Speaking of cancer, what’s with this retarded sexy-cancer image at NewScientist.com? Do I really need to trot out the picture of what cancer really looks like?
Germaine Greer says women have no idea how much men hate them. I’ve been doing my best to spread the word, but let’s face it; I’m just a churlish tree falling in the forest. With no pope taking a shit nearby to hear me, I might as well be espousing tube tops to Godly Josh.
But really, girls. Men hate you.
Still, as Kunte “Geordi LaForge” Kinte says on “Reading Rainbow,” you don’t have to take my word for it. Just take a gander, if you can stomach it, at the news. If the new American compulsory-pregnancy Supreme Court doesn’t convince you of Dude Nation’s contempt for you, and if Chicago’s “rape epidemic” leaves you unfazed, how about this Australian knob? He’s pitching a tent for the schizoid American Godbag Family Anti-Sex/Fetus Worship Coalition’s position on the new HPV vaccine. Which vaccine, if you’re just joining us, is expected to be 100% effective in preventing cervical cancer. Health advocates want to include the vaccine in the standard bundle of shots that all kiddies get. Godbags just hate this vaccine.
Why do godbags hate a vaccine that will save the lives of half a million women a year?
Because, duh, they hate women.
To recap: HPV is sexually transmitted. The aforementioned vaccine, in order to be most effective, should be administered to girls before they become sexually active. Which is seen by godbags as an endorsement of female teenage boning. Godbags, although they rarely take a position on male teenage boning, are 100% dead set against female teenage boning. They believe it will, as reader Liz suggested in a recent email, melt the fabric of society (I can understand why they might fear this melting, since they buy all the cheap polyester fabric of their society at Wal-Mart).
Because HPV is sexually-transmitted, and because women are the sex class, the virus is automatically a girl-problem. And behold! Where girls and sex collide, there you will find a clump of patriarchy-loving assholes making up rules. Godbags naturally default to slut-punishing mode when encountering scary science that might help to confer human status on women. The myth of female virtue is the cornerstone of patriarchy. A pussy unpoliced will lead to hard drugs, communism, homosexuality, rampant stuffing of newborns into trash cans, and what have you.
But come ON. Does fear of cervical cancer even register on a teenage girl’s radar as a fornicational deterrent? The contingency is remote. Even so, Focus on the Fetus et al would prefer that those dirty sluts grow up to die of hideous cancer.
That’s how much they hate you.
[Thanks for the Australian knob link, Liz]
As an HPV pos woman, this issue is particularly near and dear to me–very few people even seem to know what HPV is–I didn’t, until last year, really, even after 2 colposcopy procedures.
No one told me I could get cancer from a penis.
You bet you bunions I’m telling my daughter–and everyone else who will/will not listen that penises can give you cancer.
The whole anti-vaccine thing has me seething.
Been getting my ass kicked a bit by men who can’t understand why I can say hating the patriarchy is not synonmous with hating men. I give up. For today.
Thank you for this safe haven!
I need a good does of no-apologies feminism today!
I hadn’t seen your post op picture til today.
I love your site more every day!
maybe the newscientist creeps think that by inferring that cancer happens to nubile little sex toys, that this will be more likely to motivate men into giving a shit about it?
i dunno.
thing is, they are probably right.
i’d been arguing with a bunch of godbags about abortion on a forum that i sometimes hang out on(i’m in IT so my workdays are sometimes very slow). and i was shocked at just how that particular thread showed some of the men to be woman-owning cretins. and proud of it.
and i owe my newfound ability to argue these kinds of things to you. thank you. don’t ever give up the fight.
no matter how much they want us dead.
I hate women so much, I’m viewing this site with Internet Explorer right now.
I think Germaine Greer’s Law has a Larry Miller Corollary: “If women knew what we were really thinking, they’d never stop slapping us.”
P.S. I think LeVar Burton hates women too, that’s why whenever a girl finished her video book report on Reading Rainbow, he’d exclaim: “Don’t forget… women need literacy like a fish needs a bicycle!”
can someone please succinctly explain to me why this is a patriarchy problem? i think it is a godbag problem. godbags aren’t trying to spite women by forcing them to get cervical cancer, they’re spiting sexually active hetero couples (including men), hoping the existence of diseases will make them less promiscuous.
godbags are generally patriarchal bastards, but i don’t think this is the right example.
Here’s a humdinger: http://www.slate.com/id/2135094
“Being touched by your husband relieves stress. In a study, as women waited for electric shocks, scans of their brains showed high activity in regions that anticipate pain and regulate negative emotions. The activity subsided when a stranger touched their hands, but subsided far more when their husbands did so.”
No mention of whether men are calmed by the presence of their partners. No mention of what possible warrant a study like this could have.
“Maybe stress reduction is why married folks are healthier than singles.”
No mention of whether a close friend, non-married partner, gay partner, or parent could have the same effect. What are they testing for? The all-healing power of Jesus Christ’s blessing to allow women to be harmed without complaint?
Just remember, ladies — next time you have to suffer horrible quotidian female traumas, like being raped, beaten, or humiliated, just ask your hubby to hold your hand while he does it.
Goddamnit!! Is someone really going to try to block the HPV vaccine?? Surely no politician would be stupid enough to try and block medication beneficial to wom…oh yeah, Plan B, right. Never mind!! (Twisty, my apologies for the elipses; I know you hate them!). Is there nothing we can do to stop the theocratic, sexist godbags???!!!
Hell, the risk of pregnancy doesn’t even stop teens from having sex. I doubt many teenaged girls are even aware that HPV causes most cervical cancers. This is just further proof that godbag thinking on the topic of sex bears no relationship to reality.
How do I hate these people? Let me count the ways!
“Is there nothing we can do to stop the theocratic, sexist godbags???!!!”
As long as people insist on using Internet Explorer, probably not.
You’re wrong on this, Twisty. The Godbags don’t want to ban the vaccine because they hate women. They want to ban it because they hate sex, and the lives of women are a small price to pay to make sex less attractive, even if only theoretically. Hence, the Godbags scorn and discount women who, after all, were responsbile for man’s fall from grace in the first place — the evil temptresses.
Glad I could clear that up for you.
Tom, I fail to see how your argument contradicts my thesis. In a patriarchy, women are synonymous with sex. Hating one is the same is hating the other. Glad I could clear that up for you.
Twisty:
Sorry about the Internet Explorer. I contribute from my computer at work, and thus don’t have a choice of browser.
By the way, does anyone else see a symbolic parallel between the death of Coretta Scott King and the confirmation of Alito? Her death ended a watershed chapter in the fight for civil rights; Alito’s confirmation will be a watershed in just ending civil rights.
Kelley, I don’t blame you for IE. I blame the whatchamacallit.
Yeah, right: when I was a sexually active teenager, I didn’t think “Oh, wait! I could get an STD! Better not have sex!” What I thought was: “Better use a condom!”
That’s right: threatening teenaged girls with viruses is NOT going to stop them from having sex, if that’s what they’ve decided to do. (And let’s face it: HPV is pretty low on the teenaged radar, compared with 1. Pregnancy; and 2. HIV) And I suspect that the corrolary is also true: taking away the threat of a potentially deadly virus is not going to prod all the girls who are currently savin’ it to go out boink everything in sight. Unlike the folks who see eternal punishment as the only reason to avoid doing anything (and what kind of fucked-up version of spirituality is that anyway?), some people make decisions based on other factors.
Alito’s being confirmed today (the Democrats failed); Wendy Wasserstein died yesterday (I will mourn); and now the HPV vaccine has become a religious right call-to-arms? Twisty, how far away are we from the Handmaid’s Tale? Abject misery is obviously our lot, we should all just get married and start feeding them slow doses of arsenic.
just a note: i emailed a note of complaint to newscientist about that graphic.
i’ll update you on any response if you want me to.
I just went to the New Scientist website and complained to the editor about the pic. The more I think about it, the madder I get. Using sex to “sell” their cancer information? How sick is THAT?
every day we are indeed faster approaching a world resembling that of the handmaid’s tale. tom, you moron, when the godbags say that they are going to deny hundreds of millions of women a preventative for a very nasty cancer, they aren’t saying that they hate sex, they’re definitely saying that they hate women. cervical cancer personally touches my life, unfortunately, but all i can do is keep fighting for women’s rights and supporting a wonderful blog like this. keep up the great work, twisty, i love you and continue to root for you!
I have repeatedly wondered about the use of the word “hate”. Thing is, it’s hard for me to use the word “hate” when the policies and behaviours in question have an instrumental view of women. That is to say, their negative effects on women are justified via some exterior good (whether you agree with it or not). It’s hard for me to conflate instrumentalization with “hate” as it is commonly used, since hate implies that the destruction is justified in itself, rather than for some explicit purpose.
That said, I understand you use the word “hate” to get a particular effect. But I wonder if it clouds the issue a bit.
Quoth Spinat Teig in #4: “can someone please succinctly explain to me why this is a patriarchy problem? i think it is a godbag problem. godbags aren’t trying to spite women by forcing them to get cervical cancer, they’re spiting sexually active hetero couples (including men), hoping the existence of diseases will make them less promiscuous.”
Patriarchy depends for its existence on male cohesion. Control of females is paramount to this. The godbaggery to which you allude emerges from patriarchy, not the other way around. Godbags are just patriarchy’s minions. There are other minions, too. Like left wing guys who think abortion is a fringe issue. Like ExxonMobil. Like that design magazine with the pussy cover. Like TV.
Don’t these godbags understand their virtuous children can be RAPED? Even if they were correct in their godbag assumptions, they should still get their SONS AND DAUGHTERS vaccinated.
I swear, sometimes I think there is something wrong with the groundwater in the towns that breed these godbags. It’s fucking brain damage.
Mandos, the word “hate” my cloud the issue for essentialist men, who may see the word merely as the opposite of “love”, but I promise you, it precisely describes the situation from a woman’s point of view.
If you prefer, I could say “men enjoy higher status than women and go to great lengths to preserve it, even when those lengths often injure or kill women in the process.” Do you not concede the hostility innate in this behavior? Is it not the very definition of malice?
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…
Even though this topic makes me want to cry, I still love you, Twisty, and I’m glad you are writing about it.
Those utter, utter fuckers. How is it that some folks see it as their responsibility to paint their particular beliefs writ large on 1/2 the world?
I agree with Twisty that the majority of men actively despise women to the point of hate or else this world would look a lot different, but Mandos has a point.
It’s hard to muster up enough emotion to hate an object or a fly that’s buzzing in your face, mostly you just step past them sure in your ability to ignore them to your content. For some men, hate is more emotional investment than they concern themselves with when it comes to the women they see as objects and annoying gnats.
Susan Faludi’s book “Stiffed” explores how some men displace their anger at themselves, their jobs, their lives in general onto women. Many of these men really hate women, but some hate themselves, their jobs, and their lives more and take it out on everything around them, including women.
Wow. That photo on the New Scientist is making me so sad. My mother is fuzzy headed and in mourning about her hair because it reminds her of being a victim on so many levels. Today is her last chemo, she is refusing to do the second course because the numbers don’t change much.
I’m with Laughingmuse, this post is making me want to cry. The loss of Wendy Wasserstain, and now Coretta Scott King is not helping. Too much loss for less than a 24-hour period. Sharoni - unfortunately we seem to move closer and closer to the fiction of A Handmaiden’s Tale.
Did you see the article linked on Suburban Guerilla that women are dying of dehydration in Iraq because they don’t want to go to the latrine after dark for fear of getting raped?
The article on the rape epidemic carried this bromide, that some of the victims were “drug users or prostitutes whose lifestyles make their cases difficult to prosecute.” Men do hate women, and they teach women to hate themselves. Women are oppressed, used, degraded, defiled and generally turned into slave labor (in the name of “love” no less) and anyone, ANYONE I SAY, in their right mind, who was treated like this would perceive such treatment as hostile. I do. Sorry, that “men don’t hate women” thing that Mandos was tryint to push got to me.
Twisty, not to get too far away from our abject worship of your ongoing crusade, I hope you are feeling better, I hope your treatment is going as well as possible, and I hope you can continue this fight for a long time to come.
Who cares about the semantics, hate, ignore, Godbagize whatever. There’s actually a vaccine that can stop a cancer that only affects women and some nutty men and probably women don’t want to see girls vaccinated.
What they’re really saying is that they want women to continue to die from cervical cancer in the service of men’s desire for sex whenever they want from whomever they want it. If that ain’t patriarchy what the hell is.
(That being said, I totally agree that it’s Hate, Twisty, but am tired of some people missing the forest for the trees).
If you prefer, I could say “men enjoy higher status than women and go to great lengths to preserve it, even when those lengths often injure or kill women in the process.†Do you not concede the hostility innate in this behavior? Is it not the very definition of malice?
You may be right. I often use the word “malice” in just such a similar way (and I usually take it to mean something different from “hate” but let’s not quibble about that). The thing is that you could claim that any attempt to sustain a higher status than others is simply evidence of “hate”. If you believe that a certain order of things is “right” and “proper” (and many women believe it, as I’m sure you know), then you’re allowing people to come to harm for a Greater Benefit.
“Hate” suggests, at the very minimum, a conscious desire to do harm, or even, to use your definition (of which, as I said, I’m not certain), a conscious knowledge that one is trying to sustain privilege over others at others extreme expense. It might have been true for ancient Greek men who explicitly wrote and knew what they did to women and the evil in it and supported doing it anyway. But most men (and women) in our time really don’t have this conscious understanding of their actions, so the use of the word “hate” suggests an overt intent to do harm.
I’ve recently been reading a novel in which a female character is cursed by her hostile sister to be able to read continually the mind of a nice young man who lusts after her, but only in his mind (ie, initially, he never acts it out). For much of the novel, she’s being continually sexually harassed, effectively, and he’s largely oblivious of her experience of it, even though he eventually finds out about the bond. After that point in the story, it’s hard for me to say that he “hates” her, even though his thoughts do her harm, and he is, I guess, responsible for them. I thought that was an apt metaphor.
To the HPV thing, I’ve been dealing with it up close and personal for awhile now. I now have 2 strains of cancer causing HPV, both of which were given to me by men. But here’s the part that pisses me off the most, the medical establishment doesn’t even TEST men for HPV, although they could do so easily enough by tweaking a DNA test.
I’m still recovering from surgery over HPV going cancer and here I am a half cervix lighter knowing that the medical establishment has known about this since the late 1800’s when they understood that cloistered nuns didn’t get cervical cancer at all. It took them this long to bother researching it enough to even come up with a vaccine.
Anyway, to avoid cluttering up Twisty’s blog with my own redundant experiences with HPV and surgery, here’s the link for anyone that may be interested. I’ve chronicled my entire experience from that post on up to the surgery and recovery.
Yes, men hate women, or at the very least, are completely apathetic to them. Even in our so-called unbiased medical community women remain nonexistent until some asshole decides that maybe there is money to be made off of them afterall.
Damn, I HATE the Patriarchy.
Okay, I agree, men don’t hate women per se.
But you know, it’s also true that Hitler didn’t hate Jews. I believe he said several times throughout his life that he didn’t. Poor old Hitler couldn’t even go fox hunting or bear to watch it because it was so horribly inhumane & he was such a sensitive guy.
Ah but Hitler was conscious of what he did. I mean, it’s quite possible that he lived in a bubble, but I doubt it. Honestly, though, most people live in compartmentalized bubbles, including most of Focus on the Family. They honestly believe that what they’re doing will *help* women, because they believe that they can banish teh sex.
Are you saying, Mandos, that you don’t think Hitler did what he did out of some desire to bring glory to the Fatherland? That he just hated Jews and queers and redheaded stepchildren?
[quote]Are you saying, Mandos, that you don’t think Hitler did what he did out of some desire to bring glory to the Fatherland? That he just hated Jews and queers and redheaded stepchildren?[/quote]
From what I understand, I think he thought that They Did Something To Him and that there was something fundamentally wrong with their existence.
I admin there are probably men who consciously think there is something profoundly wrong with the existence of women, but I seriously doubt that it is the preponderance of even overt patriarchy, even such caricatured extremes as the Taliban. I mean, even Hitler didn’t want to exterminate women as such: he simply wanted them to have a lot of babies, and thought that German women having babies was good for German women, since what was good for the nation-state was good for the people in his ideology.
Hitler also said that Jews would be just fine if only there was some way to provide them with completely different brains. THIS is what I think the preponderance of men in our country, and especially the Godbags, currently believe about women. Those who have already chosen to become a vastly reduced caricature of a human being are just fine - those who have not would be just fine if only they could get with the program.
In other words, men hate (and more importantly, fear, which is an emotion that bugs them far more than hate) an actual, independent, free-thinking woman. Is that different from hating women as a class? Not to me it isn’t.
“Germaine Greer says women have no idea how much men hate them. I’ve been doing my best to spread the word, but let’s face it; I’m just a churlish tree falling in the forest. With no pope taking a shit nearby to hear me, I might as well be espousing tube tops to Godly Josh.”
Best paragraph I’ve read by anyone anywhere in a long, long time.
You rule!!
(how could I hate you?)
Men as a class also think there is something fundamentally wrong with women as a class. Such that men are the default when we think “human being.” There’s all that original sin crap, and the fact of our being “unclean” all the time, and that we’re stupider than men, and hysterical, and unfit to rule or manage or lead or do anything, really, except spread’em and incubate and clean toilets. We are essentially slaves, Mandos. In order to feel good about enslaving us, men have had to convince themselves that we are subhuman, and deserving of this contempt. Call it whatever you want. “Hate” suits me fine.
I collected the following ads for penis enlargement that were sent to my Hotmail inbox in part because at the time I was arguing with people giving men the same misguided benefit of the doubt Mandos is giving them and I thought otherwise. These ads show some serious hatred of women that men, not Hitler-like men just men, have for women, women’s bodies, and women’s sexuality because if ad come-ons like this repulsed most men instead of attracting them the ads would have been discontinued instead of being spammed to me daily.
A lot of times men are selfish and careless, and a lot more times they’re getting their dicks hard at the thought of hurting women sexually.
Make Her Suffocate on your Thick Stick
Take Your Massive Size Cock and Rip Her Apart
Make That Slut Suck On Your Huge Love Muscle
Make That Slut Suck On Your Brimming Sized Knob
Choke Her With Your Brimming Sized Knob
Gag Her With Your Voluminous Cock Size
Make Her Swallow While She’s On Top Of Your Thick Stick
Break Walls Apart With Your Humungous Knob
Shatter Her Vagina With Your Monster Prick
Split Her Slit with your Huge Husky
Make Her Choke On Your Huge Knob
Make Her Gag On Your Monster Size Member
Make Her Suffocate On Your Fat Johnson
Make Her Bleed After You Smack Her Cock-pit
I worked a Christmas-rush nightshift temp job sorting packages at UPS back in the mid 70’s. There was an interesting assortment of guys, both real teamsters and us holiday extras. We ate “lunch” at 3am, up on the balcony by the vending machines. One temp guy I sometimes ended up sitting with was a taciturn fellow who I somehow learned had a half-dozen children and was working UPS as a second job. He never said much. One night, sitting across from me at lunch, he looked up and said with sudden fierce intensity “a woman’s cunt is the gates to hell”—and said no more. Hate is the right word.
Hitler thought Jews were a vermin, a social infection that he needed to extirpate. If he could have found a way to breed future aryans off men, he would have exterminated all the women as well.
Once again, thank you for the unsexy cancer picture. Can we also have some unsexy rape pictures, please? Or some unsexy pictures illustrating female sexual dysfunction (TM)? Or a picture illustrating money worries that doesn’t feature a blonde woman with fine lines round her eyes, sitting at a kitchen table with a Fisher-Price calculator?
Actually, even an unsexy picture of “women in a man’s world” would be kind of nice. You know, a female CEO who isn’t trussed up in a “power” suit, or a female firefighter who’s wearing more than just the helmet… Well, I can dream.
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…it must be a penguin!
Seriously, this doesn’t even surprise me. I know it would be different if it affected boys/men as well, then it wouldn’t be being protested by godbags. (They do realise that you can get it from a man you may happen to be married to, right?)
Yes - some men really, really hate women. Matter of fact I wrote an article about it, posted that article on Kos, and was attacked from all sides. My follow up, on Misogyny was treated the same way. With the Supreme Court now composed of a majority of narrow-minded bigots (and yes, I include Thomas in that statement) women’s ownership of their own bodies is about to take center stage. Not just reproductive rights, folks; along with banning the HPV vaccine, women will begin to see other things evaporate as well - such as any and all research into their specific health problems, or insurance covering things like pregnancy and birth.
LCGillies - what that co-worker of yours said pretty much nails the view. All I can think of is that one sequence in Pink Floyd’s The Wall - the woman’s murderous cunt devouring and destroying everything male. It made me angry then, and it still pisses me off that, if anything - attitudes have deteriorated.
And Twisty - you got yourself another Koufax nomination. Congratulations. It was much deserved. You do very good work.
It’s like flowers after a rain, to see all the little posts pop up claiming that men don’t really actually, in the strict definition of hate that I claim to be the universal and incontrovertable meaning of the ideal manifestation of hate as an abstract concept utilized in a space/time constraint, hate women.
And I understand the slight wince that can lead to a quick scroll down to the comment box whenever men are used as a category and you are yourself in that category. I feel it every time.
Yet I myself hate men as much as men seem to hate women, possibly more. Since I never really learned to play the man game myself, I feel like a woman in certain subtle ways, and I think that the dehumanization and hate men have for women is also held for men like me, though my camoflage as a biological male is very good for avoiding direct attacks of certain kinds. So I can agree that men hate women, while denying that I hate women. I totally blame the patriarchy for any vestiges of hate for women I may have buried in my well-trained soul, too.
The words I hate men never seem to appear anywhere on this blog, isn’t that kind of strange? Kind of non-patriarchal? I say it all the time; I’ve been saying it all my life. I’ve always hated them, even though I love many individual men.
if ad come-ons like this repulsed most men instead of attracting them the ads would have been discontinued instead of being spammed to me daily
Those ads in Sam’s post are incredibly creepy and chilling. As are Twisty’s links and much of this discussion. Not too surprising that Mike Godwin and his trusty Law leapt in as early as post #30 this time around. Some days Reality just depresses the hell out of me.
Dude,
Aren’t they going to give the HPV vacine to boys and men also? I’d imagine that if its good for the goose its good for the gander. Granted men can’t get cervical cancer but they can pass HPV to women. Shouldn’t they give it to all babies? Wouldn’t it help protect women even more? Surely men don’t want to be running around with HPV anyway.
Is this a trap to get me to admit that I am in favor of female teenage boning?
You need to turn the tables on this one. Market it as an anti-terrorism measure: this vaccine will allow this country to produce more little while babies to counter all of those brown babies being made.
In my universe, love and hate are two sides of the same coin. Meaning, to really “hate” something you need to care about it enough to love it. So, it stands to (my) reason that if men hate women, they’re at least they’re capable of loving them.
Small comfort, eh?
Hey, and all those spam ads that Sam got were just those for the um, “Vanilla” sex crowd… :p
Speaking of sexbot ads for things unrelated to sex, what’s with the headless titty flasher ad at Pandagon? It leads to a supposedly liberal blog.
Violet Socks mentioned it on a thread at Pandagon, but I don’t think Amanda or anybody else responded to it.
Is that what it means to be sex-positive?
You focus on godbags too much. Just look at the godbag’s more enlightened and liberated counterpart, who champions women’s rights all the time- you know, a woman’s right to work in the sex industry, or not wear a bra, or walk around topless, or the “choice” to become a prostitute, or wear revealing clothing, etc. They’re practically feminists!
Just look at the godbag’s more enlightened and liberated counterpart, who champions women’s rights all the time…
And it’s also true that Republicans DO believe in a woman’s right to control her own body!
i can’t understand how a vaccine can be a moral problem. polio used to maim and kill a lot of people — i knew only one person who ever had polio, and it was a mild case and an anomoly, because *everyone* was immunized. presumably, polio could be spread by immoral means, but if anyone argued that as a reason against polio immunization, they have been relegated to the dustbins of history.
germs are a public health issue — not a religious issue. germs don’t care how they get spread. it matters not whether the new host person is innocent as the day is long, or the opposite. babies have gotten HIV from blood transfusions. devoted spouses have gotten STD’s from less devoted spouses, or evil persons. so now that we know a germ can cause cancer, and it can be spread sexually, the smart and scientific and human thing to do is — not make this a religious issue.
dharma, i am so sorry about your mom. hope you and she have much support and love.
mandos — can’t a conscious disregard amount to hate? sure, the disregarder doesn’t see it so, but aren’t the effects the same? “this isn’t my issue, so i won’t worry” — if *that* tips things toward not protecting kids against a known cancer cause with a simple shot, well, then we are a pretty pathetic bunch.
I think the reference to Hitler was a valid one. Hitler didn’t exterminate Jews because he hated them that much. He exterminated Jews,because it was an expediante way to gain power. And what was the purpose of gaining this power-to feed the vanity of Hitler, the Nazis and the German people at the expense of the Jews. To sacrifice the Jewish people at the alter of German pride which had been diminished by the loss of WWI. And that is what is so shocking about the godbags and the patriarchy. They do what they do to women not so much out of hate,but out of vanity. There is a saying-a woman is afraid that a man will kill her, a man is afraid a woman will humiliate him. Men diminish women, in order to diminish the female’s power to humiliate them. (And fathers in a patriarchy will humiliate their sons as well to feed their male vanity, creating sons full of hate and fear of humiliation). And beyond the smoke and mirrors that is what is at the heart of patriarchy-the vanity of old men. Pathetic.
I can’t understand how a vaccine can be a moral problem.
But don’t you want to run right out and roll around in rusty nails just as soon as you get a tetnaus shot?
And besides, do we generally have to tell children why they’re getting a vaccination? No. We take them to the Dr. and they get their shots. We don’t tell a 9-year-old “Now you can go out and have all the sex you want because now you won’t get cancer from sex.” We tell them you’re going to get vaccinated, they takes their shot, rubs their arm and it’s done. BUT NO, THESE PEOPLE WOULD RATHER SEE THEIR DAUGHTERS DIE FROM HAVING SEX WITH ANY GODBAG ASSHOLE THAT COMES ALONG.
If this is not hostility toward women and just another way to keep them subjugated to the male imperative (being able to stick it in any time they want) I don’t know what is.
Twisty, you rock!
the issue becomes free of any extraneous talk of the real meaning of the word hate and hitler’s motivations when you get to the bare facts of the matter:
they oppose a vaccine that prevents women’s deaths
so it’s pretty straight forward - are you for women dying or are you against women dying?
When I sent Twisty that link, I’d just spent two days walking around in a daze, wondering where all the outrage was about this story. Every time someone said hello to me, I answered “Barnaby Joyce is a turd”.
The thing that makes the steam escape from my ears is him saying:
“There might be an overwhelming (public) backlash from people saying, ‘don’t you dare put something out there that gives my 12-year-old daughter a licence to be promiscuous’,” he said.
Senator Joyce - who has four daughters - said he would be “personally very circumspect” about giving such a vaccine to girls who were too young to cope with the potential consequences of sexual activity. ”
A licence to be promiscuous? For a 12 year old? In our country, a 12 year old having sex is being raped. But not in whatever planet Barnaby Joyce is living on. On his planet the 12-year-old girl is leading that poor man astray.
If there’s any consolation for this story, it’s that he tried to retract his comments a day or so later (he said he was taken out of context - he says he was only reporting what ’some people’ in society might say, not referring to his own views - though this doesn’t explain the reference to his own daughters.
Another consolation is that it’s not going to happen. The drug will be quietly made available.
The final consolation is that the RU-486 debate should be resolved next week. Up until now, a deal between the Australian Prime Minister and a Christian senator who used to hold the balance of power, has meant that RU-486 is not available to women in Australia. The current Health Minister (a friend of the fetus) is trying to keep it that way, but after a huge debate (which included such patriarchy-blaming side shows as the Greens submitting that Viagra be studied for side effects and withdrawn if it’s as unsafe as RU-486, too, and also a study be done comparing the health consequences to a woman of NOT taking RU-486 - ie staying pregnant!), it’s going to a ‘conscience vote’ next week. ‘Conscience vote’ is the Prime Minister’s way of saying he’s lost control of his party on this issue, and that, male and female, they will vote against him, whether he wants it or not (this way he looks like a great leader, and also as though he has a conscience).
Liz
If this is not hostility toward women and just another way to keep them subjugated to the male imperative (being able to stick it in any time they want) I don’t know what is.
So we have two themes here: hostility…and instrumentalism (the “male imperative”). Assuming this is true, I can’t really reconcile one with the other.
I guess my problem (and my fixation with the issue) comes from the fact that I tend to view these things—oppression—in material and “economic” terms. The first thing I ask is “Who is getting (or once got) benefit out of what?” Particularly things that happen between classes, since what Twisty means by “Men Hate You”, I presume, is that “the cultural entity produced by the class of men is an expression of hatred towards the cultural object representing the class of women.” If you say, “X hates Y” in that sense, then the first thing I think is, “What’s X getting out of hating Y?” ie, how does the instrumentality of hatred for Y benefit X?
What people are saying here appears to be that instrumentalization is hatred. But then I say, “What is X getting out of that?” That I can ask that question suggests that hatred and instrumentalization aren’t the same thing.
Now people may be tempted to say, “Mandos Mandos Mandos. You are semantically quibbling again. This hardly matters to the reality of oppression.” Perhaps, I am guilty, yes. But I really do think it’s important to differentiate between active emotional states and states of exploitation, because materially different solutions to the problem are achieved by searching through these different spaces.
Ah! ah! ah!!!!!
i keep hearing about this vaccine thing . . . if there were a vaccine that would PREVENT prostate cancer, we’d all have fucking gotten it by now. That this is EVEN AN ARGUMENT is so frightening and disgusting especially because condoms do not prevent the spread of HPV and there’s almost no way to test for the virus in men (who can also be affected by it).
I am spitting with rage (as a woman who has had the traumatic experience of seeing her own cervix on TV for a colposcopy, prior to which I had no idea how HPV was transmitted, what it could do, or even what it was).
“’What’s X getting out of hating Y?’ ie, how does the instrumentality of hatred for Y benefit X?â€
Excuse me while I whip this out:
Men use women’s bodies in prostitution and gang rape to communicate with each other, to express what they have in common. And what they have in common is that they are not her. -Andrea Dworkin
So we have two themes here: hostility…and instrumentalism (the “male imperativeâ€). Assuming this is true, I can’t really reconcile one with the other.
Well, maybe they’re two separate stages. When Y stays in Y’s place, Y instrumentalized but not necessarily treated with hostility - maybe condescending affection.
If Y forgets where Y “belongs,” if Y gets uppity (which X can define pretty much however X wants to), X will feel and express immense hostility towards Y. At that point it’s safe to say X hates Y; X is terrified that Y will cease to serve X and angry at Y’s presumption, etc., etc., etc. The hostility itself is instrumental; it’s meant to push Y back into Y’s place.
That’s where we are with women and the HPV vaccine, I’d say. It’s a punish-the-sluts move. If women were good and pure, we would all fulfil our duty to be virginal before marriage and monogamous after it. And quite possibly, if women were good and pure and devoted, we could MAKE men - all men - want to be monogamous too (not to mention that we could force them to be chaste if we all refused to have sex without marriage - not that they actually WANT that, you know, but it makes for a good excuse). So good, pure, devoted wives don’t get HPV *anyway,* so the only women who could benefit from the vaccine are irresponsible, selfish women who want to avoid being justly punished for their evil slutty behaviour.
That’s my best guess at how this thinking works. Of course I’m a smidge tired at the moment.
Men use women’s bodies in prostitution and gang rape to communicate with each other, to express what they have in common. And what they have in common is that they are not her. -Andrea Dworkin
You will forgive me if I note that this is rather circular—or extremely deterministic.
If they need to express that they are “not her”, then we can obviously conclude that “hatred” is involved somewhere, since why else would you need to express that? This is certainly the sense that Dworkin would have meant it. Then I can simply ask again, how does the instrumentality of hatred benefit men? Since all it’s doing here, if we take Sam’s Dworkin quote in the context of this thread, is to express that the instrumentality of women is to express hatred… circularly ad infinitum.
The other interpretation in this context is the one that Dworkin would almost certainly not have intended. ie, that since men have a reproductive situation in common, and that reproductive situation doesn’t lend itself to the forms of solidarity that, say, childbearing does, men use rape to establish a common means of levelling that disadvantage. Or something like that—that is necessarily deterministic and precludes any meaningful sense of “hatred”.
So either way, I don’t think it establishes a hatred-instrumentality connection.
mandos, mandos, mandos — what are you saying? if kids can’t get their cancer-preventing shots [because some people are worried they might become, ya know, promiscuous], isn’t that a bad thing?
is the bad thing better if it isn’t labelled “hate?” fine, it’s not hate, it’s stupidity. it is still bad. agreed?
As I said, I think it matters what kind of bad we’re talking about.
these religious freaks all live in a fairytale world where men are virgins until marriage…
except in 20 years of actually being a real live christian(i am no longer), i never met a man who boasted about having waited till marriage to do the deed.
the utter and complete hypocrisy/double standard makes my blood boil.
Of course these godbags never seem to get the idea that a woman can be completely virtuous and godly, even by their Talaban definitions of virtuous and godly, and she can STILL get STDs!
From her husband!
This has been the GIANT GAPING HOLE in all the Africa anti-aids bullshit aimed at getting people to be virginal until marriage and then be monogomous.
Guess who gets to be virginal, monogamous AND INFECTED? You guessed it! Women. Men don’t give two shits in a society where women really don’t have other economic choices - just being men, you know!
I get so fucking sick of all the patriarchal bullshit concepts of effecting social control through controlling women because “men” have “rights” and “men” can’t “control themselves”. Fuck.
Firefly, your comment was right on:
There is a saying-a woman is afraid that a man will kill her, a man is afraid a woman will humiliate him. Men diminish women, in order to diminish the female’s power to humiliate them. (And fathers in a patriarchy will humiliate their sons as well to feed their male vanity, creating sons full of hate and fear of humiliation). And beyond the smoke and mirrors that is what is at the heart of patriarchy-the vanity of old men. Pathetic.
When I read that, I did a quick run-through of recent run-ins with patriarchal men, and this really does get at the heart of the preponderance of the issues, by a large margin. You’ve just given me a whole new way of thinking about current relationships.
As has this whole blog, actually. Keep it up, Twisty.
Look Mandos, that shit may matter to the opressor, it ain’t shit to the opressed. Get it?
In my personal experience of hating people, let’s say my stepmother, for example, there is ZIPPO instrumentality to it. Not only do I not benefit, I also don’t cause all that much harm to the person(s) that I hate. All I really do with it is waste a lot of time and energy on bad feelings and resentful memories that would be better spent in some other way.
The hatred that a lot of men have for women is very much along the same lines, and it bothers me not at all if they waste a bunch of time hating my class. The question is why, why, WHY are these people getting elected so that suddenly they have some power to treat their hate as more than just a stupid hobby? How can it possibly be that we are now rewarding pols who do NOTHING but demonize women as their primary way of getting into & office & staying there?
Getting back to my personal example, it occurs to me that I have never had the guts to indulge in fantasies of taking revenge on my stepmother myself - I’m a peaceful kind of gal after all. But it is very, very satisfying to think that someone else might harm her for reasons that can’t really be linked to me.
I may regret this, but - what is your definition of instrumentality anyway? Does it have anything whatsoever to do with how human thought processes actuallly work, or is it just a framework for interpreting stuff, and if the truth doesn’t fit the model then you need to try a different perspective on the truth until it does?
so with you, thebewilderness.
look — i have a 17 year old daughter, who really hates high school and wants to move on. and an 18 year old son. we found a pill in son’s room recently — it wasn’t to get high, as we feared — it was for herpes. we like his young girlfriend, too. they all more or less drive me nuts, but i don’t think any of them should die, or watch their friends die unnecessarily.
i have a vested interest in my kids’ health — nearly 2 decades of loving and sacrificing for them does that. everyone can sort out all the super-duper-intellectual points later, but it would be a good idea to vaccinate my own personal kids,immediately or sooner.
An illustration of hate.
http://www.pamspaulding.com/weblog/2006/01/women-in-uniform-die-to-avoid-rape-by.html
Look Mandos, that shit may matter to the opressor, it ain’t shit to the opressed. Get it?
I’m sorry that you feel that way, but I do think that meanings matter. The American “Right” has gained ascendency partly because it has a very clean set of definitions, and in fact an entire industry where people are paid to generate meaning for them.
Apparently dry intellectual exercises may seem frustrating, I understand, though.
I’m sorry that you feel that way, but I do think that meanings matter. The American “Right†has gained ascendency partly because it has a very clean set of definitions
Note that “clean set of definitions” does not mean “lots of tight definitions creating 20,000 shades ‘o meaning pidgeon holes. That’s for those pointy headed poindexters who don’t know how to service clients. Aint got time for that!
Clean set = small set. Simple. Grandiose.
i’m all for dry intellectual exercises, mandos, but not while the subjects are living in my house. the subjects in my house tend to be wet, messy, opinionated, loud, and messy, and also they leave junk around, such as dirty dishes. mostly they do that to prove they are not hypothetical. i think they have convincing arguments, and i’d be glad to send them over, should you need convincing.
“Hate†suggests, at the very minimum, a conscious desire to do harm, or even, to use your definition (of which, as I said, I’m not certain), a conscious knowledge that one is trying to sustain privilege over others at others extreme expense.”
Does it really, though? I thought Twisty was pretty clear - they may love the woman, or particular women, but hate, or look down upon, that which makes them women. It seems to me you’re splitting hairs for your own comfort.
“You will forgive me if I note that this is rather circular—or extremely deterministic.”
No, actually I won’t.
It’s the root of elitisim - you are picked because you are not one of the “not picked.” The circular reasoning is in the social structure, not Dworkin’s analysis of it.
“But I really do think it’s important to differentiate between active emotional states and states of exploitation…”
Sorry, but I don’t feel it’s my place to assure supposedly progressive men that I don’t mean them personally when I speak of the Patriarchy. If Twisty was speaking at the Democratic Convention, you may have a point; otherwise, stop taking everything so personally or stop expecting us to split hairs for your comfort - either will do.
“….because materially different solutions to the problem are achieved by searching through these different spaces. ”
Um, yeah - which is why it’s important to not sweep the fact that Men hate Women under the rug. Otherwise we may end up addressing only the symptoms, not the root cause.
Guys tend to descend into “definitions” and pretty much avoid talking about the subject at hand. I’ve seen it over and over.
As a woman, I’d have to agree that there are plenty of men out there who truly hate women.
I’m too tired to read all the comments here, so apologies if this has been brought up before, but I really do think it’s wrong to say men treat women like objects; they treat women worse.
While in this particular case it can be argued that the motive of the scumbags is not hatred but a kind of cold instrumentality, I find that in most cases the actions of the Patriarchy make no sense when you assume they see women as property.
Look at rape, for example. If women were seen as property, then there would be severe penalties for rape and vigourous prosecution of rapists (At least outside of marriage). After all, in the most patriarchal societies, a woman who has been raped is less desirable then one who hasn’t.
This means that when a man rapes a single woman, her father has been cheated out of a dowry, out of property he spent a lot of time and money to produce. In many cases, it’s the same with the husband; His wife has to be punished for the rape, which means that he no longer has a cooking, cleaning, sexbot.
And yet, in these societies we find that there is almost no interest in prosecuting or preventing rapes. Often it’s only the woman who is punished while the rapist goes free. This behavior makes no sense if women are simply pieces of property.
Thus, I can only conclude that there is something deeper at work, a loathing and hatred for women, at the root of the patriarchy.
How do men hate us? Let me count the ways: they hate the way we drive, yet when our insurance premiums are lower than theirs they say it’s because we drive “like women”–i.e. not all manly and tough, the way men drive. They hate our bleeding cunts until they become non-bleeding cunts, at which point our cunts might as well not exist. They hate our baby-bearing wombs so much that when we’re done bearing their babies they’re happy to surgically remove them. They hate our tears. They hate and fear our laughter. They “allow” us our little temper tantrums, until the tantrums turn into honest rage, at which point we become churlish bitches. They hate our bodies so much they use every instrument known to man in order to rape, mutilate, torture, and murder us. Men only really love women’s bodies when they look the way men think they should look, and are safely in some man’s possession. Men hate and rape and kill women when they’re still little girls. They hate and rape and kill women when they’re teenagers, when they’re middle-aged, and even when they’re old. They hate women who won’t fuck them. They hate women who will.
I could just rage on and on. There is not a woman in existence who doesn’t, in her inner-most honest place, know that men hate women. Even the most patriarchy-placating, anti-choice, bible-clutching sister out there knows that in order to survive she must cultivate a woman-hating man’s tolerance and affection.
Christopher, that’s how I would see it.
The notion that women can control men’s reactions to us (sexual and otherwise) is quite old and it is pretty clearly based in fear. There seems to be a basic understanding that women have to be restricted and punished in order to keep us in our “natural” place.
Mandos:
Why hate? Why not just indifference? What does hate give to misogynists?
Hate makes insecure people feel better about themselves. People who are actively involved in cognitive dissonance in their lives tend to externalize their helplessness. This turns to anger and hate.
(It is also easier to actively hate someone who can’t, on average, turn around and pulp your face to smithereens.)
——————–
Also - and this is my personal take - it is easy to never grow up and deal with your relationship with your mother, who is a legitimate person to project yourself onto when you’re a very small child. Kids see everyone as objects. It’s healthy. Mothers tend to do more childcare. They’re more objectified right off the bat.
Unfortunately, men never really have to learn that their mom’s a person, in order to establish their own identity: there’s less rebellion son to mother.
If you dislike yourself as a child, you’ll take it out on mom. Healthy child behaviour.
If you dislike yourself as a MAN, it’s an easy transfer from mom to lover to women.
This is why, I think, there’s a lot of whiny temper tantrums in the discussions of misogynists.
Oh! Oh!
I think I should write a letter absolutely agreeing with the restriction of this vaccine. But I, (equal opportunity godbag), would like to take it further! NO ACCESS TO ANTIBIOTICS FOR Syphilis and Gonnorhea! Oh yah, godbags! Syphillitic Godbags. Amen and Hallelujah!
Wow. After all of those comments, I just want to remind folks:
*Insurance companies were willing to uniformly cover Viagra (and similar meds) before birth control pills in prescription plans.
*There is still nothing on the market in the way of a “little blue pill” to help women with their “sexual dysfunction.”
No wonder the patriarchy in charge doesn’t want to support the HPV vaccine.
I think they just resent us for existing. For being people, instead of just cunts and tits that can be pulled off a tree and eaten when the mood strikes.
I’ve always said that their creation myth runs something like this:
At first, GOD created MAN. And then in order to keep MAN from getting bored, GOD created these nice juicy, jiggly chew-toys called cunts and tits. And MAN would just reach up and pull one off the tree when he got hungry or bored or horny.
Then, GOD played a nasty, cruel, mean joke on MAN — he attached brains to the cunts and tits, and now isntead of just being able to grab one when he wanted one, MAN had to contend with this stupid fucking other creature who seemed to think that the tits and cunts stuck to it belonged to IT. My GOD! They can’t just get one when they want one?! They have to pretend to give a crap about the stupid fucking brain attached to it now? That is just SO UNFAIR!
And all the hate comes from that. It’s a red-faced, miserable, vicious tantrum directed at women for existing, for being alive and aware instead of just being disembodied body parts. We’re not “loved” by them — we’re just the arbitrary, unfair obstacle course they have to negotiate in order to get to the parts they want.
Put simply — we’ve got something they want, and we’re in the way. When was the last time you loved/i> some stupid pointless obstacle that was in your way?
They do not love us. They are not capable of it — at most, they can tolerate us for unfairly existing while they sit and stew waiting for us to just hand over what’s rightfully theirs.
The unfairness of it all, I’m telling you.
They hate us for existing. I hate them for resenting my existence. The symmetry of the situation is not as it would appear at first glance.
“I guess my problemn (and my fixation with the issue) comes from the fact that I tend these things- oppression- in material and ‘economic’ terms.”
That is indeed your problem, Mandos… you have an extremely naive and simplistic view of human psychology. This kind of reasoning may have been acceptable when Engels was writing, but its been 105 years now since “The Interpretion of Dreams”, and we know far too much about the human mind to fall for the idea that the Khmer Rouge, “honor killings” or the rise of Calvinism can be explained away in terms of rational self-interest on the part of the perpetrators. We humans have never been primarily rational in our motivations, and never will be. My own speciality is domestic violence, and we know quite a bit about the pathology behind it, thank you… as indeed we know quite a bit about the roots of misogyny itself. Anteloupe is right… you’re stubbornly trying to apply your own model to a reality it doesn’t come close to fitting.
Anteloupe! I like that! I ehm zee anteloup-ay!
We humans have never been primarily rational in our motivations, and never will be. My own speciality is domestic violence, and we know quite a bit about the pathology behind it, thank you… as indeed we know quite a bit about the roots of misogyny itself. Anteloupe is right… you’re stubbornly trying to apply your own model to a reality it doesn’t come close to fitting.
Yes but you’re talking at an individual level and not at the level classes. Something that may be individually “irrational” can (and often is) be rational at level of classes at which Twisty says “Men Hate You”.
Oh, and I don’t believe we know all that much about the mind, in that I don’t think that behavioural psychology can be well-founded without a thorough understanding of cognition which we do not presently have.
Mandos - I’m way rusty on this stuff, but is this Bourdieux you’re following, more or less?
Twisty - maybe it’s just my computer - but the comment I put up earlier today says “still awaiting moderation”. Does that mean you didn’t get it, or do I need to change something in order to access your comment threads? And in case you didn’t get it - I wanted to say congrats on the new Koufax nod.
LMYC, I’ve read two of your posts, and now I totally have a crush on you. More, more!
Mandos, to flip back to the Dworkin quote. You ask how does the instrumentality of hatred benefit men?
It does so by reinforcing that men ARE NOT women, ie, the lesser, the expendable, the valueless OTHER. The hatred props up men’s view that they are the the shizznit and women are just shit.
That is how the benefit-ego stroking. Why is this news?
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:gtJhrfWKIzsJ:health.dailynewscentral.com/content/view/183/63 “HPV vaccine” “studied for first time in men”&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
Here girls, this will solve everything. The vaccine is being tested on men now to see how well it prevents genital warts and penile cancer in MEN.
Mandos in #57: “guess my problem (and my fixation with the issue) comes from the fact that I tend to view these things—oppression—in material and “economic†terms…etc”
OK, Mandos, knock it off with the chucking of semantic obstacles into the argument, already. Your’re saying the same thing, albeit a lot more eloquently and obfuscationally, as that Richard Ames guy–that in using the word “hate” I am being “shrill” (or as you put it in #18, that I’m using it for a “particular effect”).
The “effect” I’m going for is truth.
What do men get out of hating women? Patriarchy, dude. They get patriarchy. Entitlement, control, money, power, license to indulge their love of violence, a steady supply of pussy, and somebody to do their laundry. None of which pleasant benefits would be possible if women were not designated objects of contempt throughout all of human “civilization.”
Let’s hope for the HPV vaccine to come through, because the Godbags have apparently decided that low-income women need “crisis preganancy” propaganda centers more than they need routine pap smears: http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2006-01-27/pols_feature.html
Mandos, the book you mentioned way up there at post oh-I-don’t-know sounds very interesting. What is the title?
Thanks Twisty for # 92. That’s what I meant. And even if I HAD had my coffee at the time, I could not have said it that well. I will resume my place a “padawan” Blamer now and keep watching and listening.
Mandos: You’re making a false distinction… social pathologies tend to mirror individual ones, and vice versa. The views expressed by individiual rapists of their victims, for instance, are a haunting echo of the view of women one finds in the Confucian code, a fifteenth century manual for identifying witches, or a modern-day B.N.P politician. And yes, while human beings always resist losing privelage, that doesn’t explain why this brutal stratification happened in the first place, or- more to the point- why the same patriarchal fears towards women recur over and over again throughout history, and the most widely differing cultures.
Mandos, Mandos, Mandos.
Mandos #1: A difference that makes no difference is no difference.
Mandos #2: “Instrumental” my fine fat ass. Hate is instrumental. You can define hate as pure emotion limited to something totally self-indulgent, materially pointless, and gratuitous, but there’s no reason anyone should accept that definition without clear evidence or at least some semantic justification. Or you can say that’s the definition you’re arbitrarily using for a particular discussion, and I’d suggest starting your own discussion if that’s what you want.
Mandos #3: Once you’ve figured out what it is that men in general (and in particular, when they’re doing woman-hating things like, oh, honor killings, clinic bombings, assorted medical whimsies) are actually feeeeeeling, why, I think it’s clearly your task as a qualified analyst and parser of all things feely to go around and change that. It’s not our job to fix men. Really. I don’t even know how to work a Burdizzo or an Elastrator(tm). If you’re gonna be that subjective, this one’s all yours, son.
And no I haven’t failed to notice that there’s plenty of female collaboration in patriarchy. We’ll take that on when you’ve finished your part.
And Ron ties it up with a bow. Thanks, Ron.
And while I’m here let me throw in another thing: the idea that one must be consciously cynical in order to be guilty of an evil act is absurd from the philosophical point of view, and (again) ignores everything we know about the human mind. With domestic abusers for instance, the more seriously disturbed they are, the less ability they have to step outside their own, self-justifying narratives, and take responsility for what they’re doing. They’re hypnotized like a bird to a snake by the comforting thought that they’re the victims, and have a natural entitlement to treat others like objects. Often- and this is true of all kinds of neurosis- this turns into a downward spiral over time, til they reach the point where they simply can’t distinguish their own unconscious projections from reality. This obviously happened with both Hitler and his followers; its happening to-day with the American fundies; and you can find countless other examples in history, both from the lives of individuals and social movements.
Because they ‘hate’ women?
I don’t know…
It seems to me that it’s the indifference to the consequences that is the great harm here.
And the indifference of these ‘godbags’ is what seems to be the greater evil. I can cope with hate - at least there is an emotional investment that implies that the object of the hate has some value/worth.
But the sheer indifference to something or someone - and the resulting consequences of that indifference - is what I think is the great wrong being commited.
Nice points, Cass. The quality of the commenting around here is getting seriously world-class.