We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women 's Lives.

AuthorHirsch, Michael L.

Garcia, Manon. We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women 's Lives. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2021. 234 pages. Hardcover, $27.47.

In We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women's Lives, Manon Garcia explores the reality of women living within patriarchy. While social scientists generally agree that social structures are best understood as human creations, patriarchy's pervasiveness and the seeming collusion of some women "with their own subordination" (p. xii) leads some to believe patriarchy is an expression of essentialist differences between women and men rather than the result of social construction. In this short work, Garcia provides a nuanced rebuttal to the essentialist argument which draws heavily from philosophical works.

Garcia begins the work with by exploring submission as a philosophical taboo. What is the essence of humanity but agency? And if one forgoes agency, is one engagement with life morally corrupt? But if submission is a voluntary response to an oppressive order, how do we evaluate the submission? And could one gain pleasure while submitting and if so, what does this mean? Garcia argues that we must explore submission from the point of view of those who submit rather than those who oppress. This book is such an exploration of Western societies where female submission takes on "its most morally complex forms" (p. 14).

While Garcia engages the work of numerous others including Freud, Machiavelli, MacKinnon, Rousseau and Sartre, is primarily structured by a detailed analysis of Simone de Beauvoir's work The Second Sex. In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir states that women must be understood as "individuals that are in a certain situation" (p. 42). While submission oft appears as destiny, it is best understood as an expression of "historical power relations" (p. 42). Garcia portrays de Beauvoir's work at "truly existentialist...It is the way humans live their life that determines who they are..." (p. 49). In her perspective women's essence is shaped by how they exist in world with rules they are given at birth.

Garcia suggests the study of submission has been neglected by male philosophers in part because they write from a position of privilege and because it's inherent difficult to distancing oneself from the mundane and/or normal aspects of life in order to study them. The taken-for-granted rarely invites scrutiny. An analysis of submission also requires an examination or...

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