Gender Myths in The Female Man Anonymous College

The Female Man begins with a direct challenge to the patriarchy in particular the patriarchal methodology used in silencing women. Before the narrative even begins, R.D. Laing is quoted from The Politics of Experience with a hypothetical situation in which “Jack” wants to forget something while “Jill” keeps bringing it up. “Jack may act upon Jill in many ways. He may make her feel guilty for keeping on "bringing it up." He may invalidate her experience. This can be done more or less radically. He can indicate merely that it is unimportant or trivial, whereas it is important and significant to her. Going further, he can shift the modality of her experience from memory to imagination: "It's all in your imagination." Further still, he can invalidate the content: "It never happened that way." Finally, he can invalidate not only the significance, modality, and content, but her very capacity to remember at all, and make her feel guilty for doing so into the bargain.” (31)

One of the major tools of maintaining the social order is to write the histories in such a way that the reality of the past is altered in such a way as to ignore important historical influences and events. When the past is presented to people, often there can be a...