Gender Roles are Structuralized Mass-Sexual-Abuse
Isn't it fascinating that women, who have options out the ass, generally (not always) tend to try to change the man toward empathy, rather than to just do the same men do and just replace them with other genitals?
Excuse my radical feminism there but…it’s at least somewhat true. Anyways that isnt the point of this essay. Well…sort of.
I recently saw a tiktok where the creator said that the cause of this is a correlation between patriarchy-based trauma women have and capitalsm's structural make-up which favors workforce ideals and disenfranchises certain people to ensure structural benefits i.e. consumption.
However, what is frequently left out of the context in feminist theory is that men weren't born slaves to patriarchy and capitalism. And it is my claim that patriarchy has systematically sexually abused men for years to become object-focused and devoid of empathy as a coping mechanism.
Someone once told me that it is 'natural' that women want connection and men want objects.
But is it?
Freud uses the oedipus complex to explain men's psychic tendencies. But that oedipal explanation already assumes object-focus in men as their desire to dominate the father to earn the mother is a direct objectification of the mother. Deleuze and Guattari come closer to linking the environmental i.e. sociopolitical and socioeconomic cause of the object-focus in men.
They focus on desire as a thing-in-itself and claim that this almost parasitic takeover of human consciousness through capitalism's massive influence on desire structures is what makes people act the way they do. So basically...Deleuze and Guattari's main problem with Freud's oedipus complex is that they see it as a model that imposes a binary, normative structure on desire, which they argue is inherently multiplicitous and flows freely.
Here are two quotes in relation to that from Anti-Oedipus:
"Desire is not lack, but production. The Oedipus complex is the opposite of desire: it is the desexualization of desire, the reduction of desire to the law." (p. 7)
Desire does not move by the paths of lack or threat, but by leaps and jumps... It is a flow that constantly overflows its own banks." (p. 37)
The problem with this, for me, is that it tries to bypass and avoid binaries which are produced by capitalism's buddy patriarchy, and are manifested in people's realities.
So what about Lacan?
According to Lacan, the phallus is a signifier that stands for the lack of something - namely, the lack of the mother's phallus that the child perceives during the Oedipal phase. The phallus represents the child's desire to have what it perceives as the source of the mother's power, and the child's recognition of the father as the possessor of this power.
In Lacanian theory, the phallus is a symbolic concept that is not limited to biological sex or gender. Instead, it is a social and cultural construct that shapes our understanding of gender and sexuality. The phallus is not just associated with men, but can also be embodied by women, as they too can have access to this symbolic power through identification with the father figure.
Furthermore, the phallus is not a stable or permanent symbol, but is subject to shifts and changes in meaning over time. Lacan also distinguished between the imaginary phallus, which is the image of the phallus as a symbol of power and desire, and the symbolic phallus, which is the signifier that represents this image in language and culture.
So this, in my opinion, explains how the phallocentrism of patriarchy invades the child's perception and how patriarchy's binary is created but it doesn't really differ that much from Freud's original oedipus complex theory.
So...still, none of these theories mention or discuss the enforcement of object-focus on male children and how it differs from women's connection focus.
So lets see what they have to say about object-focus with my homie Freud (returning to Freud is always the best way to go...you can fight me on that but I'll never change my mind). In his essay On Narcissism, Freud talks about object-focus vs. self-focus. These are the main points of the text:
Freud defines narcissism as a love for one's own self and attributes it to being a necessary part of human development. However, he also argues that excessive narcissism can be pathological and interfere with healthy relationships.
According to Freud, individuals experience a period of primary narcissism during infancy, in which they are completely self-absorbed and do not distinguish between themselves and the outside world. During this period, the child's libido is directed entirely towards the self.
As the child grows and develops, their primary narcissism is gradually replaced by object love, in which the child begins to direct their libido towards external objects and people. This process involves a shift from the pleasure principle to the reality principle, as the child learns to accept the limitations of the external world and adapt to them.
Freud also introduces the concept of secondary narcissism, in which the individual directs their libido back towards the self. This can occur in response to disappointment or frustration in relationships or other areas of life, leading the individual to retreat into themselves and focus on their own needs and desires.
Finally, Freud discusses the relationship between narcissism and the ego, arguing that the ego is essentially narcissistic in nature, and that its development involves a process of narcissistic identification with significant others. The ego, according to Freud, is both a product of and a reflection of the individual's narcissistic tendencies.
So the assertion is that at birth, we are narcissistic and we develop object or ego focus. Let's not get too caught up in pathology claims here.
So what is different for men and women?
Well, nothing really. It's just that Freudian narcissism is villainized as contrary to survival, so women are taught that they need to embrace that ego attachment focus to survive via appealing to men, and men are taught that their worth is tied to acquisition and property which harbors that object focus.
And I, personally, consider that INFILTRATION AND DIRECTING OF LIBIDO BY SOCIAL FORCES as sexual abuse.
Here is why:
Gender roles are essentially systematic sexual abuse with a clear motive. And that motive is to eliminate self-focus (Freudian narcissism) and to seek communal, attached structures of living. By forcing us into roles of attached living, we are dependent on each other for PERCEIVED basic survival. And that is sexual coercion, because it teaches us through excessive pyramid scheme like sexual objectification or self-objectification that our basic survival and worth (in relation to cultural capital) is related to our sexuality and, therefore, our gender roles.
So what are the methods?
The methods used to convince us of this shit are multilayered.
1) We are exposed to the typical family structure which indoctrinates us to believe that survival means family.
2) We are exposed to the same narratives in our social structures (i.e. school curriculum where we are NOT taught that these things are irrelevant and that we could survive without attachment to social structures, being exposed to children of higher age groups who live out their sexual explorations in the presence of young children)
3) we are exposed to highly sexualized media even in the most vanilla things we see WITOUT the understanding that this isn't a model for behavior but a choice in how to live one's life,
4) we are told that sexual exploration is essentially shameful and should be hidden from the world while at the same time putting it in our faces as some kind of essential horror.
There's more but...all of this is essentially done to push product. There is a lot of profit in keeping people in a permanent state of discontentment and confusion. Ask Zizek about the Sublime Object of Ideology. And this is where the desire as a thing-in-itself-thing comes into play.
This is where Deleuze and Guattari truly were onto something. Because this theory shows us that desire isn't something we can ever avoid or counteract. Desire is a permanent disease we have which we are subject to. And that desire involves a constant repetition of the production of more desire. Basically...we can't be satisfied. So while socialization is set up to convince us that we are able to find basic and permanent need-fulfillment in family, labor and consumption, by falling in line and assuming the roles we are given by nature, we are never going to be satisfied with what we acquire or submit to.
Yaaaay for society (get why I think Stirner needs to be brought back?)
I'll write more about this soon. Thanks for reading.