Women As The Sublime Object Of The Ideology Called Patriarchy

By Kush

In patriarchy women , through the male gaze , become sublimated. Here I am not simply talking about considering women as sex objects but idealizing them above the status of humans and fitting them into these forms of “purity” , “softness” , “gracefulness” ,“beauty” , etc. This might appear contradictory as we generally think that women are thought of , by patriarchal notions, as lesser humans not “above human”. Let me explain this in the next paragraph.

I had a talk with my friend about a popular influential figure on the internet, called Andrew Tate known for being a misogynist and a hardcore conservative. My friend was defending him on the claim that he is a misogynist and said that “how could he be a misogynist? He treats women like goddesses and encourages other men to do so”. This I believe is a crucial problem in the ideology of patriarchy and masculinity, where men believe by considering women as goddesses or “something that needs to be protected and cared for” they are doing women a favor, where in actually they are just assigning meaning to their lives , hiding themselves from confronting the real woman.

In the next paragraphs I will explain these points clearly. let me first critique the idea of the dynamic of masculinity and its imposition on men and women. In traditional masculinity , men are assigned roles of being “strong” , “dominant” , “protective” , “providing” , etc. and women are assigned roles of being “submissive” , “pure”, “gentle” , “receiving” , “graceful” , etc. as you can see here the sublimation starts. Men are told to protect women and provide for them which makes not only puts a lot of pressure on men , it stops women from achieving in their lives and taking up oppurtunities. Here as you can see putting women on this pseudo-pedestal of femininity can be dangerous. However if you may have also noticed that women are not the only ones being sublimated here , even men have a pseudo-ideal of a strong and protective man imposed on them and which they themselves also sustain. The question is why do they sustain them? Its simply because it provides meaning in their lives , by being a strong man in the eyes of a woman they sustain meaning in their lives , as men have always been the provider/protector in society men only patriarchal men think this is the only ways they have a place in society. Hence to sustain this fantasy they create the idea of the “feminine” , men want to protect someone so they create someone that “needs” to be protected , hence femininity. With this ideal of femininity comes derogatory expectations like , women should stay in the kitchen , women are delicate , etc. These ideals while treating women like “goddesses” bring upon conditions on them that are actually worse than being human and that take away freedom and liberty.

To sustain these delusions further , men create these pseudo hierarchies of “alpha” and “beta” men , where alpha men are more masculine than beta men and hence are more dominant. Now one might object that these hierarchies actually exist before humans and have been ever-present in animals but human societies are far more complex to hold these primitive structures of alphas and betas. One additional belief they have is that the more women a man has been in a relationship with , the more alpha he is , which posits a contradiction within itself which I will explain with an analogy I came up with. What is the difference between a pen and a pencil , obviously they both are used for writing but what a pen writes cannot be erased but what a pencil writes can be , but this power , this advantage , this feature of the pencil is not held within the pencil itself it is held by the eraser. The eraser holds the power to distinguish between the pencil and the pen , without the eraser both are functionally the same things. This trick also works operates in the alpha/beta distinction , take the alpha men as pencils and beta men as pens and women are erasers , the alpha men are only alpha when they have women , this makes their masculinity reliant on women , this is also contradictory as all “self-improvement” done by these men is now for women or in other words to get more women.

women in this ideology (modern patriarchy) become fetishized commodities and looking for relationships becomes like grocery shopping. Women become the same material obsessions like cars, houses , etc. for men. For men , women become this sort of chase that they have to impress , a sort of glorified “thing” , they spend hours at the gym or hours in the office to impress the right girl but as soon as they get her and encounter the “real woman” (the desublimated woman who only comes into being for the man after he is in a relationship with her , this happens when the man recognizes the woman as a human like him and not a fetishized ideal/commodity) she moves from the ideal state down to the “ordinary” , in the same way after 5-6 days every material possession gets integrated into our lives and becomes ordinary, this then urges the man to pursue another woman , repeating the cycle.

By Kush