Gender Sexuality Power and Patriarchy Book Report

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Berger, Butler, and Waring provide unique and distinct perspectives on gender, sex, and power. Feminism is almost by definition a study of power and inequality, given the prevalence and pervasiveness of patriarchy worldwide. To dismantle patriarchy, it is first necessary to recognize and articulate its many manifestations. Berger’s analysis of the visual arts touches on the concept of the male gaze, central to the perpetuation of patriarchy. The male gaze is only one way of seeing, and yet it has come to dominate verbal and non-verbal discourse. Moreover, Berger’s analysis shows how the male gaze impacts individual and collective female identity construction. Women have come to see themselves through the male gaze, and need to take back control of their own self-concept in order to completely shed the shackles of patriarchy. While Berger focuses on the female nude in visual art, the principles discussed in the documentary are equally applicable to popular culture, marketing, and the media. Women aspire to be like the images that men have presented to them: a female in idealized form, constructed to suit predominant male appetites. The objectification of the female body also reinforces the double standards established for women.

The bridge between Berger and Butler is the concept of performativity. Berger shows how the male gaze stimulates gender performativity, in that women viewing the constructed images of feminine identity perform or re-enact that identity for societal approval and indeed, self-approval.

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Ironically, even subversive gender identities can involve a degree of performativity. In “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” Butler shows how gays and lesbians also participate in performativity, albeit in differential and perhaps more complex ways than the gendered heteronormativity that Berger discusses. For example, drag is the performance of stereotypical gender. Yet drag is social commentary, a politically empowering act of re-owning gender tropes and re-communicating those tropes in subversive ways. Drag is one possible solution to the trap set by the male gaze. However, Butler also warns against the construction of either gender or sexual orientation that recognizes or values the power of heteronormativity. Butler also refers to the concept of “psychic mimesis,” the subconscious acting out of gendered or sexualized roles, norms, and identities. Insofar as personal identity is always going to involve some degree of relativity, it is extremely difficult to develop a self-concept (whether gendered or sexual) that is not relational.

Whereas Berger critiques the male gaze and Butler analyzes the implications of “compulsory heterosexuality,” (318) Waring shifts the focus to macro sociological issues in a discussion of gender and economics. Waring recognizes that women’s labor is systematically and deliberately devalued in ways that perpetuate patriarchal political, social, and economic institutions. Devaluing female labor makes it possible to maintain power over women, who become painted as….....

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