The personal is political. And nothing is more personal than a love relationship. Reinventing Love: How the Patriarchy Sabotages heterosexual relationships by French feminist Mona Chollet explores the dynamics of romantic love in the context of Gender inequality.
Men and women are systematically raised not to understand each other. The entire drama of our novels, pop culture and romantic comedies revolves around conventions of dominance and submission.In our romantic imaginations, women are somehow inferior. Even small things like a woman being taller or earning more than a man would spoil the mood – Carla Bruni regularly posed a step below her shorter husband Nicolas Sarkozy, pictures of Prince Charles were made to look taller than his then wife Diana. Women smile, practice being nice, careful not to be “too much”, too loud or too powerful. Sportswomen like Serena Williams have been disciplined through ridicule. To be desirable, women must be subdued.
Love is portrayed as a woman’s primary responsibility. We condition girls to seek love from a man rather than take healthy care of themselves. Female selflessness and male detachment are part of our relationship schema. And yet women’s most basic emotional needs are stigmatized and portrayed as needy and desperate. At the same time, boys are taught to suppress their relationship needs.
The book analyzes the many manifestations of this inequality, drawing on literature, pop culture, and media discourse. It looks at marital violence and why women excuse men who hurt them because they are trained to be extremely compassionate rather than compassionate towards themselves. It examines, for example, why some white men objectify Asian women or seek out living dolls who cannot respond. It details the effects of objectification, as women are always aware that others are looking at them. This prevents them from accessing their own sensations, feelings, and desires.
But the heart has its reasons, some will argue. Love cannot be reformed; we want what we want. Why do violent lovers seem to feature so prominently in women’s fiction and fantasy? Why do so many women like the idea of submission, why does feminist pornography often seem unconvincing? Because male dominance is the condition we live in, the book says. To relieve the tension created by the experience of dominance, women turn it into sexual or romantic fantasies. Our challenge is to eroticize equality.as Gloria Steinem famously said.
Trapped in our fantasies, we suppress the needs of the person we love. And often we don’t know which part of our affection is real desire and which is a need for their approval. Love is not a simple feeling, but a series of actions, it is what we do for the person we love. For women, this means inner emancipation, not being afraid of being alone, of changing conditions that you don’t like.
It is possible to have a more equal love story. Heterosexual love is not just a patriarchal con: men are not just oppressors, women are more than just oppressed. But their bond is poisoned by domination, and we must see clearly this dysfunction. The edifice of conventional love must be demolished to build a new one. To cast off our masks, to question our own learned reflexes, this is the adventure and heroism of true love.
Men and women are systematically raised not to understand each other. The entire drama of our novels, pop culture and romantic comedies revolves around conventions of dominance and submission.In our romantic imaginations, women are somehow inferior. Even small things like a woman being taller or earning more than a man would spoil the mood – Carla Bruni regularly posed a step below her shorter husband Nicolas Sarkozy, pictures of Prince Charles were made to look taller than his then wife Diana. Women smile, practice being nice, careful not to be “too much”, too loud or too powerful. Sportswomen like Serena Williams have been disciplined through ridicule. To be desirable, women must be subdued.
Love is portrayed as a woman’s primary responsibility. We condition girls to seek love from a man rather than take healthy care of themselves. Female selflessness and male detachment are part of our relationship schema. And yet women’s most basic emotional needs are stigmatized and portrayed as needy and desperate. At the same time, boys are taught to suppress their relationship needs.
The book analyzes the many manifestations of this inequality, drawing on literature, pop culture, and media discourse. It looks at marital violence and why women excuse men who hurt them because they are trained to be extremely compassionate rather than compassionate towards themselves. It examines, for example, why some white men objectify Asian women or seek out living dolls who cannot respond. It details the effects of objectification, as women are always aware that others are looking at them. This prevents them from accessing their own sensations, feelings, and desires.
But the heart has its reasons, some will argue. Love cannot be reformed; we want what we want. Why do violent lovers seem to feature so prominently in women’s fiction and fantasy? Why do so many women like the idea of submission, why does feminist pornography often seem unconvincing? Because male dominance is the condition we live in, the book says. To relieve the tension created by the experience of dominance, women turn it into sexual or romantic fantasies. Our challenge is to eroticize equality.as Gloria Steinem famously said.
Trapped in our fantasies, we suppress the needs of the person we love. And often we don’t know which part of our affection is real desire and which is a need for their approval. Love is not a simple feeling, but a series of actions, it is what we do for the person we love. For women, this means inner emancipation, not being afraid of being alone, of changing conditions that you don’t like.
It is possible to have a more equal love story. Heterosexual love is not just a patriarchal con: men are not just oppressors, women are more than just oppressed. But their bond is poisoned by domination, and we must see clearly this dysfunction. The edifice of conventional love must be demolished to build a new one. To cast off our masks, to question our own learned reflexes, this is the adventure and heroism of true love.
