Accessed 12th August 2013
How to spot a misogynist
by Clementine Ford
Date May 1, 2012 - 8:42AM
*By the five classic lies they tell
When you’re a
feminist, you get used to misogynists trying to challenge the necessity of your
politics. “Feminism’s finished! Women are equal now and there’s no use for all
the hairy arm-pitted rubbish! Quit your yapping! Embrace your curves!”
But misogynist
isn’t a very fashionable kind of word – I mean, no one saunters into a room
proudly pronouncing, ‘My name’s Don and I’m a misogynist!’, unless it’s the
latest Charter Meeting of Online Trolls Monthly, or Channel Nine. So because
people know it’s not really kosher to be a codified turd, they try and hide
their misogynist views under the guise of legitimate arguments.
If you’re not
trained in the spotting of smug, self-satisfied misogynists, you might not know
the general thrust of their shtick. Luckily for you, I’ve become somewhat of an
expert in the field since they all started following me on Twitter. So to help
novices and outsiders, I’ve taken the following five popular misogynist
arguments and parsed them into some kind of legible (if not logical) format for
your benefit.
1. If you want to see real
oppression, go to the Middle East .
The problems here
are threefold. First, it implies women in the west should be grateful for the
benevolence of their natural overlords. Who cares if 1 in 3 of you will
experience sexual assault in your lifetime, while also enjoying the privilege
of lower pay than your male counterparts and the symbolic annihilation of
yourselves in literature and film? In case you didn’t know, women in Afghanistan
Second is the
accusatory tone. Now, I’m no statistician, but I’d estimate that 98.76% of
people outraged over feminism’s ‘failure’ to ‘protect’ their brown sisters from
the oppression of their Muslim Male Masters (because let’s not forget, this is
about racism too) are doing exactly zero to agitate for women’s liberation
anywhere, let alone in the Middle East. But even though they hate feminism and
all who dwell therein, they still think they know how to do it better than you
do. This is because misogynists see themselves as Upper Management – which is
precisely why we need to get more women into executive roles.
Finally,
liberation and change aren’t beholden to hierarchies of need. It’s possible to
seek the liberation of oppressed groups everywhere, at the same time! Asking comparativelyprivileged women (many of whom also live
in the Middle East – it is not a vacuum) to be
satisfied with ‘good enough’ just reinforces the patriarchal hierarchy of power
that needs to be dismantled.
Besides, I don’t
hear anyone accusing working families of selfishness for complaining about
their rising electricity bills just because some slum dwellers in India don’t
even HAVE working Playstations.
2. How can women expect us to
respect them when they won’t respect themselves?
When Sheik
Al-Hilali compared scantily clad women to uncovered meat, we were rightly
outraged. In Australia
We’re not
protecting women – we’re protecting our property. Asking women to respect
themselves in order to ‘earn’ the right to be treated like a human being is
total horseshit. But suggesting that you have the right to treat her exactly as
you please because she didn’t adhere to your archaic views of feminine
propriety is misogyny, plain and simple.
3. Stop criticizing domestic
servitude! Some women are proud to look after their families.
This one’s a
misogynist favourite, especially notable for the fact it’s the only time you’ll
find them advocating for women’s rights in the workplace. Specifically, a
woman’s right to iron her husband’s work shirts instead of her own. Misogynists
who use this argument like to wax lyrical about things like choice, pride and
sacrificial love. But what they’re really defending is their belief that women
belong in the home, performing dull domestic tasks for the primary benefit of
everyone other than themselves (and mainly their husband). Despite the fact
that these dudes wouldn’t devote even an tenth of their lives to it themselves,
they’re invested in outwardly maintaining the nobility of unpaid domestic work
– because ascribing false honour to drudgery is how you reinforce invisible social
power.
The thing is,
women can choose
those things if they want to. There’s nothing more tedious than the status quo
trying to pit stay-at-homes against workforce broads. But the fact is, these
people aren’t advocating for or defending a range of
choices. How do I know that? Because if they were, we wouldn’t even be having
this conversation.
4. It’s a science thing
“Look, men and
women are built differently. It’s biological. Men are more visual, women are
more emotional. That’s why more men are in executive roles. It’s about merit.
If women were better, they wouldn’t be so crap. I didn’t make the rules.”
So goes the
argument. Basically, it’s the kind of pop science spouted by the readers of
such noted academic journals as NW Magazine and the Herald Sun. Whenever you
hear someone say, ‘women are just better at washing up’ or ‘men are just better
at being the leader of the free world’, ask yourself this: would that sentence
be as benign if we replaced gender with race? Would we stand by, nodding sagely
as mainstream pundits discussed how white people are just better at empathy
than black folk? I sure hope not.
So why is it okay
to say that women aren’t as good at stuff ‘because biology’? The biology
argument is a Trojan horse that does nothing but sneak sexist propaganda into
the castle. The only biological difference between a man and a woman is the
difference of a Y chromosome – and even then, there’s a bit of wiggle room.
5. Men are oppressed too,
therefore women aren’t! Or something.
‘If feminists
really cared about equality, they’d be addressing all the inequality that faces
men. Like, why do feminists only care about breast cancer and not prostate
cancer? Why aren’t feminists advocating for single dads? Why won’t women sleep
with me when I’m a really nice guy and I’ve made a particular effort to be nice
to them, particularly? Until feminism can answer that, I’m afraid I don’t
really see it as being legitimate.”
This is the last
bastion of the misogynist’s argument – their self fancying checkmate, if you will.
What these people are basically saying is that, despite the overwhelming
evidence of entrenched sexual, physical and ideological oppression of women,
the only way feminism can really be fair is if it first identifies and solves
all of the ways in which the patriarchy also oppresses men.
To be more
specific, women who agitate for their own liberation are only allowed to do so
once they’ve fixed all the things that make men sad, thus making them stronger
and even more powerful.
There are
probably a million ways I could tear this argument apart, but I think this says
it better than I ever could.
To paraphrase the
great Sarah Connor, a bitchin’ kick ass broad who saved humanity from
blistering annihilation at the hands of the Terminators: if a stick figure, an
animation, can reject the stupidity of misogynist rhetoric…maybe we can too.
Go forth and
rebut, my friends.
