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Jane's Position In A Patriarchal Society

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Jane goes to a party and gets slightly intoxicated. At this party, the males are egging on the females to take their shirts off and are taking pictures. At some point Jane follows suit with the other girls, and regrets it. Later, Joe uploads a photo of Jane, and Jane then requests Joe to remove it. He, however, refuses to remove the photo. Joe does this to maintain his status in the current patriarchal society because of its expectations of Jane and Joe, and should not remove Jane’s or any other’s photo from his website. Jane removed her top for three reasons, the first is not as significant as the others. At the party Jane had a few drinks, and was under the influence of alcohol. This caused a judgment impairment, making her more susceptible …show more content…

By being at the party, encouraging and recording women as they reveal their bodies, Joe was showing the world that he is conforming to social gender norms. This gender norm can be simplified into the maintaining of male rule over women. Joe, like all males, have subtly been told this indirectly since birth. To maintain their power, males must continue the tradition of commanding women, making women submit sexually, having as many sexual partners as possible, and objectifying women whenever possible. Joe proves his conformity to the last two requirements by having a website full of pictures of naked women. All the pictures are his trophies of his sexual partners, even if there was no sexual interaction aside from what was portrayed in the photographs. As well, displaying many revealing pictures of women with no regard to their personhood, Joe treats them as objects. Following these norms, Joe does not want to remove Jane’s photo for a few reasons. First, because he will be losing a trophy of his sexual accomplishments. By losing a trophy he could lose some social ranking and not win direct comparison between men. The second reason is that if Joe listens to Jane request and goes through with it, he will become lower in status than the female. In a patriarchal society. this is a bad thing even if it is a minor task. Under the influence of society, Joe seems to …show more content…

In the current patriarchal society in which this occurs, the best decision for Joe regarding his social status is to ignore Jane’s request and keep her photo up on his website. If Joe would rather have some morals and be a nice person, he would complete Jane’s request and remove her photo. This may have consequences on Joe’s social status, but would most likely be insignificant to worry about in the long term. To maintain his social status and dominance over women he should not remove the pictures of the other women from his website. As well, he should continue his partying and photography. However, if Joe wanted to not simply follow social norms and have a more ethical mindset, he should stop hosting his website and quit taking photos of naked women. Of course, this would probably destroy his social status among those who know

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