Patriarchy CritiquePapers

This essay critically examines evolutionary psychology's claims about gender differences and mate selection, particularly the popular notion that women are 'naturally monogamous' while men are 'naturally polygamous.' Rees reveals how these scientific narratives serve gender essentialism and how feminism responds to evolutionary psychology's challenges.

This radical feminist theoretical article revisits the place of tolerance in feminist theory, critically responding to the pluralist stance advocated by the inaugural issue of Feminist Theory journal. Drawing on Herbert Marcuse's theory of 'repressive tolerance', Thompson argues that unlimited tolerance provides shelter for patriarchal and anti-feminist viewpoints, thereby undermining feminism's core as a liberatory politics. She contends that feminism must maintain intolerance toward male domination to preserve its theoretical coherence and political efficacy.

This book review discusses Hilaire Barnett's 'Introduction to Feminist Jurisprudence'. Scoular, as a feminist legal scholar at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, evaluates the book's coverage of major issues in feminist jurisprudence as a student textbook, and its analysis of how traditional jurisprudence and law remain masculine subjects despite the vast strides in formal legal equality.

Uma Chakravarti's classic essay develops the concept of Brahmanical patriarchy, showing how caste order is reproduced through control over women's sexuality, marriage, inheritance, and kinship. It is essential for understanding Indian gender history, caste violence, and anti-caste feminism.

This chapter from Collins’ seminal book *Black Feminist Thought* analyzes the controlling images of Black womanhood in U.S. culture - such as the mammy, matriarch, welfare queen, and jezebel - and how these stereotypes function to justify intersecting systems of race, gender, and class oppression. Collins argues that these images are ideological tools used to regulate Black women’s labor, sexuality, and social roles.

This paper challenges the assumption that heterosexuality is the 'natural' sexual orientation for women, arguing that heterosexuality is a political institution imposed upon women.

In this seminal essay, Laura Mulvey introduces psychoanalytic theory to film criticism, coining the concept of the 'Male Gaze' to reveal how classical Hollywood cinema constructs images of women around male visual pleasure.

This groundbreaking 1975 essay introduces the concept of 'écriture féminine' (feminine writing), calling for women to reclaim their bodies and desires through writing. Cixous reinterprets the myth of Medusa, transforming her from a monstrous figure into a symbol of feminine power and creativity, challenging patriarchal language systems and advocating for the revolutionary potential of women's writing.

This paper proposes the groundbreaking concept of the 'sex/gender system' to analyze the social origins of women's oppression through a critical synthesis of Marxism, structural anthropology, and psychoanalytic theory.