The politics of penetration

The politics of penetration is a theory about the gendering of human (and particularly “western”) value systems. It posits that everything in human experience is or can be gendered in our thinking, according to its relationship (actual or metaphorical) to reproductive sex roles.

Since the first emergence of patriarchy just a few thousand years ago, a now-globalised world has come to value masculine modes, states and actions more highly than feminine. The politics of penetration examines the metonymic relationship between femininity and structural vulnerability as a root cause of misogyny and sexism.

Politics-of-penetration

We may observe that modern patriarchies are no longer simply about the empowerment of men. Rather, patriarchy—entwined from the beginning with private property, privilege, militarism and commerce—has become an economic system that privileges masculine modes of behaviour and penalises the feminine, throwing human development and society out of balance in ways that have been sometimes productive and sometimes catastrophic.

The politics of penetration seeks to offer a new way of thinking about today’s big problems. It provides new language with which to confront once-taboo questions of gender and power more explicitly and precisely, in search of new and better solutions to both age-old questions and modern crises.

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