Misogyny in America
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert’s op-ed from Tuesday was reprinted in Wednesday’s Virginian Pilot.
If there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media, it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America. Sexism in its myriad destructive forms permeates nearly every aspect of American life. For many men, it’s the true national pastime, much bigger than baseball or football.
The question in my mind is why? Why is it that is remains perfectly OK to be openly sexist (or, as they called it back in the 1970s, a male chauvinist pig)? The politically correct police have made no headway in this issue. Herbert offers this explanation:
We’ve become so used to the disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous and even violent treatment of women that we hardly notice it. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed against women and girls every day. Fashionable ads in mainstream publications play off of that violence, exploiting themes of death and dismemberment, female submissiveness and child pornography.
Has America become so desensitized to misogyny that they don’t even see it?
“Has America become so desensitized to misogyny that they don’t even see it?”
Put simply, yes. Once there were boundaries, but very few exist anymore. As family and marriage have become less import and women have become sexually “liberated”, we all have become less free. A fact of life and biology is that almost all men are “pigs”. Its in our genes, but when we stop viewing women as mothers, daughters and sisters we become less human and there are many women who play along with the game.
The fault lies not in our politics, but in ourselves.
Paul Hammond may indeed be a pig as he asserts, but I refuse to allow such lies to be applied to men in general. I find it particularly disgusting the way some self anointed feminists decry all of the supposed injustices against women, while using filthy epithets to describe men. In so doing, they commit the very crimes they attribute to men, but their close embrace of victimhood apparently blinds these harpies to their own double standard and prejudice.
Since women gained the vote, the laws in America have been steadily modified to benefit women, often at the expense of men. Glaring examples of where laws disproportionately favor women are labor law and family law. What other nation on earth allows a woman to bring a company to its knees for a perceived “hostile environment?” As for family law, some states now will forcibly remove a father from a home, merely based on the accusation that he has made the woman suffer “mental anguish.”
There is a very good reason many other cultures see America as the agent of Satan, because we have so skewed the relationship between men, women and their children. It is indeed ironic that America, a nation founded on equality, has created so many different levels and classes of “protected classes of citizens” that we now have something approximating an Orwellian society where some are clearly “more equal than others.”
Minority women have the most protections, followed closely by White women, and on down the list. The poor devils at the bottom of American society are single, White men, who have no protection and are the most highly sought targets of litigation.
This sort of inequality in law and especially in the workplace can not stand. Eventually the uneven, unjust treatment of men, especially White men, will result in the destruction of this nation. A society cannot demoralize its most productive citizens without eventually having to pay the ultimate price.
For the sake of our sons, brothers, fathers and husbands, women in America must dedicate ourselves to liberty and justice for ALL Americans, and put an end to these contrived special rights for people based on their chromosomes or gene pool.
There are some very strange and bitter women in our country who seem to take pleasure from voicing their hatred of men. They must be countered by those of us who love our men and who still recognize the value to our society of the traditional, patriarchal family.
Bob Herbert is making some excellent points concerning the “dark persistence of misogyny” which seems to be so commonly accepted that it borders on invisibility.
Paul, while it appears you are trying to be sympathetic, you’re making a flawed assertion that increasing misogyny is due to the decline of marriage and family, the sexual revolution and the genetic piggishness of males in general. That doesn’t explain the accepted misogyny of the bad old days of yesteryear when women were considered property, barred from owning property, limited from entering most professions and husbands were legally allowed to beat their wives with sticks no thicker than a man’s thumb. As far as the theory on genetic piggishness, I’m not buying it because it’s a grand cop-out. “We men are jerks, but we can’t help it! It’s in our DNA to subjugate women. We’re born that way!” What Gingrinchian poppycock.
And haven’t you ever heard that the personal IS the political?
For the sake of our sons, brothers, fathers and husbands, women in America must dedicate ourselves to liberty and justice for ALL Americans, and put an end to these contrived special rights for people based on their chromosomes or gene pool.
Clairese Lippincott;
For the sake of our daughters, sisters, mothers and wives, men in America must dedicate themselves to liberty and justice for ALL Americans. This includes a society based off of egalitarian relationships where people are respected for their mind and humanity not for their gene pool- like a patriachal family promotes.
Nice get-out-of-jail-free play by Paul. No, the sense of entitlement generally experienced by men is not “in our genes.” It’s what even the most enlightened little boys are taught is our birthright.
The whole shaky house of cards depends on the fiction of gender as simple-minded essentialism peddled by the aptly-named Paul. Look under the hood here:
http://www.equalityloudoun.org/2008/01/16/conversations-we-need-to-have/
Paul Hammond indeed has it wrong. If it was the so-called liberation of women and our quest for equality that led to misogyny, how do you explain the extreme misogyny in Islamic countries where women are not free to come and go? In those societies, women observe the traditional roles, stay at home, and do not even expose their faces to public view.
Yet that has not protected them from being raped, murdered in honor killings, and beaten by their husbands.
I don’t buy that it is something exclusive to Islamic law, or Sharia as it’s called.
The Bible has similar laws about women. They were once considered the property of their husbands or fathers. And in the so-called good old days, women were frequently abused, forced to obey the whims of husbands or fathers, and suffered silently. They had no place to go to escape mistreatment.
The face of misogyny has changed. Instead of veiling women or forcing them to stay home, they are dehumanized and turned into objects to be used by some men. But the nature of misogyny – of woman hating – has remained the same.
It has the same roots as racism, anti-semitism, and any other predudice. It’s fear and loathing of “the other” – of that which is different from one’s self. And it has nothing to do with genes as Mr. Hammond asserts. That’s a cop out.
I have a thing to add for macho men.
(please excuse my English, as I am a French speaker):
If you won’t share the world, just get OUT
If you won’t share the world with women, do not forget that we ARE the world.
Never forget that if the world could carry on without you, without us, no more human being.
We ARE the world; we are the future
See what happens in France ! Don’t reppeat the errors !
I want to disagree. With advancement in science, there will be a day when artificial wombs will be a reality. Eggs can be produced from sperms(as also sperms can be generated from female bone marrow). I will rejoice the day when artificial wombs will be a reality, and women will no longer have the unique ability to nurture a zygote into a human baby; and the world would not need females.(Although there would be some for having sex). I was not a misogynist. But these feminists have turned me into one. Marriage is on the decline for good. There should much more investment into “Artificial womb research”.
Women are NOT the future. Artificial wombs ARE
I´m a bit puzzled, where is the big misogyny in america?
In the family where the father was expelled?
In the millions of young men dead by the hands of crime?
Against women who owns 65% of national wealth and controls 80% of the spending?
Who in those stupid series on the air everyday is the jackass, evil, useless, retarded and who is the smart, courageous, and mature? You have to be a jackass to don´t notice that men are portraited as scum.
Who is considered disposable to the family? Women? No way
Who do you fear?
Who would you help?
Who commits more suicides?
Why does society treat men like this? In short, became more superfluous than women. Women can do everything men can but men can´t do this important part of human reproduction and so are considered less important.
ARTIFICIAL WOMBS will come someday and when this wonderful day arrive true equality shall arise
Artificial wombs???
1) Are you serious? *lol*
2) I suppose you hope they would genetically alter all embryo to be male?
3) Why?? Do you hate women because they can give birth?
4) If this really is the future *there’s* your big misogyny.
5) That would be a cool invention for couples who can’t get pregnant or don’t want to go through with it — maybe they could watch it grow in their living room.
On politics: Who passed those laws allowing women to evict their husbands? The female majority in congress?
On Entertainment: Who write and produce the shows that depict men as pigs? The wealthy females controlling the entertainment industry? Who watches these shows? The overwhelming amounts of women who like to see men farting and talking about beer and breasts?
Perhaps if more men asserted themselves as smart, kind-hearted, and mature (like old hollywood?) the industry execs would notice that “Gee, ‘Journey to Boobland’ didn’t get as high a viewership among males as we hoped… maybe they want to see themselves as more intelligent.” It worked with women… we raised a stink about being the lackey, the dopey blonde, or the flat love interest. Now we are almost ALWAYS in a humorless, kill-joy “mom” role to our doofus men — basically being seen as the ‘mature one’ is not all it’s cracked up to be, and we still can’t relate to our characters. Producers still don’t care about the female character and only have her there as the token girlfriend/love interest/sex object, but are now afraid to make them look stupid so they are bland, have no personality, but a whiny or bitchy attitude – a caricature of a feminist.
Trust me, I agree it’s weird that most comedy films are male-centered and about immoral, pea-brained, gross-out dudes dating pretty, intelligent, confident women. What message is this sending us? If someone that attractive and together can’t find anyone better to date than a flatulent, philandering man-child, what can the majority of us expect from the male population? So you win – it’s a horrible image of men voiced in the tune of a schoolyard chant. The only hope is in knowing that these are extreme caricatures of men being made by men and watched by a male audience. If you are being oppressed by it you should take it up with the guys and not blame women, who tend to distance themselves from that material and prefer to watch idealized prince charmings of “chick flicks.” Honestly, do you think we want to see a bachelor party film and imagine our boyfriends and husbands getting drunk and fooling around with other women? Or see male incompetence accepted as the rule (we like men, we fuck men, we fall in love, marry and have children with men — we don’t want men to be stupid or we are even stupider for investing our time, minds and hearts on them!).
On Violence: Who are killing these young men? Who are they killing? These are usually boys and men who were not taught how to be a good, honest man by their father, or their father is unavailable to them. They try to find their masculinity through physical tests, dangerous or unlawful activity, or their ability to force their will on others (often women and younger or weaker men). Again, men need to be involved with their sons and teach them right from wrong. Our current culture would mock a boy who openly looked up to his mother (“mama’s boy” anyone?), and until women are truly seen as equals to be respected, boys often need a positive male role model… someone to say “I’m a strong, confident, good-hearted, honest and responsible person. I’m a man like you will be one day. One day you can be like me.” When fathers aren’t around to teach their kids how to be a good person, they will likely be taught by their mother. In a culture that sees women as the “other,” some boys might see kindness, education, and honesty as things their mom achieved but they innately cannot, as they are not female, and perhaps they are in a poor neighborhood with preexisting male crime, and gravitate toward that. It’s self-perpetuating until fathers decide to be responsible parents to their kids.
On Family: Why are men generally not as involved in the family? Gender roles ascribe them to be the breadwinner – certainly not “disposable” – but men are often not taught to be involved in social matters with the family and let the wife handle it. It would be better if parents equally spent time with the kids, but that’s difficult with the typical family structure and child raising duties are given to the wife by tradition rather than necessity. Perhaps if we continue to strive for equality (not matriarchy or patriarchy), love, and understanding, future generations will have a more even amount of time with their parents.
On Fear: Men are physically bigger and stronger — posing a more obvious threat. Media has emphasized women’s weaknesses making them seem less dangerous though this assumption is certainly not always accurate, just as a large man may be kind and a small man may be a serial killer, looks can be deceiving.
On Help: Help those in need, but be cautious of strangers (man or woman – either could have a gun). Don’t let strangers in your house or car (or go into a stranger’s house or car)– offer to call someone for them or a police officer to assist them if they don’t have a phone. You can’t be too careful these days.
On Suicide: Why do you think men die from suicide? They are taught that expressing their sadness and insecurities is weak and akin to (horror of horrors) women. They feel uncomfortable seeking help for fear of being seen as weak. They hold back their emotions for fear of being seen as feminine (that’s bad.. no, the worst). Their friends don’t know how to comfort them, because in theory they would never encounter such a situation. Men are not getting the help they need to get through difficult times (trouble at school, pressure to be successful, pressure to be a sexual expert, break-ups, or loss of a loved one). If men and women begin to embrace the fact that men have feelings and feelings are human, perhaps men will no longer feel they have to suffer in silence.
I don’t think men are considered less important by any stretch. Men are just feeling the repercussions of their forefathers’ hate and fear. Older women and non-whites resent the repression and patronization of decades passed, and young men who had no part in their oppression are taking offense at the crones in the pulpits who are obviously not talking about them. Certainly these vocal extremists who speak of man as if he were the devil must be put back on their meds and into their padded cells (as should their misogynist counterparts), but assuming *all* women think like this is the same small-minded childishness that led these man-hating beasts into creation. Denounce THEM not all females. Be bigger than them. And by all means raise awareness to laws you find unfair. But do so in a pro-humanity way, not “us versus them”. That’s a Hitler tactic and you’ll only win nut-jobs who don’t care about the issue so much as an excuse to justify their irrational fear and hatred of other human beings.
Bottom line: Everyone needs to stop fussing. There are 2 body options (in most cases) and we have no control over which we’re born into. Let’s just accept that and try to be supportive of each other. We really are not that different.
MS Sanity,
Thank you. It seems that every time any news story, blog entry, or whathaveyou bring up the violence women and girls worldwide suffer, the first respondents are angry men crying, “What about US!!!”
In your response, I think you clearly and eloquently answered most of the charges they generally raise.
The sad thing is that these men cannot imagine a world in which women and men share equal rights AND equal responsibility. They assume (as whites did while blacks gained their civil rights, and as some heterosexuals do now that LGBT folks are shooting for theirs) that if They (women) have more rights, We (men) will have fewer – which is faulty FAULTY logic.
Losing dominance and privilege is NOT losing rights.