The Controlling Metaphor
This essay kicks off with a stunning assertion that serves to become the controlling metaphor for the argument which is ferociously pursued through the rest of the text. The language is simple and deceptively indirect, but the full potential of what the author is proclaiming is nothing short of breathtaking in its revolutionary approach to the study of economic history. The question marks are the author's.
“The society we know, our own culture, is based exchange of women. Without the exchange of women, we are told, we would fall back into the anarchy (?) of the natural world, the randomness (?) of the animal kingdom.”
The Economic Is the Patriarchal
When discussing patriarchy as a systemized form of rule and authority, what is really meant is economics. Power in any civilization derives from the basic economic rules pitting the have-nots versus the haves. Civilization has always been one on which women were on the outs and this historical record continues to drive the terminology today, even if the usage is far more metaphorical than it used to be:
“The work force is thus always assumed to masculine and “products” are objects to be used, objects of transaction among men alone.”
The Value of Women as Products of Men
The logical extension of patriarchal economics is that women become a product, therefore their value is determined not by themselves, but their maker. And who is the maker? Only in a system designed by men for men could a woman’s value be placed at the hands of a man:
“woman has value on the market by virtue of one single quality: that of being a product of man’s ‘labor.’”
“Mother, virgin, prostitute”
The author points out what is pretty much a verifiable fact of history by asserting of three nouns quoted above: “these are the social roles imposed on women.” What this statement implies is that women throughout history have been reduced to metaphor. It continues today. Just consider the various stereotypes generally allowed women sharing a common job in a work of television or cinematic entertainment: in any group larger than two, almost invariably there is the maternal figure, the innocent and the wisecracking dame (because, after all, why would an interior design firm or restaurant staff need a prostitute?).
Sexual Desire and Economic Desire
One of the more interesting metaphorical associations the author makes is one that connects male sexuality with the operating principles of economics:
“…is libido not another name for the abstraction of "energy" in a productive power? For the work of nature? Another name for the desire to accumulate goods?”
