Updated version published here.

There is no singular unity referred to by the word ‘patriarchy.’ Instead, it consists of innumerable lines of penetration, some discordant with others, but all set against feminine modes of subjectivity made out as inconvenient, abject, or otherwise ‘out of line.’ Penetration is the guarantor of the masculine ego: the sword, the rifle, the literal phallus—a whole armory of techniques for the assertion of power, of virility, of control. Alongside penetrative techniques, a whole array of technologies is invented to shore up flows—other than the fountains of blood unleashed upon the Other by the fascist male. Solid boundaries secure the ego of the masculine subject. He stands tall in the face of the undifferentiated chaos of the feminine as he constructs it. Monuments to the impenetrable masculine hold whirlpools and torrents and surging waves at bay.

Patriarchy freely seizes upon the whole of its history as a repository of techniques of shoring-up; it “makes its history current by artificially reconstructing it” (Theweleit, 359). Putting into play centuries worth of images of ideal and monstrous femininities, patriarchy constantly redefines femininity according to the needs of each moment. It deploys the fetishized figure of the Virgin Mary moments before calling upon the coquettish noblewoman of 17th century Europe; it demands women simultaneously adopt the rigid posture of masculine virtue and play the role of the soft and malleable wife-as-property—in short, it wants, without exception, to exert control over feminine subjectivity and the ‘female body.’ Like in a movie, “the male protagonist is free to command the stage” (Mulvey).

Through these techniques of domination, the masculine ego hides the evidence of its fundamental lack—which, by its own standards, is inadmissible. Manhood under patriarchy is wholly vital. This is why fascist men—the most vigorous adherents of patriarchy-as-a-mode-of-being—paint their enemies as ‘degenerate.’ Jews, communists, homosexuals: all are weak and effeminate, according to fascists. They embarrass the ego of the fascist male, and so they “must” be exterminated—their mere possibility must be foreclosed. Extermination is a way of shoring up flows before they turn to floods, and bloodlust replaces ‘shameful’ need for women—which threatens to reveal lack and dispel fantasies of total control—with a drive for total mastery, as expressed in fascistic depictions of murder as a kind of rape fantasy.

Any struggle against fascism must be a struggle against patriarchy. And, as we are all molded in patriarchy’s image, much of the work to be done is in transforming how we relate to ourselves and others.

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Cited:

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”

Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies, Volume I: Women, Floods, Bodies, History