Misogyny
Want to read this book. I’m intensely and permanently interested in misogyny, and where it comes from and why it’s so pervasive and universal and chronic and hard to get rid of.
You see, darling, I could have said, lots and lots of grown-up men don’t like women. For as long as there have been two genders, men have made enormous efforts to enforce and institutionalise the oppression of the female. Even in a supposedly enlightened and “post-feminist” society such as ours, hatred of women stinks out the whole shooting-match like a bad drain. Young women are bitches and sluts who absolutely force men to rape them by not wearing enough clothes. Old women are either invisible or grotesque, and when they get too old to shag, they have the temerity to take a man’s money if he goes off in search of something fresher.
Because men, of course, as we all know, never get too old to shag, hence all those Hollywood movies (written directed and produced by men) featuring men in their sixties and seventies pairing up with gorgeous women in their twenties. Harrison Ford, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Woody Allen, they’re all out there collecting the glowing glimmering sparkling women age 25. Women are not people but consumer goods – when they get a little worn and chipped you’re supposed to trade them in for a newer one. Misogyny is pervasive and universal and chronic and hard to get rid of.
Every year, an estimated 5,000 women are murdered globally by their own relations for damaging the family “honour”. Millions of girls have their clitorises cut off and their labia stitched together. Millions more are expected to go about their lawful occasions shrouded from head to foot.
Millions are forcibly married to men not of their own choosing. Millions are aborted. Many millions are raped, beaten, coerced, exploited, overworked and underpaid.
This prejudice, he says, is the oldest of the lot, and runs so deep that it is almost invisible. “Was there,” he wonders, “a women’s history BC — ‘before contempt’?” If so, he has not found it…Misogyny is “a Gordian knot of interwoven dependencies” and can be attributed to the basic natural differences between men and women. But as Katharine Hepburn says in The African Queen, “Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we are put into this world to rise above.”
Damn right. Be careful not to hold your breath while waiting though.
External Resources
- DRC: Rape as a Weapon in North Kivu
Rape is seen as fully legitimate ‘additional retribution’ by the armed groups. - Rape in the DRC
6-year-old Shashir was gang-raped. She was close to starvation when found. - Violence against women rife in war-torn countries
The use of sexual violence is precisely calculated to subjugate and humiliate civilian communities.
25 years old for woody allen? bit OLD doncha think?
Well, true. In his case more like 16. And, for preference, his own step-daughter – yee-ha, now that’s fun!
It’s hard goddamn work to raise children to reject misogyny (or at least know it when you see it). Thankfully my father is a strident feminist – certainly more vocal than my mother. If one of my brothers or myself came home with some misogyny, he’d set us straight – especially if we blurted something stupid out in front of our sister.
My wife gets jealous. Stories about his strident (I love that word now!) feminism drive her nuts. At her home, women were/are expected to have boyfriends, be daddys-girl, and most certainly not attend a college for “Women’s Studies.”
Of course, none of that makes a lick of difference to the young girls being mutilated around the globe. Considering how little the State Department and DoD do to protect women in Afghanistan, I’d guess that there are plenty more people who need convincing that all woman deserve human rights.
G. –
Got it. I left out the step. Humans deserve human rights; Women are Fully Human; thus, women deserve human rights.
Im not about to equate Islam with the Nazis anytime soon. (Nazi is too easy, in my book – that’s why Bush likes to equate people to Hitler.) Their poor treatment of women is the manifestation of thousands of years of woman-bashing.
“I’d guess that there are plenty more people who need convincing that all woman deserve human rights.”
Yeah. It seems so. Of course, the unstrident Wonkettes of the world consider that a ‘fixation’ – so they’re among the people who need convincing. Lotta work to do.
That Wonkette – where does she fall. I doubt she is a misogynist (even tho’ it’s not impossible.) So what is her deal?
Ignorant?
Oblivious?
Complacent?
I can’t figure it out.
Oh, she’s a common type. At least, the persona she presents in that review is a common type (I don’t know if she’s different elsewhere – although with that stupid name…). Postfeminist, lipstick feminist, third wave feminist, sex positive feminist, girly girl – whatever. They all certainly rely heavily on those three items – on having no clue how much that they take for granted relies on the feminism they like to despise.
“…having no clue how much that they take for granted relies on the feminism they like to despise.”
Your remark reminds me of PZ Myers’ post this morning about a NYTimes book review. The reviewer busted out the tired old claim that Dawkins and Dennett turn people away from evolution, which, as PZ points out, is silly. Unfortunately, I hear that from more people than not.
On the left, I think it pays to to defend the moderate ideas (and obliviousness and contentment) against strident opinions. This does not apply on the right, where the strident (or fervid, a word PZ used) are cherished.
But I hate all that calculation. I don’t want to choose my ideas on the basis of what pays. It’s the same objection I made to the idea of atheists ‘needing’ to ‘improve their image’. I want to choose and argue for and defend my ideas strictly on the merits, I don’t want to drop some because they might turn people off something or other.
Well, if that’s the way you are going to be, then I guess you have no choice but to leave the gossip-blogging and NYT-book-reviewing to the calculators of the world.
Oh, darn – you mean I’ll never be as widely-beloved as Wonkette? Oh, my little eyes are welling up. I can’t bear it.