Misogyny and Gender Inequality

23 February 2018

本周我们来讨论厌女症和性别不平等。在世界各地,男性享有相对于女性的权力和特权。一直都是这样,可能以后也会是这样。

但人们也可以有更多的希望,因为在一些国家,女性已经取得了很大的进步。一百年前,美国女性没有投票权。现在你会发现女性占据着社会等级的最顶端。有女性ceo,女性科学家,女性律师,女性参议员。

Then again, one might also think the #MeToo movement shows how far we still have to go. Women are still disproportionately the victims of sexual violence. They still earn less than men. They still do the lion’s share of work in the household. There's no doubt those things are bad for women. But the gender hierarchy is bad for men too.

This is no brief for the oppressed male. Masculinity can be toxic, not just for women, but also for men, who are more likely to die at war, more likely to end up in prison, get beat up—they die earlier. And they miss out on their children’s lives. Women are also better educated. They even tend to have more friends.

None of this is to deny that women are oppressed or that men are their oppressors. It's not hard understand the ways that women are treated as second class citizens. But in our gendered world, men are losers too.

当然,无论男性面临什么不利条件,与受压迫的女性相比都是苍白无力的。即使主人的房子是空的(有点孤独),他仍然拥有房子。即使是没有房子的男性仍然主导着拥有更少房子的女性。这是因为性别化的文化将他们置于一条将男子气概等同于压迫女性的道路上。

But what about free will? After all, men aren’t just victims of this system, they're agents in this system too. But that view may overestimate the amount of agency that individual men have in the patriarchy. Norms and social structure dictate so much of the gender injustice.

Take the norm that women do most of the child-rearing. That feeds into the fact that women earn less than men at work, which makes it more economical for them to do the child-rearing. It’s a vicious and self-reinforcing cycle.

So how do we break the cycle? Helpful social policies like early and affordable childcare and flexible work times are a start. But perhaps that's too optimistic, since one could think that putting more women in the workplace might result in more sexual assault, more harassment—more men hating women who encroach on their “territory.”

但如果厌女症与仇恨无关,而是与权力有关呢?如果世界上的哈维·温斯坦(Harvey weinstein)真的爱女人,但只是靠自己的权力获得快感呢?有了这样的爱,谁还需要恨呢?这些男人把女人当作物品来爱,而不是作为完整的人类主体——这不就是一回事吗?

Comments(6)


Gerald Fnord's picture

Gerald Fnord

Sunday, February 25, 2018 -- 11:22 AM

I see misogyny as stemming

I see misogyny as stemming from residual resentment against the power exercised by the mother, by resentment against women seen as potential sex-partners unwilling to be so, and simple and explicitly misogynist and masculinist ideologies. They play well together; in particular, simple bigotry makes it easy to see sexual unavailability as being motivated by malice or artifice, an avenue pre-widened by the desire not to see oneself as undesirable, itself bolstered by a strongly-held equation of desirability with personal worth. Similarly, simple bigotry makes a mother's rule over her son seem, as he ages, illegitimate, and more worthy of resentment than his father's. (An analogy: in the Jim Crow South, a three-year-old white boy was supposed to heed his black nurse-maid, but order her about at the age of ten or so, race by then trumping age as a determiner of legitimate authority.)

Misandry当然存在于类似或镜像相反的原因,但女性往往不太经常处于明确的优越地位,并往往被教育成这样一种信念,即女性的权力是为了好的理由而使用的……然而,对于许多人来说,没有什么是“男性化”的,以及权力的行使,(正如奥威尔和其他人注意到的)权力最容易表现为武断和自私的使用。

…and we need not have resort to conspiracy theory to see how this, like all unfair and arbitrary division, assists those with greater power in society. Many a man has salved the wounds of being under a boss' thumb by being a domestic tyrant, or a Proud White Man who at least has the n-gg-rs beneathhim; every moment James Damore spent considering and complaining about supposèd unfairly favourable treatment of women at Google was a moment not spent considering how men and women both at Google might be better-off with a union backing them….

Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Sunday, February 25, 2018 -- 11:49 AM

Fnord seems to have covered

Fnord seems to have covered the bases. Maybe more than was needed...but, I'm not criticizing. If anyone is interested, I made some remarks on the other recent PT post on misogyny, so there is no sense in repeating them here---even though the context is slightly different.

Friendly Heretic's picture

Friendly Heretic

Tuesday, February 27, 2018 -- 1:30 PM

If women are more oppressed

If women are more oppressed than men in "developed" countries like the United States, wouldn't we expect there to be more misandry than misogyny, based on the oppressed naturally feeling more anger?

If women are more oppressed than men in "developed" countries like the United States, wouldn't we expect more women than men to be undergoing sex change operations, in order to join the group perceived as being more advantaged?

If women are more oppressed than men in "developed" countries like the United States, wouldn't we expect statistics in things such as life expectancy, education levels, incarceration rates, household assets, consumer purchasing power, etc., to reflect this?

Is it possible that we're paying too much attention to the power wielded by a relatively small number of men in high-profile positions in countries like the U.S., and not enough attention to less visible ways in which the average woman in such societies has more power and advantages than the average man?

Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Wednesday, February 28, 2018 -- 10:38 AM

Thoughtful assessment, FH.

Thoughtful assessment, FH. And probably more on point than many in the me-too camp might wish to admit. Women scorned are furious; women disrespected are livid; women who have been used by powerful men are ready to commit murder. Hoping not to sound too egg-headed, the history of power wielded by men is long and studded with pitfalls and pot holes (somewhat like my mid-west community, this time of year). Women are as mad as hell, and clearly, they are not going to take it anymore. This is a significant time, not only in these United States, but in the rest of the world. Having lived through several mini-epochs of social change and societal upheaval, I am worried about the 'course of human events'. One thing is most amazing to me: the more social turmoil I witness, the more resistance to change there appears to be---even when change is (or ought to be) viewed in a constructive way: the more there is push-back against egregious treatment and behaviors; the more those tend to push back against the threat of their elimination. We seem determined to maintain a 'state-of-quo', tied to traditional conservatism-if there is such a thing. Someone's grass is always greener. Out feet should be screaming in pain from all the times we have shot holes in them. Maybe men are just too bone headed to get it. I do not know...

Some of us would like to think we are rational, caring and sensible. That is difficult to sustain when so many others don't give a flip.At least we still have metaphor.

JNavas's picture

JNavas

Sunday, August 16, 2020 -- 12:01 PM

My take is that misogyny like

My take is that like racism, misogyny is a strategy to divide and subjugate (conquer), and that men suffer in their own way just as women suffer. This basic idea is illustrated well in the movie The Platform. When we fight for a bigger slice of the pie, we lose sight of the real problem. We're being pitted against one another instead of joining forces against the perpetrators.

The solution is simple. It's called quotas, and it's demonized by the privileged because it threatens their privilege. For example, requiring all corporate officers and boards of directors to be at least 40% women would go a long way toward gender equality in business.

Tim Smith's picture

Tim Smith

Saturday, March 27, 2021 -- 10:32 AM

精彩的电影……I wouldn't

精彩的电影……如果不是你在这里发表评论,我不会看到它。谢谢!

My take == Your take. Thanks for posting this.