Once you realize that patriarchy is effective in part because it is built on lies, or false narratives regarding what reality is and how it should be, it is important to develop a counternarrative. This is a second reason for reading radical feminist work. Although defined diversely, counternarratives are basically responses to the dominant narrative and its inaccurate, inappropriate representations of reality. Counternarratives exist to challenge the logics of domination which come to constitute the normal way that people interpret reality. Dominant narratives, which are also narratives of dominance insomuch as they reinforce the power that men have over women as well as the view that this is how things should work, exist in every sector of society and function as patriarchal propaganda designed to produce compliant, docile female citizens who accept male supremacy. Furthermore, dominant narratives are the prevailing interpretation of reality, meaning that they tend to shape society’s understanding of how we should think about our identities and events that take place in the material world. Dominant narratives are reinforced through the process of repetition, meaning that they are told over and over again so that they are normalized in the psyches of those who are exposed to them. These narratives are amplified by all types of media sources, including the film and music industries. Additionally, dominant narratives typically marginalize the experiences and ideas of historically oppressed people while also suppressing, ignoring, or ridiculing alternative viewpoints.
An example of a normal dominant patriarchal narrative would be “A wedding is the happiest day of a woman’s life. She is given away to her husband by a loving father, and this process symbolizes her newfound immersion in the realm of adult love and blissful sexuality which she will experience in the arms of a loving man.” A feminist counternarrative would be “Weddings function as an arm of the patriarchy which convey that female people are transferred as property from one man to another; the wedding will be the onset of the saddest, most miserable days of the woman’s life as she becomes inundated in a realm of non-orgasmic sex, verbal abuse, and emotional immaturity.”
There is a plethora of other counternarratives that women have devised in order to refute the erroneous logic of patriarchy so that they can start thinking in divergent ways which gravitate away from male supremacy and towards the conceptualization of female people as fully human. These counternarratives help dispel the lies of dominant narratives, many of which are told in simple, mantra-like formats (because the slogan-style form of language use can make concepts easier to remember). One dominant narrative-slogan designed to promote the aspect of male domination which involves the legitimization of rape is “No means yes. Yes means anal.” This verbage advances the patriarchal view that women do not have the right to say no to male sexual advances (which actually become rape rather than anything “sexual” because consent is absent when an individual cannot say no to unwanted sexual activity) while also conveying that when a female person consents to one form of sexual activity, the male is entitled to pursue other forms of bodily engagement without attaining permission. Feminists (as well as individuals who do not explicitly align themselves with feminist values) have developed many counternarratives which combat the presence and perpetuation of male supremacist logic as made evident in statements like this. One such counternarrative is “No means no.” Rather than adopting the logics of domination and its insistence in the normalization of removing a woman’s ability to say no to unwanted “sexual” activity, groups such as the Canadian Federation of Students are advancing the view that consent is mandatory and must be taken seriously. The seriousness of the “No means no” counternarrative has been historically advanced by the organization of annual events such as Take Back The Night. Originating in the 1970s, this annual event emphasizes the importance of recognizing sexual violence as an egregious harm which must be actively and arrantly resisted.
Another dominant narrative of male domination is that patriarchy does not exist; rather, women “protest too much,” imagine that they are being discriminated against when they are not, don’t understand that men ruling the earth and women submitting to their rulership is God’s plan and deviation from it is demonic rebellion, will simply not accept their nature-based inferiority and accept their lot in life, etc. Additionally, the dominant narrative “patriarchy does not exist” is not always rooted in the aforementioned understandings; it can be rooted in the misperception that patriarchy may have existed in previous eras, but the passing of time has resulted in the revolutionary and/or progressive evolution necessary to ensure that women and men are treated equally in our contemporary period. Therefore, the “patriarchy does not exist” concept is a two-fold master narrative that is rooted in either ignorance regarding the ongoing war against women or a desire to shut women up so that they will keep going along with patriarchal edicts. Radical feminists have been producing effective counternarratives to these lies for quite some time. One such counternarrative is “I’ll be a post-feminist in post-patriarchy.” This counternarrative works to undermine the lie that patriarchy does not exist while simultaneously asserting that feminist antagonism towards male domination will continue until male supremacy is no longer an active, operative component of the material world. Thus, by asserting that patriarchy does exist and subsequently asserting that there therefore is a need for feminism, the slogan “I’ll be a post-feminist in post-patriarchy” functions as an effective counternarrative to the dominant mantra of pretending that patriarchy is either 1. not real or 2. existing but not a problem but rather the appropriate, acceptable way that reality should work.
