Linda Hilton
Reader, Writer, Merciless Reviewer and Incurable Romantic
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In answer to the oft-asked question: How can they do it?
I was almost literally on my way out the door to go to dinner when I posted this a while ago.
"Stockholm Syndrome Writ Very Large" is indeed the topic of this book, though not the literal subtitle. But if you're wondering how some women can support and defend the very system that denies them full personhood, allow me to recommend this book.
I haven't read it for almost 20 years, and I only had time this afternoon for the briefest of skims through its pages. It's not a new book -- my edition is copyright 1994 -- and I read it in 1999. But its premise is fairly simple: that women, as a class, are held hostage not by individual men but by the patriarchal system and that to survive in that system, they often feel they have no other choice but to defend it.
This is not an open, admitted, conscious decision. Many women would deny that they are hostages. They will claim to believe the same things the patriarchy asserts about superiority and subservience and submission and inequality. Their sincerity is often beyond question.
Knowing and understanding the reasons why they do what they do may help you in interactions with them. It may help you just walk away from unproductive relationships. It may just help you deal with the world.
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