(..) the stability of gender relations over time is surprising, something he explains as the “paradox of doxa.” This is because, in spite of the millions of unquestioned practical actions (doxa) performed every day that would suggest an almost inevitable force for change in gender relations, these actions often seem to have the paradoxical effect of stabilizing gender relations. Here, masculine domination represents “the prime example of the submission to the social orthodoxy,” so much so that even “the most intolerable conditions of existence can so often be perceived as acceptable and even natural” (p. vii). The conditions for social agentsʼ submission are created by the effect of, using Bourdieuʼs (2001) term, symbolic violence, which he defines as: A gentle violence, imperceptible and invisible even to its victims, exerted for the most part through the purely symbolic channels of communication and cognition (more precisely, misrecognition), recognition or even feeling. This extraordinary social relation thus offers an opportunity to grasp the logic of the domination exerted in the name of a symbolic principle known and recognised by the dominant and the dominated—a language (or a pronunciation), a lifestyle (or a way of thinking, speaking and acting)—and, more generally, a distinctive property, whether emblem or stigma. (pp. 1-2)

(David Brown "Pierre Bourdieu’s “Masculine Domination” Thesis and the Gendered Bodyin Sport and Physical Culture")