ACADEMIA Letters

Masculine Domination
Felipe Nantes Jr.

There is a seeming universality of gender differences and its concomitant repercussions. This
is consciously or unconsciously embedded in the historical, economic, religious, social and
political life of societies. The issue of gender differences in the society is that of gender in-
equality in which men usually dominate women. This is perceived as natural and acceptable
and hence perpetuated or reproduced in the various facets of social existence. In the social
order and structure of most societies, the hegemony of the androcentric principle is widely
evident. The social order and social structure are apparently determined by masculine domi-
nation.
In his book Masculine Domination, Pierre Bourdieu presents arguments regarding the
question on the permanence or change in the sexual order. He devoted for the resolution
of what he called “paradox of doxa” in gender inequality. Masculine domination, and the
way it is imposed and suffered, is a prime example of paradoxical submission, of symbolic
violence, of a gentle violence, imperceptible and invisible even to its victims (p. 1). As
such this situation is accepted and respected by the victims themselves making masculine
domination natural, eternal, justified and consequently continuously reproduced. But why
is this the case? Bourdieu said that the question needs to be countered with questions more
scientifically pertinent and more politically urgent: Why has the domination of women by
men persisted for centuries, and why has this domination taken a similar form across time
and space? In order to answer these questions, Bourdieu suggests that we should identify
and understand better the historical mechanisms and the roles of social institutions like the
family, church, school and state in reproducing gender asymmetries, in tacitly consenting and
perpetuating the androcentric principle, in “naturalizing” the symbolic violence integral in
masculine domination.
Bourdieu grounded his analysis of masculine domination on an ethnographic analysis of

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Felipe Nantes Jr., ipenantesjr@gmail.com

Citation: Nantes Jr., F. (2021). Masculine Domination. Academia Letters, Article 2065.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2065.

1
the objective structures and cognitive forms of the Berbers of Kabyla. The highland peasants
of Kabyla have preserved structures which, protected in particular by the relatively unaltered
practical coherence of behaviors and discourses partially abstracted from time by ritual stereo-
typing, represent a paradigmatic form of the “phallonarcissistic” vision and the androcentric
cosmology which survive even today (p. 6). The Berbers of Kabyla concretely manifest the
cognizant gender division and sexual inequality that are experienced as completely natural.
Gender inequality specifically that of masculine domination is taken for granted and this sex-
ual order, androcentric as it is, serves as an organizing principle of the society. The social
structures and the somatic attributes legitimize gender division and inequality. Sexual at-
tributes and acts are dichotomous and are charged with anthropological, cosmological deter-
minations and social meanings. For instance, upward movement, through erection and the
upper position in sexual act, is associated with the male while its opposite being associated
with the female. The sexual act is itself conceived in terms of the principle of male primacy (p.
18), a form of domination, appropriation and ‘possession’ (p. 20). The division of things and
activities that present the opposition between male and female include up/down, above/below,
right/left, dry/wet, outside/inside, etc. spell the dominance of males over females (p. 7). This
situation is true not only to the Kabyles but also to other societies even today. Although
there are objections to these saying that women with the help of feminism have broken with
this tradition, it has to be pointed out that the feminine body remains to be subordinated to
the male point of view like in the commercialization of sex where the female body, with its
symbolic availability, power of attraction and seduction is used for what we call conspicuous
consumption.
While the males practice domination, the females are expected to show the submissive
demeanor. This structure is seen to be the normal, the natural and the legitimate order of
things. The social structure, roles and activities are aligned to this framework. The anatom-
ical difference between male and female define and justify activities assigned to both sexes.
Domestic tasks like cooking, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, cleaning the house, etc.
are assigned to females while the place of assembly, the military, political positions, field
works like ploughing, planting, etc. are reserved for men. This anatomical and socially con-
structed division, the somatization of the social relations of domination is perceived as the
basis and apparently natural justification of the social vision. Bourdieu said that masculine
sociodicy legitimates a relationship of domination by embedding it in a biological nature that
is itself a naturalized social construction (p. 23). Further, the divisions constitutive of the
social order and, more precisely, the social relations of domination and exploitation that are
instituted between the sexes thus progressively embed themselves in two different classes of
habitus, in the form of opposed and complementary bodily hexis and principles of vision and

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Felipe Nantes Jr., ipenantesjr@gmail.com

Citation: Nantes Jr., F. (2021). Masculine Domination. Academia Letters, Article 2065.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2065.

2
division which lead to the classifying of all the things of the world and all practices according
to distinctions that are reducible to the male/female opposition (p. 30).
With masculine domination at work not only among the members of the Kabyle society but
also in modernized societies, Bourdieu proposes that the only way to understand this particu-
lar form of domination is to move beyond the forced choice between constraint and consent,
between mechanical coercion and voluntary, free, deliberate and even calculated submission.
The effect of symbolic domination exerted through the schemes of perception, appreciation
and action that are constitutive of the habitus, that is, females are perceived to be submissive
and males are perceived to be assertive. The paradoxical logic of masculine domination and
feminine submissiveness, described as both spontaneous and extorted cannot be understood
until one takes account of the durable effects that the social order exerts on women and men.
In the somatized social relationship, at one point, the women are responsible for their own
domination inasmuch as they choose to adopt submissive practices, they love their own dom-
ination, they enjoy the treatment inflicted on them (pp. 37-40). They like to be held, to be
caressed, to be protected. It is in here where the paradox lies. They both like and do not
like domination consciously or unconsciously. The submissive dispositions that are used to
blame the victims are the product of the objective structures and these structures derive their
efficacy from the dispositions which they trigger and which help to reproduce them. These
objective structures then which define social space and social dispositions (habitus) in acting
and choosing reinforce and re-appropriate the gendered social order.
There are certain factors that are contributory to the continuous recreation, constancy and
seeming permanence of masculine domination. Bourdieu acknowledges the agents and in-
stitutions and their interlocking system of cognitive oppositions and social patterns which
permanently contribute to the maintenance of the permanence of the hierarchical dispositions
that favor men against women. These include the family, church, state, educational system,
etc. The family, Bourdieu said, and it is true until today, play the most important part in the
perpetuation of masculine domination inasmuch as it is in the family where early experiences
of sexual division of labor occur. The father is commonly described as ‘the head of the family’
while the mother has the role of being ‘the light of the home.’ Moreover, the parents rein-
force stereotyping by assigning tasks for men and women. Household chores are assigned to
women while works in the field, carpentry, repairs etc. are reserved for the men. The church
likewise is historically an agent of reproducing masculine domination. It is pervaded by the
deep-seated anti-feminism of the clergy. The hierarchy of the church is usually occupied by
men. Until today, there are no women priests in the Catholic church. The educational sys-
tem also contributes to the permanence of masculine domination. It continued to transmit
the patriarchal representation based on the homology between the man/woman relationships

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Felipe Nantes Jr., ipenantesjr@gmail.com

Citation: Nantes Jr., F. (2021). Masculine Domination. Academia Letters, Article 2065.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2065.

3
like in fields of specialization. The whole of learned culture has it that the military, engineer-
ing, politics are for men while nursing, caregiving and the like are for women. The role of
the state should also be taken into account. Bourdieu said that the state has inscribed all the
fundamental principles of the androcentric vision in the rules defining the official status of
the citizens. In order then to reconstruct the history of the historical labor of dehistorization,
Bourdieu suggests that historical researches cannot limit themselves from simply describing
the transformation over time of the conditions of women but in aiming to establish the state
of the system, the structural mechanisms and strategies which helped to remove the relations
of masculine domination more or less completely from history (pp. 81-88).
The immense critical effort of the feminist movement has helped in breaking the circle
of generalized mutual reinforcement of masculine domination. It is true that feminism has
contributed at least to the modification of the educational system manifested by the women’s
increased access to education like secondary and higher education as observed today. There
are now women in the military, in engineering, in agriculture, etc. Family structures have been
transformed allowing a less transparent male domination. Egalitarian families for instance
have become common. Also, there is an effort to feminize professions and positions. Women
are now much more represented in the intellectual professions, in administration, and even in
politics. Rights and privileges usually accorded to men are also now being enjoyed by women.
But while masculine domination has lost its transparent and taken for granted quality,
in the final analysis, Bourdieu said, there still persists the relative inequality of men’s and
women’s positions. While it is true that women are found at all levels of the social space,
their chances of access and rate of representation decline as one moves towards the rarest and
most sought-after positions. Women always occupy the less favored positions. The changes
in the condition of women still always obey the logic of the traditional model of the division
between male and female. Men continue to dominate the public space and the field of power
whereas women remain assigned to the private space. There are three principles that support
this. First, the functions appropriate to women are extensions of their domestic functions.
Second, a women cannot have authority over men. Women remain subordinate to men. And
third, men have the monopoly of the handling of technical objects and machines (pp. 89-94).
With these said then, the transhistorical continuity of the relation of masculine domination is
still the case, far from producing an effect of dehistoricization.
What then can be possibly done to wrench masculine domination from history, from
the historical mechanisms, from structures and strategies of sexual division and domination?
What is required to dismantle masculine domination? Bourdieu perceived that while the fam-
ily or the domestic unit is one of the sites where masculine domination manifests itself most
visibly, the principle or perpetuation of the material and symbolic power relations exerted

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Felipe Nantes Jr., ipenantesjr@gmail.com

Citation: Nantes Jr., F. (2021). Masculine Domination. Academia Letters, Article 2065.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2065.

4
there is largely situated outside that unit, in agencies such as the church, the educational sys-
tem or the state, and in their political actions, whether overt or hidden, official or unofficial (p.
116). Since the hierarchy of the sexes, that of masculine domination and the social order in
general is thus rooted in political actions present in the church, in education and in the state,
the appropriate response to this phenomenon is therefore also a political action. Bourdieu
concluded that only a long-term political action that accounts all the effects of domination
will be required to wrench masculine domination or at least to contribute to the progressive
withering away of masculine domination. This will begin from the recognition of the objec-
tive complicity of the embodied and institutionalized aspects of domination. But whatever
this political action is, Bourdieu did not clearly identify and elaborate. Bourdieu proposed a
solution to the seemingly universal and perpetual problem of masculine domination but he did
not devote an ample discussion or presentation of what he called as political action. Prior to
this however, Bourdieu, in the postscript, mentioned that we can have a relief from the law of
masculine domination in the experience of love. In love there is no more domination, there is
no more violence. In love there is equality inasmuch as it is a relation of reciprocity, of mutual
recognition and of disinterestedness. In love there is unity, so there is no more division, there
is no more desire to dominate. Whether this concept of love is only applicable in romantic
relationships, Bourdieu did not mind to elucidate. Bourdieu’s brief discussion on love and
domination should not however divert our attention from his arguments on the current efforts
of theorizing gender relations, gender inequality.
The arguments presented by Bourdieu in his Masculine Domination provokes readers
specifically social theorists and those involved in researches in relation to gender and de-
velopment. Since issues on sexism, gender relations, gender inequality, gender violence and
domination are still very prevalent, Masculine Domination is worth reading.

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Felipe Nantes Jr., ipenantesjr@gmail.com

Citation: Nantes Jr., F. (2021). Masculine Domination. Academia Letters, Article 2065.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2065.