Understanding Patriarchy Bell Hooks Summary

In “Understanding Patriarchy,” bell hooks lays the groundwork for her most regarded feminist perspective. hooks articulates the singular reason for the social disparity between genders: a “political-social system” that everyone prescribes to and which negatively impacts the way people exist (p. 1). hooks contests that this system affects everyone alike. In it, persons’ genders are funneled into man and woman depending on their biologically-assigned sex. Men are praised for attributes understood as masculine – violence, autonomy, authority, and individualism, for example. Women are praised for certain traits as well– communal, passive, weak, and submissive, to name a few. Further, the traits which are not lateral to one’s apparent gender are not just ignored or not awarded but violently opposed. This is

patriarchy, and hooks reasons the first way to challenge this system is to name it. Many men, notes hooks, are not familiar with the word and often exclusively see patriarchy in terms of how it disadvantages women. However, patriarchy affects everyone in the way our desired existence is altered and edited by others, and in the way our own social articulation engenders others. As the problem of gender inequality lies in a system we all participate in rather than men’s sexism and misogyny, everyone is implicated in patriarchy’s undoing.
As a social-political system, patriarchy is reinforced by social interaction and on a grander scale, institutions. In the U.S., hooks credits schools, courthouses, clubs, sports arenas, churches, and homes as sites of patriarchal conditioning (p.1). These all relay information to the participants detailing their exact relationship to the group and others. For example, on attending one’s first football game, one would immediately understand a man’s and a woman’s role in the sport. In a christian wedding ceremony, one can immediately pick up the same inequality reproduced everywhere throughout American culture. Handing off the bride from father to husband, the officiating words “you may kiss the bride,” and the woman taking her husband’s surname, all communicate implicit roles for men and women. In hook’s words, these underlying messages demand that “males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate” (p.1). hooks brings up her own family life to better illustrate the centrality of patriarchal thinking. She and her brother, only a year or so apart in age, were schooled in patriarchal models of man and woman. Her brother’s passivity and quietness and her own violence and autonomy were combatted by their mother and father. The disparity between bell hooks and “girl” culminated in a violent episode of patriarchal dominance. Not only did hook’s father hit her for playing with a “boy” game, but later, her mother defended her husband’s outrage. This is because paternal violence is the pinnacle regulatory force of patriarchy, and both men and women of this mindset are equally responsible in patriarchal conditioning.
hooks distinguishes concrete patriarchy from psychological patriarchy. Psychological patriarchy is the underlying understanding and acceptance of patriarchy by everyone. It is what governs people to mask certain characteristics, interests, or desires. Concrete patriarchy is the interpersonal manifestation of patriarchy. Outbursts like hook’s father or trauma from sexual assault, may lead to an internalization of psychological patriarchy, but there is a distinction in the violence of concrete patriarchy and psychological patriarchy. The therapist Terrence Real recalls a significant moment of patriarchal discipline, where his son, dressing up as Barbie, was permanently dissuaded from the activity by the prolonged gaze of his older brother’s friends. hooks categorizes episodes like this as the “normal traumatization” of boys (p 2). This is an example of psychological patriarchy. Real’s son absorbed the gaze of the older boys and taught himself, not that he did not like dressing up as Barbie, but that the enjoyment he received from playing dress up was wrong. The complexity of individuals is incongruous with the rules of the gender binary. Patriarchy simultaneously “exalts” some of our traits and “devalues” others, damaging people's subjectivity and deforming relationships (p. 6). The result is a system divorced from honest, interpersonal intimacy and replaced by veneers of role congruity.
hooks distinguishes patriarchy from sexism.

She sees a common thread in misandry-type feminism, which interprets gender inequality as misogyny and sexism in the hopes of benefitting women and supplying them with the same right to domination that men are currently afforded (pp. 3-4). This is not the solution. Psychological patriarchy damages everyone. Due to the nature of patriarchy, people are best valued by their ability to perform their prescribed gender. hooks reckons this understanding eventually guides men, even anti-patriarchal men, into patriarchal roles. Addressing patriarchy means to properly address our relationships with others and where the values we place on others originate. “Understanding Patriarchy” is a call to end patriarchy, the concrete violence it advocates, and the psychological control it has over subjectivity. The first step is to name the problem. The second step is to challenge situations of patriarchy. Reimagining masculinity with egalitarian values will heal the “normal traumatization” of boys, and it will allow for new models of being. Ending patriarchy will afford everyone the ability to exist and be valued beyond the gender

binary.