Femininity And Domination By Sandra Bartky

In chapter five of the book Femininity and Domination by Sandra Bartky, she analyses Michel Foucault’s evaluation of discipline and power relations utilized against the body. Her critiques are addressed through a feminist lens, arguing that the experience of domination over the feminine body is unique from other institutions of control. In this essay, I will analyze the following quote from Bartky’s book; “The absence of formally identifiable disciplinarians and of a public schedule of sanctions serves only to disguise the extent to which the imperative to be ‘feminine’ serves the interest of domination” (Bartky 1990, 75) I shall argue that Bartky’s quote suggests that the loci of feminine domination are unclear as there are no physical structures that regulate discipline and control. I shall also make the claim that the normalization of feminine self-regulatory behavior allows for patriarchal systems to obscure their role in feminine domination by passing of the behavior as natural.
Foucault argues that there are systematic and observable entities that regulate, schedule, and restrict the human body. Such entities include schools, prisons, the military, and hospitals (Bartky 1990, 63). Bartky counters that the domination of the feminine body is different than the
The normalization of the expected and restrictive feminine behavior shifts the blame from the individual over the structural problems of patriarchy, which masks its involvement. Sandra Bartky suggest that feminine subjects must undergo a process of “de-skilling” (Bartky 1990, 77). The skills acquired under a patriarchal system are become difficult to resist as they become tied to a person’s identity but are crucial in reversing the effects of self-surveillance, gaining power over their own bodies, and to begin the deconstruction of patriarchal