When Someone You’ve Always looked Up To Turns Out To Be a Misogynist.

I really don’t have much time, so I will have to keep this post short and simple.  I did want to pose a question to everyone here concerning something I have always struggled with.  I wanted to maybe hear if others have dealt with the same thing, and if so, how they managed to deal with it. 

I tend to look up to people, to idolize, praise, aspire to be like them, etc.  Yet, being a feminist, I find that I have looked up to people who didn’t always feel the same way I did about the equality of women.  I wasn’t always aware that I was doing it, of course.  Some of these people, it turns out, didn’t even respect women in the way I thought they should be respected.  Now, in the days where I wasn’t as passionate about, or even as aware of feminism as I am today, it wasn’t much of an issue; however, today I find it harder and harder to ignore when someone I have always loved, and admired turns out to be, quit simply, a jerk! 

I love to write, and to read.  It turns out that some of my favorite poets and authors have been either very abusive to their wives, or have had a history of very misogynist attitude towards women in general.  Do I stop loving their work?  Do I stop reading their work?  Do I stop aspiring to write like them?  Do I need to change the way I write now, because trying to imitate them would be unthinkable?  What about my favorite musician whose music has always reached a special place in me?  Whose music means quite a bit to me on a sentimental level?  What do I do now that it turns out he thinks of women the same way one would think of a pesty house fly ?  Is he just a guilty pleasure now?

When I come across these scenarios, I feel alone, like I’ve just been slapped in the face.  It effects me more than most other forms of verbal disrespect towards women, because I can just count those people out as ignorant, or bigoted.  There is at least some form of a perceived excuse.  But when it turns out that someone whose work and ideas have always mirrored mine, and that I’ve always looked up to and respected is a misogynist, I feel intellectually raped on some level.  I feel like I’ve been betrayed and let down.  I feel extremely insignificant, and like I have no one or nowhere to turn, and like I have to now give up that part of myself or thought process because in some way I am not entitled to it, and it nomlonger represents me.  Has anyone else ever felt like this or experienced this, and how did you come to terms with it?

This was more like a stream of consciousness, so my apologies if things aren’t as coherent as they ought to be.