Misogyny for Sale – Misogyny for Healing

March 15th, 2010

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GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Judith Barr, MS, LPC

Click here to contact Judith and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

March is here.
March is Women’s History Month*… a month created to celebrate the gift that women are to our world and our civilization.

But just a few weeks ago, on February 7, not long before Women’s History Month . . .
Right out in the open, we saw misogyny in action in Super Bowl commercials.
Misogyny: hatred of women! In very expensive Super Bowl commercials.

In a Bridgestone Tire ad, thugs stop a car and say “Your Bridgestone tires or your life!” The driver throws a woman out of the car. The thugs say “Not your wife! Your life!” The misogyny portrayed is obvious – a man’s tires are of far more value to him than his wife!

An E*trade commercial supports men being unfaithful to women starting in the crib. In the E*trade ad a baby boy lies to and cheats on a baby girl with another baby girl. The misogyny once again is blatant: girls/women don’t deserve to have boys/men keep their commitments to them.

And the Dodge Charger ad – Man’s Last Stand – reveals a number of men, angry men, men in whom the rage is evident. Michael C. Hall does the voice for all of them. He’s also plays the lead in the television show Dexter, in which, out in the open, he’s a blood spatter analyst for the Miami PD, while “undercover” he’s a serial killer. This background sets up the commercial perfectly as the men in it say things like:

I will shave.
I will clean the sink after I shave …
I will take your call …
I will be civil to your mother …
I will put the seat down…
I will separate the recycling …
I will put my underwear in the basket …
And because I do this,
I will drive the car I want to drive!***

He’s saying, “It is your #@&% fault, woman, that I have to be a responsible person . . . and a responsible adult. I’m enraged at you. I’ll be responsible but my reward is to drive whatever car I want.” The misogyny in this ad is visible, audible, palpable.

That these and other misogynistic ads could be accepted as commercials by the network anytime of the year reveals a lot. That they were accepted as Super Bowl commercials exposes right out in the light of day the undeniable misogyny in our country (and our world.)

In order to truly celebrate Women’s History Month we need to see, acknowledge, and work to heal misogyny, both individually and communally.
You don’t have to be a man to hate women. Unfortunately, women have learned to hate themselves and each other for eons.

To heal misogyny in our world . . .
We need to see it in ourselves – whether we are men or women. And we need to see it and stand up to it in our world amongst both men and women.

********************

In order to heal misogyny wherever it exists, we need to understand its roots.

Everyone has a mother – whether a known mother or an unknown one. Everyone – male and female alike – has a mother who is a woman. And everyone has experiences with that mother, experiences that impact one’s feelings about women. If your mother gave birth to you and then had to put you up for adoption, you likely have on the youngest, most primal level, all the feelings that are part of what I call “the abandonment cauldron.” This will inevitably include rage and hatred for that singular woman, and probably women in general, too. You likely are not even conscious of your feelings of rage and hatred . . . they are so young and so beneath thought and word. But they are there inside you, nevertheless. And they will have a huge impact on your relationship with women whether you are a man or a woman.

Perhaps your mother gave birth to you and stayed with you. Perhaps she wanted to give you her best, to be a good mother, but . . . you had colic as a baby, and whenever you cried and she couldn’t comfort you, she got triggered and became angry at you. You were terrified! And cried all the more. She got still angrier. You, more frightened. And eventually you became enraged in response to her scaring you so and to your powerlessness in the interaction and relationship. Now, without even being aware of it, you are afraid of mother and all women. And now, without being conscious of it, you are enraged at mother and all women and the power they have. What a vicious cycle has been created here . . . within each of you and between the two of you! And transferred onto other women, as well. And all because your mother, was not able to feel her fear, triggered by your pain, her powerlessness to comfort you, and instead felt and acted out on her anger in response to her fear. Perhaps her fear and anger came from a very similar place in her life experience as your fear and anger. That is, after all, how the vicious cycle moves from generation to generation.

Have you ever seen a tiny baby in a rage? You’re red all over, you flail wildly and cry uncontrollably, and nothing can stop you! Most people don’t know what to do when a baby is frightened and raging . . . so it can evoke their fears of inadequacy, their fears related to control, as well as their own early childhood feelings. The only thing that can be done for you is for a loving, wise, and un-triggered adult to hold you gently and close (but not too close) so you can feel you are being held and not flying out into black space . . . till the cycle runs its course and you fall asleep.

Even with that loving response, you still have rage and fear within you. You still have an involuntary, frightened response to being powerless. You still focus your rage, fear, and powerlessness onto mom and other women.

This is most likely all unconscious. You are not aware of it. You have buried the feelings and memories as much as possible, for they are too much for a little child to bear. But you also are not aware that you transfer all these feelings, memories, and decisions you made at the time onto women in your life later on. Later on could be later on in childhood – like onto a teacher. Later on in your adolescence – onto a girlfriend or a female friend. Later on in your adulthood – onto an employer, a female clergy person, a life partner, or even a daughter.

And it is this unconscious transfer that feeds today’s misogyny most of all. As long as you are unconscious of the root of your hatred of women . . . As long as you are unconscious of the root of your fear of women . . . As long as you are unconscious of the root of your power struggle with women . . . you can find all sorts of excuses for it. All sorts of rationalizations for it. All sorts of philosophical reasons for it. And heaven knows! In a patriarchy in which misogyny is normalized those justifications for it melt into the pot of normalized misogyny.

So . . . if we are going to heal misogyny in our society and our world . . . we – each of us – needs to discover and heal our own hatred, fear, and power struggle with women. Each of us needs to bring it into consciousness and not stop there. Each of us needs to do the very deep, very primal, very feeling work that lies beneath the mind . . . in our hearts, our cells, our early, early childhoods. That way we will not have to think our way through to a response that is not misogynous, while holding the feelings at bay. That way, misogyny will finally be absent from our response to women . . . whether that woman be our mother, our daughter, our friend, our teacher, our employer, our clergy, our senator, our president or . . . our self.

Reference:

*The first part of this article was, in essence, posted on my blog, PoliPsych, a short time ago. Though the post just began to scratch the surface, it feels like an apt and powerful introduction to our exploring the roots of misogyny.

©Copyright 2010 by Judith Barr, MS, LPC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Judith and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

 

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