The word misogyny is defined as the hatred of, and prejudice against the female gender. So what does this entail? And how are those feelings of hatred manifested? I will try to discuss this by giving it some historical context.
Misogyny can be manifested through things such as segregation, hostility, exclusion, male privilege and supremacy, belittling, objectification and of course physical and sexual violence. With me so far? Okay.
Now let’s make it a little more complicated to try to understand where this kind of brutality comes from. Some say its religion – namely Islam, but I’ll get back to that – and others say it has more to do with upbringing and culture. Although the latter has some truth is, the single biggest reason for this kind of behaviour is the current education system in the world, along with television shows, and adverts, movies, and products that are sold freely all over in supermarkets. So from an incredibly young age, we are taught to believe that men are better, smarter and stronger than women. This is called indoctrination (teaching a group of people to accept a set of beliefs uncritically).
Growing up, little girls are taught to dream of becoming a princess through adverts and children’s shows, or that society won’t accept them unless they look a certain way or are shaped in a certain manner. From there they are then slowly introduced to certain clothes and products, which are then sold to them for the rest of their lives, because they have been socialised into believing they are not beautiful without them.
As for little boys, from the moment they can communicate and understand things, they are told they an be superheroes, that they can do anything they set their mind to, that they can take over the world. And as if that wasn’t enough, they are also subtly told that girls will always be inferior to them. Let me give a real life example. A few weeks ago, while I was teaching a group of young boys between 5 and 10 years of age, one of them starting chanting something repeatedly. His words were “Girls go to Jupiter to get stupider, boys go to college to get more knowledge”. This boy was six years old.
So as you can see, there is clearly a difference between the way the two genders are brought up, and this is without the mention of the domestic issues, where girls are forced to cook for their brothers, and always clean after them. We all know that testosterone produces an already large enough ego, and here we are massaging that ego, hence creating a generation of girls that rightfully despise their brothers, and a generation of boys that have no idea how to look after themselves. Then comes adulthood and oldage. When you think of an old man with grey hair, you automatically think of wisdom and experience. But switch it up and take a woman with grey hair. How many of us will straight away think of her wisdom and all that she’s experienced? This is the society that has been created for us. At this point all of this may seem like disorganised waffle but there is a point.
There is also a long historical parallel to this. During pagan times in Central Asia and the Middle East around 1400-1500 years ago, it was seen as the ultimate shame to have a daughter, so if anyone had a baby girl, they buried her alive. This was a predominately Arab practice, and still manifests itself today with the well known practice of hate speech and oppression – at times physical – in the Middle East. It was a pagan practice and it is today a Satanist practice on a smaller scale but much more vicious. Instead of burying them, they now let them live and just rape and defile them, thus robbing them of their childhood and leaving lifelong scars. So that is the link to culture in society, handed down over generations. The link to religion comes through the current smear campaign on Islam and Muslims. If you watch the way Islam is portrayed in the news, and then you hear the story of a Saudi “scholar” claiming that women only have a quarter of a brain, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the religion is misogynistic and mistreats women.
Today we do live in a society that not only favours the male gender, it also subtly and violently oppresses each and every female brought into it. Then it goes on to find us culprits by blaming religion, or “uncivilised” people of colour – because white people are all a bunch of sinless saints right? So it does become very easy to blame each other, and alienate the whole of society.
It is easy to create movements against black oppression, or several different movements against female oppression, or new movements for homosexuals and trans genders. It is very easy for each and every one of us to go around shouting about this abuse or that oppression. But we have been doing that for a very long time, and all that it’s achieved is that we’ve turned on each other. Now we have black men claiming they’re the most oppressed people, and then women disagreeing with them because a lot of black men also practice abuse of women (which is true), and then the cycle starts all over again.
It is a fact that nearly every man on this planet is a misogynist on some level, or has done things that are classed under misogyny – myself included. Because of this it is easy to understand the mistrust any woman will feel about a man discussing this subject, especially since we will never be able to understand what a woman goes through, just for being born a woman. This creates a tendency for the topic to be written off by men as something that should be left to the other gender, and there is also a long historical parallel where discussion has broken down due to man not really understanding (and at times not respecting) the views and the points laid out by the women who have suffered. In turn, this then created the idea that a man’s opinion on the issue doesn’t really matter.
So I’m going to finish by saying there may not be many, but there are a few men who genuinely want to see change, and of course we are always stronger together.
N.B.
This blog post is mainly the opinion of one person, so if you do have issues with anything stated here, I am more than happy to discuss it and be corrected.
Behind the Eyes 