends up justifying this violence through “science” rather than an intentional use of power.
In the tape, Everywomanspace: Tarot, the tarot practitioner explains the cards as a way to grasp the self, interpreting the cards through the “classic” duality of “Man” and “Woman,” in which the masculine is regarded as active while the feminine is seen as passive. When taken as an axiom of self, this binary opposition between “Man” and “Woman” naturalizes women’s subordination to men. Though the tarot practitioner tries to grasp women’s liberation through the cards, she ends up encouraging women to suppress their anger, to mediate un-ladylike attitudes through a supposed pacifying female spirit.