HW 22: Ch. 2, Patriarchy

In the assigned reading response Patriarchy is defined as “a society in which fathers are the powerful responsible heads of their families and households and by extension, a society in which men hold a disproportionately larger share of power”. In Virginia Woolf’s chapter two reading, much of what she talks about is how men really do have more power, and when comparing them to women, there really is no comparison. On page 25, in the beginning of chapter two, Woolf begins asking questions like “why did men drink wine and women water? Why was one sex so prosperous and the other so poor?” But instead of asking so many questions she left and went to the British Museum. When she goes there she checks out things about women and rules, and when moving over the M section she find nothing on males. There are no books written about men by women, but there are plenty found about Women, written by men. Clearly, men hold a majority of the power and control what goes on. In the reading found in the library it was a book of rules, but when she went to look for men, there were no rules. When going to the New York Times website, I found that this website would not “give a transient visitor to our planet the impression that the United States is a Patriarchy”, because on this website it does not talk about equal rights, what’s right and what’s wrong. All the issues discussed on not just only the New York Times but others are equally applied to both sexes, discussing many different issues, which is much different from the reading where in England it seems as if one sex is favored.