With it being the beginning of V-week I thought I would try to find something relevant to what we have been reading and that also dealt with women’s issues. In my search I found an essay by Luke Roelofs entitled Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic and Sexual Oppression. In the article Roelofs attempts to use the master-slave dialectic as a reason for patriarchal societies. The main argument of the article is that the conflict between two males is different from the conflict between a male and a female because the female when subjugated to the male is seen as a sexual object. The interaction between a male and female thusly emphasizes the physical differences between the two. The article brings up the idea marriage and states that;
“The wife will no doubt work for the master as well, but will be assigned tasks that do not give her sense of her own agency because they do not involve any change, any production, but merely the maintenance of things as they are… …She pours her effort into making the bed: it is slept in, and becomes messy again. So she repeats her work, repeats it every day, and as a result teaches herself… …that her work is simply static, something that exists and does not change or end, i.e. an object.”
The article puts forth that patriarchy stems from a need in individuals to exert their mastery over others and since everyone can’t be a master humans reached a sort of social contract where each master is allocated a certain subset of humanity to lord over. The article references that in most species males fight over access to females to gain the right to reproduce. Whereas humans, which are social animals, the conflict between males leads to a peace between them based on an agreement that allows for an allocation of slaves (women) to masters (men) such that a patriarchy is created. The society that is created excludes women through systematic sexual abuse and objectification. The argument that Roelofs presents is interesting but seems to adhere very loosely to Hegelian master-slave dialectic as it ignores the fact that in Hegel’s system when a consciousness no matter the gender interacts with another consciousness there is a struggle. Therefore I don’t believe it even allows for two males to broker a peace between each other to subjugate females since the whole point of the system is a struggle for acknowledgment of themselves as more than objects. I do feel the argument is interesting and presents an interesting take on the source of patriarchy through a Hegelian lens I’m just not sure how sound the argument actually is. What do you all think of this argument?
Here is the link to the essay
I think I would have to agree with you. It is an interesting idea to view these types of relationships while thinking about the Hegelian Master-Slave dialectic. But yes, I don't think that this is really the kind of relationship Hegel had in mind while forming this theory. It is interesting that the writer of the essay thought to bring the ideas together but I'm really not sure that it is applied very well. I guess one could try to apply the Master-Slave dialectic to just about any relationship but I do agree with you on the point about the two males. The focus should probably start on the struggle for recognition between the two of them before we move on to the patriarchy issue. Wouldn't the struggle or fight to the death between the two men cause issues that would hinder their ability to gang up on and subjugate females?
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