In patriarchal cultures, people internalize cultural gender imagery that enshrines procreative heterosexuality and relations of domination and subordination between men and women. Once internalized – i.e., embedded in people's cognitive and emotional infrastructure – this imagery shapes, though it does not determine individual identity. Discernable in perception, imagination, desire, reflection, judgment, and choice, internalized gender imagery not only affects individual self‐knowledge and self‐definition but also affects people's conception of human nature and hence their political principle ... More

In patriarchal cultures, people internalize cultural gender imagery that enshrines procreative heterosexuality and relations of domination and subordination between men and women. Once internalized – i.e., embedded in people's cognitive and emotional infrastructure – this imagery shapes, though it does not determine individual identity. Discernable in perception, imagination, desire, reflection, judgment, and choice, internalized gender imagery not only affects individual self‐knowledge and self‐definition but also affects people's conception of human nature and hence their political principles and ideals. As a result of their ubiquity and potency, patriarchal stereotypes of womanhood interfere with women's self‐determination or, in other words, their autonomy. The book canvasses and critiques a wide range of toxic gender imagery pertaining to issues that are central to women's individual identities, e.g., mother hood, recovered memory of childhood sexual abuse, and beauty ideals. Because women (and men) typically appropriate culturally entrenched tropes, mythic tales, and pictorial images to develop their self‐portraits and self‐narratives, resisting and supplanting patriarchal discursive regimes are crucial to women's agency. It is incumbent on feminists, then, to combat the pernicious effects of these representations of womanhood through a discursive politics that crafts and broadcasts emancipatory gender imagery and that complements feminist demands for equal rights and improved material conditions. Feminist discursive politics have already made some headway, for contemporary psychoanalytic theory and other representational practices provide illustrations of how emancipatory imagery might look. If this discursive campaign is unsuccessful, patriarchal cultures will continue to undercut women's ability to chart their own courses in their day‐to‐day lives, and feminist social and economic gains will be vulnerable to residual misogyny, backlash, and reversal.