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7 reviews for:
Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression
Sandra Lee Bartky
4.25 AVERAGE
7 reviews for:
Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression
Sandra Lee Bartky
4.25 AVERAGE
informative
fast-paced
Femininity and Domination contains seven essays written over 15 years.
At its best, Bartky's writing articulates ideas about gender and power which rocked my world, and which I think are completely relevant in the world today.
I found a lot to think about in all of the essays, but for me, "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power," "Shame and Gender," and "Feeding Egos and Tending Wounds: Deference and Disaffection in Women's Emotional Labor" were perhaps those which most dramatically shifted my perceptions.
I found the essay on feminine masochism to be the weakest, as perhaps is evidenced by the fact that Bartky herself finished it with a few paragraphs entitled "Instead of a Conclusion."
Bartky's essays are very much a hammering out of ideas, and as such, display her own cognitive process in trying to understand the world in which we live.
Ultimately, Femininity and Domination isn't perfect, but that's not what it's about. What it is, is a sincere, important, and at times brilliant re-thinking of the power dynamics which in a very real way undermine women's lives today.
At its best, Bartky's writing articulates ideas about gender and power which rocked my world, and which I think are completely relevant in the world today.
I found a lot to think about in all of the essays, but for me, "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power," "Shame and Gender," and "Feeding Egos and Tending Wounds: Deference and Disaffection in Women's Emotional Labor" were perhaps those which most dramatically shifted my perceptions.
I found the essay on feminine masochism to be the weakest, as perhaps is evidenced by the fact that Bartky herself finished it with a few paragraphs entitled "Instead of a Conclusion."
Bartky's essays are very much a hammering out of ideas, and as such, display her own cognitive process in trying to understand the world in which we live.
Ultimately, Femininity and Domination isn't perfect, but that's not what it's about. What it is, is a sincere, important, and at times brilliant re-thinking of the power dynamics which in a very real way undermine women's lives today.
I am grateful for Bartky’s work. I don’t agree with all of it, and it has its typical white feminist “there are no black feminists in the world that I could cite” moments, but she does an excellent job of identifying the tyranny of patriarchy without bashing men. She describes its various outposts in women’s heads. Chapter one is about how being a feminist demands raising one’s consciousness. Chapter two appropriates Fanon to argue that women are also colonized with no mention of how they participated in colonizing. The first three chapters build up the concept of alienation, which is the focus of chapter three. Chapter four declares that feminine masochism is not okay because it’s an extreme example of the seductiveness of domination but the process of un-desiring is murky and perhaps still impossible. Chapter five shows how women are under a patriarchy Panopticon surveillance so that they see themselves as men see them and are constantly monitoring their behavior and adornment. Chapter six surveys shame and guilt and how women feel it more often than men because they feel themselves to be inadequate by their own standards. Through education examples Bartky argues that those standards are remnants of societal oppression and thus what women see as problems with themselves are problems with the society in which we live. Chapter seven is where I started and is actually my favorite. Emotional labor hurts women especially when its unreciprocated and especially when silence is a moral compromise about issues with which they clearly disagree. At the very least, one can say that silence is a patriarchal affliction that Bartky totally eschews in this book.
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
A fantastic examination of internalization and micro-politics, and an excellent counterpart to MacKinnon's more macro-level (and prescriptive) theorization.
One of my favourite pieces of feminist philosophical works so far. It's one of those books that makes you start to see the world around you in terms of it.
provocative, uncompromising but still somehow compassionate. i certainly don’t agree with bartky on every point and found certain terminology difficult to digest, but i found myself writing “yes!” in the margins again and again. this book is a catalyst.