The Roots of Misogyny

[wukter]

Why is practically every human society across all times, places and cultures dominated by men?
I have read that War on Women article that MillyR linked to. It's chilling. Why is it everywhere?

I would be interested in your thoughts, or maybe there is actually a simple, widely accepted answer that I could be pointed to.

'The feminist movements agenda was to declare all men as potential rapists and batterers. Under cover of the shelter movement which gave them funding and accommodation to wage their gender war against men, they began to disseminate misleading information. Legislation against fathers was put into place & family couts became hostile to men'

And it's interesing that the only person who has ever told me to "fuck off back into the kitchen" is a female feminist....

saf and dittany, she genuinely doesn't understand...

Germaine Greer is an idiot dittany, the female eunuch was the most boring book i've ever read, and she went on big brother fgs..

Hmmm, okay I'll say that at the points in time I describe (using info from descriptions I read above rather than knowledge of my own you understand) that there was perhaps no 'in charge' but logical community decision making where each role was so essential that one could not survive without the other and thus there was no superiority of role to take charge of. The women could not feed the children without the men, and the men had no offspring to feed without women. They would cease to exist without women's nurturing.

Now, women need men to procreate and vice versa but they don't need men to provide thereafter. Women, in effect, can survive without men once children are born. So, perhaps it is the diminished role of men in the continuation of our species that makes men feel the need to exert power over women.

Of course, to some extent this is illusionary because though in the Jones family, the mother earns the money to keep her family going by being a cook at the local school, and The Smith family survive beacuse Mrs Smith makes and sells jewellery while Mr Smith does most of the childcare and housework; and despite the fact that in the Green family Mrs Green is a builder, if all the builders were women we'd have problems. We still need men in masculine roles. We need women in masculine roles too because of the feminie skills base they bring. We need men at home and in schools because of their masculine qualities, but

oh flipping heck children are soooo squabbly

can I finish later?!

Have you finished with me swallowedafly?

Can I go in the kitchen now and make you something wonderful to eat...

dittany and SAF i am really enjoying reading your posts. although each tends to disagree with the other (posts, not posters) i can see how both views could be correct although for some reason (don't know why as i am quite ignorant about the whole thing) i find myself agreeing with SAF (sorry dit).

dittany;

The thing is, feminists are suffering from an image problem....I have friends (females in their 30's) who when you mention the word "feminist" think - man hating, militant, boring, (probably lesbian) no sense of humour, communist

I know that isn't true, but that is the perception for alot of people and that harms the cause. I'm not sure what the answer is.

lol swallowedafly....phwoar....don't get all masterful with me!

sprogger, you see, you haven't got time to debate right now because you are looking after and playing with children! Me either. How the hell I'll have thinking time to event a vacuum cleaner better than a Dyson I don't know...I don't have the time to work to pay my rent tbh. but the father of my baby does. He's out in his porsche with her now while I care for the other DC. Funny how he has the power (earning potential) but still needs a car like that to prove it though, eh?

Does misogyny correlate with the lessening need for masculine traits. Before that there was (perhaps) male dominace through strength but it wasn't misogyny.

Did men in caves take charge without physically beating women?

Am thinking about articles I've read on rape during wartime. Not just rape of the women of the enemy side...Have men always raped women, even before they lost some of their grip on power?

There is an interesting chapter in the Politics of Breastfeeding which suggested that men on some level feel threatened by women's ability to produce and nurture children, something which they physically cannot do. Someone further up the thread pointed out that baby formula was invented by a man. I'm not saying that formula hasn't been a wonderful invention for many women, but the aggressive marketing of it has without a doubt trivialised breastfeeding. There still remains (Jeremy Kyle aside!) the fact that a woman is in some cases the only person who really knows who her child's father is. Of course most(?) women don't abuse this and would be honest with their partners (and/or not sleep around in the first place), but it is still something that remains in our power. And if it's the way that the male brain is hardwired to use your own power/strength to prove your superiority over your opponent, and this "power" is not based on strength or intelligence or anything else measurable, the only way to overcome this one is to make sure no other man has access to "your" woman and therefore is unable to father her children.

Sorry, that probably needed some paragraphs

hobgoblin, i would imagine that there were men who never raped a woman and men who did. just like today.

Do men see a woman as his though? Men tend to sow their seed in a variety of places to ensure they reproduce one way or another. I'm not sure that indicates any inherent loyalty to a particular woman, unlike with swans.

And what about pimps?

bertie i remember that chapter aswell, and i remember feeling liek a ligtbulb moment as i read it. it felt like alot had just been explained.

Men tend to sow their seed in a variety of places to ensure they reproduce one way or another

erm, do they?

why are sperm banks so short of ammunition then?

This is a really interesting thread. I get the point about the agricultural aspect, however in a lot of cultures, women are just as important and equals on the labor front. There isn't really the concept of SAHM, but the baby gets put in a sling and carried so the woman can continue to do work.

Am wondering if the root cause of misogyny is based on resentment? For instance the men not having a defined role?

Because men don't want the responsibility of what they may create. That is a real dichotomy. The need to provide...the urge to be the in control provider and yet, in modern times, the shunning of that responsibility so often.

Men and women screw around to ensure reproduction occurs. Once there was community parenting. Now this barely exists and thus men and women still act the same but it is the women taking responsibility and men running away from it. That in itself disempowers men.

Who are they providing for? Maybe they do need to feel like they own one woman so that they can answer that question in themselves.