Response to "Johnson and Frye"

Johnson’s article describing patriarchy as a system in which both men and women participate, raises many important points for how we view male domination and female oppression. Most striking is the assertion that it is futile to accuse and punish individuals for their behavior without questioning the social systems that produce such behavior. Johnson uses the game of monopoly as an example for how the system within which we participate shapes our reality and perception of what is normal. Similarly to how we distort our actions to coincide with the rules of monopoly, we are governed by the rules of patriarchy: “we feel limited by the rules and goals the game defines, and experience it as something external to us and beyond our control” (Johnson 34). Johnson then goes on to note, and this relates to both Alex and Sam’s critique that Johnson does not leave us with much suggestion for changing the cycle, “how rarely it occurs to people to simply change the rules” (Johnson 35). Clearly in order to change the system and the resulting norms that allow male privilege to persist requires an uprooting of the patriarchal system that Johnson describes. What is not so clear, however, is how such an uprooting can occur. As Sam mentions in her post, Johnson suggests that people need to stop taking the paths of least resistance, object to sexist jokes and be more tuned into our social surroundings since “the more aware we are of what’s going on…the more likely it is that we can make conscious, informed choices, and therein lies our potential to make a difference” (Johnson 32). I agree that standing up for your beliefs, and calling out your friends when they tell offensive jokes and fall into the habit of using derogatory slang has potential for creating change, but how can we encourage enough people to leave their comfort zone and speak against the status quo so that a shift in the system would actually be possible? Like Alex, I am curious to see what answers Johnson proposes in chapter 10.

Frye’s argument for adopting a macroscopic rather than a microscopic view of oppression seems to coincide with Johnson’s argument that rather than looking at individuals we need to look at the entire societal system in which they participate, but falls short in one important area: it ignores the idea that men are affected by the system too. Frye critiques the men’s gesture of opening the door for women, deeming it a service “of little or no use” that suggests that “women’s actual needs and interests are unimportant or irrelevant,” but ignores the possibility that men are affected by the pressures of patriarchal society just as women are. She doesn’t stop to consider that men are under the same social pressure to open the door as women are to walk through it. It is true that women face oppression that is not experienced by men, but Frye’s article could benefit from an analysis of men’s role in that system of oppression.