Done? Good. Now I know you can't actually tell me and that's alright, this whole post you are reading is rhetorical anyways, a straw man argument if you will. I can think of a few things I can spit out right now. Anti-Communism during the Cold war as well as describing Terrorism in the early 2000's. This quote by Bell Hooks is honestly some of the biggest bullshit I've ever heard. It is fear mongering, pure and simple, creating an Us Vs. Them scenario. Nothing in between you have to be in the right or you're always wrong. Speaking of this reminds me of a quote I heard while playing Mass Effect 2 (2010) by a character named Garrus Vakarian "It's so much easier to see the world in black and white. Grey...I don't know what to do with grey." Bell Hooks wants us to see this perfect enemy that literally does not exist. Can you tell me who the patriarchy is made up of? The government? Well our president is black and a feminist, we have may senators and representatives that are from all different races and both male and female. So tell me, where are all these white men at that secretly control our world? I can actually answer this too, it sounds an awful damn like this thing called the Illuminati. The enemy Bell Hooks is talking about is literally a conspiracy theory, sounds a bit far fetched, but if you actually stop to think, she really does sound a wee bit bonkers.
Confirming Intensifies
But Allen you're just being angsty and you're wrong. Well shit, maybe I am wrong but I left my angst phase like everyone else in my teenage years. And before that? Funny enough living in a house of mostly guys I was an emotional bitch, I cried a lot at school more times that I wish to remember and suddenly as I entered puberty, I stopped. You want to know why I no longer cry? Let me tell you, it damn well wasn't because "patriarchy". No one told me guys couldn't cry, it was at the time when my brother decided he was going to join the Marine Corps. At first I was confused why he didn't want to go to college like my parents wanted to, but then after a few months of hearing him argue with my parents over and over about his decision it sunk into my head that he could be deployed across the globe and die. So why the fuck was I crying over small shit now? "Patriarchy demands of men that they become and remain emotional cripples. Since it is a system that denies men full access to their freedom of will, it is difficult for any man of any class to rebel against patriarchy, to be disloyal to the patriarchal parent, be that parent female or male."(pg 27) Well, if it is so impossible for men to access their full range of emotions then why the hell could I "rebel" against the "patriarchy" and access my full range of emotions? Why is that my friends and I can all cry in front of each other when we're going through a bad time?
Honestly I had no feelings reading through The Oppositional Gaze, I'm an Asian male so when you have an issue between black and white peoples I have no care in the world who wins or loses. In less than 20 years, China will become a dominant world power that equals the United States politically, economically and militarily. After all, the only way to win is not to play the game.
"You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally.."(pg 51) "To be named is to be oneself. To be nuked is to seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself....... on display is to have the surface of one's own skin, the hairs of one's own body."(pg54) from Berger's Way of Seeing, he loves to play the pronoun game. To never specify exactly who he's talking about. Yes he clearly states male and female, but who are the man and woman? Every single man? Every single woman? Why is it that I must see a woman as an object of my desire? When I look around on the train, I don't care whether a woman is beautiful or not, my thoughts are what do they see me as? In this thought, I reverse completely what Berger is saying. A man does not just look at a woman for his desires, but he too looks back at himself from her point of view.
The readings we have read focus on women and their relationship to men, but where is the talk of race in all of these? Bell Hooks limits herself to her own point of view as a black woman, John Berger is stunted because he is a man himself and talks solely on gender. These authors don't realize it, but they speak from a western mouth. A mouth shaped by the very "patriarchy" they claim to fight against, but they do not look outwards to the rest of the world. Limited are their thoughts and views, the arguments they present to us fall apart in the eyes of those who do not apply to their dialogue just as The Oppositional Gaze did nothing for me, I could take nothing away from it as neither my race nor my gender could line up with her. What then could the two of us match up on?
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