HW 22: "A Patriarchy Society in the US Today?"

Patriarchy is a society that is ruled and managed by men. Men had the sole responsibility of everything from money to how their household was run during Virginia Woolf’s time. Virginia’s beliefs that men hold unequal power over women is described through a newspaper she reads that is dominated by the opposite sex, “The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy” (Woolf 33). In other words, it would be clear to any stranger that the male gender was favored over women. Men dictated every aspect of life down to the smallest detail and women had no say in money, the law, or films. The reasoning that men are so driven to be the superior sex is that they are power hungry and females are the fuel for their hunger. Virginia exclaims, “Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size” (Woolf 35). Men have used women to feel confident and secure with themselves. If this inferiority is taken away from men then they would no longer have possession over women and as a result, men and females would be equal. Even today, there still would be signs to a transient visitor from another planet that the United States is a patriarchy society. Let’s look for example at the front page of today’s New York Times Newspaper. What sex is pictured here on the front page? Men! Two males that are both head’s of countries, President Bush and the Dalai Lama appear together as the first thing you see. If I were a transient visitor, it would be obvious to me that men were not only shown foremost on the page but also that males are in control of the government. It is interesting to view something like a newspaper as a stranger and interpret how a society is run and who has the upper hand.