Patriarchy as a social system can be viewed from different angles, including the point of psychology. The processes that take place in the psyche of an individual are very similar to social processes, just as the relations between social groups largely reflect the relations between people.

You've probably heard of the term "Social Stockholm Syndrome" used by radical feminists to describe the mental state of women as a group under patriarchy. We are hostages of this system, and in fact we cannot get out of it. Some are less fortunate and take the brunt of male abuse and exploitation. Some were more fortunate, and they have the opportunity to hide in the nooks and crannies of this society (including through separation). But all this is one system, no matter how badly some would like to measure "privileges".

People like us have more opportunity to do something useful for the women's movement and to defeat the patriarchy, precisely due to the fact that we do not bear the main blow. Feminism has always been created by women who have the resources and time to do it, so don't feel guilty about our sisters suffering more than we do. On the contrary, we need to rejoice in our capabilities, and be aware of the responsibility that is higher for us in this regard.

The relationship between a group of men and a group of women in terms of psychology is an abusive relationship where you can find all those methods of manipulation, all types of violence that are characteristic, for example, of family abuse. These are economic violence (control of resources and their use to strengthen their power), physical, psychological, and sexual / reproductive. I would like to talk about psychological violence as the most inconspicuous and underestimated.

The main methods of such violence are gaslighting, projective identification, isolation, control, infantilization, objectification.

Let's consider them separately and start with projective identification, as it is "the basis of everything." In simple terms, this is the attribution to the partner of those qualities that are the characteristics of an abuser himself, but which he does not accept in himself. This is exactly what we see when it comes to gender roles. Men attribute to women those things that they would not want to see in themselves - weakness, vulnerability, passivity, stupidity, humiliation, and other so-called qualities of the shadow side of personality. This is because the core of male gender socialization is the fear of being a victim of violence and the associated shame for any manifestation of weakness. Furious counter-identification with women (“you are like a woman”, “we are from Mars and you are from Venus”, “women and men are opposites”) is a psychological defense aimed at displacing the corresponding qualities in oneself and attributing them to women as specially created for this social group. Women's acceptance of this projective identification is a form of emotional service.

Interesting, that the projective identification works both ways and the victim of abuse gradually starts to squeeze out her certain personal traits and project them on the abuser. However, these are not the negative traits, on the contrary, they are positive, but she cannot allow herself to have them. Such traits as intelligence, strength, generosity, rationality and others, which are allegedly not the characteristic of her. This is the basis of the psychological attraction of victim to aggressor, because she wants to deal with these squeezed out traits that need to be expressed.

Women would want to develop strength, intelligence, aggressiveness and skills to protect themselves, but due to the social prohibition (that is implemented into mind), they do not allow these traits to be expressed. Instead of this, they choose men with the corresponding traits.

Therefore, it is important to combine the study of feminism with elements of psychotherapy (usually called "reflection") - awareness of one's hidden motives, repressed emotions, unconscious needs. This is part of healing from the trauma of female gender socialization. It is important to understand where your own ideas about yourself are, and where the male view of you is, and also share the emotions associated with this. For example, the shame of their "inferiority" is what they pass on to us so that we experience it for them. And our real emotion may be anger at the fact that our psyche is subjected to such use.


Author: Philosopher's Stone of Artémis
Translator: Yulia N.