widthCould it be that only about 10% of raped women file complaints in Germany and France? A quarter of women suffer from partner violence, and most of them are still in a violent relationship? Women in 2021, even if they have the same job, have to cook for their husbands, wash clothes, and take care of their children alone?
French philosopher Mannon García wanted to use her book to answer these questions—as the title suggests, she did so, referring to the continuation of the patriarchal order in which we coexist. Garcia pays attention to the issue of obedience, to the contribution that those who become women themselves make to maintain this order. And this expression itself shows the complex interaction between passive and active, structure and action, society and individual, which ultimately leads to individual women succumbing to men without having to bear moral responsibility for this.
Pitfalls of heterosexual relationships
First, Garcia took care of her to refer to the terminology definitions made by critical rulers such as Marx and Foucault: In every relationship between individuals or groups, the degree of rule determines whether people can even talk about obedience. If the rules are based on sheer violence and no one surrenders, then there is no choice. But here and now, in France where Garcia writes, and other “Western” countries she mentions, most women have a formal choice-which makes the subject even more interesting.
The arguments that Garcia interspersed in the previous chapters are also interesting. For example, heterosexual couples are parades for women’s submission. In lesbian relationships, there is no unequal distribution of housework.
Constructed as an object of desire
However, it quickly changed from the current phenomenon to re-reading Simone de Beauvoir The work “The Opposite Sex”. Because no one writes so inspiringly about the objectification of the form of submission, women and their bodies like Beauvoir. García’s statement about Beauvoir is still correct, for example about the suffering of young girls, “this is caused by the experience of the body, more precisely the body, which has been constructed as an object of desire”, or Regarding women’s attempts to “distinguish themselves by appearance”, this makes them fall into “unending dependence on the gaze of the outside world.”
But at the same time, due to the focus on Beauvoir, the author ignored some current developments and some important reference materials, such as the works of young feminist writers, such as Laurie Petunia or Margaret Stokowski, who It also reveals the objectification of those who are objectified. Considered to be female. Garcia explained through Beauvoir the two main reasons for women’s continued (self) obedience: First, those fertile bodies are more obviously subject to species protection than those that are infertile. This seems to be biological determinism, but Garcia rejects this determinism. Similar to Beauvoir, she emphasized that physical experience can only be understood in the context of the social belonging to the body.
Economic dependence on men
However, it does not address the social forces and structures that maintain the reproductive body. For example, modern countries continue to criminalize abortion, or its anti-feminist ideology is based on the right-wing parties and groups that reproduce the body as a means of reproducing people. . There is no mention of these initiatives in Garcia’s book. These initiatives have been fighting for decades to repossess bodies that are objectified by the slogan “My body, my choice” in patriarchal chats. Garcia did not inquire about the feminist movement, nor did he mention people who have reproductive potential but are not women.
The second relevant aspect that Garcia and Beauvoir emphasized as the reason for the continued existence of the patriarchal order is the heterosexual romantic and sexual relationship patterns that women repeatedly suggest to obey. The economic dependence on men, especially on their husbands, is no longer what women did in Beauvoir’s time. However, if they do not succumb to men, they will still learn to be lonely, unpopular, and unloved from an early age. These gender norms need to be revised: “If people understand that women, like men, are a kind of generation, a historical existence rather than another, a natural other and an inferiority person, then people will also understand obedience as historical rather than rigid Attitude.”
The frustrating thing is that by 2021, women will still have a so-called natural disadvantage compared to men. Manon Garcia’s book clearly shows that this is necessary. Therefore, although there are some gaps, it is important for the emancipation of those who have been turned into women and for the emancipation of all.
Manon Garcia: “We are not born obedient”. How patriarchy determines women’s lives. Translated from French by Andrea Hemminger. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2021. 234 pages, hardcover, 26 euros.
