Decided to post my comment as a separate blog, also, since I put some serious time and thought into it. (FWIW: The younger generation of fathers now becoming more accessible to their children than the more traditional remoteness of fathers of the past will help significantly lessen the root of misogyny addressed below.):
Fascinating and illuminating book written decades ago, The Mermaid and the Minotaur, by Dorothy Dinnerstein iirc about the core issues of the relationship of men and women.
Women whose identity is based on their same gender mommy are compelled to work to be like her, to emulate her and her bonding and caretaking and empathy nurturing the family. They have a close up adult human role model to pull their identity from. Accessible and available. She is an ever-presence in their lives, or used to be back when Dinnerstein was writing about her in the home.
So bonding makes a woman feel grounded since her same sex role model is so earnestly bonding with the family. Again, girls build identity by "merging" with the mother figure then others as a kind of establishment of identity. Merging reinforces that identity of woman-ness.
The male child to be grounded in his identity needs to SEPARATE from mommy and needs to bond with the exotically and often frustratingly remote father sometimes in a kind of desperate at all costs way for his confused and more challenging quest for what a "male" is (and it is an opportunity to become far less androgynistic as a human being, since he does not have the full palette of an adult human accessible to him as frequently as the mother is to the girl to build from) and since the father is often remote, he must rely on brittle and misogynistic social mythic and not always healthy stances of what maleness is from the father or surrogate fathers around him -- and that insecurity of identity breeds overcompensating superiority at the worst of times in others and in him.
Also, again the very act of anti-bonding with women is a quest for male identity. Not to be overwhelmed throughout his life as he was by being a tiny infant once in her god-like thrall, so he and many men still are sometimes fighting the surrogate mommy-women in their lives from that identity-questing time of being abandoned by their gender role model and at the mercy of the "other" gender adult being so profoundly. Especially troublemaking if the "other" gender role model, the mother, had troubling and toxic "issues" herself, especially with "men."
So bonding makes a woman feel grounded since her same sex role model is so earnestly bonding with the family. Again, girls build identity by "merging" with the mother figure then others as a kind of establishment of identity. Merging reinforces that identity of woman-ness.
The male child to be grounded in his identity needs to SEPARATE from mommy and needs to bond with the exotically and often frustratingly remote father sometimes in a kind of desperate at all costs way for his confused and more challenging quest for what a "male" is (and it is an opportunity to become far less androgynistic as a human being, since he does not have the full palette of an adult human accessible to him as frequently as the mother is to the girl to build from) and since the father is often remote, he must rely on brittle and misogynistic social mythic and not always healthy stances of what maleness is from the father or surrogate fathers around him -- and that insecurity of identity breeds overcompensating superiority at the worst of times in others and in him.
Also, again the very act of anti-bonding with women is a quest for male identity. Not to be overwhelmed throughout his life as he was by being a tiny infant once in her god-like thrall, so he and many men still are sometimes fighting the surrogate mommy-women in their lives from that identity-questing time of being abandoned by their gender role model and at the mercy of the "other" gender adult being so profoundly. Especially troublemaking if the "other" gender role model, the mother, had troubling and toxic "issues" herself, especially with "men."
Now, at the same time men have issues with bonding to an uncomfortable degree, we women can have harsh issues, socially reinforced, with separating. To be a "bad" girl in society is often unforgivable, whereby to be a "bad" boy is sexy and admirable. You are judged more on gender as a woman than on individuality by the tribe. Look at the double standard for sexual behavior in men and women, for example.
It's been years so I hope I am not skewing the essence of her treatise. But I found it very enlightening.
I wish you had written more about how misogynistic men can call out the misogyny in other men that one didn't think was there, but that need for a male to sometimes bond with another male, heed his call, against women can ambush and confuse and hurt a woman who assumed a basic loyalty and specialness above that kind gender cronyism.
At its worst, this is when a group of, granted, already seriously amoral men commit gang-rape on a woman. The peer-pressure to go along with the biggest and most disturbed male predator psychopath makes those particular profoundly weak-willed and also sociopathic men go along with that group action who most likely alone would not have gone there, gone to that dark dark dark evil place in the name of male bonding and comraderie and heretofore latent misogynistic rage.
I once was in a writing group led by a soft-spoken very well educated male teacher -- who back during more feminist years would be called a "snag" -- "sensitive new age guy". I wrote a short story based on an encounter with a "misogynstic brute" I had met at a social event who by the end of the evening came close to slugging me. Much to my horror the teacher got so personally protective of the male character (who was a fictional character as far as he was concerned but it hit some nerve with him of startling outrage), he insisted that I was being overly stereotypical of the guy and unfair to him. That was one thing. Then I watched my "sisters" in the class take up his drumbeat (merging with his emotionalism and seemingly obsequious to his authority) and I was really confused. It was a story that an earlier, fantastic, mentoring female teacher and another class of both men and women had seemed to groove on so I had had support on this story, otherwise his gross over-reaction would have really shamed me and made me feel like I had some horrifying subconscious anti-maleness leaking out (and I do have issues with men admittedly and maybe more than most women ... but don't we all have issues with the opposite and our own gender at times).
Anyway, this guy protested so much about this story. It was not a flattering portrayal of a male and maybe I was flat-footed as an author analyzing it all back then, but his reaction to me felt like a disturbing "projection" of HIS issues, not mine. I had triggered a reaction that did not fit into his persona imho. :)
I wish you had written more about how misogynistic men can call out the misogyny in other men that one didn't think was there, but that need for a male to sometimes bond with another male, heed his call, against women can ambush and confuse and hurt a woman who assumed a basic loyalty and specialness above that kind gender cronyism.
At its worst, this is when a group of, granted, already seriously amoral men commit gang-rape on a woman. The peer-pressure to go along with the biggest and most disturbed male predator psychopath makes those particular profoundly weak-willed and also sociopathic men go along with that group action who most likely alone would not have gone there, gone to that dark dark dark evil place in the name of male bonding and comraderie and heretofore latent misogynistic rage.
I once was in a writing group led by a soft-spoken very well educated male teacher -- who back during more feminist years would be called a "snag" -- "sensitive new age guy". I wrote a short story based on an encounter with a "misogynstic brute" I had met at a social event who by the end of the evening came close to slugging me. Much to my horror the teacher got so personally protective of the male character (who was a fictional character as far as he was concerned but it hit some nerve with him of startling outrage), he insisted that I was being overly stereotypical of the guy and unfair to him. That was one thing. Then I watched my "sisters" in the class take up his drumbeat (merging with his emotionalism and seemingly obsequious to his authority) and I was really confused. It was a story that an earlier, fantastic, mentoring female teacher and another class of both men and women had seemed to groove on so I had had support on this story, otherwise his gross over-reaction would have really shamed me and made me feel like I had some horrifying subconscious anti-maleness leaking out (and I do have issues with men admittedly and maybe more than most women ... but don't we all have issues with the opposite and our own gender at times).
Anyway, this guy protested so much about this story. It was not a flattering portrayal of a male and maybe I was flat-footed as an author analyzing it all back then, but his reaction to me felt like a disturbing "projection" of HIS issues, not mine. I had triggered a reaction that did not fit into his persona imho. :)
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well expressed
I love your explanation of the early influences. This is a well written and significant essay.
rated with love
rated with love
If there is anything more boring than talking about the boy v. girl thing, it has yet to be discovered.
This is a really well done and detailed expression of the female need to think, and be thought of, as “knowing”, the causes and reasons for their own and other’s attitudes and therefore actions.
The clear transference of paternal influence being lacking in the female child’s life to the young male’s life and its consequences is blatant. The claim that the young male is somehow deprived of closeness and understanding because he is not involved in becoming a carbon copy of daddy in the manner of the young female who, according to this author, becomes such a copy of her mother.
This also implies that the father is somehow at fault for his son not becoming such a carbon copy. It totally ignores that many sons do, in fact, become carbon copies of their fathers and that a great many boys, myself included, had no wish whatsoever to be closer to their fathers as they sought personal independence and self mastery.
In short, my dear friend libby, I think you’re waaaaay off base here even though your insight into how women might think is excellent and informative.
R
The clear transference of paternal influence being lacking in the female child’s life to the young male’s life and its consequences is blatant. The claim that the young male is somehow deprived of closeness and understanding because he is not involved in becoming a carbon copy of daddy in the manner of the young female who, according to this author, becomes such a copy of her mother.
This also implies that the father is somehow at fault for his son not becoming such a carbon copy. It totally ignores that many sons do, in fact, become carbon copies of their fathers and that a great many boys, myself included, had no wish whatsoever to be closer to their fathers as they sought personal independence and self mastery.
In short, my dear friend libby, I think you’re waaaaay off base here even though your insight into how women might think is excellent and informative.
R
DH & RP: Thanks for your generous responses to me on this. I hadn't thought of that wonderful Dinnerstein book in ages. I consider it quite brilliant. Again, I was paraphrasing decades later.
note to sky & William: I think we all have a "need to think", or should have, and should do more explorations of the powerful forces of basic social conditioning and what they have done to us as at this point in our profoundly dysfunctional family of man and woman.
I think we as both men and women with both our mutual and separate sets of challenges in this life need to do a lot further thinking and exploration in order to turn around the grotesque degree of amorality prevailing in our world.
Misogyny is a reality, whether passive aggressive or aggressive. "Machismo" in promoting war-mongering also exists. The secret frat-boy sadistic cronyism and hazing by a disturbed George Bush during his Yale days of supposed glory whereby he insisted on branding new pledges with branding irons but the authorities only allowed him to use scalding hot coat hangers (which shows the amorality and grotesque non-empathy of the Yale leadership in protecting ALL its students) set the stage for the institutionalization of TORTURE in America.
Both sexes have huge issues and dysfunctions separately. We also have huge issues collectively.
I was addressing one issue that had been brought up here at OS, misogyny.
best, libby
note to sky & William: I think we all have a "need to think", or should have, and should do more explorations of the powerful forces of basic social conditioning and what they have done to us as at this point in our profoundly dysfunctional family of man and woman.
I think we as both men and women with both our mutual and separate sets of challenges in this life need to do a lot further thinking and exploration in order to turn around the grotesque degree of amorality prevailing in our world.
Misogyny is a reality, whether passive aggressive or aggressive. "Machismo" in promoting war-mongering also exists. The secret frat-boy sadistic cronyism and hazing by a disturbed George Bush during his Yale days of supposed glory whereby he insisted on branding new pledges with branding irons but the authorities only allowed him to use scalding hot coat hangers (which shows the amorality and grotesque non-empathy of the Yale leadership in protecting ALL its students) set the stage for the institutionalization of TORTURE in America.
Both sexes have huge issues and dysfunctions separately. We also have huge issues collectively.
I was addressing one issue that had been brought up here at OS, misogyny.
best, libby
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