Response to Yellow

I also really enjoyed the reading “Patriarchy, the System: An it, Not a He, and Them or an Us” because it really changed the way I look at patriarch and the feminist movement. One of the major stereotypes surrounding feminists is that they are man-haters. Although not always true of feminists, I felt this to be a little unfair to the men as well. Blaming individual men or all men for women’s problems in society is not right. No one man, nor all men, are conspiring against all women. Instead, it is the society that our social norms and all citizens have constructed that has created our gender issues today. Last semester I took Personality and Social Psych and felt that this reading directly related to that psychology class. In that class we learned that the power of the social situation is more influential than most people realize and can cause people to act a certain way, even if the behavior is not particularly “nice”. For example, group mentality can cause people to behave in horrid ways, because they are consider themselves anonymous and to be just following the crowd. Furthermore, we learned that children learned how to behave in social situations based on social norms already in place by the culture. This influence exerts itself in the most trivial situations, like which way to stand in an elevator, to more serious situations, like how a marriage should function. From culture to culture these social norms are different and therefore in a patriarchal society, from a young age all people, not just men, are being taught how to behave according to such patriarchal ways. These facts make it easier to understand I thought this also connected back to Frye’s ideas that all people form this patriarchal norm which in turn then influences them to conform to its ways or else. “Imagine My Surprise” and Neuborne’s idea of “programming.” Despite her feminist upbringing, society had still gotten to Neuborne and in the certain situation, the social norms ultimately influenced her behavior. Subtly and yet powerfully, social norms direct our behavior every day. Therefore, as Frye suggests, it is in women’s best interest to change these social norms. If society as a whole works to change expectations for social behavior then the patriarchal ways will no longer be able to exert such a social force over people’s actions. This releases individuals from blame and yet also empowers them to make a change.