The Misogyny Bubble

[seabeyond]

One way in which things are much, much worse for women these days than 20 years ago is the sheer amount of virulent misogyny that is openly expressed, and tolerated, in our society. It feels to me that, in many ways, our culture is much more openly sexist now that it was then. Rush Limbaugh’s comments about Sandra Fluke are only the most recent and notorious example of this new misogyny. You see it online; women bloggers, for example, report they are frequently the target of vicious verbal abuse, up to and including rape threats and death threats. Female political leaders of both parties are held to a double standard and subjected to much humiliatingly sexist treatment. Many movies and TV shows, and reality shows especially, traffic in extremely sexist stereotypes; TV commercials sometimes seem to go out their way to be offensive to women. Tabloids obsessively police the bodies of female celebrities and cruelly ridicule any famous woman who dares to go out in public looking less than perfect.

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The internet allows many people to be extremely nasty anonymously, with impunity — that’s certainly part of it. Pop culture has become more vulgar, and porn has become more widely available, and thus more influential, I think. The proliferation of everything from home video to cell phone cameras to the internet has caused us to become a more visual culture, which partly explains why women today are judged much more harshly on the basis of their looks. We’ve become a much more conservative country, politically, and the Christian right, which is explicitly anti-feminist, has become more powerful. But that can’t be the whole thing.

At a guess, another part of the reason is that a lot of misogyny that was more-or-less private a couple of decades ago is now more-or-less public. We might not be more misogynistic than we used to be, but our misogyny is a whole lot more public than it used to be. That makes it seem like there's more of it. In reality, we're just being forced to confront the fact that there's always been, and still is, a helluva strong misogynistic streak in American culture.

But it's disgusting regardless of whether there's a real upswing or simply more media channels to make it public. I do think there's some occasional carelessness here, where mere nastiness toward a female target is mistaken for real misogyny, but that's a minor thing. There's too much of it, and if lefties won't call it out when they see it, who will? Examples in comments, please.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/03/misogyny-bubble


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The New Misogyny


Well-known men have publicly referred to women using terms that they never would have thrown around openly, say, 25 years ago. Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank calls Hillary Clinton a “mad bitch”; Bill Maher calls Sarah Palin a “c—-“; Ed Schultz calls Laura Ingraham a “slut.” This kind of viciously sexist insult is thrown around casually by many men in public life, who almost never suffer negative career consequences for it. (That Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers are deserting him en masse for his comments about Sandra Fluke is a striking anomaly).

— Lest you think it’s just a bunch of cranky old men like Limbaugh spewing this kind of misogynist bile, I would like to direct your attention to a current controversy that’s raging over at Columbia University. Male Columbia students, jealous that Barack Obama has chosen to speak at the graduation at Barnard College, the women’s college that is affiliated with Columbia, have taken to the internets, denouncing Barnard Women in comments on Columbia’s student-run blog. Some sample comments: “Moral of the story is that ugly, feeble Barnard women need to shut their jizz holes and just be happy that Columbia let Barnyard pretend it was affiliated for this long,” “this is why we hate you cum dumpsters,” etc. And there’s more along those lines — much, much more. Read the entire post, if you can stomach it.

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I really don’t have any idea why there appears to be so much more openly sexist behavior now than there was 20 or 30 years ago. The internet allows many people to be extremely nasty anonymously, with impunity — that’s certainly part of it. Pop culture has become more vulgar, and porn has become more widely available, and thus more influential, I think. The proliferation of everything from home video to cell phone cameras to the internet has caused us to become a more visual culture, which partly explains why women today are judged much more harshly on the basis of their looks. We’ve become a much more conservative country, politically, and the Christian right, which is explicitly anti-feminist, has become more powerful. But that can’t be the whole thing.

Sometimes I think the new misogyny is actually a sign of feminism’s success, and that most of the sexism is perpetrated by old white guys bitter about using the patriarchal power they once had, yet refuse to go gentle into that good night. But plenty of young men engage in this kind of behavior as well — witness the ugly behavior of those male students at Columbia University. Perhaps the horrible economy and the increasingly stressful lives and economic insecurity of the 99% have made people in general a lot meaner, and specifically made men more likely to scapegoat women for the problems in their lives, financial and otherwise. Who knows.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_03/the_new_misogyny035990.php

[geardaddy]

1. The comic really nails it. n/t

[redqueen]

2. Nothing better than seeing men tell us which slurs we're allowed to be offended by.

Or even better, telling us that anti-woman slurs aren't anti woman anymore! They're just harmless words, so shut up!

Ain't THAT convenient!

[seabeyond]

3. ya. cause see, we say guys when we are talking to a group of people. lets ignore how often

those unoffensive sexist slurs are used specifically to degrade, demean, humiliate and hurt.

wtf...

good thing we have those men to think for us.

[redqueen]

4. Oops! When I clicked this thread before the comic was gone, I thought you took it out...

so I reposted it in a new OP.

And yeah, lol, the astronomical logic fail in those comments... just

[seabeyond]

5. one of my misups. i added katherines piece that went with article initially.

then gear said he liked comic. so then i added it again... lol

ah well.

not a deal

[ismnotwasm]

6. 'No homo'

Yet another way sexism and heterosexism are entwined. Can't have hetero male solidarity without making sure its not 'homo' ala Bill and Teds excellent adventure