After reading the post on how to "treat your husband," I'd like to know if any men here actually feel this way about women. Everyone jokes around about male/female relationships, but how many really think women are inferior? I know from some serious posts I've read here, that a few of the men must have really been hurt by someone. (No names...) I also feel that a few of the men here have something close to contempt for most women. (Yes, I know it goes both ways, but I'd like the men to respond first.)
Anyone here still believe as they did when they were witnesses? That the wife should be in subjection in all things? Be honest......
The Fear of Mom: The Twentieth Century
1) Women emasculate men when they consider themselves the equal of men.
2) H.L. Mencken, a confirmed misogynist, claims that:
- Men destroy themselves trying to satisfy the (financial) needs of women.
Mother-love is the essence of exaltations of the woman's ego. In other words, mother-love is a selfish love because women get a sense of accomplishment from raising a child
Marriage is slavery with man the slave.
4) Moss Hart claims that a woman experiences true womanhood when she rejects a career for a man..
5) Herbert Lobsenz writes about a man who, after being emasculated by career woman wife, is rejuvenated by a Spanish girl who confines herself to serving his wants.
6) George Jean Nathan contends that a man is always happiest with a woman who is deferentially his inferior.
7) Rogers debunks of the romantic illusions of women and the role of Sigmund Freud
8) Rogers analyzes misogyny in D. H. Lawrence (what an enormous task!). Lawrence is a throwback to the nineteenth century antisuffragist misogynist who believes that women naturally have power over men; men are happiest when they restrict their friendships to other men; if a woman asserts herself at all, she undermines a man's self-esteem and therefore his virility; and women should be subjected to men. Lawrence is hostile to the distinctively female function of motherhood (men should deny women the opportunity to become mothers) and definitely is afraid of the power of woman.
9) Ernest Hemingway, who preferred undemanding primitives over emancipated Anglo-Saxon women, claimed that women are not important to a genuinely virile man, and agreed with Lawerence that when woman is not kept in subjection, she is destructive.
10) Nathanael West saw woman as mindless, heartless, all-powerful but dangerous and found sexual involvement with her is irresistible. He encouraged a man to defend himself from a woman before she devours him, and believed that no matter what he does, she will survive because of her animal insensitivity and unawareness of morals.
11) William Faulkner envisioned women much like Nathaniel West but like Hemingway believed there are 2 types of women: masterful ladies and mindless female animals.
The Reason Why
1) "The fact that certain male writes have always found some female villain to hold up to ridicule, censure, or furious indignation indicates the perennial desire to express hostility against women. ... Since misogyny is generally recognized as an abnormal feeling, not to be expressed directly, it is apt to be disguised as criticism of an admittedly obnoxious type, or satire against women's failings, or statements of their mental and moral differences from men, or ostensibly harmless jokes about the married state. The disguise is given away by uncalled-for vehemence in the satiric attacks, the blurring of the distinction between censurable women and women in general, the revelation that women's differences from man invariably make her inferior, and the undercurrents of seriousness in the jokes.
The volume of misogyny which has poured forth in all periods must be interpreted in the light of several modifying factors. In the first place, the attacks on women were sometimes justified - not only because women have their faults like everybody else, but because social conditions often encouraged the development of obnoxious female types"
2) Reasons why men become misogynists
- a) Men experience sexual guilt. Here men blame the target of their passion for the passion itself: men as lovers resent being ensnared by women and controlled by them. For example, "Their [St. Jerome and Jonathan Swift] attitude seems to suggest the psychological conflict that Freud described as the split in male love life, which prevents a man from physically loving a woman he respects, although not from loving and admiring women he can desexualize. In men of strict morality the result is likely to be sexual repression with a consequent intense condemnation of woman as animal."
b) Domination by mother yields fear of dominance by any other female (Lawrence)
c) Men become embittered by a bad experience with a lover or wife (Milton)
d) A desire to tear down what has been raised unduly high results in misogyny as a result of the idealization of women as mistresses, wives, and mothers
e) Men project their emotions, attitudes, and actions (greed, fear, jealousy, lust, treachery, exploitation, etc.) onto women
f) Most important cause - the patriarchal feeling - the wish to keep women in subjection.
- The top dog wants to remain on the top.
Women who are freed from restrictions will become men's master. Men fear the power of women.
Men are selfish bastards who will use any technique to retain power, and conversely, to retain power they must keep women in subjection
- Use religion (the Bible and the Fall) to justify their attitudes (medieval, 16th- and 17th- century, modern) Use science or reason to justify their attitudes (Restoration, Victorian, modern) See women as helpmates, i.e., as someone to help a man accomplish his agenda, resent any independence in woman and project their feelings (greed, jealousy, unfaithfulness, anger) onto women. Show hostility to every attempt by woman to escape from their traditional limitations and condemn such behavior as a violation both of time-honored traditions and of woman's basic nature. See woman as basically insubordinate, greedy, grasping, scheming. Considers women men's property and believe women should devote their lives to making their man happy. Is attached to the idea of woman's physical, mental, moral inferiority Fears the power of woman. Because men desire sex and immorality through their children, men must convince a woman to have sex with him, to bear his child, and to raise that child. Because men must rely on women to fulfill these needs, woman has an normous amount of power over him.
- a) Rogers takes a Freudian approach to discussing the cause of misogyny in men. b) Misogyny stems from a number of causes: bad experiences with women, projection of one's own failings onto an innocent other, outgrowth of the normal frustrations of men and women living together, and the fear of woman's power. c) Men fear that if women are ever freed from the restrictions, women will become men's master. (This point is emphasized over, and over, and over, again.) Could this be true? Would women WANT to be?