“这种自由，要孤立无援地创造目的”

标题引自波伏娃《第二性》，不过个人感觉Kate Millett的文字相比于波伏娃（不管哪一种语言的版本）都要更容易读一点（但都很爱！），并且在今天上课的过程中也和Mo一起讨论了Millett各种witty用词。Millett出这本书（1969年）前发表了另一篇14页同名小文章（1968年），和书里第二章内容有呼应，在此分享一篇读后总结：

This article can be treated as a prologue of Kate Millett’s proposition of the relationship of the sexes. She brought up the question of whether we are capable of analyzing the gender issue in the political area, gave examples of the historical Black people situation or the religious case, made comparison between those associated problems, expounded the misconceptions and irrationality of widely prevailing gender perceptions, and ultimately expressed the urge that we should begin to realize and to retrain ourselves.

At the very beginning, Millett makes a explicit clarification that the ‘politics’ that we are going through here, rather than political factions, is a power-structured relationship containing governance and subordination. In order to initiate discussion, she first specifically analyzes the differences that race relations make in the structure of the regime. Birth-determined features such as skin color and figure are ridiculously considered as the basis of classifying levels of power. And Black people are unjustifiably placed in an inferior category for years. The same pattern also exists in the situation of women.

There are two primary ways that male rule and control are accomplished. Firstly, in the existing culture of male domination, power is consolidated by avoiding or ridiculing discussion of gender issues. Sex, in this context, is what only female have, and such narrative amounts to declaring the female as the Second Sex. Thus, the conclusion is proposed that women exist, function, and develop only to serve men. Therefore, female is, and always should be on the opposite side of having political and any other power.

Additionally, there is also a control and power-dynamics inside the male organizations itself that is based on castration and ideas that have been derived from it. Castration, as a power played by men in authority over weak men, reinforces the masculine myth of victimization while eliminating the irrationality from its political means. And it is in this perplexing propaganda that the pain of castration (also known as inter-male control) is magnified, while the real harm and crimes committed by men against women are ignored. As a result, the entire gender of mankind is underrepresented by toxic masculinity.

To dive deeper into the source of the hegemonic male ideology, we will find a fact that is inextricably linked to the long-standing misogyny. There is an incredible level of male hatred and hostility towards the female population. Explanation is mainly based on the worship of the phallus. Here comes the core problem: Phallus, as a significant symbol that is associated with male power, is actually just a signifier coming out of pure contingency. Using the metaphysical condition of "no phallus" as a standard, men set women as their opposites, completing the semiotic sense of domination, thus defining their own existence and gaining a platform for discussion.

After pointing out the misconceptions and contradictions of past perceptions, Kate Millett focuses on the contemporary masculine culture that reduces the two sexual collectivities of male and female into an endless variety of purely individual situations. This oversimplification has allowed psychology to replace religion as the new propaganda tool. Its essence remains the ignorance of history and the distortion of reality. Reintroducing the collective will symbolized by religion and the right of black people to vote as examples, our author points out that the central issue here is not whether one can vote, but whether one is recognized as a subject that exists and enjoys equal representation.

Last, Kate Millett analyzes the gender violence that women experience, including how it affects them mentally and consciously in addition to economically and politically. By pursuing woman's external, superficial aesthetic values and restricting their access to political rights and expression, the patriarchal society inhibits the growth and resilience of woman's spiritual world, taking the world away from women at the very beginning by professing it is out of protection. It is the time for us to face the reality and to transcend the biological gender divide in how we view individuals.

Inspired by this article, the realization came upon me that there is no prescribed male/female dyad, only a biological male/female distinction. The male sex constructs a self-righteous male/female gender dyad through accidental biological difference-phallus, and furthermore, the female sex's biological characteristics become the object of male aesthetic and erotic projection. Then male gradually consolidates this masculine system through their biological superiority in the course of history, just as capitalism consolidates its own system through its superiority in controlling the means of production. Therefore, we do not need to set up an opposite, which is to overthrow masculinity, in order to have a say (because the mode of thinking of "setting up opposites" itself identifies with and follows masculinity), but rather to construct self-identity by isolating a male-centered order and producing woman's own aesthetic symbols. In other words, femininity is decentralized. True feminism must be combined with pluralism and it is gender-busting, not gender-dividing. This M+ model objectively allows for the existence of the patriarchal system and its proponents, but in practice, it constantly expands into new areas and constructs a more inclusive and broad cognition of all human beings.