Separation of Spheres | Clarissa's Blog
Patriarchal attacks that deny one full entry into the public realm are ubiquitous and can be really subtle.
Take the example I gave the other day, the insinuation, "You don't know what it is like to be a real person in the real world."
Take another one: "You are hiding something. It really cannot be as you say. You're keeping something back."
Take another: "You hurt his human dignity when you exposed his actual behavior to the public world like that. You ought to be ashamed!"
All of these kinds of attacks, which are often reflexive, and come from all sectors of society, are anti-feminist. They assume that women are only psychologically equipped to operate in private.
The difficulty is when these assumptions are deeply embedded in the subconscious minds of everybody. Even feminists start acting as if obvious lines of propriety had always been drawn somewhere.
Patriarchal attacks that deny one full entry into the public realm are ubiquitous and can be really subtle.
Take the example I gave the other day, the insinuation, "You don't know what it is like to be a real person in the real world."
Take another one: "You are hiding something. It really cannot be as you say. You're keeping something back."
Take another: "You hurt his human dignity when you exposed his actual behavior to the public world like that. You ought to be ashamed!"
All of these kinds of attacks, which are often reflexive, and come from all sectors of society, are anti-feminist. They assume that women are only psychologically equipped to operate in private.
The difficulty is when these assumptions are deeply embedded in the subconscious minds of everybody. Even feminists start acting as if obvious lines of propriety had always been drawn somewhere.
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