One of the reasons I started this blog was to serve as a creative outlet for all of the myriad of ideas, notions, concepts, and other abstract hew-haw that circles around in the inner recesses of my mind. There's one thought that's been swirling around in my ol' noggin a lot lately (the last year or two, frankly) and I've been meaning to address it. And that thought, dear reader, is misogyny.
Misogyny is a word that gets tossed around a lot these days, and like the term "racism" it's the sort of thing people get really defensive about, because it's not a fun label. Someone can tell a racist joke, but if you call 'em a racist, you might have a fight on your hands. Likewise, a guy can display all the tendencies that qualify as misogynistic, but call him such, and suddenly you're the one with the problem.
Well it's time for us to sit down and to try and have a calm, civil, in-depth look at this whole concept. It's going to require a degree of self-awareness on your part, so if you're reading this and you have a penis, I want you to take the time to reflect and be honest with yourself about the things you'll be reading. Don't worry, there's no one watching you get all self-reflexive. You're alone with your computer/tablet device. It's just you, your brain, and the words on the screen.
I first started thinking about the concept of misogyny as it relates to modern culture as a result of some advocacy work I was doing that centered around women's issues. I read a lot of stuff that made me think about things in a different way, and I started to analyze my own perspective. It's a difficult thing to do, but it was both liberating and cathartic. You see, most of the things that get tossed around regarding sexism are somewhat superficial. It almost seems black-and-white: magazines print unattainable images of female bodies, therefore women feel self-conscious and men have unreasonable expectations. Frankly, I don't think it's that simple. It's not a switch that someone just turned on overnight. It's a psychological issue that delves far deeper than I think most people are aware or care to admit.
The objectification of women is nothing new. It's been commented on more times than anyone can count, and there's way more wonderful articles dealing with it than the one you're reading right now. And while there's an absolute gargantuan amount that can be said about how objectification affects the female psyche, I don't have the qualifications to adequately discuss that. What I am qualified to discuss, however, is the male psyche, because I believe that's where the biggest problem lies. I believe there is an undercurrent attitude - a psychological conditioning - that most men aren't aware of. I want to turn the mirror on ourselves, my fellow folks of the y-chromosome demographic, so that we can acknowledge this issue exists.
See, I'm not talking about run-of-the-mill objectification, where we only focus on physical attributes, because I think (although it's much more prevalent among men) women are also guilty of this too. Show a girl a picture of Ryan Gosling or Henry Cavill, and I guarantee the first comment won't be about how much their acting is appreciated. It's a biological drive to be drawn and notice attractive features, even if it makes us look stupid and do stupid things. It's all part of an evolutionary standard that has accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years.
The objectification I'm talking about is the sense of entitlement that a significant number of men and boys feel toward women. I'm talking about the notion that if you give a girl a ride home, you're entitled to a blowjob in return. I'm talking about the attitude that makes guys continue to hit on girls after they've said "no," where the only line that will make a guy stop is "I already have a boyfriend." I'm talking about the unbelievable amount of sexist threats that are hurled against women in online forums for no justifiable reason. I'm talking about the attitude that some guys have where they feel they are owed a girl's affection, and any girl who rejects them must therefore have a problem.
These are attitudes that I see abounding around me. I hate to admit that I was guilty of a similar frame of mind for a very long time. I've admitted that I haven't always been the most popular with girls, but for a long time I assumed the problem was with them. I was convinced that I was great, therefore they were the ones with the problem, because I hadn't developed the self-awareness to realize that autonomous expression wasn't limited to just myself. I viewed things as a checklist: I had x and y qualities, therefore I deserved z in return. I got upset if a girl wasn't interested in me. I got extremely jealous if a girl I liked was dating another guy. This was (and still is) greatly a matter of ego; I couldn't fathom that other people functioned in a world that didn't revolve around me.
The turning point was when I had the revelation that just because I liked a girl, that didn't mean I deserved anything. I did not have a monopoly on who they found attractive or who they chose to sleep with. No woman, anywhere, has any obligation to me whatsoever. My interactions with the opposite sex could not be boiled down to a checklist or be solved by a "pickup guide" written by some asshole trying to make a quick dollar off desperate frat boys. There's a wonderful quote making the rounds regarding this that I love: "women are not vending machines that you put nice-tokens into until sex falls out."
It's hard to pin down exactly where this attitude developed from though, or why it seems to have infected such a large number of men and boys. A large portion of the blame can be placed at the foot of mainstream media. Laura Mulvey was one of the first film theorists to pioneer the concept of the "male gaze" in cinema. She theorized that the movie camera mainly served the male's perspective, and the majority of women in film were passive objects to be admired or won by the protagonist. This is still very rampant today. Male actors are valued for their skill first and foremost, whereas actresses are almost always judged by their appearance. One only needs to look at the latest Transformers movie to see how seductively the female lead is framed and how thinly developed her character is. It's permeated into every media sphere from magazines to television. Anna Gunn (who portrayed Bryan Cranston's wife on the show Breaking Bad) wrote a wonderful piece for the New York Times, highlighting how she was receiving death threats because of a fictional character she played, and how female characters are often held to different standards than their male counterparts. I'd hate to imagine the sort of stuff Lena Headey has to deal with for her portrayal of Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones. There was also that bullshit a little while ago where someone (probably from Fox News) was berating Adele and Kelly Clarkson because they weren't serving as "healthy" role models for young girls because they were slightly overweight. It's fairly common to see women deconstructed and stripped of their talent and personality until only an object prized for her sexual attributes remains.
Nowhere else is this attitude more prevalent than online, especially when it comes to video games, perhaps because it mixes a heavily vocal male audience with the mask of anonymity. One of my favorite YouTube channels is Feminist Frequency, where host Anita Sarkeesian posts criticisms on the portrayal of women in video games. She became quite famously the center of an Internet shit-storm awhile back, simply because she wanted to critically analyze a medium that she loved dearly but felt there were issues with. She received thousands of death/rape threats, which really only solidified the point she was trying to make. I have had many debates with friends regarding the representation of women in video games, and I see the same dismissive attitude popping up again and again. The arguments are endless, and many serve to highlight the issue. I was recently part of a debate where the game Grand Theft Auto 5 came up a lot, with one of my friends arguing that it presents a lot of well-rounded female characters. I'm not saying it doesn't, but I would argue that doesn't magically eliminate the issue of misogyny in gaming as a whole or in that game in particular, especially since all three of the playable protagonists are male (thereby all female characters exist around the male leads) and you still have the option of hiring a prostitute, having sex with her, then killing her. One could argue this is simply a "realistic" part of an open world experience, but think about it; a committee of people (most likely all men) brainstormed, developed, and decided to include this feature believing it was a suitable inclusion to their game. It's also worth highlighting that a female reviewer received horrible threats because she gave the game a 9/10, with guys saying she couldn't totally appreciate the game because she was a woman. Seriously, go look that shit up, because it's totally fucking baffling.
I believe this misogynistic attitude goes largely unnoticed by men because they have never had to confront it. It's a privileged attitude to assume something isn't a big issue because you occupy a demographic that doesn't have to deal with it on a regular basis. And as a man, what right do you have to comment on the prevalence of an issue if you are incapable of identifying/empathizing with it? I would argue that it's similar to bullying in a high school. If you were to ask someone who didn't get bullied whether bullying was an issue at the school, they would most likely say "no" because they have never experienced it first hand. To someone who is constantly bullied, however, it is a very real problem. Just because it only exists among the peripherals of your vision doesn't mean it's not there, it only means your eyes aren't open wide enough. And a major problem that few people tend to grasp is that there is a contextual history behind these issues. A favorite argument against me in my video game debates is that men's bodies are often idealized just as much as women's, and while this is true, it does not mean everything is on equal footing. The misrepresentation of women is problematic because there is a history of misrepresentation stretching back further than a single game, and simply having an impossibly good looking male character doesn't negate that, in the same way that just because I've been called "cracker" because I'm white doesn't mean it's suddenly okay to use the n-word in everyday vernacular.
This misogynistic attitude, I would argue, is mainly a problem because most people don't even realize how prevalent it is, namely because most of it has become an acceptable part of modern culture. In a single generation we witnessed a media boom that is both unheard of and unprecedented, and I firmly believe it has had a jarring effect on our psychology and our social adaptability - our minds simply aren't ready for it, in the same way that our bodies haven't been given time to adapt to the recent changes in food production which has led to an obesity epidemic. Mine is the first generation that grew up with readily available Internet pornography, and one could write an entire essay (and many already have) about how its mass consumption has permanently altered an entire generation of men's perspective on sexuality.
The psychology behind this is both complex and expansive. I believe blame can be placed anywhere from TV shows like Keys to the VIP, which turns the act of picking up women into a literal game, to readily accessible pornography, to poor male role models, to underdeveloped and misrepresented female characters in TV and film. It's all been allowed to fester in our minds for over a generation until it seems like a cultural norm.
And to anyone who still thinks it's not a prevalent issue, there are a few things to remember. Remember that we live in a society where the reproductive rights of women are largely decided by a committee of old men. Remember we live in a culture where a girl can be raped by two male athletes, and a major news outlet can lament about how the accusations will forever damage the boys' careers while giving no thought to the psychological trauma the girl must now endure for the rest of her life. Remember we live in a culture that teaches women to "not get raped" instead of teaching men to "not rape," and where the first question in sexual assault cases is usually "well, what was she wearing?" Remember we live in a world where girls as young as five are sold into sexual slavery, where women are forced to engage in sex acts with up to thirty "clients" a day and are tortured and abused if they refuse.
I didn't write this article with the hope of presenting a solution to this problem, because I think the biggest issue surrounding it is that most people fail to acknowledge that a problem exists in the first place. All I hope to do is draw attention to it and encourage people to be a little more self-reflexive.
Remember we live in a culture that often degrades the entirety of who someone is - the complexity of their entire being - into whatever is between their legs. This is not strictly a problem with media, or with a select few individuals. This is a rampant attitude that is more prevalent now than ever. It is psychological, it is destructive, and it is still very real.
And it has to stop.
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