A quick Bourdieu soundbite on gender

This past semester in Feminist Criminology we very briefly talked about the differences between feminist ideology and feminist science, the difference being that feminist science utilizes feminist theory. I wasn't quite convinced and wished that we had spent a little more time on it because my inability to articulate a clear difference between the two was uncomfortable. Fortunately, I recently picked up Bourdieu's Masculine Domination, which so far I interpret as an attempt to explain the perceived permanency of patriarchy. I was drawn to the book because of the applicability of habitus and doxa to the division of the sexes, and so far I haven't been disappointed.

What I believe is that in Feminist Criminology we missed the chance to break down the antimony between feminist ideology and theory by seeking an theoretical account of the structures that in essence conceal the origins of ideology. An account of the socialization from which patriarchal ideology derives its permanency. Bourdieu says it better.

"This detour through an exotic tradition is indispensable in order to break the relationship of deceptive familiarity that binds us to our own tradition. The biological appearances and the very real effects that have been produced in bodies and minds by a long collective labour of socialization of the biological and biologicization of the social combine to reverse the relationship between causes and effects and to make a naturalized social construction ('genders' as sexually characterized habitus) appear as the grounding in nature of the arbitrary division which underlies both reality and the representation of reality and which sometimes imposes itself even on scientific research" (p. 3).

It is refreshing to begin to construct a theoretical (objectified) understanding of what previously appeared to be an eternal patriarchal order. I remember thinking as I wrote a paper on the origins of rape legislation that patriarchy began simply because men thought of taking power first! I especially like the the notion of "a long collective labour of socialization of the biological and biologicization of the social combine to reverse the relationship between causes and effects", or a naturalization of social differences in biology and socialization of biological differences through science, presumably.