NEGATIVE - CRITIQUE - FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF PRIVACY 143

B EXT IMPACTS–PUBLIC/PRIVATE DICHOTOMY LEADS TO BIOLOGISM

THE PUBLIC/PRIVATE DICHOTOMY REIFIES MALE/FEMALE DICHOTOMY AND PERPETUATES BIOLOGISM

Zillah R. Eisenstein, Prof. at Northeastern University, 1981; THE

RADICAL FUTURE OF LIBERAL FEMINISM, EE2001-hxm P. 223

Because of the patriarchal origins of this distinction,, the state is identified as the male and public world, and the family is defined as the female and private world. The rule by men is formalized by the state because this division of public and private life is at one and the same time a male/female distinction. On the basis of this distinction, ideology identifies the realm of female, family, private life, as outside political life and the domain of the state. As such, patriarchy has no political identification on the state level. The division between public and private life, when it is identified, is spoken of as reflecting the development of the bourgeois liberal state, not the patriarchal ordering of the bourgeois state.