So why does love hurt? And why does it hurt women disporoportionately more than men?

-
I do not agree with the way Illouz talks of the 'seduction' love exercizes on women in the last excerpt hereunder. I think it is the legacy of most of pre-modern history, through which Western women were not left much choice as to the sphere of life they wanted to express themselves in. It is not that they were particularly 'seduced' by love, it is just that they were relegated to it. Love was socially constructed as a 'female' domain, in which they had to thrive and to invest, lest they be branded ugly, masculine or spinsters (the hidden and common theme of these three patriarchal scarecrows being of course heternormativity, with its correlates of lesbo- and transphobia). And the same goes for the domestic sphere and care. Although it seems that Illouz falls here into what she denounces throughout the book (the making of social phenomena into individual struggles and responsibilities), I still find her observations enlightening. 

"Precisely because we live in a time where the idea of individual responsibility reigns supreme, the vocation of sociology remains vital. In the same way that at the end of the nineteenth century it was radical to claim that poverty was the result not of dubious morality or weak character, but of systematic economic exploitation, it is now urgent to claim not that the failures of our private lives are the result of weak psyches, but rather that the vagaries and miseries of our emotional life are shaped by institutional arrangements. [...] What is wrong [in contemporary relationships] are not dysfunctional childhoods or insufficiently self-aware psyches, but the set of social and cultural tensions and contradictions that have come to structure modern selves and identities. 

As such, this suggestion is not new. Feminist writers and thinkers have long contested both the popular belief in love as the source of all happiness and the psychological individualist understanding of the miseries of love. Contrary to popular mythology, feminists argue, romantic love is not the source of transcendence, happiness, and self-realization. Rather, it is one of the main causes of the divide between men and women, as well as one of the cultural practices through which women are made to accept (and "love") their submission to men. [...] In reducing women's love (and desire to love) to patriarchy, feminist theory often fails to understand the reasons why love holds such a powerful sway on modern women as well as on men and fails to grasp the egalitarian strain contained in the ideology of love, and its capacity to subvert patriarchy from within. Patriarchy certainly plays a central role in explaining the structure of relationships between the sexes and the uncanny fascination which heterosexuality still exerts on them, but it alone cannot explain the extraordinary grip of the love ideal on modern men and women. 

[...]

[M]y overall argument is that something fundamental about the structure of the romantic self has changed in modernity.[...] Ultimately, my aim is to do to love what Marx did to commodities: to show that it is shaped and produced by concrete social relations; to show that love circulates in a marketplace of unequal competing actors; and to argue that some people command greater capacity to define the terms in which they are loved than others. 

[...]

It is unsurprising that love has been historically so powerfully seductive to women; it promised them the moral status and dignity they were otherwise denied in society and it glorified their social fate: taking care of and loving others, as mothers, wives, and lovers. Thus, historically, love was highly seductive precisely because it concealed as it beautified the deep inequalities at the heart of gender relationships."


Eva Illouz (2011), Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation, London, Polity, pp. 4-8.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Have you ever heard of a ‘crazy ex-boyfriend’?

-
Image
Spoiler alert: don’t read if you intend to read/watch “The Girl on the Train” I just saw the film adaptation of the British bestseller “The Girl on the Train” and it made me see more clearly the utterly political aspect of the ‘crazy ex-girlfriend’ trope. The film shows an alcoholic woman who is gaslighted by her (former) husband into thinking that she is prone to angry and violent outbursts during her drinking blackouts. The manipulation not only makes her doubt her sanity, but leads her to think she killed another woman. Although I do not really care for the thriller and crime story aspect of the film, I found it interesting because it resonates with the white western misogynist and racist ideal of emotional restraint that hurts so many people (the ‘crazy ex-girlfriend’ trope, the ‘angry black woman’ trope, etc.). Emotions are political folks, and let’s pause for a second to thank second-wave feminists for pointing it out so clearly to us, despite all the shortcomings of t
Read more

The expectation that you will place yourself in a 'one down' position

-
"Deference - or the capacity to place oneself in a 'one down' position vis-à-vis others - is a characteristic demanded of all those in disadvantaged structural positions, including women, racial-ethnic minorities, and others in subordinate structural statuses. When deference is made a job requirement, members of structurally disadvantaged groups are likely to be overrepresented in such jobs or even be seen as better suited for the work than members of more advantaged groups." Amy S. Wharton (2009), "The Sociology of Emotional Labor", The Annual Review of Sociology, 36: 147-165.
Read more

Women attribute success to external factors, such as luck, men attribute their success to their own abilities

-
"Women who are career-oriented tend to have high self-esteem and self-confidence, and this factor is predictive of women's career achievements, especially in male-dominated occupations such as scientist or politician. Women generally tend to underestimate themselves, whereas men usually tend to overestimate their abilities and performance. This pattern is linked to women's tendency to attribute success to external factors, such as luck, whereas men attribute their success to their own abilities, (...). Women tend to attribute their failures to internal sources, such as lack of ability or effort, whereas men excuse failure by external factors, such as bad luck", Catherine Hakim (2000),  Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century,  Oxford, Oxford University Press: 186.
Read more