***The New Misogyny

[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. There’s an extremely nasty edge to much of this running media commentary about women. It’s not just garden variety sexism, because it’s very conscious of itself and a lot of it is clearly driven by pure hatred. Here are some examples of what I mean:

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About two years ago, my parents took my two 12-year old nieces, their granddaughters, to a football game at Giants Stadium. During the course of the game, drunken fans started chanting and demanding “Show us your t—-!” to two young women seated nearby. My parents were understandably outraged. I must say, by the time I was 12 I’d been to a few ball games and witnessed some obnoxious behavior by fans, but never anything that disgusting. What a horrible message for a young girl to receive about how women are valued in our society.

Just the other week, while riding the campus bus in the University of Chicago neighborhood where I live, I overheard a conversation between two young women. One of them said she’d attended a birthday over the weekend, where as special “surprise,” the boyfriend of the birthday girl had hired a stripper to perform! The woman telling the story indicated that she thought this was extremely gross, but didn’t want to leave early, for fear of offending her hosts. Listening to this depressing story, I wondered how in the world we could have gotten to the point where a person smart enough to get into a school like the University of Chicago could possibly assume that a (female) stripper was appropriate entertainment for a mixed gender party.

And if you’re a woman, you’ve definitely been in the same situation that young women was in. You hear or witness something that’s completely sexist and offensive, but you just sit there with a pasted on smile on your face and don’t object. Because God forbid anyone think you were one of those annoying, trouble-making feminists, taking offense at every little thing. Many women have found it’s far easier on their social and professional lives if they just keep the peace and make it a practice to ignore these kinds of insults. 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.

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

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this whole article is well written, asking the same questions i have.

[sufrommich]

1. Excellent article,Sea.

The rise of misogyny is hard to deny. As usual,we take one step forward,two steps back.

[Ikonoklast]

2. This just one more example of the overall coarseness of what is now publicly acceptable behavior.

I don't see this as anything 'new' as such, it is just now out in the open and in your face.

It has always been there, but polite people would refrain from putting their prejudices out there for the entire world to see.

What was once said only in private among one's social group is now publicly proclaimed.

[seabeyond]

3. i agree with the "coarseness" or raunch of our culture, but

i do not agree it was always there. i do believe it feeds off itself, teaching, and making acceptable. becoming a norm, that would otherwise not be there. i think a lot of it is to be cool to peers. i also think it is a backlash from a society where women have come too much in their own. that threat was not there in the past. it is now.

[Ikonoklast]

4. Possibly, some of it is due to women wanting a greater say in how things are run in our society

I still say it has always been there.

Like racism, as long as everyone kept their place, not much of a problem, but it was always there in the background, simmering.

When people start asking for their just due and civil rights, some of those that hold power are frightened by that and react with anger.

Women are just the latest target, especially in the political arena.

I suppose it can be said about almost any group seeking their place at the table.

I see the downward turn taken by the Republican Party in regards to demonizing the opposition, Limbaugh, et. al., is reflected openly by our society as a whole.

The problem isn't that it happened, the problem is so many find it acceptable.

[sufrommich]

5. Excellent post. nt

[seabeyond]

6. ha... i love your posts. why?

cause i am agreeing and disagreeing all over the place. lol. that is fun, i brain think.

i get what you are saying and a lot of people think that way. i use to. but now, what i think i am seeing is people are learning to be racist and sexist and homophobic with the "acceptable" that you reference. i agree the worse is the acceptance and the need for people to speak out.

but, i do not think these 'isms are innate. i do believe they are learned. and i do believe we are teaching and it is feeding off each other and growing. i think the net and the excessiveness of the misogyny on the net is escalating this behavior.

all the rest of your post, ..... agreed.

[Ikonoklast]

8. I will say that this 'new norm' is what some younger people see as acceptable behavior.

They are the same ones taught by their parents to believe these things first, though.

Those older folks are the ones who always felt this way, but for the most part (at least in public) kept their urge to rant about those they hated in check.

Anonymity on the Internet is the perfect place where one can hide behind a persona in order to broadcast their prejudices in public, without fear of privately being held accountable...and we are seeing the results of that.

People being shits because there are no repercussions.

Like calling a woman a b**** on the Internet when IRL he wouldn't have the brass to do so.

[seabeyond]

9. exactly right on.... nt

[Ikonoklast]

10. I see this also as one reason the Republicans have been successful in attacking women through proxies

Women that don't conform to their standards get mercilessly attcked, defamed, insulted, etc., by anonymous posters.

The women co-opted by their ideology are off-limits to criticism from any corner, however, no matter how civil or factual the criticism.

I would present the example of those that dared to criticize Palin's various political as well as personal foibles who were immediately branded as 'anti-woman' by the Right, even though the facts in evidence were never in dispute.

[seabeyond]

11. true that and good point. and a couple others extending from this.

on the one hand knowing palin is using sexuality to get a vote (and the wrong in that) and some of us having to defend that bullshit cause we on the left endorse/excuse using the c word on her (sexism) and other sexist frames.

that is a real oddity of a position to be in to call out her using sexuality for a vote and quit calling her a c.

the other is, i think that all of this as a whole, the total break down of respect for women, (and language matters) in all this has allowed the rw the ability to attack women.

plus add on what you are saying.

kinda like a perfect storm. that i am hearing more and more women recognize and are dam fed up with.

[redqueen]

12. It doesn't seem like an odd position to me.

No matter if the target is a criminal who's done horrible things, there's simply no excuse, ever, for using bigoted slurs against anyone.

It's sad that instead of seeing these anti-woman slurs as bigoted, they're rationalized and excused.

[Ikonoklast]

16. It's the use of language as the controlling mechanism.

One uses their own terms to define the 'other' in order to diismiss the legitimate concerns of the members of that group.

[seabeyond]

17. i couldnt agree with you more, red. nt

[Ikonoklast]

13. The same knuckle-draggers who hooted and cheered for Palin when she did her little hip wiggle

and wink while saying, "Drill, Baby, Drill!" were the ones that called a serious person like Sandra Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute", yet see absolutely *zero* hypocrisy in their thinking.

As for Palin, she was just doing what brought her success all these years, she relies on her physical appearance...which is easily seen through by anyone who can think.

[seabeyond]

14. yep yep yep . nt

[redqueen]

15. Yet the same liberals who took such offense to Rush calling Fluke a slut,

defended and rationalized Maher calling a woman a c**t, and Moore calling a woman a bitch.

And they, like their counterparts on the right, see absolutely no hypocrisy in their actions.

[Ikonoklast]

18. And that is the reason I cannot stand Maher.

"Oh, that's all part of his act, it's his schtick, lighten up!" they say.

Uh, sorry, no.

He presents his true self when he speaks these things.

[seabeyond]

19. this article was interesting on maher. New Rule for Maher

Mockery is certainly fair media commentary on politicians of either gender, but jokes become sexist when the punchline hinges on something that can only be said about women. To steal a concept from another comic, if your joke about women reinforces sexist troupes, you just might be a misogynist.

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Maher has often cast himself as a free speech advocate, as if any attempts to call out sexism in media, using whatever culturally appropriate tools women have, was in any way an attack on his free speech. We’re still wondering when the right not to be jailed for what you say turned into the right to be paid millions of dollars to have a TV show/radio program and remain criticism-free for anything you could say. To Bill Maher his right to “free speech” means others have to pipe down.

But if I offended women, I'm sorry. I have no problem saying I'm sorry. I don't know why women would want to align themselves with Sarah Palin. I don't know why an insult to her is an insult to all women, but if it is, I'm sorry.

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Bill Maher, you say you believe that women should not be marginalized and should have a voice for their choices on birth control. Try this: practice what you preach. When you use the c-word on Sarah Palin, or call Governor Jan Brewer a "delusional cat lady," you become a part of the reason why women have been marginalized. You ask us in your Times op-ed to consider this "crazy" idea: "from now on if you see or hear something you don't like in the media" just "turn the page or flip the dial or pick up your roll of quarters and leave the booth.” Except that it’s not like women can walk away unaffected by sexism. Yet when we speak up against it—when we name what you are doing wrong and let everyone know—then we have power too.

http://www.nameitchangeit.org/blog/entry/new-rules-for-bill-maher

[Ikonoklast]

20. Maher's take on almost everything is that of a Libertarian who never progressed past age 15.

Which is typical of Libertarians.

Uses Free Speech as both weapon and shield, never realizing that his right to offend people will get a response from those offended and is continuously baffled by it when it happens.

[seabeyond]

21. again, we agree

i can separate his sexist and the rest of who he is. he has never been dem. i dont know why we own him. he is not one of us. though, some things he says works with our agenda and ideas. i can listen to him. but i can recognize his sexism and hypocrisy.

[cwydro]

7. good article

and I always wonder how the western world boycotted South Africa with their apartheid policies, but nothing but a blind eye to the way women are treated in the Middle East. Makes me sick.

A friend of mine visited Iran and had to pretend to be married to stay in the hotel. I would not go to these countries.