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Bodies and Souls/Sex, Sin and the Senses In Patriarchy: A Study in Applied Dualism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2020

Sheila Ruth
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Abstract

What elements lie at the core of patriarchal consciousness and give it its particular expressions? Beneath the hatred of women, at its source, is a profound, dissociating fear: the fear of non-being, the Absence beyond Death. In an effort to escape death and non-being, the patriarchs have constructed a conception of existence which is split in two, with eternal life, God, meaning and spirit on one side and bodily death on the other. The masculist association of women with bodies, nature and the birthing-dying cycle places us clearly on the side of death, in the realm of being which is and necessarily must be despised and controlled. Alienation from the rhythms of life, giving rise to a crisis of meaning; the denial of death, which leads paradoxically to an adoration of death; and a hysterical ambivalence to sex and sensuality all coalesce and find concrete expression in the personal and institutionalized hatred of Woman.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 2 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Philosophy and Women Symposium , Winter 1987 , pp. 149 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by Hypatia, Inc.

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