I feel this deliberate unrecognition of all female people as an act of abject terror enacted upon half of humanity. The half that we all know have always been treated as lesser humans, possessions. And I feel us slipping into the status of less-than-human.
Yes, absolutely, Barracker. It has always been very clear to me that this is an act of structural abuse against women and girls: and yes, an act of terror, in the context of millennia of acts of terror against us. By the other half of the human race.
It’s only very recently that women in some countries (of which the USA is not one, given their failure to ratify the ERA) have had full equality before the law, and there are still plenty of places worldwide where women’s status is officially, legally less than that of men. Added to the fact that even where we do have legal equality, culturally and socially we have never stopped being “less-than-human”, and it’s very easy to see women slipping back into that category in legal terms too.
When otherwise rational, fair people cling tenaciously to an obviously irrational, unjust belief, there has to be a psychological basis for it. They gain something that means more to them than being actually rational or just, although they’re not usually aware of this and con(vince) themselves that their belief is actually rational, and make up more and more absurd theories to try and prove they are, in the face of all evidence to the contrary. (The staggering pseudo-science of “biological” gender identity, clownfish, intersex et al, for example, in the face of the immutable, blindingly obvious reality of human sexual dimorphism.)
The only explanation I can find for the truly breathtaking cognitive dissonance among “liberal” women in the USA and Canada (and here) is that recognising how deeply embedded our second class status really is just too painful for them. Their gain, or payoff, is sustained denial of the unbearable truth of how entrenched misogyny is; in what contempt we are still held by (a critical mass of) men; how powerless we still are to make men treat us as fellow human beings.
Presumably some of the men who genuinely believe that they care about women but nonetheless throw us right under the bus are also just incapable of acknowledging the full horror of how much their sex hates our sex, because it would be so very, very uncomfortable for them.
Because it is truly horrific. The (ongoing) history of male oppression and abuse of females is an absolute atrocity, a global, millennia-long atrocity. One that doesn’t show any signs of ending soon. We achieved some rights, yay. Now watch them being rolled back, and see us getting punished for getting above ourselves.
Whether conscious or unconscious, this belief that women are less than men is a deeply-rooted and powerful one and still exerts enormous sway over the world. And the men and women who think they have evolved beyond that, who don’t think they have to worry about their own internal bias because they are progressive - they are the ones who are doing most to wreck women’s rights in the western world.
The longer it goes on, though, the more women wake up not just to this part of the picture, but the whole picture. How many of us have had the scales fall from our eyes as a result of this issue? We know we’re human. We’re quite pissed off that not everyone apparently does. And we’re mobilising.
Sisters in the USA, I hope that the next four years see numbers of liberal American women waking up the way women have been waking up the last few years over here. I hope there will be a flourishing of grassroots women’s activist groups, like there has been here. We need more numbers on both sides of the Atlantic! Let’s wish for that. Bon courage.