To What Extent Can Morality Be Codified?
Note for Practice, Toyo Lee, 2026
Legislated morality is not a neutral norm but a technique of governance. It originates from the fear of power that society might no longer be controllable. This fear, through the language of “moral protection”, fixes women within the private sphere of domesticity, gradually erasing her from the public world.
The codification of morality relocates women from public subjects to beings confined to the private sphere. Here, protection is not care, but another name for control. Within war societies and patriarchal orders, violence, command, and control become equated with masculinity. Within this structure, women face restrictions on freedom of movement, education, labour, and expression, being trained into roles confined to the household. Simultaneously, she is transformed into an object to be owned and managed. Such an extreme patriarchy and the destruction of gender equality are a response to the fear that the social order, maintained through violence, might weaken. Power mobilises the device of domesticity to suture this fear.
Pavilion and Skirting Board — A Micro-Apparatus of Governance
The pavilion is inherently an open space enabling public discourse. Yet the moment morality becomes institutionalised through law, its openness gradually closes. Religious justification, cultural relativism, and the logic of “moral protection” transform public space into a selectively accessible place. The moment women are prohibited or restricted from education, movement, or speech, the pavilion ceases to be a space for all and becomes an apparatus of exclusion. The public world appears outwardly maintained, yet for specific groups, particularly women, it already functions as a closed space.
Skirting board is a micro-device revealing how domesticity becomes fixed within space. The moulding is a decorative element that tidies the boundary between wall and floor, concealing the gap. Similarly, codified morality adorns the boundary between public and private spheres as if it were a natural and self-evident order, preventing women from crossing that line. However, this pavilion is not an actual domestic space. The skirting board moulding installed within is merely the surface of mobilised domesticity. Therefore, the reverse side of the moulding remains fully exposed to the outside.