The Role Of Patriarchy By Hazel Carby

818 Words2 Pages

Negotiations and back-room dealings happen in any possible setting at any possible moment. Regardless of whether a bargain is two people negotiating a business deal, eighty people silently weighing the pros and cons of drawing attention to themselves, or one single person unconsciously deciding to give up individuality to wrest some semblance of power from the system, a choice is being made between various options. Everyone has to negotiate with patriarchy. Patriarchy, a facet of society promoting “being male dominated, male identified, and male centered,” uses the male-centered actions and exclusion of women to “subsume the female under the male,” meaning that anyone trying to exist in society as gendered beings, for better or worse, fall “Black manhood, [...] could not be achieved or maintained,” under the patriarchy, meaning that men who aren’t white still have to fight to have a say in the patriarchy and thus make bargains themselves—meaning that patriarchy is a white man’s realm of control (Carby 35). This also implies that black womanhood has no ground within the patriarchy, since male privilege is reserved only for white men. Since the patriarchy is a white realm, and per Carby’s argument, only white women can make patriarchal bargains. Bennett finds that any woman is capable of bargaining with the patriarchy, as “women as a group are disempowered” and thus play a role in it by trying to wrest any power they can (Carby 57). Carby finds that because of the cult of true womanhood, white women are allowed to make patriarchal bargains, but because of the race and class divide, black women—particularly in the time of slaves—are not allowed even the option to assimilate into the patriarchal world and vie for This has heavy ramifications on women as a class because women come from such vast backgrounds—race, social class, financial background, sexual orientation, gender expression, cis/transgender backgrounds, age, ability, and any other backgrounds imaginable—women have to reconcile all of these backgrounds together as fellow women. Bennett would argue that the lack of knowledge of the past of women as a class “hinders our ability to trace continuities in women’s history,” specifically because women’s history is different with every separate tie to other backgrounds (Bennett 79). One might argue that the only thing that ties women together as a class in modern society is the ability to make patriarchal bargains. Even though not every woman is able to assimilate into the patriarchy as easily as white, cis, straight women, in modern society, more women than ever before have been able to make patriarchal

Open Document