The Stepford Wives, the Emasculation of Men, and the Forced Submission of Women

         Forced submission and domination of women in patriarchal societies is largely due to the man’s fear of castration which would result in his own inferiority, and because power and societal control has long been seen as an essential component of manhood, gender categories and feminine roles are created and defended as a method for man to preserve his power. The effects of the emasculation of men depicted in the Stepford Wives illustrates that the gender roles assigned to women further entrench masculine superiority in a patriarchal society. Sigmund Freud’s theory of the oedipal stage and the process of gendering a subject supports that men fear the loss of their inherited phallic power in a phallocentric or patriarchal society through castration, or the emasculation of men from the de-marginalization of women. With Monique Wittig’s One is Not Born a Woman, Wittig asserts that the category of women is not natural, but is a socially and politically constructed group, and that the category of women and sexual difference is historically and culturally created. Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and Gender, Sex, and Sexual Performativity proves that gender is entirely a disciplinary framework which sets standards by which women and men must exist within the gender binary, and that gender identity is discursively produced and performed. Because gender is performed, one gender should not be privileged over another, but in a patriarchal society, men cling to performing their masculinity in order to assume a position of power, and force women into submission by assigning feminine roles. In the Stepford Wives, the forced feminine roles that the once powerful “super-women” were transformed to assume by the less superior, emasculated men as a result of their fear of inferiority, is closely related to the gender roles assigned in patriarchal societies, the fantasy ideal of the “American dream,” and the power struggle which results from each.

         Sigmund Freud’s theory on the process of sexuality and gender is merely assertive and re-entrenches a patriarchal view of the woman. Freud’s theory provides a possible explanation for the progression of sexuality and gender in males and females in a nuclear family, and how inferiority and femininity is unconsciously embedded in females as they age. However, Freud’s theory is not universally true, and fails to acknowledge or explain different processes of sexuality and gender by members of other societies and cultures.

         Freud views all human beings as born with certain instincts, such as the natural tendency to satisfy certain biological needs: food, shelter, and pleasure. According to Freud, the pleasure which we derive from this satisfaction of biological drives is sexual. Freud traces the fulfillment of instincts and pleasures to infancy, and views infancy as a seething mass of drives, with a need to satisfy the drives. The infant's capacity for pleasure centers around the mouth, which Freud names the oral stage. The oral stage is most associated with the drive to incorporate objects into the mouth. This is directly related to the fact that the mouth is where the infant receives food, and a great deal of the infant’s pleasure is derived from consuming food and satisfying hunger. The oral stage is then followed by the anal stage which lasts from ages two until four, where the child takes pleasure in the process of defecation.  The phallic stage, or the genital stage lasts from age four until seven. This is most notable for a drive for fulfillment, and the object of desire is the genitals. During these early stages, the child’s body becomes a site for the fulfillment of pleasures, and the child does not differentiate between the different kinds of pleasures. Because of this, child sexuality is polymorphically perverse, flexible, and is not a unified subject. The child does not have a sense of self between his or her self and the external world, and according to Freud, the child is a collection of masses, drives, and desires for fulfillment. The child contains drives which become separated out as the child ages. Freud emphasizes that sexuality is a process, and is not innate. The child experiences every single drive imaginable, and any drive can solidify in the child. Thus, the child’s sexuality may change at any point in time. Since the child does not have a center or a stable identity, boundaries between the child and the external world are constantly shifting. The child’s pleasures are un-gendered, and Freud argues that gendering occurs through the oedipal complex.

         Freud supports his research on the process of sexuality and gender with the destiny of Oedipus in Sophocles’ play, Oedipus Rex. Freud’s process of sexuality and gender is characterized by the role of which the oedipal complex plays in the gratification of pleasures for the child, and the gendering of the child through the pleasures that solidify in the child.  According to Freud, when the infant is nursed by the mother, the mother provides the infant with the pleasure of satisfied hunger, which establishes a desire within the child to possess the mother as the primary love object. The desire to have the mother as the primary love object creates an understanding of the father as a “disturbing rival,” which causes the child to wish to take the father’s place. This relationship between the child and the parents is crucial to the oedipal complex in the phallic stage. 

         Freud’s phallic stage of the female begins with the discovery of the penis. “They notice a penis of a brother or playmate, […] at once recognize it as the superior counterpart of their small and inconspicuous organ, and from that time onward, fall a victim to envy for the penis (Freud 16).” Freud asserts that because the female’s organ is “small and inconspicuous,” she immediately recognizes the penis as the “superior counterpart.” According to Freud, the discovery of the inferiority of the clitoris dismantles the desire of the female to make the mother her love object. “[…] the girl’s mother, who sent her into the world insufficiently equipped, is almost held responsible for her lack of a penis (Freud 17).” Freud asserts that the females, upon recognizing their inability to possess the penis, begin to identify their empowerment in their ability to have a child. “Now the girl’s libido slips into a new position by means there is no other way of putting it – of the equation “penis = child” (Freud 18).” Once the female learns that she cannot compensate for her lack of a penis, she gives up desire for the penis and her mother as the love object, and replaces the desire with the desire to bear children with her father as a love object.

         Furthermore, Freud attempts to warrant the intrinsic biological superiority of males to females through an explanation of the male’s fear of castration. Conversely to females, the identification created between males and fathers is absent of jealousy of the mother, and the male’s desire for possession of the mother ends with the fear of castration. “[…] that period includes an identification of an affection sort with the boy’s father, an identification which is still free from any sort of rivalry in regard to his mother (Freud 19).” The male begins to fear castration when he discovers the female’s genitals, which causes the male to conclude that the female’s lack of a penis was caused by castration. To Freud, males fear castration because the penis is the “superior counterpart,” proving mans holistic superiority, when man is merely socially and culturally superior because of preconceived patriarchal assumptions about biology.

         According to Freud, the boy’s castration anxiety is not derived from the literal fear of castration, but is the need for the young boy to not be seen as weak or incompetent, and to fear humiliation. Freud’s notion of penis envy is culturally determined by the patriarchal society, where women are considered as inferior, and where fulfillment, identity, and empowerment was made through having a child for the women. Freud allows us to recognize the concept that sexual identity exists across a spectrum, and that the gender binaries of masculine and feminine are theoretical constructs, because of Freud’s assertions that all infants are theoretically bisexual, because of their lack of sexuality. Freud’s theory of the oedipal process provides an accurate representation of power and gender differences in a specific socio-cultural structure. Freud allows the link between society, culture, and the way of which gender identity occurs to be revealed – that gender is not natural or spontaneous, but relies on cultural factors.

         Unfortunately, Freud’s theory is flawed for multiple reasons. First, his analysis relies on assumptions of male superiority to prove male superiority. Second, Freud’s theory fails to explain why the penis is actually superior, even if it is perceptually superior. Thirdly, Freud does not address the gendering of children raised in extended families, but merely focuses on the patriarchal, nuclear family. Lastly, Freud’s theory fails to explain alternative performances of gender by members within matriarchal societies. Thus, Freud’s theory on the process of gender and sexuality does not prove the superiority of the male and instead asserts male superiority in an attempt to maintain patriarchy.

         Freud’s assertion of male superiority in order to maintain patriarchy is proven invalid by Judith Butler’s theories of gender. With Freud’s process of gendering a subject, one can easily discern that gender is a social construct which limits individuals. Butler uses this idea that gender is a social construct in order to prove that gender is performed, and not natural. This argument is vital to the argument that men fear the loss of phallic power to the de-marginalization of women, and maintain gender roles to preserve this phallic power. This being because emasculated men further force women into assuming a role of the oppressed feminine gender when they feel as if their phallic power is being threatened. According to Judith Butler, the patriarchal society of which western society has evolved has placed heterosexuality as the dominant sexuality, thus marginalizing homosexuality and women. “[…] the regime of heterosexuality operates to circumscribe and contour the “materiality” of sex, and that “materiality” is formed and sustained through as a materialization of regulatory norms that are in part those of heterosexual hegemony,” (Butler 271).  This compulsory heterosexuality leads to the repression of women and homosexual men occurs because of the larger, dominant, homophobic structures of society, and this society is homophobic of women and homosexual men because homophobia is inherit to a heterosexual society. This reveals a seamless link between homo and hetero sexuality, and these holes in the binary are evolving and shifting depending on the historical situation, but what remains the same is the different access of power that men and women have.

         The closet metaphor has emerged because of this power struggle, and has shaped and determined heterosexuality. The closet creates a regime of an open secret, and involves the contradictory rule of confession and privacy, and the confession and secrecy makes this contingent to queer theory. Examination of the closet leads to the understanding that there are two contradictory models of homosexuality: the minoritizing and the universalizing. The universal understands that the homosexual and heterosexual binary is important to people of all binaries of sexuality, and to our understanding of sexuality. The universal utilizes both models to examine sexuality, and that while sexuality and gender may be linked, they are distinct conceptual realms. “[…] the matrix of gender relations is prior to the emergence of the human,” (Butler 271). A person’s sex is seen as the minimal raw material, and is the basis of which gender is constructed.

         Gender is the rigid, binarized identity that is reproduced within the culture system. These rigid binary structures underlie other binaries within society, and sex is seen as biologically immutable, while gender is culturally constructed, mutable, and variable. Gender is understood in relation to masculine and feminine, and each term is understood in relation to the other which collapses this binary. “Consider the medical interpellation which shifts an infant from an “it” to a “she” or a “he,” and in that naming, the girl is “girled,” brought into the domain of language and kinship through the interpellation of gender,” (Butler 271). The usage of sex, or the term sex, exceeds its chromosomal limitation which leads to sex being often confused with gender. In this way, sex has been used as a means to perpetuate the power structure.

         Butler argues that the understanding of sex is already inflected by our understanding of gender. Sexuality is fluid and uncontainable, however has been consistently mapped on gendered bodies, which is defined by binaries. “Attributions or interpellations contribute to that field of discourse and power that orchestrates, delimits, and sustains that which qualifies as “the human”,” (Butler 271). In reality, sexuality cannot be contained within the male or female body, sexuality exceeds all common sense assumptions about the gendered body which causes sexuality to be constructed and variable. These constructs, thus, limit individuals. Butler urges us to move beyond these binaries and our current understandings of gender and sexuality which are produced by binaries. Additionally, Butler asserts that one must de-familiarize understanding of sexuality by de-linking it to gender, and argues that sexuality is directed everywhere, and that sexual desire is not specific to gender.

         Heterosexuality or compulsory sexuality, determines sexual desire and understandings of gender. According to Butler, compulsory sexuality determines our gender and sexuality. The essential, universal woman does not exist, and our contemporary understandings of gender are produced within the narrative of compulsory heterosexuality, which becomes naturalized. This reveals the consistently constructed idea of gender. Since things come into existence through utterances, identity restrictions produced by gender are created by the narrative of compulsory heterosexuality. “The task is not whether to repeat, but how to repeat, and through a radical proliferation of gender, to displace the very gender norms that enable repetition itself,” (Butler 271). Butler argues that language works through citation and repetition, and that every utterance makes sense because it is citing pre-existing rules and conventions that we are already familiar with. Speakers of language are aware of these conventions and practices, that every utterance is a repetition of what has been said before. Butler argues that gender is performative, that it cites, and repeats. By citing previous rules and conventions, gender is brought into being, and you are performing the construct of gender. Gender is constituted, replicated, and reinforced through the process of citation and repetition, and this gender determines the way people behave.

         Butler’s performance theory emphasizes that gender is constructed, and that our bodies are signified by the process of gender. Gender is a disciplinary framework which makes one act a certain way, and every gender identity is discursively produced and performed. Thus, if every gender is performed, then one gender should not be privileged over another. “If the materiality of sex is demarcated in discourse, then this demarcation will produce a domain of excluded and delegitimized “sex”,” (Butler 272). If gender is a stylized repetition of acts within a framework of compulsory heterosexuality, then any other gender is valid. While Freud used his findings that gender is a process which leads to the construction of the social framework of gender to enforce patriarchal ideals that the masculine gender is superior through his theories of penis envy and phallic power within his theory of the gendering of the subject, Butler uses her findings that gender is a social construct in order to prove that gender is a performance enacted through the repetitive act of language, and thus, there is no proof that a gender is more superior or inferior than the other. Butler’s argument is most valid because Freud does not use scientific facts to support his claims, but merely recycles patriarchal ideals. Therefore, there are not true, false, real, or distorted acts of gender, and non-normative sexual practices and genders are just as viable as hegemonic practices.

         Freud’s notions of masculine or phallic power are further disproven by Connell’s study of masculinities. According to R.W. Connell, masculinity is a monolithic construct which women are fighting against. “Hegemonic masculinity was understood as the pattern of practice that allowed men’s dominance over women to continue,” (Connell 218). To be a man means that you occupy a position of hegemonic power, and men occupy a different structural position. Men have access to the phallus, although do not have the same access to power. “Men who received the benefits of patriarchy without enacting a strong version of masculine dominance could be regarded as showing a complicit masculinity. It was in relation to this group, and to compliance among heterosexual women, that the concept of hegemony was most powerful,” (Connell 218).Connell points out that there is not an eternal man, that there is not a trans-historical, universal masculinity. Masculinity is contingent to time and place, and changes across times and cultures. However, despite these shifts, male power and privilege continues, and maintains levels of status quo. This proves that there is no natural masculinity, phallic power, or male superiority. The very fact that masculinity is contingent to time and place dismantles Freud’s idea that men are biologically superior due to the phallus. When Freud is dismantled, the ideals which shape the foundations of patriarchy are destroyed because there is no theoretical or scientific proof to support male superiority, and the fear that masculine hegemony has of losing this phallic power to de-marginalized women and homosexuals is revealed through the preservation of traditional feminine gender roles.

         Attempts to construct a masculine identity are done in relation to other masculinities, which causes masculinities to emerge in relation to a series of other groups and identities. “Research has also documented the durability or survivability of non-hegemonic patterns of masculinity, which may represent well-crafted responses to race/ethnic marginalization, physical disability, class inequality, or stigmatized sexuality. Hegemony may be accomplished by the incorporation of such masculinities into a functioning gender order rather than by active oppression in the form of discredit or violence,” (Connell 219). According to Connell, despite the fact that gender and sexuality are two different categories, masculinity is constructed on sexuality. This being, because to be a man always emerges in relation to homosexuality and heterosexuality. “This is, for instance the contemporary position of gay masculinities in western urban centers, where gay communities have a spectrum of experience ranging from homophobic violence and cultural denigration to tolerance and even cultural celebration and political representation. Similar processes of incorporation and oppression occur among girls and women who construct masculinities,” (Connell 219). Connell’s relational approach emphasizes that masculinity is not a matter of choice, but is determined, and emerges in relation to certain constraints which produce masculinities. Connell’s notion of hegemonic masculinity captures the ideal embodied by fantasy that gender formation in the present moment is the dominance of men and the subordination of women, which is guaranteed by contemporary patriarchal order. The dominance of men in this fantasy functions as a fantasy ideal. This occurs when the cultural ideal and institutional power is connected together, and even if individuals do not live up to the idea, it still exists as an ideal. Subordinate masculinity is applicable to the culture and the nation as a whole, because there are distinct relations between different groups of men. For example, the subordinated group of men is the homosexual men, and these men occupy the lowest run of hierarchy masculinity. Additionally, these men are cast into a lesser, inferior, and feminine role, and they are the men who are excluded and marginalized. According to Connell, any man who displays a stigma of inferiority are excluded and marginalized, and occupy a position of subordinated groups which do not fit the adequacy of masculinity.

         Connell argues that class, race, and gender are always in play, and everything is always in relation to each other, that identities and classifications emerge through difference. From this, Connell explains that the marginalized and hegemony are always relative. Connell’s theories of masculinity explain that gender roles are historically determined, that both masculinities and femininities have radically transformed. This gender order has real world effects which transform society, and there is always going to be structural constraints which produce you as a certain person. The consequences of which are manifested through domestic violence – a direct effect of structural inequality in a society. From inequality, two types of violence emerge: violence enacted to sustain and maintain male privilege, and violence against men which is used to police boundaries in order to perpetuate masculinity. Therefore, this violence is shown through the policing of women in a patriarchal society with gender roles in order to maintain hegemonic masculinity.

         With Connell’s work, one can discern that violence directed at women in order to perpetuate male privilege is one of the many negative effects of the social gender constructs. Oppression, marginalization, and domestic violence erase the voice of women in the cultural narrative of America. Without a voice in the cultural narrative of America, women do not stand a chance at gaining power or escaping oppression from the masculine hegemonic patriarchal society. Wittig allows us to see that the very fact that there exists the category “women” to lose its voice is unnatural to begin with, and is a construct of masculine hegemony as well.  Monique Wittig’s notion that the category of “woman” is not natural, but constructed emphasizes that sexual difference is as constructed as racial difference, that there is not an immediate given which validates this sexual difference. “[…] race, exactly like sex, is taken as an “immediate given,” a “sensible given,” “physical features,” belonging to a natural order,” (Wittig 11). Since there are no inherent differences between races, the notion that blacks are inferior are the result of social constructs – the color black was designated from social and cultural practices. “They are seen as black, therefore, they are black; they are seen as women, therefore, they are women. But before being seen that way, they are made that way,” (Wittig 12). Since power operates through knowledge, senses of identity emerge from a set of disciplinary practices, from scientific, cultural, and institutional discourses. Discourses set a parameter from which people are seen, for example, the sex of a baby emerges from what kind of knowledge the doctor has, e.g. the set of chromosomes determines the sex. What is normal is produced through this because power operates through knowledge. “”Woman” is not each one of us, but the political and ideological formation which negates “women” (the product of a relation of exploitation),” (Wittig 15-16). Social institutions and practices create modern identities, the homosexual, the African American, etc. According to Wittig, the most pervasive, powerful disciplinary process is compulsory heterosexuality, which creates the idea that heterosexuality is the most natural sexuality in society. However, heterosexuality cannot be the most natural sexuality because heterosexuality is a social construct, and this is proven through the very fact that homosexuality exists. “Thus, as long as we will be “unable to abandon by will or impulse a lifelong and centuries-old commitment to childbearing as the female creative act,” gaining control of the production of children will mean much more than the mere control of the material means of this production: women will have to abstract themselves from the definition “woman” which is imposed on them,” (Wittig 11). Within this compulsory heterosexuality, women are determined to give birth, and birth becomes a natural process. This becomes a naturalized idea because of the very fact that pregnancy is encoded by cultural and medical practices.

         The category of women exists only in relation to men, and if compulsory heterosexuality is a social construct, then it is the organizing principle where men and women are created in relation to each other. “Thus it is our historical task, and only ours, to define what we call oppression in material terms, to make it evident that women are a class, which is to say that the category “woman” as well as the category “man” are political and economic categories, not eternal ones,” (Wittig 15). Wittig argues that rather than seeing women as a natural category, women should be looked at as a social political group.”At this point, let us say that a new personal and subjective definition for all humankind can only be found beyond the categories of sex (woman and man) and that the advent of individual subjects demands first destroying the categories of sex, ending the use of them and rejecting all sciences as their fundamentals (particularly social sciences),” (Wittig 19-20). Wittig examines women or gender identity categories as necessarily produced within historical and cultural moments, and asserts that both men and women are social constructs. Therefore, this proves that there is not an eternal man or woman, but that we have different gender categories produced at the intersection of race, class, and time which create socially constructed categories of men and women. In order for masculine hegemony to perpetuate, the very idea that the category “women” is not natural, but is socially produced at the intersection of race, class and time must be preserved through the common belief of normalized heterosexuality that women must become child bearers – an idea illustrated by Freud as well through his theory that the only means for women to overcome penis envy is to obtain power of their own through child bearing. With women oppressed into the role of housewives, marginalized into the role of being submissive, fragile, feminine, and repressed into devoting their lives to raising children, the constructed category of women lose their voice in the cultural narrative of America, and do not stand a chance at obtaining rights by asserting that the category of “women” is not truly natural, but is constructed and maintained by masculine hegemony.

         In the context of the film, the Stepford Wives, the socially, historically, and politically constructed gender roles are shown through the roles which the emasculated husbands force the wives into assuming. After being transformed into robotic-like slaves to their husbands, the wives assume the role of an extremely feminine, domestic, and ultimately submissive traditional wife of patriarchal society. The wives center their lives completely around the domestic sphere – interesting themselves only in recipes, satisfying their husbands sexual desires, priming their faces to perfection with cosmetics, dressing only in traditional 1950’s-style dresses, and never being anything less than perfectly feminine and joyful. The characteristics of the robot-like wives capture the aspects of the feminine gender role which patriarchal societies assign to women. Instead of being powerful, intelligent, self-sufficient women, the wives submit to the husband’s domination, and to the feminine gender role. Inevitably, the women are oppressed by the husbands. This oppression is illustrated further with the use of a remote control by the husbands in order to control the robot-like wives. Before the transformation, the wives symbolize the non-traditional women because these women earned more than the men, were more intelligent than the men, and assumed higher positions in the social hierarchy than that of their husbands. This defied the patriarchal idea that men are superior than women, which led to the emasculation of the husbands. As a consequence of the husband’s emasculation, the women were forced to assume to feminine gender roles through violence. This is consistent with the consequences of patriarchy, since Wittig’s theories point out that domestic violence is historically related to the defiance of women to the submission of men. The effects of the fear of emasculation, or castration in Freudian terms, are illustrated in the Stepford Wives through the forced submission of the once superior wives by their husbands. According to Freud, fear of castration by men is the fear of losing phallic power through the de-marginalization of women. Since the wives in the Stepford Wives were by no means marginalized, but actually superior to their husbands, the husband’s loss of phallic power causes them to force the wives into marginalization through forcing them into gender roles by transforming them into robots. This illustrates the idea that gender roles are created and defended within a patriarchal society as a method for men to preserve their phallic power.

         When applied to the works of Butler, Wittig, and Connell, one can easily see that the gender roles of which the women are forced to assume in the Stepford Wives is not natural, which is illustrated through the transformation of the women into “robots” in order for the women to assume the gender roles. Butler argues that because gender is performed, much like the way of which robot-like women perform the genders, that no gender should be privileged over the other. Although, historically, the ideals of a patriarchal society and the “American dream” are consistent with the notions that men are superior to women. This being because the fantasy of the “American dream” idealizes a heterosexual nuclear family, where the women occupy all realms of the domestic duties, and the man works in order to provide for the family. The very idea that the norm of American culture is a heterosexual nuclear family re-entrenches compulsory heterosexuality and the role of women as child-bearers. In order to move away from this idea to eliminate gender roles, gender inequality, oppression and marginalization of homosexuals and women, and masculine hegemony, the consideration of the “American dream” as the societal norm must be destroyed. As long as the fantasy ideal of American culture includes compulsory heterosexuality, the existence of gender roles, and masculine hegemony, gender inequality and the marginalization of homosexuals and women will occur. The Stepford Wives illustrates this effectively through the re-enactment of or nod to 1950’s American culture by the wives and husbands in the town of Stepford, and through the de-naturalizing of women through transforming them into robots in order to assume the traditional, unequal gender roles. Thus, gender roles, compulsory heterosexuality, and masculine hegemony further entrench masculine superiority in a patriarchal society.

         Gender roles, compulsory heterosexuality, and masculine hegemony have long shaped the narrative of American culture, and the fantasy of the “American Dream.” Specifically, 1950’s culture and society displays the power dynamic inherent in gender roles and compulsory heterosexual marriages, which is why, I believe, that Frank Oz – the director of the Stepford Wives, chose to have the robotic wives dressed and act as if they were a flawless product of American ideals in the 1950’s. This era certainly was the time where roles were most blatantly shown because women were denied a public voice and were forced to reside entirely in the domestic domain and act and dress only in ways which would please men. Proof of gender roles, compulsory heterosexuality, and masculine hegemony during this era can be found in much of American media. For example, in the widely-viewed AMC television show, Mad Men, the narrative of 1950’s America underwrites the theme of each episode and the actions of every character. Consider the dynamic of the marriage between Don and Betty Draper in season one. In the first season, the viewer hardly catches Betty out of the house or without a single characteristic of the trademark 1950’s housewife stereotype. Betty is painted as always well presented in makeup and with hair done, thin, agreeable, feminine, submissive, soft-spoken, beautiful, and always minding the house work and the children. Don, on the other hand, strides into his home at any hour of the day, or night, without explanation, and demands a drink and food from his ever-subordinate wife, despite how late in the night it may be. However, Betty never asks of his whereabouts or argues against his blatant rudeness toward her. This being because this relationship dynamic has long been a part of the American cultural narrative. This narrative is negative due to the violence which is supported by these ideals. Violence enacted to sustain and maintain male privilege, and violence against women which is used to police boundaries in order to perpetuate masculinity is a direct result of inequalities in society. Common violence in American culture and society is present through the policing of women in a patriarchal society with gender roles in order to maintain hegemonic masculinity. These inequalities are the foundation of American culture, so to escape violence and oppression seems somewhat impossible for women.

         For America to escape these inequalities, and to erase the oppression and marginalization of women and homosexuals, the idea that gender is a performance, and is a social construct must replace compulsory heterosexuality and masculine hegemony as the cultural narrative. Since America is well-known as being the “land of the free,” shouldn’t America finally exercise that idea? Social constructs created at the intersection of time, race, and class should not define one’s fate or restrict a person’s freedom. It is time that masculine hegemony is eliminated entirely through the replacement of phallic power in knowledge with that of truth. Truly, there is not any scientific evidence which proves male superiority, but there is discursive evidence which proves that the limitations forced upon individuals which place males as superior are socially constructed. It is foolish for a woman's life to be wasted as a slave to her husband’s every desire, and to ideology’s constructed restrictions. The Stepford Wives ultimately portrays this idea. The transformed wives cannot exercise free will due to the technological restriction forced onto their anatomy. Much like how women of America’s patriarchal society do not have much autonomous freedom because of the oppression and marginalization of gender roles. Additionally, the inevitable violence which results from power inequality is shown through the husband’s decision to deprive their wives of autonomy by forcing a transformation which would result in the wives abiding by ideology and masculine rule. This is not much different from ideology’s restrictions on women through the assigning of gender roles. Masculine hegemony provides men with inherited phallic power, and this power is exercised and preserved through the protection and perpetuation of gender roles. Emasculation or castration is threatened by a woman who by any means de-marginalizes herself. De-marginalization of a woman means that the woman is independent, intelligent, self-sufficient, and does not allow for the dominance of men. An example of a de-marginalized woman is the protagonist in the Stepford Wives. Joanna is a successful reality television executive producer, and her husband works below her. Contrary to traditional patriarchal roles, Joanna dominates her husband both in the domestic and vocational realms, thus “castrating” her husband of his inherited phallic power. The men’s club in the town of Stepford can be viewed as masculine hegemony, because here, the wives are transformed into the traditional patriarchal roles of women. Joanna’s husband becomes a part of the men’s club, learns of the transformation process that his wife can be forced into, and attempts to transform his wife into assuming the feminine gender role of a traditional house wife as a result of his discontent with being emasculated by her. The transformation which Joanna is forced into turns the once superior, non-traditional working woman into a submissive, robot-like, gender role-adhering house wife. This is symbolic of the masculine hegemony of America which resorts to violence to sustain and maintain male privilege, and violence against women which is used to police boundaries in order to perpetuate masculinity.

         For violence against women and homosexual men to be prevented, the narrative of America’s prevailing ideology must recognize that is no natural sexuality or gender, thus eliminating compulsory heterosexuality which will ultimately dispel the notion that women can only gain power through child-bearing, and that men are born with inherited phallic power. Dismantling the role of women as “child-bearer,” and the role of man as “superior” because of his phallic power will deconstruct the basis of masculine hegemony. If women have to no longer find a powerful, superior man to marry and gain power with by bearing children, and have to no longer seek protection of the children by residing primarily in the domestic sphere while the man provides, and if women no longer have to please the man in order to preserve this protection through being submissive, physically attractive by patriarchal standards, then women will no longer be oppressed. Without the role of child-bearer being the driving force of a woman’s life, a woman can ultimately be free. This being because the driving force of American men and women is to achieve the compulsory heterosexual American dream of getting married, having children, having the traditional powerful, dominating male bread-winner, and having the traditional submissive female house wife. Ridding the role of women as child-bearer will rid of the American dream fantasy, and thus, the idea that the male is the powerful, dominating bread-winner.

         Hegemonic masculinity captures the ideal embodied by fantasy that gender formation in the present moment is the dominance of men and the subordination of women, which is guaranteed by contemporary patriarchal order. Within this compulsory heterosexuality, women are determined to give birth, and birth becomes a natural process. This becomes a naturalized idea because of the very fact that pregnancy is encoded by cultural and medical practices. According to Butler, compulsory sexuality determines our gender and sexuality. The essential, universal woman does not exist, and our contemporary understandings of gender are produced within the narrative of compulsory heterosexuality, which becomes naturalized. This reveals the consistently constructed idea of gender. Since things come into existence through utterances, identity restrictions produced by gender are created by the narrative of compulsory heterosexuality. Compulsory heterosexuality as a narrative must be stripped of its naturalized presence in American ideology in order to rid of the oppression and marginalization of women and homosexual men. Gender is performative - it cites, and repeats, and by citing previous rules and conventions, gender is brought into being, and you are performing the construct of gender. Gender is constituted, replicated, and reinforced through the process of citation and repetition, and this gender determines the way people behave. By refusing the repetition and citation of the rules which consistently construct ideas of gender, compulsory heterosexuality will be dismantled as the foundation of America’s prevailing ideology. Hopefully then, truth and ultimate individual freedom will then underlie the basis of American ideology.

         Thus, because gender roles are performative, the socially constructed category of men and women are unnatural, and because the body is gendered through a process, the entire basis of which patriarchal privileges phallic power is derived from cultural, social, and historical constructs, and not from  biological or natural processes. These unnatural and socially constructed roles maintain the masculine superiority in patriarchal societies through the existence of compulsory heterosexuality and masculine hegemony. The Stepford Wives works to prove that because gender roles are performed, and because compulsory heterosexuality is no more than an aspect of the prevailing ideology, that the hegemonic masculine gender should not be privileged over others, and that other sexualities should not be marginalized. The entire discursive framework which creates the foundation of American ideology which favors compulsory heterosexuality, and thus, masculine hegemony, is consistently constructed through the repetition and citation of the rules of gender roles. To have ultimate autonomy, Americans must refrain from aspiring to achieve the fantasies of the “American dream,” from believing that women only achieve power from child-bearing, and from perpetuating oppressive gender rules by repeating the rules of patriarchy society which place compulsory heterosexuality as the naturalized norm.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. "Gender, Sex, and Sexual Performativity." Gender Inequality. Ed. Judith Lorber. 4th ed. New York:  Oxford University Press, 2010. 270-73. Print.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. 2001. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2010. 2488-2501. Print.

Connell, R.W. "Hegemonic Masculinity." Gender Inequality. Ed. Judith Lorber. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 218-229. Print.

Connell, R. W. "Making Gendered People: Bodies, Identities, Sexualities." Revisioning Gender. Ed.  Myra Marx   Ferree, Judith Lorber, and Beth B. Hess. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1999. 449-73. Print. The Gender Lens 5.

Freud, Sigmund. Sexuality and the Psychology of Love. 2001. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2010.  919-929. Print.

Oz, Frank, dir. The Stepford Wives. Dreamworks Pictures, 2004. Film.

Wittig, Monique. "One Is Not Born a Woman." The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. 9-21. Print.