Sexism Vs. Misogyny: A Conversation
Dear Readers,
Nicholas D. Kristof, columnist for the Opinion section of the "New York Times" and his accompanying blog "On The Ground," has published several provative pieces on race and sexism--the latest was published yesterday at his blog "On The Ground" and entitled "Misogyny Vs. Sexism."
In it he questions what is "sexism" and what is "misogyny" and how are they related. Then, he admits that he doesn't have clearly-defined answers and invites comments--in fact, he has invited a conversation.
I responded and, then, after reading the comments, I wrote an additional response. What is very clear to me from the comments is that this is a very heated topic. In addition, I perceive much confusion between what constitutes information and what is personal opinion.
I have copied both of my responses to this blog because one of the issues that greatly concerns Woman's Voice is the effect of discrimination in the form of sexism--and repression in the form of misogyny--on our women's ability to claim our authority by having a voice, giving voice to, and having the power through Voice to create change.
Comment #1
Women in the United States experience both sexism and misogyny.
If you speak with male batterers, they will tell you that they love the women they beat up. They will tell you that they do it for the good of the women.
In the workplace it becomes sexism. What else can you call it when women in the 21st century still do not earn equal pay for equal work–and Congress has failed repeatedly to pass legislation to remedy it? Does it matter if men feel like they hate women or love women if the effect on women’s lives is the same? Does it matter if it is an institutional problem like sexism as discrimination in the workplace or the misogyny of domestic violence? In my experience, it is two faces of the same problem for women.
We women are at a distinct disadvantage in the workplace even though we may have all the qualifications needed. When we make the transition from homemaker to the workplace the question: “Explain all gaps in your employment.” is a killer. When we women move in and out of the workplace to accommodate family needs, we lose connections, we lose seniority, we lose benefits. We lose access to employment.
Add the inability to find employment or employment that allows us to be self-supporting to post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by a battering relationship and–well, tell me–what’s a woman supposed to do? Regardless of whether it’s sexism or misogyny, we women are in an institutional and cultural impossible bind even in the United States.
Does it matter if it is sexism or misogyny if it puts 1/3 of women in the U.S. in this position? Of course it matters if it is mysogyny over sexism. Violence against women and girls in any form is intolerable and must end–it simply must, by any means, be ended. Sexism, in the form of workplace discrimination, must end. It must be forced to end. As long as our society continues to tolerate either and both, it becomes and is complicit in crimes against women that are not tolerated in any form in the world of white, middle-class, college-educated men.
Comment #2
1. The roots of sexism in Western European culture lies in the history of the founding and organization of the Christian/Roman Catholic Church.
Women were essential in the early Christian movement. They were the center of the home, providing education, religious services, and social work and medical attention to the community. Women brought strangers into their homes and conducted the services there, for example, among other necessary functions.
When the Christian movement organized into an institutional church, creating the theology and rituals as well as the hierarchy of officials, there were power struggles on many levels–many designed to remove women from any possibility of attaining any official authority and voice in the church as institution. Long outmoded Greek customs were revived in order to sequester women in their homes and put married women behind the veil. Even so, women continued to be founders and administrators of monasteries, priests continued to marry, and women actively participated in the creation of the Roman Catholic Church and, despite efforts to control them, women continued to be active and necessary members of the clergy for 1000 years.
In the year 1000 C.E. the church hierarchy acted to remove women from authority and send them back into cloistered convents or to marry them off. The Church benefitted by confiscating women’s properties,including the monasteries that the women founded. It continued its harassment of women until it reached its apotheosis in the publication of “The Hammer of Witches” which led to the Witch Hunts. It then extended its repression through persecution, not only to Churchwomen, but to secular women of property, community authority, and women healers. To cap it off, monasteries which had housed both men and women became the only institutions of learning–from which women were also excluded.
The attitudes, the lore, and the prejudices explicit and implicit that inform our secular culture are deeply-rooted in this history. After all, the Roman Catholic Church was both the center of government as well as the center of religion.
I cite this to remind everyone that control and power continue to fuel sexism–overt and covert. It is only in bringing it to light and to consciousness that we can begin to have informed conversations that have the possibility of leading to real change. Sexism is a truly hidden form of discrimination–hidden in a history that all to few of us have learned.
2. Misogyny: here I refer back to the comments about the male imperative to impregnate women to pass on their genes. The true purpose of raping and impregnating women in wartime is practiced as a form of genocide. In the first Bosnian War in the 1990s, it was reported that a tactic practiced by the military was to so traumatize women of child-bearing age–from young girls to older women–that they would both hate the children conceived from rape and be rendered incapable of caring for them. Here women were forced and traumatized into becoming vehicles to exterminate their own culture.
3. Where women are complicit: Some women, like many prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps, participate against their own sex. For many reasons, there have been women throughout this sorry history who have bought into the myths of their own sex and, at the same time, regarded themselves as the exceptions. There are also women who feel compelled by their circumstances to do what they must do in order to survive or to ensure the survivial of their children.
These are not matters of personal opinion even though we all may think they are. What we all here are struggling to understand is so deeply embedded in our families for generations and in our upbringing and in our Western European culture that, if we are truly being responsible in this conversation, we must be willing to see ourselves, our own attitudes and behavior through this lens.
Conclusion:
Dear Readers, this is a vital conversation that has been written about and responded to because of Hillary Clinton and her courageous campaign to become our next president. If we are to truly move beyond the "conversation" into action and to remedy the injustices of sexism and misogyny, we need women in leadership. We need Senator Clinton to provide the leadership, the experience, the agenda, and the model that will move our country into action on behalf of all women and all individuals seeking a Voice and change as we all become creators of the 21st century.
Again, I strongly urge you to support her campaign in any way that you are able. By her presence and through her Voice, she has raised the level of conversation among us. She has made her commitment to us her #1 priority by refusing to abandon her candidacy. We women, now the majority of voters, have the power to support her all the way to the Presidency.
There has never been a time in history when we women have had a more powerful moment to give Voice to our authority. Please support this courageous woman, Senator Hillary Clinton, who gives Voice to and is committed to fight for us all.
And, also, if you support the work of Woman's Voice and have appreciated this blog, I invite you again to order a copy of my book "Raising Our Voices: Women and Woman's Voice in the 21st Century" at amazon.com. I thank you for your much-needed support.
And, thank you again, dear readers, for showing up to share this space with me--and, thank you again to all my special helpers for supporting my commitment to this great Work.
Nicholas D. Kristof, columnist for the Opinion section of the "New York Times" and his accompanying blog "On The Ground," has published several provative pieces on race and sexism--the latest was published yesterday at his blog "On The Ground" and entitled "Misogyny Vs. Sexism."
In it he questions what is "sexism" and what is "misogyny" and how are they related. Then, he admits that he doesn't have clearly-defined answers and invites comments--in fact, he has invited a conversation.
I responded and, then, after reading the comments, I wrote an additional response. What is very clear to me from the comments is that this is a very heated topic. In addition, I perceive much confusion between what constitutes information and what is personal opinion.
I have copied both of my responses to this blog because one of the issues that greatly concerns Woman's Voice is the effect of discrimination in the form of sexism--and repression in the form of misogyny--on our women's ability to claim our authority by having a voice, giving voice to, and having the power through Voice to create change.
Comment #1
Women in the United States experience both sexism and misogyny.
If you speak with male batterers, they will tell you that they love the women they beat up. They will tell you that they do it for the good of the women.
In the workplace it becomes sexism. What else can you call it when women in the 21st century still do not earn equal pay for equal work–and Congress has failed repeatedly to pass legislation to remedy it? Does it matter if men feel like they hate women or love women if the effect on women’s lives is the same? Does it matter if it is an institutional problem like sexism as discrimination in the workplace or the misogyny of domestic violence? In my experience, it is two faces of the same problem for women.
We women are at a distinct disadvantage in the workplace even though we may have all the qualifications needed. When we make the transition from homemaker to the workplace the question: “Explain all gaps in your employment.” is a killer. When we women move in and out of the workplace to accommodate family needs, we lose connections, we lose seniority, we lose benefits. We lose access to employment.
Add the inability to find employment or employment that allows us to be self-supporting to post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by a battering relationship and–well, tell me–what’s a woman supposed to do? Regardless of whether it’s sexism or misogyny, we women are in an institutional and cultural impossible bind even in the United States.
Does it matter if it is sexism or misogyny if it puts 1/3 of women in the U.S. in this position? Of course it matters if it is mysogyny over sexism. Violence against women and girls in any form is intolerable and must end–it simply must, by any means, be ended. Sexism, in the form of workplace discrimination, must end. It must be forced to end. As long as our society continues to tolerate either and both, it becomes and is complicit in crimes against women that are not tolerated in any form in the world of white, middle-class, college-educated men.
Comment #2
1. The roots of sexism in Western European culture lies in the history of the founding and organization of the Christian/Roman Catholic Church.
Women were essential in the early Christian movement. They were the center of the home, providing education, religious services, and social work and medical attention to the community. Women brought strangers into their homes and conducted the services there, for example, among other necessary functions.
When the Christian movement organized into an institutional church, creating the theology and rituals as well as the hierarchy of officials, there were power struggles on many levels–many designed to remove women from any possibility of attaining any official authority and voice in the church as institution. Long outmoded Greek customs were revived in order to sequester women in their homes and put married women behind the veil. Even so, women continued to be founders and administrators of monasteries, priests continued to marry, and women actively participated in the creation of the Roman Catholic Church and, despite efforts to control them, women continued to be active and necessary members of the clergy for 1000 years.
In the year 1000 C.E. the church hierarchy acted to remove women from authority and send them back into cloistered convents or to marry them off. The Church benefitted by confiscating women’s properties,including the monasteries that the women founded. It continued its harassment of women until it reached its apotheosis in the publication of “The Hammer of Witches” which led to the Witch Hunts. It then extended its repression through persecution, not only to Churchwomen, but to secular women of property, community authority, and women healers. To cap it off, monasteries which had housed both men and women became the only institutions of learning–from which women were also excluded.
The attitudes, the lore, and the prejudices explicit and implicit that inform our secular culture are deeply-rooted in this history. After all, the Roman Catholic Church was both the center of government as well as the center of religion.
I cite this to remind everyone that control and power continue to fuel sexism–overt and covert. It is only in bringing it to light and to consciousness that we can begin to have informed conversations that have the possibility of leading to real change. Sexism is a truly hidden form of discrimination–hidden in a history that all to few of us have learned.
2. Misogyny: here I refer back to the comments about the male imperative to impregnate women to pass on their genes. The true purpose of raping and impregnating women in wartime is practiced as a form of genocide. In the first Bosnian War in the 1990s, it was reported that a tactic practiced by the military was to so traumatize women of child-bearing age–from young girls to older women–that they would both hate the children conceived from rape and be rendered incapable of caring for them. Here women were forced and traumatized into becoming vehicles to exterminate their own culture.
3. Where women are complicit: Some women, like many prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps, participate against their own sex. For many reasons, there have been women throughout this sorry history who have bought into the myths of their own sex and, at the same time, regarded themselves as the exceptions. There are also women who feel compelled by their circumstances to do what they must do in order to survive or to ensure the survivial of their children.
These are not matters of personal opinion even though we all may think they are. What we all here are struggling to understand is so deeply embedded in our families for generations and in our upbringing and in our Western European culture that, if we are truly being responsible in this conversation, we must be willing to see ourselves, our own attitudes and behavior through this lens.
Conclusion:
Dear Readers, this is a vital conversation that has been written about and responded to because of Hillary Clinton and her courageous campaign to become our next president. If we are to truly move beyond the "conversation" into action and to remedy the injustices of sexism and misogyny, we need women in leadership. We need Senator Clinton to provide the leadership, the experience, the agenda, and the model that will move our country into action on behalf of all women and all individuals seeking a Voice and change as we all become creators of the 21st century.
Again, I strongly urge you to support her campaign in any way that you are able. By her presence and through her Voice, she has raised the level of conversation among us. She has made her commitment to us her #1 priority by refusing to abandon her candidacy. We women, now the majority of voters, have the power to support her all the way to the Presidency.
There has never been a time in history when we women have had a more powerful moment to give Voice to our authority. Please support this courageous woman, Senator Hillary Clinton, who gives Voice to and is committed to fight for us all.
And, also, if you support the work of Woman's Voice and have appreciated this blog, I invite you again to order a copy of my book "Raising Our Voices: Women and Woman's Voice in the 21st Century" at amazon.com. I thank you for your much-needed support.
And, thank you again, dear readers, for showing up to share this space with me--and, thank you again to all my special helpers for supporting my commitment to this great Work.
posted by Knowing Woman at 10:21 AM
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