The responses to the recent Pennsylvania shooting speaks volumes about how we view (or ignore) misogyny.
In the aftermath of George Sodini’s horrific crime, I took some solace in the fact that the media was covering the crime as one targeted towards women. (Something they failed to do several years ago when similar shootings occurred.) And this weekend, I was even more heartened – and not at all surprised – to see Bob Herbert of The New York Times link the shooting to our culture’s hatred of women:
We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.
We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment.
Yet despite the links being made in the mainstream media, and the numerous bloggers and reporters who have shown that Sodini had ties to the “pick up artist” community and probably would have fit in well with the “Nice Guy” sect as well – some people are aghast that anyone would link Sodini’s crime to a larger culture of misogyny.
Take, for example (and this is just one of many), conservative anti-feminist blogger Cassy Fiano – who after a roundup of feminist blogger responses to the shooting, writes:
…To say that it is a “culture-wide problem” because America is apparently just still so misogynistic is ridiculous and wrong. And feminists know that. Most men do not harbor secret fantasies of forcing women to have sex with them whether they want to or not, nor do most men dream about enacting violence against women. Yet it doesn’t keep feminists from labeling men this way.
What I think it boils down to is that feminists no longer have anything to fight for. And so, a movement that once was dedicated to fighting for equality between sexes has now resorted to slandering all men as angry, violent, women-haters in order to further their own feminist agenda. George Sodini is a sick, evil man who I hope rots in hell for what he’s done. And while I don’t think feminists are evil, they should still be ashamed of themselves for exploiting a tragedy of this nature in order to continue to smear men.
I genuinely find this kind of reasoning completely fascinating. Calling feminists opportunists and conflating cultural criticisms with man-bashing seems to serve only one purpose – denial. (And some head-patting from misogynists, of course – but that’s a post for a different day.) Seriously, I have often wondered why anti-feminists spout what they do. The only answer I’ve been able to come up with is denial, and an extreme desire to believe that if they’re not one of those women (feminists, sluts, etc) then they will be safe. If they can separate themselves from the reality of most women’s lives, and the terrifying culture that is misogyny in America, then somehow they will be immune to it all.
Part of me gets it, truly. Opening your eyes to the way that U.S. culture views women – and hates women – is not pleasant. It’s scary and unsettling and makes you question…well, everything. But the sad fact is, you can’t wish misogyny away. It exists whether you believe in it or not.
And when you rail against feminists, or the idea that misogyny is a culture-wide problem – you are enabling misogynists. That’s why I wasn’t surprised to see that this was the first comment to Fiano’s post:
There is no ‘culture of misogyny’ at all. The feminists are, as usual, unhinged. to a point, I think Mr Sodini had a few valid points. I’m not the most attractive guy in the world, and have experienced downright offensive rejections when I attempted to approach an ‘attractive’ girl. The women viewed me as completely beneath them, and how DARE I approach them, since i clearly was not up to their standards. These were the same girls that cried and whined when they had sex with a guy that never called them back. So from one perspective, I can relate to his feelings. He simply took it to a serious extreme.
If the feminists want to blame anybody, they should be blaming themselves for how so many of them treat men in today’s modern society.
Another commenter calls Sodini “a victim of the women who dismissed him.” One person even singles out me:
If sex is but a good time, it’s a real insult to not sleep with a man; you are denying himself and yourself a fun, healthy time. If sex is special – if chastity means something more than just a way of life to be shunned – then not having sex with a guy is normal.
Once you criticise chastity, you reverse the default position from not sleeping with someone to sleeping with them. So, Jess, author of The Purity Myth, how do you feel about the logical consequences of your politics?
These commenters blame everyone from the women who rejected Sodini to feminist authors – but never the culture of misogyny, and rarely Sodini himself. Because for the men who benefit from this culture, recognizing that misogyny exists would mean having to change. And for the women who live in this culture, it’s just easier – and less painful – to believe that the widespread acts of violence against women are simply anomalies that could never happen to them.
But as Herbert writes, “we would become much more sane, much healthier, as a society if we could bring ourselves to acknowledge that misogyny is a serious and pervasive problem.” Because maybe then, we could start figuring out ways to end it.
140 Comments
I was teasing with that last one, its not the same, but chivalry did lead to instances of misandry that where seen as culturally acceptable.
To give you an example: the white feathers given by women to men who didn’t want to fight in WWI.
Troll alert. Do not feed.
Umm… also want to thank the rest of y’all… SarahMC, Lily, Vwom, Rebekah and so on… you know who you are…
I’m kind of disgusted by some of the stuff written on here, so here’s to y’all having the stomach to respond and respond well!
Of the inevitable “experts” trotted out post-tragedy to proffer facile analysis, J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and clinical professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego, made a remark which, in its radical naivete – or, if one prefers, willful ignorance – perfectly attests to this phenomenon:
“The concept here is really, really hard for most people to grasp, and that is the sense of entitlement, that ‘I have a right to murder all of these women because of my personal frustration,’ ” Meloy said. “It’s absolutely astonishing that a person can come to that mind-set.”
Yes, I can see how “absolutely astonishing” it is. After all, it’s not as though we live in a world in which, alongside occasional conscious directives about women and their civil rights, everyone receives, from birth on, a _non-stop_ stream of tens of millions of images and intersubjective cues which baldly contradict the former and reify that masculinity is x and femininity is y, and that masculinity is based on ____, and entitles men to ___, ___, ___, etc.
Cassy Fiano and co. are exemplars of what I refer to as the culture of disavowal:
http://jouis-sens.livejournal.com/27852.html
When you have people insisting that “There is no ‘culture of misogyny’ at all” you are no longer in the realm of mere “backlash”; we’ve graduated to the arena of ethicopolitical emergency – no different from that of the emergence and spread of holocaust denial, and in no less urgent need of sustained, highly visible, widespread countering (including from those in authority – are you listening, Mr. President?).
You haven’t riled up the site. But the fact that you ask that question when I didn’t even mention it suggests what your agenda is.
And whoever you are behind that mask, stop fucking focusing on Afghanistan! What is your hard-on about Afghanistan? It’s coming off as incredibly racist. Like you’re saying, “Those OTHER PEOPLE, those MIDDLE EASTERNERS, they’re teh worst misogynists evah!!!”
You’re right, that was kind of trollish.
Here is my opinion on the article: if MRA’s can be accused of denying misogyny in our society like this, feminism can be accused of doing exactly the same with instances of misandry.
Hint: We would stop fearing men if men would stop raping, abusing, and shooting us.
Exactly. I work in the downtown area of a city, and when walking around by myself I’m pretty aware of my surroundings, particularly of other people. I’ve mentioned to friends that I am generally wary of all men I see, but of very few women (and they’d have to exhibit pretty odd behavior for me to feel wary). Further, all I’d fear from a woman would be them doing something like stealing my purse. With dudes, I worry about things like sexual assault as well as robbery. Yet when I say this to a dude, am I complimented for my vigilance and non-naivete and awareness and all those things misogynists will often accuse rape victims of not having enough of after they are raped? No, of course not, I’m a crazy man-hating feminist due to my wariness of strange men who I have absolutely no reason to trust.
If I didn’t read about murder/rape/kidnappings perpetrated by men against women so often (and if they didn’t happen so often), maybe I wouldn’t be so wary.
Maybe you should be afraid of men too.
Fair enough, although I wouldn’t argue that those are parallel processes at all.
In my statement, I have not made ANY assumptions about Christians (women AND men). Based on my OWN experience in the church, I am certain that people who seem perfectly nice would have some fucked up views about women’s equality, views which are, most certainly, influenced by their religion. My point, though, was that if a Christian woman considers herself a feminist, she my gravitate more toward people who are like minded and never actually get a balanced view of what all Christians think about equality. Thus, a poll or study would be the best objective way to back up ones assertions rather than personal experience.
I don’t really know why I’m replying to you. It seems completely useless, as you have shown your entire lack of understanding on how social conditioning works. BUT, I’ll have a go anyway.
First, I agree with everything Kurumi & Cheese said.
Second, from a young age, girls are taught that they may not be good at math, but if they aren’t, its ok, because it is a boy’s subject anyway. So if a girl performs poorly its not because she hasn’t tried hard enough, it is because of her silly girl brain.
Third, girls are socialized to believe that they will never get boyfriends if they are smarter than boys. The girl nerd never gets the boy, its always the pretty but stupid girl that gets attention.
Fourth, there are very few visible female role models in those fields. Trail-blazing is hard, and the feeling that one must do it is daunting, especially when one begins to consider the sexism and possible harassment one may face for being in the minority.
The point is, there are still remnants of sexism that hinder women in certain fields, such as engineering, physics and computer science. The sexism starts so early, that by the time a female has to choose a career, she has long since given up on math and has already started grooming herself toward another field.
I hate to put it this way, but you’re a freaking moron. Somebody had to say it.
“I really question that there is a culture of misogynie in America that leads to deadly violence against women, when there have been only very few isolated incidents so far which do not even dent the statistics.”
http://www.now.org/issues/violence/stats.html
“Very few isolated incicents”? Yeah fucking right. Mass shootings are isolated incidents, but rape, domestic violence, and MURDER perpetrated against women by men happen EVERY FUCKING DAY.
Same. As a Jew, I get VERY upset when people act as though Jewish people have overcome all obstacles in the world. Sure, we’ve made progress, but, as my father says, if you scratch a bigot deep enough, you’ll find an anti-Semite.
Actually, I read a lot of the opposite, and the working theory on a lot of blogs at the time it happened was that his status as a white male was what prevented him from being viewed as part of an anti-semetic culture.
I think that when someone has privilege, their actions against a minority are often viewed as single, isolated incidents. Whereas, part of the disadvantage of being in the unprivileged group is that one person acting out is almost always viewed as a stand-in for the entire group – sort of an ‘othering’ technique. The result of those two facts is a strange mix of compartmentalization and generalization that doesn’t provide very useful analysis of what’s really going on.
Nice try, but I’m not the one claiming that the whole of society is misandric and out to kill my gender. Its the writer Jessica and the feminists here who infer that society is misogynistic because some nut targeted women.
My response to this is that, if we take the murder of members of a gender as a sign that society hates that gender, then society is far more misandric than it is misogynistic. Because far more men get murdered than women. And my point is that is it ridiculous to claim that a “culture of misogyny” is terrorizing women all over western society.
As for being afraid, sure, I know I should be afraid of SOME men, just like I should be afraid of SOME women.
From my own life, I’ve been the target of men’s violence multiple times, enough that it needs to be counted on at least two hands. I don’t think that my own experience is at all exceptional among women.
I hope you didn’t mean to imply that women feeling threatened or targeted by violence from men is irrational — because in a lot of cases, that feeling is formed from the evidence of our lives and the lives of those around us.
It may be statistically more likely for a man to be “gunned down” than it is for a woman to be the victim of the same crime. However, I think it’s not at all unlikely for some women to see this same misogyny as manifesting in assaults, abusive relationships, workplace and street harassment/assault, etc., or to see many facets of society as more or less accepting those crimes as the norm.
No, I did not mean it is irrational of women to feel threatened in certain situations. But it would be if your mind jumps to ‘rape, murder, HELP’ at the first sign of any man.
I’m only saying that women do not have a monopoly on being the victims of crimes, assaults and murders, and that with regards to violent murder its actually men who make up the vast majority of victims. So it strikes me as rather silly to infer from a violent murder of 8 women that society has a “culture of misogyny”
And please dont take this as a sign that I accept these murders as OK, or the norm. I’m as disgusted about this as everyone else. But I do not accept that this crime is evidence of wide spread hatred towards women. Nor is critisism of feminists who do make that claim.
Hey rebekah, I do realize there are Christians as well as adherents of other patriarchal religions amongst the feministing readership.
I would *hope,* however, that such feminists know I mean nothing personal when I express my views about patriarchal religion and misogyny. It’s just my opinion, which I am free to express.
Please do not attempt to silence me because you disagree. If I have been offensive to you personally, please state how so.
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and for my part I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.”
-Thomas Paine.
Your patience and restrain are amazing. There are some words I’d say to this… person but I don’t trust myself not to say something nasty.
I find it really interesting that you consider the white feathers an instance of misandry, but you don’t seem to understand the subtleties of misogyny. In both cases, freedom of choice and agency is being taken away from the other either by shame, force, or institutionalized sexism.
92% of people who commit murder by shooting someone are men, while only 83% who are murdered by shooting are men. Overall, men commit about 90% of murders, and are about 80% of murder victims, so shooting/being shot isn’t any more gendered than murder as a whole. But yeah, murdering and being murdered are essentially male activities.
Link
The sentencing disparity exists across all crimes, however, and a lot of it does come from the expectation that women can’t really do anything bad, which is problematically infantalising.
There’s a good study here: for instance, that also looks at income, educational and racial sentencing disparities. To gauge the magnitude, the difference between the typical sentence you get if you’re black vs if you’re white is comparable to the difference between being a man and being a woman.
That’s fascinating, thanks for sharing. Definitely looks like the courts go easier on women across the board.
I stand by my guess that part of the disparity in spouse murder cases is related to domestic violence, but that certainly doesn’t explain the broader difference in sentencing.
Is there any feminist scholarship or blog posts or other writings about this disparity in sentencing? I’m really curious if other folks have thought about this issue.
right, and how do the acts of one psycho crazy guy, denounced by everyone in society no matter what creed, color or gender, amount to evidence of “a culture of misogyny” ?
I do admit that it was an instance of misogyny, perpetrated by that one guy. But it is NOT seen as acceptable or encouraged by our culture. The white feather instance, on the other hand, was very much culturally driven.
Nobody is saying that the society is misogynistic just because one guy targeted a bunch of women. Please read what people are actually saying.
The claim is that he killed a bunch of women for reasons that reflect the misogyny present in society, as demonstrated by his blog where he expressed the opinion that he hated women, felt entitled to sex, and saw women as objects.
And yes, the fact that men make up the vast majority of both the murderers and murder victims does say that there’s something wrong with society. It’s not misandry, the “hatred of men” — if men are mostly killing each other, how could it be misandry? — but rather a culture that values violence as a legitimate form of masculinity. That is dangerous for both men and women!
Sorry, I’m not aware of anything detailing this from a feminist perspective, nor have I been able to find anything of interest. You might try gathering a few resources and posting something to the community area if you’re particularly interested.
And I very much dissagree with that claim. This guy does NOT represent anything that is seen as acceptable by our culture. Neither the entitlement of owning someone of the opposite sex, nor hatred towards the other gender.
The media where the first to hype this up into some sort of hate-crime against all women, and the feminists couldn’t wait to jump on that bandwagon.
This guy was crazy, an individual who could not operate within the boundries of society. He doesn’t represent it just because he had a freakin blog.
Well, men and women are both far more likely to murder men than women (Men make up three quarters of victims of male murders, and fourth-fifths of the victims of female murders.) For whatever reason, both men and women choose to murder men more often than women. It’s more complicated than just “masculinity is violent”.
Well, it can be misandry the same way that those few percentage points of women who are murdered represent misogyny.
Clearly society isn’t doing enough to save all these men, so its a clear sign that men are hated…
is the sarcasm and the irony getting through yet ?
Contrary to how feminist portray it, our culture considers the victimization of women far more important than any other group.
Nah. We give first priority to those men who have died honorably in defense of this great nation, right? Let’s see, we have 2 holidays and countless monuments and ceremonies, right?
It goes like this:
#1 warrior male deaths
#2 aborted fetuses
#3 attractive child-bearing aged women deaths
#4 cute kids (who will either grow up to be attractive child-bearing women or warrior males)
#5 everybody else
The bulk of the innocent victims on TV police dramas are female.
I consider Law&Order, et. al, a drop in the bucket compared to the popularity of violent adult content, don’t you? At least Law&Order pretends to be balanced, by addressing moral questions and showing that actions have consequences—in essence you rape someone, you go to jail
vs
you gang rape someone and the stupid bitch enjoys it = harmless good-natured fantasy fun for all.
Understanding the potential ways that can effect someone is the best way to prevent other Sodini’s from acting on their anger.
I’m pretty sure that you don’t prevent irrational crimes this way.
Comparing this to anti-Semitism is both egregious and woefully misguided as history shows that the few people like Sodini who specifically targeted women usually had very horrible, abusive experiences with women.
By people, I assume you meant, straight men?
Cause, according to your logic, we should be having about 1 nightclub shooting per week by angry gay folks. Trans folk should be rampaging. Certain clergy members should need police protection… But nope. None of this has come to fruition. Why?
So it strikes me as rather silly to infer from a violent murder of 8 women that society has a “culture of misogyny”…
I agree this would be true if this single incident were the sole event informing this inference. Unfortunately, for a lot of us, while it is an extreme example, it’s far from the only — or the closest-hitting — example.
It goes like this:
#1 warrior male deaths
#2 aborted fetuses
#3 attractive child-bearing aged women deaths
#4 cute kids (who will either grow up to be attractive child-bearing women or warrior males)
#5 everybody else
I love you for this.
(And the rest of your comment, too.)
That a portion of women are killed by their partners does not alter the fact that the majority of people killed, either by strangers or people whom they know, are male. Likewise, there is no statistical evidence or research supporting the claim that women who abuse or kill their intimate partners are often acting in self-defense. That said, Sodini did not kill an intimate partner. He killed random women in a gym, so the use of intimate partner violence is not applicable.
What Sodini thought as an individual does not represent the opinions of all men. More so, violence in and of itself stems from the position that one is owed something by others, so your own argument can be reversed and applied in this fashion: until women as a collective group can understand that boys and men owe them nothing, physical and sexual violence against boys and men will continue to be a problem. The point is that both genders commit acts of violence, but even in those instances the people who commit such acts represent a small portion of the total population. It is therefore unfair to hold men collectively responsible for one man’s random actions just as it is unfair to hold women and feminists collectively responsible for the women who rape and abuse children.
Misandry has always existed in some form or another. The extent to which it became socially acceptable as it is now is a direct result of feminist rhetoric and actions. That one misperceives genuine concern about views that push and perpetuate the hatred and irrational fear of men lies primarily in one’s own political views, not in the views of others.
As for feminists not committing acts of violence, as you noted one does not have to kill a lot of random boys and men to hate them.
In the grand scheme of things, I think monuments to the men who gave their lives, particularly those dedicated to the men and boys who were drafted and forced to fight in a war they had no desire to participate in, are fine. Those men died to protect your right to seemingly trash their sacrifices has wholly unimportant. They deserve the recognition, particularly since they were willing to do what most people, including feminists, would not: die for someone else’s sake.
As for Law and Order, while it may be a drop in the bucket, it is a fair representation of how our society views victims. Police dramas overwhelming use female victims because no one would care if a man or boy was killed, assaulted or rape (the latter would most likely prompt laughs).
In regards to addressing crimes, the way one addresses them is by prevention. Simply waiting until something happens does nothing, and neither does treating a person after he or she has committed an act. Pretending to know the reason something happens without ever speaking to those who commit the acts is no different than treating a seizure with an exorcism. While one may believe the person is inhabited by a demon (as ludicrous as that is), the best way to address the problem is by noticing what may prompt the seizures and what symptoms occur before a seizure happens.
Statistically speaking, males experience the same proportional rate of emotional, physical and sexual violence as females. The overwhelming majority of them never assault anyone. Only a handful of women and men who were abused go on to abuse others. However, it would be misguided to simply ignore those people’s history of abuse, particularly if they victimize people who remind them of their abusers. Coincidentally, the majority of male victims of child abuse and sexual abuse are not gay or trans, so your implication that heterosexual boys and men are never abused is insulting and inaccurate.
Until you can say that you fear going out at night, until you fear going to a bar because you feel like someone is going to slip something into your drink, until you can’t listen to a certain song because it triggers memories of your sexual assault, until you fear walking a block down the street even in a nice area, until you get your ass grabbed by a stranger at a concert for no reason than you are a piece of ass to a man, until you get called a skank or a slut because you have sex, until you get called a skank or a slut for your clothing, until you get cat called for no reason other than walking down the street, you have no idea what we are going through. I am not making light of male assault victims, I know several, including one perpetrated by a woman, but you have no idea the hatred this culture has for women. Songs written about killing and raping women like it’s no big deal, women who are told they deserved to be raped because of x, y, and z. Anti-choice advocates who embrace gender stereotypes. Need I go on?
Sorry if this is poorly written. It’s almost 6 and I can’t sleep so the tired is getting to me
Thanks for this. Great post.
I feel like there has to be more reasoning behind the deniers than “If I can distance myself from it, it won’t happen to me.” Because I get this same type of refusal to connect one’s experiences up with the social theory/patterns from, say, my father. He works for the state; taxes pay his salary. He’s been in the state union (AFSCME, probably the most-hated union in this country) since he started the job and is a strong supporter and acknowledges that the union has done much to help him and his colleagues get the pay and benefits they deserve for their hard work. In spite of all this, he regularly votes Republican for the absurd ideological reason that “government screws up everything it gets involved in” and “big government is terrible.” It leaves me baffled that he doesn’t realize the same politicians he votes for wouldn’t bat an eye at eliminating his job and putting the work up for bid by private contractors, or cutting his pay in half. In fact, they’d like it. He pays no attention to the party’s platform and history of and RELISH for union-busting. He KNOWS “it could happen to him” because the state’s already attempted to slip in laws allowing some of his department functions to be put up for private bid, and he had to go out of his way to speak out against them.
On another note, I sense the “Jeez, I just want some no-strings sex, what’s the big deal” vibe from men ALL THE FLOCKING TIME, like women are supposed to put out because it’s “not serious, no big deal, it’ll just take a second for you to do this big favor for me.” If only men would follow this logic when you asked them to do something around the house: “Jeez, I just want you to vacuum and pick up after yourself and feed the dogs, what’s the big deal? It’ll just take you a second to do this big favor for me.” I don’t even know how this “please just do me a big favor and let me fuck you” logic has come about. I’m sorry, people’s ownership over their own bodies and their own time IS a “big deal.”
So I think most of this – Sodini, the deniers – comes down to a male sense of entitlement to women’s bodies more than anything (e.g., Erin Andrews), and I don’t doubt at the spectacles of porn and sexualized advertising/media contribute to it. People who had full respect for others would not even CONCEIVE of this shit. They wouldn’t need to annoyingly beg and bribe women for sex, they wouldn’t need to rape, they wouldn’t feel entited to take women’s lives.
There’s really a strong, almost fundamental desire in America to believe that life is basically fair and that individual effort and willpower can trump social patterns/adversities.
e.g., in the book _Why Americans Hate Welfare_, Martin Gilens quotes some interesting studies where study participants were presented with pairs of people involved in social interactions – I think like problem-solving or job-interview-type interactions – or perhaps with stories about people (I can’t quite remember) and informed that one of the pair would be randomly chosen to “win” some money (or to get the job), and the other would not. The pairs performing the interactions both did things about the same, said qualitatively similar things, and came up with equally average or equally good/bad ideas.
After watching this, the participants were aked who they thought “did better” and why, and people consistently thought that the person randomly rewarded the money did better, and actually came up with “reasons” why the person indeed “deserved” to win the randomly awarded money.
So I guess my point is, Americans still strongly want to believe that bad things don’t happen to good people. When bad things happen to you, it’s because you’re a bad person. When good things happen to you, it’s because you’re a good person. It’s a logic that actively denies the influence of larger abstract entities like “culture.” A lot of victim-blaming results from this sort of mindset, especially when speaking about the poor.
Feminine/female power is not tolerated!
I like to tell the invariably male Mormons who accost me on the street occasionally that, I’m sorry, but I believe God is a woman. You should hear them stutter and see their eyes bug.