MISOGYNY IS LIFE OUT OF BALANCE AND SOUL SUCKING
Why are we wasting time on trying to prop up an archaic system of patrimony?
Some particulars on misogyny from Wikipedia to clearly define it.
Misogyny is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practised for thousands of years. It is reflected in art, literature, human societal structure, historical events, mythology, philosophy, and religion worldwide. Social psychology research[vague] describes overt misogyny as "blatant hostile sexism" that raises resistance in women, as opposed to "manifestations of benevolent sexism" or chivalry that lead women to behave in a manner perpetuating patriarchal arrangements.
According to sociologist Allan G. Johnson, "misogyny is a cultural attitude of hatred for females because they are female". Johnson argues that:
Misogyny .... is a central part of sexist prejudice and ideology and, as such, is an important basis for the oppression of females in male-dominated societies. Misogyny is manifested in many different ways, from jokes to pornography to violence to the self-contempt women may be taught to feel toward their own bodies.
Sociologist Michael Flood at the University of Wollongong defines misogyny as the hatred of women, and notes:
Though most common in men, misogyny also exists in and is practiced by women against other women or even themselves. Misogyny functions as an ideology or belief system that has accompanied patriarchal, or male-dominated societies for thousands of years and continues to place women in subordinate positions with limited access to power and decision making. […] Aristotle contended that women exist as natural deformities or imperfect males […] Ever since, women in Western cultures have internalised their role as societal scapegoats, influenced in the twenty-first century by multimedia objectification of women with its culturally sanctioned self-loathing and fixations on plastic surgery, anorexia and bulimia.
The nineteenth century was a century of culturally wide misogyny. So the books which I get many of my ideas from, being from that time, are full of misogynistic quotes from male authors. This is from well over a hundred years ago, if not more. I have avoided the use of these particular writings in my analysis and writing as much as I can. I thought that for my discussion today it might be valuable to show many of these misogynistic quotes to confirm how far we have advanced. That is qualitative, as not all of us have progressed.
“There are in woman's eyes two sorts of tears, the one of grief, the other of deceit.”
- Pythagoras.
Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 – c. 495 BC) was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend. Modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle. This lifestyle entailed a number of dietary prohibitions, traditionally said to have included aspects of vegetarianism.
“The brain women never interest us Nature is in earnest when she like the heart women; white roses makes a woman.”
- Holmes.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894) was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. Grouped among the fireside poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). He was also an important medical reformer. In addition to his work as an author and poet, Holmes also served as a physician, professor, lecturer, inventor, and, although he never practiced it, he received formal training in law. Holmes had no interest in becoming a theologian, however, and as a result he did not enjoy his single year at Andover. Although he achieved distinction as an elected member of the Social Fraternity, a literary club, he disliked the "bigoted, narrow-minded, uncivilized" attitudes of most of the school's teachers.
“If women were humbler, men would be honester.”
- Vanbrugh.
Sir John Vanbrugh (24 January 1664 (baptised) – 26 March 1726) was an English architect, dramatist and herald, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies, The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy. He was knighted in 1714. Vanbrugh was in many senses a radical throughout his life. As a young man and a committed Whig, he was part of the scheme to overthrow James II and put William III on the throne. He was imprisoned by the French as a political prisoner.
“Women of the world crave excitement.”
- Chamfort.
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas, known in his adult life as Nicolas Chamfort and as Sébastien Nicolas de Chamfort (6 April 1741 – 13 April 1794), was a French writer, best known for his epigrams and aphorisms. He was secretary to Louis XVI's sister, and of the Jacobin club. For some time he subsisted by teaching and hack writing. His good looks and ready wit brought him attention; but, though endowed with immense physical strength – Madame de Craon called him "Hercules under the guise of Adonis" (Hercule]] sous la figure d'Adonis) – he lived so hard that he was glad to have the opportunity for a rest cure in the town of Spa when the Belgian minister in Paris, M. van Eyck, invited him to accompany him to Germany in 1761. On his return to Paris, Chamfort produced a successful comedy, The Young Indian Girl (La Jeune Indienne, 1764), following it with a series of epistles in verse, essays and odes. However, his literary reputation was not established until 1769, when the Académie française awarded him a prize for his Eloge on Molière.
“It is against womanhood to be forward in their own wishes.”
- Sir P. Sidney.
Sir Philip Sidney (30 November 1554 – 17 October 1586) was an English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age. His works include a sonnet sequence, Astrophel and Stella, a treatise, The Defence of Poesy (also known as The Defence of Poesie or An Apology for Poetrie) and a pastoral romance, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. An early arrangement to marry Anne Cecil, daughter of Sir William Cecil and eventual wife of de Vere, had fallen through in 1571. In 1583, he married Frances, the 16-year-old daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. In the same year, he made a visit to Oxford University with Giordano Bruno, the polymath known for his cosmological theories, who subsequently dedicated two books to Sidney.
“Fine by defect, and delicately weak.”
— Pope.
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, Pope is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translations of Homer. Although he never married, he had many female friends to whom he wrote witty letters, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. It has been alleged that his lifelong friend Martha Blount was his lover.
“Woman cannot stand alone, for any time, in whatever position she may be.”
— Lord Melbourne.
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, in some sources called Henry William Lamb, PC, PC (Ire), FRS (15 March 1779 – 24 November 1848) was a Whig politician who served as the Home Secretary and twice as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He succeeded his elder brother Peniston as heir to his father's title in 1805 (and as captain of the Midland Troop, Hertfordshire Yeomanry, when he resigned his commission in the Volunteer Infantry) and married Lady Caroline Ponsonby, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat. After two miscarriages and a stillbirth child, she gave birth to George Augustus Frederick in 1807 and was devoted to him. George was epileptic and mentally handicapped, requiring significant medical care. He died in 1836. In 1809, they had a daughter. She was born prematurely and lived only one day.
“A woman needs a stronger head than her own for counsel - she should marry.”
- Calderon.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca (17 January 1600 – 25 May 1681) was a Spanish dramatist, poet, writer and knight of the Order of Santiago. He is known as one of the most distinguished Baroque writers of the Spanish Golden Age, especially for his plays. Pedro Calderón de la Barca was a Spanish Golden Age playwright who — from the beginning of his theatrical career in the 1620s to his death in 1681 — wrote about 120 comedias and about 80 autos sacramentales. About 40 of these have been translated into English, at least three during Calderón's own lifetime; La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream), "a work many hold to be the supreme example of Spanish Golden Age drama", exists in around 20 English versions. At the beginning of the 19th century, international interest in Calderón was resurrected by August Schlegel, and English translation resumed. Now, Calderón was more often seen as a philosophical, literary, or religious — rather than a popular — dramatist. The two giants of 19th-century Calderón translation exhibit opposing approaches to the "Spanish Shakespeare".
“Women are naturally unstable.”
— Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio (16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was sometimes simply known as "the Certaldese" and one of the most important figures in the European literary panorama of the fourteenth century. Some scholars (including Vittore Branca) define him as the greatest European prose writer of his time, a versatile writer who amalgamated different literary trends and genres, making them converge in original works, thanks to a creative activity exercised under the banner of experimentalism. Boccaccio, together with Dante Alighieri and Petrarch, is part of the so-called "Three Crowns" of Italian literature. He is remembered for being one of the precursors of humanism, of which he helped lay the foundations in the city of Florence, in conjunction with the activity of his friend and teacher Petrarch. He was the one who initiated Dante's criticism and philology: Boccaccio devoted himself to copying codices of the Divine Comedy and was a promoter of Dante's work and figure. His final years were troubled by illnesses, some relating to obesity and what often is described as dropsy, severe edema that would be described today as congestive heart failure. He died on 21 December 1375 in Certaldo, where he is buried.
During the years when women’s suffrage was being debated in the United States some men began taking this cause seriously. George Bernard Shaw may have signaled his feelings of this cause being just. He may have written the truth at this time in the following quote.
"Men no longer need special political privileges to protect them against Women, and ... the sexes should henceforth enjoy equal political rights."
— George Bernard Shaw (1884)
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Shaw's expressed views were often contentious; he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform, and opposed vaccination and organised religion. He courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the First World War as equally culpable, and although not a republican, castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period.
I could go on, but there really is no need to. American culture, at least a segment of it, is not progressive in matters of gender equality. Unfortunately many who could be included in this general description do not merely get out of the way of a society which might want to advance, but actively fight against any progress. It seems that they must always be the hurdles to a better, more equitable future for all of us. There seems to be a stubborn belligerence in these folks, which essentially are a hundred anchors holding us back. Some want to return to a nineteenth century mindset which serves no positive purpose for America in 2024.
152nd Posting, February 15, 2024.