For men and women alike, casual misogyny is the climate and context of all their interactions. It is unconcealed and automatic. It affects the way women are received, portrayed and considered as colleagues, friends, workers, mothers, artists, thinkers, public figures and victims of male violence and discrimination. Apart from outright slander, jibes, names and insults there is: talking down a woman's work, interrupting her, teasing her, mocking her, talking over her, patronising her, sighing or rolling one's eyes when she talks, invading her personal space. The misogynists' approach to women can be summed up thus: sneer, leer, exploit, ignore.
Never was the phrase "the plural of anecdote is not evidence" more appropriate. I read this article and was incensed, it was all too easy and I'm sure many women reading it could nod and agree they'd seen or heard about similar. But that isn't the whole story. It's like saying Sarah Palin is a typical American or typical american feminist; the loudest most obnoxious mouth is not representative.
Sure there are issues of glass ceilings and the fact that when it comes to gender violence men have the upper hand in dishing it out (although men are far more likely to be victims of male violence), but the rest of it ? That's surely the human expression of hatred/fear/contempt of the other ? The Not_Them. Has she ever listened to women discussing men in an office, or in the loo of a pub or bar ? It's just the same. Hell it's even worse cos there is absolutely no societal comeback on women trashing men as there is for men trashing women.
Sorry. That article annoyed me cos she got paid for it, it was a double page spread !!!! And it was lazy fatuous rubbish. keep to the Fen Causeway
The quote is a perfect summary and the whole article goes in my favorites for future use, because most people have not learned the definitions of sexism and misogyny since they came into public use. Not even young women. Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.
