Internalising the dominant paradigm

"One form of the social existence of male power is inside women. In this form, male power becomes self-enforcing. Women become "thingified in the head"... Given the imperatives of women's lives, the necessity to avoid punishment - from self-rejection to involuntary incarceration to suicide - it is not irrational for women to see themselves in a way that makes their necessary compliance tolerable, even satisfying. Living each day reconvinces everyone, women and men alike, of male hegemony, which is hardly a myth, and of women's innate inferiority and men's innate superiority, a myth that each day's reliving makes difficult to distinguish meaningfully from reality."

--- Toward a Feminist Theory of the State / Catharine A. MacKinnon


This means that women who do not reject the patriarchy have deluded themselves and we can ignore them as having internalised the dominant paradigm.

This means that we can act in people's best interests - ignoring what they want - as long as we tell ourselves that they are suffering from false consciousness and that we are acting for their own good.