Unthinking Patriarchy And Utilizing Resistance Rhetorics

By Jocelyn Crawley

As male supremacy continues to rear its head in a plethora of egregiously disturbing ways, radical feminists need never lose consciousness of the reality that rape and other forms of sexual assault constitute the most central element of patriarchy. Without living under the constant threat of and/or lived reality of rape, women and girls would have less reason to view themselves as any of the following: victims, objects, sex objects, discardable objects, unwanted objects, half persons, toys, dolls, etc. When patriarchy retains sexual assault as an integral element of cultural life, the fundamental humanity and vitality of women is threatened. This ongoing threatening involves men creating structures and systems (including but not limited to pornography and prostitution) through which the belief that women are bodies that are meant to be used and consumed becomes prevalent. Rape not only works to facilitate the dehumanization and perceived inferiority of women, but also functions as a modality through which women lose their sense of autonomy and agency such that they retain little to no sense of self as a discrete entity and rather view themselves as fundamentally and irrevocably connected to male views of themselves. Indeed, a woman who has been raped will oftentimes undergo a period of recovery in which her own inner psychic work involves recognizing that although she has done nothing wrong, she–simply by being female in a patriarchal society–can and has been victimized as a result of the male view that women are not human and therefore have no bodily autonomy that men must recognize as any sort of psychological or somatic barrier/boundary. 

In recognizing the ongoingness of rape under patriarchy, it is important that radical feminists not fall prey to the ideological numbness and false consciousness which women are continually subjected to as a result of ongoing exposure to all aspects of reality which work to purport the patriarchal agenda (books, television, schools, religious institutions, legal systems, etc.). Radical feminism knows that resisting the ideological numbness of false consciousness requires thought, and this realm of cognition includes a form of thinking which I call “unthought.” Unthought is the cognitive process of thinking through the way that patriarchy thinks about things and unabashedly, unequivocally pronouncing those thought systems null and void. In this article, I examine how this process of “unthought” transpires in the work of radical feminist thinker Joanna Russ. I subsequently analyze relevant cultural contexts in which her rethinking of patriarchal ideas is rearticulated in the voices of individuals who offer counternarratives to the quotidian, mainstream lens through which their rapes are expected to be viewed and interpreted. I use the phrase “rhetoric of resistance” to describe the articulation of these counternarratives which reflect assent to the process of unthinking patriarchy. Although the world of “unthought” is consonant with the “rhetorics of resistance,” the terms are not used interchangeably here. Rather, the rhetorics of resistance is a product of unthought. To understand this, one should view rhetorics of resistance as forms of speech–including words, phrases, slogans, and mantras–which actively and unequivocally refute modes of logic which promote and defend patriarchal praxis. An example of a rhetoric of resistance would be the feminist slogan “Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice.” (This specific resistant rhetoric results from a process of unthinking which involves rejecting the patriarchal idea that pornography is fun and harmless as a result of recognizing the role that it plays in promoting hierarchical thinking about men and women such that the physical abuse and sexual assault of women becomes an acceptable practice in pornographic films and daily life.) Thus, the rhetorics of resistance emerges as external articulations rooted in the process of thinking through, and then unthinking, patriarchal logic. 

To understand the link between Russ’s thinking through and unthinking of patriarchal logic and contemporary counternarratives to the destructive rationality of male supremacy, one should consider her important essay “The New Misandry.” In “The New Misandry,” Russ makes several assertions which are a part of the process of unthinking patriarchy exacted by a plethora of radical feminists. I will discuss two of them here. The first element of Russ’s unthinking process is:  

1. Unthinking patriarchy’s attempt to delegitimize hatred as a rational response to oppression:

In discussing the patriarchal formula for delegitimizing loathing as a logical reaction to the experience of subjugation within a woman-hating framework, Russ notes that the configuration unfolds thus:

(1) You do something nasty to me. (2) I hate you. (3) You find it uncomfortable to be hated. (4) You think how nice it would be if I didn’t hate you. (5) You decide I ought not to hate you because hate is bad. (6) Good people don’t hate. (7) Because I hate I am a bad person. (8) It is not what you did to me that makes me hate you, it is my own bad nature. I — not you — am the cause of my hating you.

Although multiple meaningful articulations are elucidated here, the aspect of unthinking patriarchy that seems most salient to me is Russ’s argument that, within misogynistic logic, the primary problem with men and women relating to one another is not that men engage in deleterious activity, but rather that women respond by expressing antipathy towards either what the male has done or the male himself (and sometimes both). Yet, in her enumeration of how this misogynistic logic works, Russ makes plain its flaw: the argument attempts to assert that there is something wrong with the character and nature of the individual who experiences and expresses hatred towards an individual who wrongs them. In actuality, as I and many other radical feminists would argue, there is absolutely nothing wrong with responding to malicious, malevolent actions and attitudes of men with intense, passionate dislike. In fact, the experience of this emotion might preclude further harms. Ultimately, Russ’s process of unthinking patriarchal (ir)rationality, a process which involves labeling this logic “double-think,” can enable readers to begin envisioning ideological realms in which victims are not blamed for expressing anger towards their oppressors.

Luckily, the process of unthinking the patriarchal argument that women are not allowed to experience and express emotive antagonism (hate) towards their oppressors is going on all over the world. And women aren’t just thinking and writing about it. They are expressing their antipathy to male privilege and power out loud.  All types of women, irrespective of their ideological slant, have made plain their willingness to resist the suppression of dangerous and potentially transformative emotions upon being oppressed. Margaret Cho, for example, responded to the reality of a male relative who repeatedly raped her during childhood with unalloyed contempt. Having been raped by her uncle from the ages of five to 12, Cho eventually told her family members and, although they believed her, they were more concerned with keeping the peace than addressing the issue.  Years later, Cho’s family came to an event being held in her honor and brought the molestor. When he attempted to hug her, Cho whispered to him “You know what you did, and I am going to fucking kill you.” In reflecting on what she said, Cho stated that it felt good to threaten his life. Although Cho did not kill her molestor, her expression of deep antagonism towards him in response to his violation of her works to counter the narrative that victims should suffer in silence, forgive their oppressor, pretend that nothing happened, maintain systems of socialization with men that put their lives in danger, etc. Instead of doing these things, Cho opted to adopt a rhetoric of resistance infused with unequivocal anger towards the man who violated her. In reading about it, I realize that I would like to see the hatred expressed by Cho engender an outcome that many feminists are waiting to observe: the end of individual and collective abuse of women by men. As Russ notes in discussing the intersections of male contempt for women and hatred for men by women as an outcome, “the cure for hate is power–not power to hurt the hurter, but power to make the hurter stop.” 

Refuting the notion that hating one’s oppressor is wrong is not the only form of unthinking patriarchal logic that Russ engages in. The second element of Russ’s unthinking process is:

2. Recognition of the role that ideological mystification plays in constructing “realities” which ensure the perpetuation of male supremacist narratives:

Just as she does in refuting the illogic of asserting that subjugated individuals cannot hate their oppressors, Russ takes the reader through a process of enumeration to convey the lack of rationality indigenous to how many men rationalize their abuses of women: 

That bad things are done to you is bad enough; worse is the double-think that follows. The man insists — often semi-sincerely, though he has some inkling of his motives because if you question them, he gets mad — that (1) he didn’t do anything, you must be hallucinating; (2) he did it but it’s trivial and therefore you’re irrational (“hysterical”) to resent it or be hurt; (3) it’s important but you’re wrong to take it personally because he didn’t mean it personally; (4) it is important and personal but you provoked it, i.e., it’s your fault and not his. Worse still, he often insists on all of them at once. 

Here, the reader notes Russ’s process of unthinking patriarchy unfold with impeccable lucidity. First, a man harms a woman. This deleterious behavior is followed by one or multiple types of rationalizations, including the idea that he didn’t do anything wrong and the woman has somehow imagined the harm into existence. Other forms of rationalization include minimizing the harm such that resistance or response to it constitutes excessive hysteria, accusing the victim of taking it personally, and asserting that although what happened to the victim was personal, it was her fault. After her enumeration of patriarchal logic, Russ explains its nefarious impact in order to dismantle the fallacious notion that the malevolent, malicious activity of men can transpire in ways that entail no significant harm. According to Russ, “hurting people makes them angry, anger turns to hate when the anger is chronic and accompanied by helplessness, and although you can bully or shame people into not showing their anger, the only way to stop the anger is to stop the hurt.” She is right, and her assessments regarding emotionality reveal that anger cannot be rationalized into nonexistence but rather exists as evidence that a problematic experience (which involves one person hurting another) has transpired.

Russ’s ability and willingness to unthink the perverse power of patriarchy is paralleled by women verbally articulating antagonism towards the reality of its illogic. In providing her Victim Impact Statement after being brutally raped by Brock Turner, Chanel Miller retells the horror and atrocity that she and her family members endured during the trial. In addition to having to listen to him lie about raping her, Miller and her family had to see the necrotic results of the abuse. Specifically, Miller notes that “my family had to see pictures of my head strapped to a gurney full of pine needles, of my body in the dirt with my eyes closed, dress hiked up, limbs limp in the dark.” Miller goes on to point out that “It is enough to be suffering. It is another thing to have someone ruthlessly working to diminish the gravity and validity of this suffering. But in the end, his unsupported statements and his attorney’s twisted logic fooled no one. The truth won, the truth spoke for itself.” Here, Miller’s words work to refute the form of patriarchal logic which Russ outlines in terms of the male asserting that he didn’t do anything and the woman must be hallucinating, misunderstanding, etc. Instead of leaving this patriarchal logic uncontended, Miller asserts that the truth–which was that Turner sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious behind a dumpster–won in context of the jury’s decision to sentence him. In addition to embodying the form of resistance rhetorics which involves articulating one’s awareness that a man did something nefarious despite insisting that he didn’t, Miller’s words work to address the aspect of patriarchal logic which involves trivializing the harm caused by abuse. Specifically, she draws awareness to her suffering, the reality of which was exacerbated by the increase in suffering engendered by her consciousnessness that her family had to observe photos encapsulating the harm she experienced. Miller’s articulation of her suffering works to effectively refute the argument that, when women do suffer from the deleterious activity of men, the harm that results is not a big deal and doesn’t warrant antagonistic rebuttals and resistance. In short, she demonstrates that 1. She has been harmed by a male and 2. The harm was not trivial. It’s also important to note that Miller’s construction of her VIS also carries with it a refutation of the argument that she is irrational to resent the harms that she experienced given the extent of her suffering. In making these assertions, Miller’s Victim Impact Statement functions as a rhetoric of resistance that effectively contends with the perpetuation of patriarchal articulations which attempt to erase and/or minimize the reality and impact of misogyny.

When radical feminists consider the ongoingness of misogyny in the contemporary world, it is important to remember that articulating both what these acts of woman-hating involve and how they are being addressed is important. Understanding factors such as how power imbalances can be perpetuated through fallacious phallic logic plays an integral role in enabling women to understand and resist our oppression. Therefore, analyzing and synthesizing the logic of academics such as Russ as well as individuals who have dissected their own oppression (like Cho and Miller) is a process that must be put in perpetuity given the persistence of patriarchy.

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Jocelyn Crawley is a radical feminist who places primacy on analyzing and exploring rape and sexual assault as key aspects of male supremacy.