Love as a Weapon for Oppression

‘Love’, as Simone de Beauvoir says, “by no means has the same sense for both sexes.” For a woman, love is the total gift of the body. For a man, love is the want of love from the woman he loves. Love — in the form that it is sold to women — is a lie that socializes them into basing their means of existence on a complete devotion to man. Throughout history, philosophical texts based their definition of what love is and should be on strict gender roles, and heterosexist and misogynistic ideologies. Texts like the Symposium by Plato, and philosophers like Nietzsche and Freud all have mentioned these corrupted ideas of women and their inferiority. However, they were not left without criticism. Philosophers like Mary Wollstonecraft, De Beauvoir, and Shulamith Firestone provided significant voices for women and paved the way for feminist philosophy.

Plato’s depiction of Ancient Greece in the Symposium shows how men regarded women through the speakers’ speeches on love. Specifically, in Pausanias’ speech he mentions that “...the Love who accompanies Celestial Aphrodite is wholly male, with no trace of femininity” What he is essentially saying is that good love is only able to exist between two men. Femininity is what taints love, it is considered bad since it can only be lustful. In ancient Greece, love was capable only between men because only men were regarded as intellectual, while women were only attractive bodies whom one could not have a real connection with since they did not possess any intelligence.

What is compelling is that within Socrates’ speech, he mentions his conversation with a woman, Diotima. She is portrayed as wise, and perhaps even wiser than Socrates himself because he ends up being mentored by her. That goes against Ancient Greek ideas and societal structures. However, no one questions Socrates about Diotima, they accept it because he, as a respected and loved man, recognized her as someone he was learning from. This proves that women are capable of having a philosophical conversation just as men are, and there is more to a woman than her service and looks. 

After Greek society fell, most of their ideas on love lost significance in Europe. Love changed from being a capability for only men to being a woman’s “natural” duty to fulfill — while men concerned themselves only with rationality. Firestone expands on the idea that is often brought up of women having completed nothing while men were creating masterpieces. The problem is that this claim ignores the position women were confined to for centuries. They were deemed inferior and society actively worked against them to keep them as such. For example, not giving them the chance for education, the means for success, or even depriving them of sexual knowledge — which directly involves love. Love is the fundamental part of this oppression, contrasting Ancient Greece on the notion of women and love, with the birth of heterosexist ideologies, society changed how it applies love to women. 

Men were thinking, writing, and creating, because women were pouring their energy into those men; women are not creating culture, because they are preoccupied with love…That women live for love and men for work is a truism.

Essentially, it is not that women are incapable of creation, but because they have been getting pressured by society to focus on love. That love, however, is not healthy since it is demanded through socializing; “(male) culture was built on the love of women, and at their expense…(male) culture was (and is) parasitical, feeding on the emotional strength of women without reciprocity.” There is no equal exchange of selves as Firestone defines healthy love to exhibit. Women give, men take.

Important thing to revisit and note is the shift from love being only capable for men, to only then being related to women in helping understand patriarchal love influences on both sexes. Firestone marvelously analyzes this shift:

The male half termed all of culture, men have not forgotten there is a female “emotional” half: They live it on the sly. As a result of their battle to reject femininity in themselves they are unable to take love seriously as a cultural matter but they cannot do without it altogether.

Femininity and masculinity lie in every human regardless of sex, and love is a human concept, involving all humans. However, due to the cultural structure and gender ideologies, men reject love’s relation to them because at the root they reject their femininity. To them, love is irrational, it is emotional, something they deny themselves to be because it is categorized as a feminine trait.

Nietzsche, on the topic of this phenomenon, follows up by writing about each sex’s prejudice about love. He presents the false notion of women wanting to be taken and accepted as a possession: “she wants one who takes, who does not offer and give himself away, but who reversely is rather be made richer in ‘himself.’” In saying that, he prescribes women an innate characteristic of being a giver and desiring to be taken by a man who would not give back. On the other hand, for men, he claims that, in their nature, love is just desire and possession and not a renunciation and giving away like women.

Woman gives herself, man takes her. – I do not think one will get over this natural contrast by any social contract, or with the very best will to do justice, however desirable it may be to avoid bringing the serve, frightful, enigmatical, and unmoral elements of this antagonism constantly before our eyes. For love, regarded as complete, great, and gull, is nature, and as nature, is to all eternity something “unmoral.”

He suggests that even if it is unjust, it is nature. Therefore, no system in place could prevent this dynamic since the nature of love in its completeness is immoral.

Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, argues against this “innateness.” Instead, she applies these sex differences to the way culture has socialized men and women differently, which determined these different conceptions of love. Men are brought up as subjects — meaning with a recognized identity. They are encouraged to explore the world and themselves in it because they are ambitious and are in favor of action. In comparison, women are inessential creatures who are unable to sense their subjectivity. Why?

De Beauvoir answers:

Shut up in a sphere of the relative, destined to the male from childhood, habituated to seeing in him a superb being whom she cannot possibly equal, the woman who has not repressed her claim to humanity will dream of transcending her being toward one of these superior beings, of amalgamating herself with the sovereign subject.

Essentially, she points out that women are thought of as objects from birth while men are held up as superior beings. This imbalance creates the different conceptions of love. Men’s existence is validated and therefore there is a lack of need to be accepted by women and validated by their love — but this is unfortunately not the case for women. How else would she realize herself unless by completely emerging herself in him who is held up as absolute? 

This structure is the very foundation of patriarchal love. Women are conditioned from birth that to be validated in their humanity they have to reside themselves completely in a man through the art of loving — giving the full sacrifice of their whole being to the man. Meanwhile, men bathe in superiority and claim women’s love as their birthright. 

She will try to rise above her situation as an inessential object by fully accepting it; through her flesh, her feelings, her behavior, she will enthrone him as supreme value and reality: she will humble herself to nothingness before him. Love becomes for her a religion.

For a woman, love is the only means of existence — she is nothing without a man and his approval. Love becomes the weapon of oppression when it serves to define one's humanity while exciting the Other. The unbalanced dynamic causes unjust patriarchal love. Women become slaves to the chase of men and their love just to exist. Meanwhile, men get to pick and choose different women’s love if they so please because they are perceived as human beings. Patriarchal love dehumanizes women by keeping them dependent on men’s recognition of them and their full devotion to love. 

In On Narcissism: An Introduction, Freud writes that women's devotion to men resides in narcissism and wanting to see themselves as the object of desire. He points out that parents make their daughter direct her love towards herself and not another by praising and loving her.

According to Freud, for this narcissism to be transformed into object-love instead of self-indulgent love, women need to bear children since it shifts the direction of their love to their creation. Not only is this idea absurd since narcissism does not dispel that way, but he is essentially tying women to motherhood as their only way of therapy for their condition. According to de Beauvoir, mothers teach their daughters what they have been taught, “thus, women given the care of a little girl are bent on transforming her into women like themselves with zeal and arrogance mixed with resentment.” 

De Beauvoir provides a more developed analysis of the notion of narcissism within women in contrast to Freud. She examines the direct link between narcissism in girls and the romantic desire of women. 

...He is saved from his narcissism by turning his attention to his penis, whereas the girl is reinforced in this tendency to make herself object... The doll helps her, but it does not have a determining role.

The doll is pretty, elegant, admired, and decorated. The doll is also quiet, still, and unalive. The importance of the role the doll plays is crucial in understanding girls' upbringing which reflects the pampering of the doll and the emphasis on beauty. It instills the notion of their beauty as what men desire from them. They grow up to understand the importance of their appearance; if they are ugly they are treated as outcasts. And therefore, the passivity that defines the essence of the “feminine” woman is something that grows in her from an early age. It is untrue to say that she is biologically predisposed; rather, her destiny has been thrust upon her by society and her teachers.

Ultimately, when male philosophers attribute such traits to women’s nature, they uphold their power by ignoring other factors like socialization and upbringing. The woman’s resulting narcissism is what keeps him in power — she will devote herself to him because he is the god she desires to be accepted and recognized by most. And if he doesn't, she will seek another who will. Otherwise, her narcissism will eat her from the inside out because she has failed to justify her existence with the only power she was given as a female: her femininity. 

Mary Wollstonecraft expands on this point in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 

The woman who has only been taught to please, will soon find that her charms are oblique sun-beams, and that they cannot have much effect on her husband's heart… is it not more rational to expect that she will try to please other men; and, in the emotions raised by the expectation of new conquests, endeavour to forget the mortification her love or pride has received?

She is ultimately asking the male philosophers who believe women's situation is natural that — if things are the way they describe — wouldn’t a woman seeking other men after one is no longer charmed by her mere nature? Women are not taught to look within for validation of their existence. They are taught their opinions and thoughts are lacking. There is nothing to women but to be of service to men and give them the love they feel entitled to, so why would she seek answers within herself?

However, when women do seek within themselves, society negatively reacts again. Karen Horney in Love and Marriage, makes the point that “woman's efforts to achieve independence and an enlargement of her field of interests and activities are continually met with skepticism.” This is because the frames in which women were boxed in with the labels: “femininity” and “womanhood” don’t include that type of characterization of a woman; because womens’ thoughts should center exclusively on the male and upon motherhood.

This type of attitude toward woman…represents the patriarchal idea of womanhood, of woman as one who's only longing is to love a man and be loved by him, to admire him and serve him, and even to pattern herself after him.

Socialization that takes root along the notion of inherited tradition compresses women’s participation into the spheres of eroticism and motherhood. It is claimed to be her nature, therefore she may not concern herself with things outside of it.

But within the spheres she is constrained to reside restrictions on how she is to participate in them. Specifically, having a position of a wife is one where a woman is actualized and recognized through the man she shares a last name with, but the dehumanization and the oppression of her being does not stop. Theano, in A Letter on Marriage and Fidelity, writes to a woman whose husband has been unfaithful to her. She describes a decorum the woman should follow when handling such a situation. She must not defend herself against the courtesans but distinguish herself from them by her orderly conduct towards her husband, attention to the house, and tender love for her children. 

Theano may sound like she is advising the woman to stay put in the walls of her oppression, — that is what she is essentially advising — however that is the only way it may give the woman some sort of power over the situation. Divorcing the husband and getting a second doesn’t ensure the story would not be repeated. And choosing to be alone would entail being a spinster, meaning outcasted. “By patiently enduring you will quench your suffering sooner.” The only way to end suffering that comes from unfaithfulness is for her to accept the role that the patriarchal society has given her as a wife, in an attempt to save dignity and avoid repeating the situation. Not only does that keep the woman in her oppressed position and only rewards society by succeeding in keeping her put, it teaches her that even if she were to stand up for herself, the outcomes that could play out don’t guarantee justice or liberation on her part either. 

Kathryn Pauly Morgan on the topic of relationships and women's chains in it, she talks about the significance of the relationship status which strengthens Theanos argument but also analyzes the unfortunate fate for women. 

Because she has, literally, come into existence through this relationship, if she loses it, she loses all that she is: her sense of identity, her sense of herself as a person of value, her social world, and often her sense of economic security. 

It emphasizes the importance of patriarchal love because it chains her to it through this dependency. Feeling jealousy, anger, and resentment are natural emotional responses to adultery, but for women there is a threat in expressing such emotions, so in turn she swallows them in order to keep her her position in society. 

When there is a fundamental imbalance of power, love between men and women cannot exist since it isn’t equal in terms of respect, willingness to be open and the recognition of humanity on both accounts. Elizabeth Rapaport, On the Future of Love: Rousseau and the Radical Feminists, has examined Firestone's writings on the topic of love, comparing it to Rousseau's. In it, she writes that if one accepts Firestone's notion of healthy love, then it implies the incapacity for men to love women at all. 

Since healthy love requires two persons to be mutually open to each other, have mutual respect and equal exchange of sleeves.

The mutual self-respect which is necessary for healthy love is impossible where neither men nor women regard women as genuine and autonomous persons…men do not see a person worthy of the effort.

Men grow up to know their superiority — they grow up seeing the difference in upbringing between them and women. They are, in a sense, socialized to see women as less — similarly to how women are socialized — so it would take both sexes to destroy such conceptions that are so deeply rooted in them for healthy love to flourish. 

When men fall in love, they idealize the woman they have fallen in love with at the expense of undervaluing all women. This prevents the intimate and open interaction with women that healthy love requires, serving as further proof that men are incapable of loving women. “Their model for vulnerability is not the openness of genuine love but the dependency-love of women as they know them.” This dependency is associated with weakness and insufficiency. Men fear dependency that love entails and therefore consistently reject it, thus preventing love between the both sexes. She sees herself less and will try to actualize her humanity through loving the man, while he will reject emotion, openness and respect towards women that love requires- resulting in little capability for healthy love to exist, only the oppressed version of love is able to flourish within such dynamics. 

Patriarchal love oppresses women and dehumanizes them, but it equally deprives both sexes from the ability to experience healthy love. The question of love for the future and hope for it, concerns philosophers like Kathryn Morgan, Elizabeth Rapaport, and Alison Jaggan. Is there a chance for love to exist when such values are so deeply rooted within the sexes preventing them from properly connecting with each other? Jaggan, in On Sexual Equality, suggests the following potential solution to this concern:

What we must do instead is to create a new androgynous culture which incorporates the best elements of both the present male and the present female cultures, which values both personal relationships and efficiency, both emotion and rationality.

This proposition is one I am in favor of, not only does it emphasize the importance of balance, but it destroys the power of masculinity that is emphasized in our culture and eliminates femininity as an active weapon for oppression. It strips masculinity and femininity to its basic form, a form that all humans embody despite their gender. This solution will also allow the existence of healthy love between the sexes, and the destruction of love being women's active oppressor.