patriarchy and antipatriarchy first paper, due may 9 Pick one question and answer it with a short essay 1. According to Catharine MacKinnon, Consciousness raising can also affirm that although women are deprived of power, within the necessity of their com
social sciences
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patriarchy and antipatriarchy first paper, due may 9 Pick one question and answer it with a short essay 1. According to Catharine MacKinnon, Consciousness raising can also affirm that although women are deprived of power, within the necessity of their compliance is a form of power which they possess but have not yet seized. Mostly, women comply. Women learn they are defined in terms of subordinate roles; failing to challenge these roles confirms male supremacy in a way it needs. Daily social actions are seen to cooperate with and conform to a principle.
They are not random, natural, socially neutral, or without meaning beyond themselves. They are not freely willed, but they are actions nonetheless. From seeing that such actions have meaning for maintaining and constantly reaffirming the structure of male supremacy at their expense, women can come to see the possibility, even the necessity of acting differently. Women can act because they have been acting all along. Although it is one thing to act to preserve power relations and quite another to act to challenge them, once it is seen that these relations require daily acquiescence, acting on different principles, even in very snall ways, seems not quite so impossible. Offer an interpretation of MacKinnon’s claims in this passage. A good interpretation might include answers to the following questions. (a) What does it come to that “Mostly, women comply”? Give an example
