Category Archive

  ” In Loving to Survive she makes an analogy between femininity and the behaviour of hostages om situations of captivity and threat that has been named Stockholm syndrome.  She explains that the idea of Stockholm syndrome comes from a hostage situation in Stockholm in which it because clear that hostages, instead of reacting with rebellion to their oppressors, were likely to bond with them.  This bonding, in which hostages can come to identify the interests of their kidnappers as their own, comes from the very real threat to their survival that the kidnappers pose.  Graham extends this concept to cover the behaviour of women, femininity, that is a reaction to living in a society of male violence in which they are in danger.  Femininity represent societal Stockholm syndrome, “If one (inescapable) group threatens another group with violence but also – as a group – shoes the victimized group some kindness, an attachment between the groups will develop. […] (Graham, 1994, p.57)

Graham states unequivocally that, “masculinity and femininity are code words for male domination and female subordination” (1994, p.192).  She says that women, like hostages, are afraid, and “use any available information to alter our behaviour in ways that make interactions with men go smoothly”(p.160).  One of the things they [women] do is change their bodies in order to win men over.  She lists the harmful beauty practices that are considered in this book, such as make up, cosmetic surgery, shaving and waxing body hair, high-heeled shoes and restrictive clothes, as examples.  She says that these practices reflect:

1.  The extent to which women seek to make ourselves acceptable to men,

2.  The extent to which women seek to connect to men, and thus

3.  the extent to which women feel the need for men’s affection and approval

4.  the extent to which women feel unworthy of men’s affection and approval just as we are (unchanged).  (Graham, 1994, p.162)”

From Beauty and Misogyny by Sheila Jeffreys. (p. 25-26)

Powerful stuff that makes difficult societal concepts more easily understood and more easily argued.  Please feel free to reference this post when you’re trying to get across basic societal ideas to the next clueless dude who “knows what feminists are all about.”