Subordination of the Feminine in "Because I Said So."

Because I said so is a film about an overbearing mother who is all too eager to ensure her daughters are happy by making sure they are all with men --and in relationships. According to Irigaray, "One must assume the feminine role deliberately." In this case, the “feminine roll” to be assumed is being a partner to a male.

Essentially, society has created this mother (Diane Keaton) into a woman that believes her daughters must be in relationships or with men in order to be happy, healthy and prosperous in their lives. This very fact brings the "subordination [of women] into an affirmation" (795). That is to say, the mother is affirming the idea that women are subordinate creatures by falling into the myth that they need to be with men to be "independent creatures."

This mother, perhaps without realizing it, is exploiting her daughters to the subordination of women. “For to speak of or about women may always boil down to, or be understood as, a recuperation of the feminine within a logic that maintains it in repression, censorship and nonrecognition” (796). Irigaray believes that if thought patterns continue as such, subordination is a thing that will never go away.

Work Cited
Ryan, Michael. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin. Grand Rapids: Blackwell Limited, 2008.