Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
The Invisibility of Misogyny
Last edited Tue Sep 18, 2012, 12:06 PM - Edit history (2)
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2011/the-invisibility-of-misogyny/
In the summer of 2010, Mel Gibson’s phone rant to his ex-partner Oksana Grigorieva became an internet sensation. The recording of Gibson’s enraged comments was circulated under headlines about his “insane,” “racist” and “psychotic” rant. There’s no doubt about the aptness of the “insane” and “psychotic” descriptions, and Gibson’s statement that Grigorieva’s choice of wardrobe made her look “ like a fucking pig in heat” who risked getting “raped by a pack of n*****s” shows plenty of overachievement in the racism department. But while commenters seemed to easily notice the general craziness of Gibson’s words and their disturbing racism, very few drew attention to his rant’s most distinguishing feature: its unremitting misogyny. Gibson proclaims, “I am going to come and burn the fucking house down … but you will blow me first. 1 ” (This and other threats of violence in the recording seemed to have been more than just angry talk, since Grigorieva filed domestic violence charges against Gibson in this same time period). He calls her a “bitch” and a “cunt” repeatedly during the call, and his prediction about the potential consequences of Grigorieva’s fashion sense is a classic bit of sexist victim blaming, indicting women for supposedly inviting abuse. But aside from discussion on a smattering of feminist periodicals and websites, coverage of Gibson’s rant largely ignored its blatant contempt for women.
...
These examples could be multiplied many times over, and aren’t limited to stories on the front pages and current events sections of mainstream newspapers. In fact, the worst cases of misogyny in the world today are rarely even deemed newsworthy. In India, a “bride burning” in which a young bride is set ablaze as punishment for unacceptable dowries, occurs about once every two hours. 39,000 baby girls under 1 year old annually die in China each year directly because of gender discrimination, which causes parents to deny them the medical treatment reserved for boys. According to some estimates, more girls have been killed directly because of being girls in the last 50 years than all of the men killed in all of the wars of the 20th century, and more girls die in any given decade than all people killed in all of the genocides of the 20th century. Additionally, a staggering number of girls and women are also victims of various forms of sexual violence. As many as 3 million women and girls worldwide are victims of sex trafficking, with hundreds of thousands of new victims added each year. Rates of rape around the world are staggeringly high, not just in areas like the war-torn East Congo, but also in the United States military, where recent reports indicate that one out of every three women in service has been sexually assaulted, and surveys of college-aged women routinely show that approximately 25% have experienced rape or attempted rape. 3 And rape is abetted everywhere by ingrained cultural attitudes that still, even in ostensibly liberal democracies like the United States, blame the victim and diminish the responsibility of the rapists. Even the mainstream New York Times recently got on the victim blaming bandwagon when their coverage of the gang rape of an 11-year old girl included quotes from members of the girl’s community who observed that the girl acted older than her age, hung around too much with neighborhood boys, and obviously wasn’t being properly supervised by her mother. 4
In all of these cases, it’s striking how little awareness people have of both the frequency of sexist discrimination against women, and also of the severity and sheer contempt for women that often come with it. When misogyny plays a central role in stories that get mainstream media attention, as in the first three examples discussed here, it’s rarely called out as such. And when it is itself the whole story, as in the examples of global injustice and violence toward women, it rarely commands attention and serious analysis. It’s not just the fact that misogyny is invisible that we need to face – it’s also the fact that this invisibility is a large part of what makes it the enormous problem it is. We cannot begin to properly address misogyny and the harm it causes unless we start being able to see it.
...
9 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
