Misogyny isn’t caused by male horniness [View all]

[seabeyond]

A million people have sent me this off-putting article by David Wong at Cracked trying to explain misogyny. The women have found it unnerving, and the men have loved it, for reasons they should be ashamed of that I will explain in just a moment. I didn't want to write about it, because having done this for many years, I'm less inclined to be critical of someone who means well, even if they're doing it all wrong, but this seems to be the only way to get people to stop sending me this article. Apparently, it struck a chord. The piece starts off on a good foot, explaining that men are taught from the cradle that they're entitled to women's affection, and he even touches on how women who aren't considered beautiful are often not considered at all. He's 100% right on this. This is the underpinning of the Nice Guy® complaint. They say that "women" overlook the "nice" guys because they're not as attractive or whatever, but if you scratch them, you'll find that they exclude a huge percentage of women from the category "women" for not fitting their beauty standards. Thus, the whine only makes sense if you assume that men are entitled to beauty, but women should settle for "nice", and give up on physical attraction.

The rest of the piece is based on the iffy theory that only men really know what it's like to feel horny. This is why liberal dudes were licking it up, since it was a purportedly anti-sexist piece, but it still had a soothing message that men still somehow are more than women, because they are more alive, you know. They have more desire. They really like sex, in a way that you women can never understand.

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Wong means well, but he's letting men off the hook. By making misogyny about men's supposedly overpowering sex drive, he makes it seem primal and nearly unavoidable. After all, if nature dictates that men want it and women don't, then there's not much you can do about it. But I think misogyny is rooted in something else, something Wong does hint at before scrambling away to make more jokes about how women can't know what it's like to really feel sexual desire. It's hard to talk about, because it cuts right to the bone in something humans don't like to talk about, but it's about the will to dominate. I think men become misogynists not because their intense horniness short circuits their brain. It's because they feel entitled to have women in a submissive position to them. They want to live in a world where women are considered automatically dumber, where women are expected to clean up after them, wipe their brows, and kiss their asses, all with a smile on our faces and without asking much more in return but an occasional bit of jewelry and a door-opening, which is just as much about the man feeling more powerful as it is about being nice to the woman. They want to control women sexually, not because they're more horny, but because sexual control is just one more form of control. Misogynists especially dislike women having reproductive control, because if a woman can't control her pregnancies, she's going to be more dependent on a man, and they believe that makes it easier for them. If women are dependent, you don't need to be nice to your wife to get her to stay. She doesn't have a choice, and that's how they like it. They believe in their hearts that women are inferior, and fear that if they're disproved in this contention, their entire sense of self will crumble, because that sense of self is all built on being a "man". They get angry and mock other men they believe are trying to hard to be pleasing to women---genuinely pleasing, not faux "build skyscrapers" pleasing---but men who take care of their looks to be sexually attractive (they get dismissed as "metrosexual&quot or men who treat women with respect. Those men are seen as undermining the united front to artificially lower women's standards. It's not an accident that the biggest misogynists are the first to flip their shit at the idea of swapping out big greasy burgers for some broccoli on occasion.

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More importantly, men get to feel hornier because they're socially supported in this. The whole of society is geared toward titillating men and discouraging female sexual desire. It's inherent to the Nice Guy® complaint, where men are entitled to feel physical attraction, but a woman who wants more than "nice" is shallow. It's evident in the way men and women dress, with women always mindful to wear stuff that makes them sexually attractive, whereas men have the opposite problem, and have to avoid being too sexualized lest they seem feminine. Naked women are draped over every inch of public space, and the internet is full of visually interesting porn for men, but our society barely can imagine what it would be like to try to attract a female eye. (Though "True Blood" is really making up ground rapidly on this front.) Men seem hornier in no small part because their sexuality is celebrated and codified. It's easy for men to know right away how to be sexual, whereas women are still largely expected to figure it out for themselves---and even that's a recent invention, because pre-feminism, women were mostly just expected to do what men wanted. To a large extent, that's still true, but we're at least getting a few glimmers of liberty for women, but in many ways, the past few generations of women are real pioneers in trying to figure out what sex means when we're actually allowed to want it, even a little.

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/misogyny-isnt-caused-by-male-horniness
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read the whole article. it is all relevant. there were two threads on du about 5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=481155 . i was listening to people cheer it as i was sittin in confusion. on the one hand, seemed to be supportive to women in the beginning. as i continued to read, saw how it was really about the all awesome male sexuality. i was thrilled with this author putting it into perspective. for me, this is what i often see on du with our progressive. as they state their identity with feminists, i see the very opposite happening. it is easy to be for womens rights, not so easy being a feminist for some of our progressives.

excellent article.