emmanuel reynaud holy virility the social construction of masculinity

land. Like certain slaves, it is she (her body) who is owned.
And that is not only in marriage― the most obvious form,
perhaps too obvious. In fact all women belong to each
man, and each woman belongs to all men. [5]
[76 / Holy virility]
Man does not only appropriate a woman through marriage; in
fact, he can only marry because women have already been
appropriated as a class. As Collette Guillaumin comments: 'to
acquire a slave "normally" in a slave class which has already
been formed, all one has to do is buy one, to acquire a woman
in a society where the woman class has been formed, one only
has to ask for or buy her.' [6]
Daddy is not content to protect and provide; he judges and
imposes his idea of what a woman must be. He is the father who
helps make his daughter a woman, the husband or lover who
seeks to mould his woman according to his interests and
fantasies and, more globally, he is the creator of the concept
'woman' which he perpetuates, from one generation to the next,
to justify the appropriation of women.
Since Pygmalion made his ideal woman out of ivory and
succeeded in bringing her to life, creating a woman has been
one of man's favourite pastimes. From childhood and
adolescence, he starts to fashion his feminine model; he
imagines the behaviour that women in general must have, and
also that of 'his' woman in particular. In addition, he itemises the
shape and size he prefers for each limb and external organ of
their bodies isolating them to the point where he gives certain
parts their own personality: 'Ah, they're the most beautiful
breasts I've ever come across.' he sometimes exclaims in
ecstasy, but even so, he does not forget how his 'ideal woman'
should look. He attaches great importance to her weight, her
height, the texture of her skin, the colour of her eyes, the shade
of her hair and even ―why not?― the number of breasts: 'it is
biologically conceivable to manufacture women with two pairs
of breasts. This is doubtless a proposition that biology has to
offer tradition,' wrote Abraham Moles in 'Open Letter to the
Situationists'. [7]
However, man does not only cut women into pieces in his
fantasies, he also looks for them in life as he imagines them in
his head, and he tries to shape them according to the model that
he has created in his mind. This attitude is particularly
noticeable in the husband or lover who chooses a woman
according to established standards of beauty and behaviour;
once he has appropriated her he tries to make her correspond
even further to his interests and fantasies. But this common
attitude among men is not only to be found in individual
relationships, on the contrary, it is usually stressed when man
devotes himself to artistic or intellectual pursuits. In painting or
music, the cinema, literature or human sciences, creating
'woman' is one of man's greatest sources of inspiration.