Amen, Joss.

From the excerpted passage, I assumed this was going to be Joss' Dave Sim impersonation.

Jen, that has got to be the most disturbing idea I have read this year.

Jen, that has got to be the most disturbing idea I have read this year.

I saw one of the billboards for that movie. I thought the billboard was out of line, for advertising in public. So did other people; I heard of at least one complaint, in the San Fernando Valley, where one had been put up near a high school. (The movie itself sounds like it should be rated X.)

The problem isn't that we're evil. It's that we're property. And we keep forgetting that and behaving as if we're free. Worse, many men have forgotten. Entire societies are in danger of forgetting.

Violence is a tonic. It clears away the cobwebs and reminds everyone of the true status of the victim. Property.

Wow.

I agree with the idea of womb envy.

I'd also add "Caretaker Antipathy". A lot of "women's work" is based on taking care of others and being a resource and/or a "slave" for someone (usually male). Women are needed to such an extent that we can't be gotten rid of wholesale. (Just look at the gender skewing in the service industries.) When the caretaker bucks the flow of assumption or, in that poor woman's case, tradition, she's killed. Heavens forefend that what others expect and can obtain change on a "slaves" whim.

I just saw the rant about an hour earlier. Coincidentally, I had recently read Ehrenreich's For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women and was discussing it with a friend. The book mentions the penis envy theory amongst many others that were propagated to "explain" women; during our discussion I had half-jokingly wondered if men had womb envy, then.

(And I was directly thinking of a Firefly quote, too: "Man is stronger by far than woman. But only woman can create a child. That seem right to you?" said by a male bounty hunter to Inara.)

Of course that thought is as demeaning to men as pushing for a penis envy idea is to women... and I prefer a worldview for myself in which neither is accepted.

But I have to echo Pat Greene in #1: Amen, Joss.

I've always thought that It's All About the Genes. Keep women subjected, and you (as a male) can be sure that it's YOUR genes that are being passed on, not the milkman's or whoever else might wander by.

Sucks if true, because that pretty much means we'll never get rid of the attitude. It's hardwired.

Janice in GA, that really just means that she'll tell you the kid's yours even if it is the milkman's. Seems more sensible, if we're really invested in knowing the parentage of offspring, that we have an environment that encourages honesty. "Well, honey, the mailman got this one, but I'm sure the next will turn out to be yours, okay?" ;)

I love Joss Whedon's female characters because they are strong enough to take care of themselves, but still human.

Janice, I've seen suggestions from some evolutionary psychologists that the attitude to which you refer has evolutionary benefit in the short term. However, in the long run, women do choose to leave men like that. Additionally, the offspring of men who are more involved in their children's lives tend to live longer. Assuming men who are more caring are also going to see their wife as more of a partner than a servant (which is generally the case), caring genes may have more of an evolutionary advantage over time. It may not be as hardwired as you think.

#5:

I saw one of the billboards for that movie.

I don't know what movie you're talking about. Title?

James at #12: I think P.J. Evans was talking about Captivity, the movie Whedon also refers to in his post.

James @12:
Captivity, apparently.

I admit it hasn't crossed my radar. I don't think I'm sorry about that.

I saw a review of that movie and would have thrown the newspaper across the room had I been reading a newspaper.

Whedon's rant is wonderful. I immediately connected it with the current Supreme Court decision regarding "partial birth abortion" -- no, this is not an invitation to get into a discussion about abortion, please let's not do that -- which essentially buys into the argument that adult women need to be saved by society from making poor decisions about their own sexuality.

*insert sputtering incoherence here*

I would quibble.

I don't disagree with anything Joss said in his rant, as far as I get the connection between honor killing and a movie to watch a pretty girl tortured and killed.

Yet my daughter watches television and watches the world today, new and fresh, without the context adults have and what she sees is, Girls are superior.

Yet as superior as girls are supposed to be they are also supposed to conform to a certain girly stereotype and think it's wonderful.

So she's sort of frustrated and stuck because she likes boy stuff, not girl stuff, and the stuff she likes is "bad" and the stuff she finds stupid, superficial or insipid, is "good."

The misogyny that shocked Whedon is only a subset of what humans have always done to to each other, and the brutality on display in that particular murder-with-audience is repeated on a daily basis, with a variety of victims of all genders and ages, all over the world. Think of the daily sectarian bombings and beheadings in Iraq, institutionalized torture at Gitmo, the civil meltdown in Bosnia, whatever goes on in our prisons (all those TV-show references must has some sort of basis in reality)--the list goes on. Statistically, it looks like men are responsible for most of this, but the question is not "Why do men hate women?" but "What is it that allows anyone to behave so?" And if you really want to deal with it, you have to also account for the very large numbers of men who would not only not harm a woman (or a child or a pet) but who are positively sickened at the thought of harming anyone.

Misogyny seems to me to flourish in cultures that separate men and women, so that, for example, after puberty the only women a young man is around are immediate family members and (eventually) his wife (who might have been chosen for him). Exposure to the full range of possible human traits in both sexes--strength, intelligence, stability, courage, humor, beauty--ought to supply some counter-force to all but the most insidious memes about what men or women "really" are. I think that's what formed my picture of the sexes, even in the dark days of the 1940s and 50s. (Anybody who had doubts about the existence of strong women would have had an interesting time with my paternal grandmother or any of my great-grandmothers.)

I am reminded of this article from Pandagon, which has my most recent reminder of how much I hate the extra constraints on my life imposed by my gender.

Hate it. Hate the year or so my parents took to teach me those extra constraints. Hate the fact that I'm going to have to do that to my daughter.

Ugh. But I'm glad of every guy who realises that it's a bad thing.

Okay, got the billboards. (Viewer discretion, as they say, advised.)

From the trailer: "The film they don't want you to see." And: "The movie so intense it was punished."

I guess that sounds better than "The film that stinks on ice" and "The movie so lousy we're making our excuses in advance."

I find myself wondering (like some of the commentators on Joss' piece and the posting here) if the core of this behavior isn't so much gender based as it is control based. A group attempts to maintain control, and singles out subgroups (women, minorities in the culture, other external groups) for repression.

Seems to me that if you can demonstrate your power over one group, other groups will tread lightly around you.

anaea #10: Why do you think that:

(1) Many cultures emphasise proof of the virginity of a bride;

(2)many of the same cultures practice honour killing, and

(3)FGM?

I've seen the promotional materials for the movie. They're quite nauseating, and I hope it loses a LOT of money, and what more is there is to say?

One of the many horrible things about Dua Khalil's murder-- I won't say "the most horrible", it seems that there's plenty of horror to go around-- anyway, one horrible thing is that there are about twenty men in her neighborhood who MIGHT have been able to take a better moral position on honor killings, before. Now they can't, because if honor killings are murder, they're murderers!

Worse yet, Dua Khalil's own mother is left with a choice: was her (dead, and beyond harm) daughter a sinner worthy of her fate, or are her (live, and presumably beloved) sons hideous killers? And it's so much *easier* to forgive the living and move on.

Since penis envy came up, it might be good to note that Sigmund Freud's first theory of neurosis was related to the child sexual abuse he found was common to his female patients. When he presented his paper to the psychologist's association he was exiled for seven-years until he returned with his concepts of Oedipal Complex, penis envy, and the interpretation of dreams, which the association (mostly men) found palatable.

As for the concept, "it's always been this way" there is evidence that goddess following cultures having been more egalitarian. Even in the time of the early christian churches, women played a significant roll, some owning the houses where the churches met. So this behavior hasn't "always been" or is "hard-wired."

#22 - time to find my "this demeans women" stickers again. The big 8 1/1 x 11 ones, I think.

Fragano Ledgister at 21, the general answer comes down to passage of property along paternal lines and the perceived need for the fidelity of that line, not so much a need for assurances of genetic relatedness - a fine distinction, but an important one. And everything I say following this is gross generalization for which counterexamples are available if you look for them. But we're talking big general issues here, so I beg forgiveness in advance.

1) This is one part to make sure the bride isn't already knocked up by somebody else, and probably two parts to make sure she's the kind who can keep her legs closed. (Assurances of paternity can be gotten in the case of a non-virgin through two months heavy isolation for the bride-to-be just to make sure she's not already pregnant. This practice is known in some cultures.) If we were worried about genetic paternity, husbands ought to have different priorities. Instead of a blushing virgin, you'd want somebody with demonstrated fertility (best done through prior successful pregnancy) and who's going to encourage your attentions to her. Current theory on the evolutionary motivations for female orgasm is that it promotes conception, meaning you want a bride who's going to enjoy the honeymoon. Virgins generally have no such indications.

2) Honor killings are very complexly motivated. Part of it is to encourage chastity and monogamy among women, another part is to ensure that the women, and the property accompanying them, stays in the family. If you'll note, the Koran was progressive in its time for the property rites it granted women. But do you want that sister who inherited part of Dad's farm running off with a guy from another tribe when if you marrying her and her farm off to your best friend he'll not only like you a lot, but show a little financial appreciation? If genetics are the sole concern, the practice would work more like the behavior you see in other primates where females who run off are forcibly brought back, their pregnancy terminated, and they're reimpregnated by an acceptable male.

3) FGM ought to just go down in the history books as stupid, excepting that most of places and times where it started can't have possibly known just how unproductive it is. Arousal and sexual desire starts in the brain and is expressed in the genitals. Fry the right part of her brain and you'll have a female with no libido. FGM removes the tissue generally required for the sating of that libido, not to mention introducing injury and wounds which can easily lead to infections that leave you with a sterile/dead female. It might reduce libido through the psychological trauma that tends to accompany sexual abuse, but then again that kind of trauma can also lead to acting out and reckless, self-destructive behavior potentially expressed in the form of promiscuity. Typically, with FGM, nobody wins.

Which all brings me back to my original point; if men are concerned about having their genes passed on, it makes more sense to create an environment where you can trust the female to tell you the truth, which means that deterrents for infidelity need to be limited to the male seeking out a different female with which to mate with negligible change to the female's living conditions. You can try to forcibly ensure fidelity, but that's a really good way to wind up a cuckold.

anaea #25: You're perfectly right (although 'property rites' sounds positively Confucian). It's all about property and lineage.

Interestingly, in matrilineal societies women have a great deal of social power, even if they don't necessarily have much political power (Kwame Appiah in Cosmopolitanism tells a fascinating story about his father deciding to get circumcised, even though this had not been part of Ashanti culture, because the young women of Kumasi started singing that they wouldn't marry uncircumcised men -- there's a layer of irony here, given that Joe Appiah married an Englishwoman).

In my opinion (YMMV) n most 'honor killings', which have also happened in U.S. cities, where, by the way, the family appears to be the one that instigates the murder. (Actually probably the father and brothers, I cannort imagine a mother wishing her daughter dead...)

They consider that something so demeaning has afflicted their daughter's persona that she must be obliterated to maintain their honor.

That's stupid and destructive and horrible. And wasteful. But it doesn't stop people from doing it, even in the U.S., where they end up in the penitentary because U.S. justice cannot possibly overlook the horror committed.

The true horror is in their home countries where girls are buried without comment or any fuss. Because they violated some invisible rule.

I don't know a way to make people who believe these kind of things are stupid and cruel. They believe because of some imam's preaching or somesuch. That can't be vaccinated for or educated against.

In my opinion (YMMV) n most 'honor killings', which have also happened in U.S. cities, where, by the way, the family appears to be the one that instigates the murder. (Actually probably the father and brothers, I cannort imagine a mother wishing her daughter dead...)

They consider that something so demeaning has afflicted their daughter's persona that she must be obliterated to maintain their honor.

That's stupid and destructive and horrible. And wasteful. But it doesn't stop people from doing it, even in the U.S., where they end up in the penitentary because U.S. justice cannot possibly overlook the horror committed.

The true horror is in their home countries where girls are buried without comment or any fuss. Because they violated some invisible rule.

I don't know a way to make people who believe these kind of things see that they are are stupid and cruel. They believe because of some imam's preaching or somesuch. That can't be vaccinated for or educated against.

In my opinion (YMMV) n most 'honor killings', which have also happened in U.S. cities, where, by the way, the family appears to be the one that instigates the murder. (Actually probably the father and brothers, I cannort imagine a mother wishing her daughter dead...)

They consider that something so demeaning has afflicted their daughter's persona that she must be obliterated to maintain their honor.

That's stupid and destructive and horrible. And wasteful. But it doesn't stop people from doing it, even in the U.S., where they end up in the penitentary because U.S. justice cannot possibly overlook the horror committed.

The true horror is in their home countries where girls are buried without comment or any fuss. Because they violated some invisible rule.

I don't know a way to make people who believe these kind of things see that they are are stupid and cruel. They believe because of some imam's preaching or somesuch. That can't be vaccinated for or educated against.

Fragano Ledgister @ 21

I would beg to differ, honour killings are NOT about the virginity of the bride (although it is known to be one of the excuses.) Honour killings occur when the girl or woman 'betrays' the family's honour going out with / being engaged with / marrying someone the family feels is outside the bounds of convention. (Outside the tribe if you will.)

Better posters than me have commented on this, but the truly mind boggling thing is that
1) the culture that value virginity in their young women, also
2) tend to expect their young men to prove virility by screwing any girl / woman that they can.

PS. Look up Purity Balls. Both Digby and Pandagon had article on this 'cultural' event.

I saw that article, and honestly, I'm not impressed.

First of all, even evolutionarily speaking, a lot of scientists would argue that men don't envy women--they envy other men (see Bateman's Principle).

I find that womb-envy arguments avoid the real problem: sexism has frighteningly little to do with biology and everything to do with power. I liked Amanda's response over at Pandagon:

My theory about the origins of misogyny isn’t that it goes back to womb envy or anything like that. I don’t think it’s that complex, actually. All you need to do to see how one group of people can demonize and hate another is to look at the history of American racism. White people’s desire for cheap labor preceded fear and loathing of black people. The hateful stereotypes about black people came about as post hoc justifications for slavery—if you dehumanize someone, it’s easier to justify your oppression over them because you think they’re either hateful and need to be controlled or inferior and need to be controlled, or some combination of the two.

I'm not saying that the same thing is at play here as in slavery, but I think it's clear why things like sexism and racism persist: they're convenient methods of dehumanizing someone for the purposes of exploitation. Let's also not forget that the symbol of penetration is a powerful one, and in that sense biology very much informs dominance structures. We're smaller and lighter, too, easy targets of violence. A perpetrator, through the demonstration of violence against others (particularly public), secures his own safety and dissuades competitors (of food, shelter, sex, whatever).

And sometimes "because I can" is as good a reason as any.

I see that I was late to the gate. Other posters were able to make the point in a more elegant manner.

Torie:

The thing that makes misogyny complicated is that it is a cross-cultural, ancient aspect of civilizations, civilzations as different as China under the Han, Greece during their Golden Age, Victorian England, and every other culture about which we have sufficient information to make educated guesses. Women's rights within those circumstances are different, but they are always second class.

We've had slavery as long, but slavery is a different problem, one that comes of the exploitation of other tribes, for the most part. While there are some analogies, it isn't close enough to dig out the reasons about misogyny.

Here's how I explain it to myself: One night in Indiana, I was listening to Republican talk radio while driving. It was contributing to my safe driving, although not to my blood pressure. It was open mike, just call and complain.

Someone called in and said, "When you're born, your mother nurses you, she gives you that mother's milk. I feel like women are denying me that. That milk I need to survive."

Read that again and feel your stomach go cold. What women gave as nurture as a child is expected as a commodity when you become an adult. Men can't live without us. We hold an important piece of their selves, which is, peculiarly, ourselves.

My last breakup I felt bad, cause I still loved him, it's just that we'd come to the end of the relationship. I kept on trying to make him feel better, which only made him feel worse. My psychiatrist said that it was no longer my job to try to comfort him. I'd removed myself from that role in his life when I'd told him I was leaving. He needed to find comfort for himself.

In this culture, and in many others, I think, there is an unwritten deal: women accept the nuturing emotional burdens of the men, and the men accept the aggressive emotions of the women. This makes it vital to control women. If they walk away, they will take a part of the man with them. And they will also take their own right of aggression. The fact that the woman has no use for the man's emotional weight and freight, and would gladly give it back, but will in the end simply shed it, isn't relevant to the sheer panic many men feel when their relationships are falling apart. And they'll do almost anything to prevent it.

None of this goes as far as honor killing. All I can think is that an "honor" killing must be the expression of a culture where women are completely devalued. I don't know what emotional trades they are making, but the amount of rage on one side and the amount of submission on the other suggests to me that the system has the two carrying each other's burdens.

Alan Dundes (freudian folklorist) interpreted the myth of Adam's rib as womb envy. If the first woman is born from the first man's abdomen, then men get preemptive credit for the birthing process.

Not much of a freudian m'self, but I'd buy that.

#16 Synova: man what in TV and the world today leads you to "Girls are superior"?

#17 Russell Letson: but the question is not "Why do men hate women?" In fact, the question very much exactly is "Why do men hate women." You look like a sleaze when you try to change the subject in the face of the horrible stuff we're discussing. And as for your attempt to dodge into "not me!" land with "Misogyny seems to me to flourish in cultures that separate men and women", maybe you missed it in the excerpt Patrick posted, but if you'd clicked through to read Joss's essay, I don't think you would have twice missed "And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority—in fact, their malevolence—is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas."

Every single discussion of sexism on the internet gets some man going "Oh they might be bad but I'm so not." Ok, sure, we've checked that box now.

For actually adding to the discussion, instead of derailing it into "let's pat this poor man on his head" territory, seems to me Lydia Nickerson's post at 33 is a good place to start.

abi @ 18... I hate the extra constraints on my life imposed by my gender. Hate it. Hate the year or so my parents took to teach me those extra constraints. Hate the fact that I'm going to have to do that to my daughter.

My friend Nicole up in Quebec was going thru something like that with her 16-year-old daughter, when I visited in 2004. For example, don't trust that the boy she's chatting with on the internet is what he says he is, and of course the young lady, who had never encountered the dark side of people, thought that mom and dad were exagerating.

Just want to throw this out, dunno what it means:
I live in Japan these days.
This place has very sharp distinctions between men and women. Gender roles are sharply limned. (skirted uniforms don't end with Jr.High)
Women are educated (through middle-school often better than men, after middle-school it deponds on their (and their family) decisions about continuing school) and legally equal.
The last 10-15 years has seen stunning decreases in the amount and acceptability of sexual harassment and overt sexism.
Most women don't seek careers outside the home (give or take a few hours a day at a part time job once the kid(s) are school-aged)

If you educate women, give them the full suite of rights, and tell them that they're women (and that women are different from men) most of them will become housewives? Japan isn't much like the rest of the world, is it?

It seems to me that the double standard linnen mentioned--virginity for girls, promiscuity for boys--also feeds into the need for cheap labor. If you have that kind of sexual double standard, you must have socially designated whores and sluts. These women in turn have sons and daughters--and these same societies generally put a heavy stigma on illegitimacy. That implies the existence of an entire underclass (though of course there could be many other reasons for one).

I've seen social conservatives write longingly of the day when people knew the difference between the kind of girls you married, and the girls of easy virtue who you went to for fun--and I've also seen them lament the loss of the Stigma of Bastardy. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is tied to authoritarian, hierarchical attitudes, the insistence that in all things there must be Higher and Lower and the Lower must know their station.

I think violence against women has many sources. Men, as a rule, are outer-reactive to stress and confusion and hurt. Our natural instinct is to find an external target for these feelings, and unfortunately that target is too often the women and children in our lives.

Which is why I think we need to bring back chivalry. And not the kind that cloisters women and forbids them from participation as full partners in society.

I mean the kind that basically says the following:

Males don't become Real Men without Service becoming the focal point of their identity.

Every boy should aspire to be a Real Man. Real Men are men who embrace Service. Perhaps the highest possible expression of Service can be found in serving a female. She could be your mom, or your sister, a cousin, a girlfriend, a wife, a daughter, a grandmother, etc. Through Service to our women we magnify ourselves beyond petty machismo and small-penis-syndrome. True masculinity does not lie in the domination of women, grinding them under foot, but in the exhaltation of women, the givers of life and the bringers-forth of our future as humans.

Alas, as men, without strong and dedicated examples to teach and lead us, we fall into corruption. We beat and we rape and we ravage and we never seem to be able to touch the core of our iniquity; though that never stops us from continuing the unhalted abuse.

I am grateful for my father, who has given himself in absolute Service to my mother for almost four decades. He is a kind and gentle man, whose obdurate and tested masculinity never centered on domination or coercion. I have tried to be worthy of his legacy through Service to my own wife, and my little daughter as well. Without them I would be next to useless; a purposeless creature. Through them I hope to prove my worth.

Everything else? All the pain and death we males inflict on women every year? It's a placebo. Snake oil for the shallow of soul and the destitute of spirit. We seek to make ourselves Big by behaving in the Smallest possible way.

IMHO men who rape and abuse face a special kind of damnation, when all is said and done. For in wrecking the lives of women, such men thoughtlessly trample that which is absolutely necessary to give the human male purpose and meaning and substance.

Sorry, I am waxing prophetic here. My wife has worked DV for years, as both a volunteer and a paid case worker. She's also a womens studies major and we're always discussing DV and other forms of abuse against females. I take this subject very seriously, and consider it an unbearable woe on our heads, as men, that we still inflict such misery on our women and our girls.

It seems to me that the double standard linnen mentioned--virginity for girls, promiscuity for boys--also feeds into the need for cheap labor. If you have that kind of sexual double standard, you must have socially designated whores and sluts

...unless, of course, the sanctioned male promiscuity is exclusively homosexual. Which I think is pretty rare, though I suppose some societies might have come close.

Surely many of us are reminded of Tiptree's The Screwfly Soution? For the person who despaired of Tiptree's feminism: if you are reading this, this is the reality that keeps these stories relevant and powerful. (Oddly enough, it seems likely that Whedon hasn't read that story.) As to the rest, it seems pretty plain that widespread violence against women is the result of both inherited ape behaviors and culture. As with other difficult ape-inherited behaviors, if we want it to stop, we will have to change culture. Perhaps now more than ever, we need to do this; if we do not control our violence, mostly perpetrated by men, we have no future as a species. As I've remarked in other contexts, it is amazing to me how much recent history can be explained by masculinity doubts. (And I am tired & my brain is fried. Hopefully, this post will keep its vowels and tomorrow draw interesting, thoughtful responses.)

Dear PRV -- I was following your post with sympathetic interest until I got to the last line. "Our women." "Our girls."

I know you absolutely mean well, here. Trust me, I am not nit-picking. Such words are important. Care to reconsider and/or rephrase?

I have other comments as well. But I await your reply to this one.

Lizzy L @ 42... I think we should bring back the time-honored tradition of shotgun weddings to protect our wimminfolk. (Did they have ballista weddings in the Middle-Ages?)

I think that misogyny is motivated by Womb Envy in roughly the same way that racism is motivated by Superior Dancing Skills/Athletic Ability/Sexual Ability Envy. Which is to say, it's a symptom, not the disease.

If you want to look for ultimate causes, I think Steve Libbey @ 20 got it right: Misogyny is primarily a mechanism of control. If one wishes to rule the human race, one must divide us against ourselves, and gender is a bright and obvious divide present everywhere in the world. It disenfranchises over half the world's population in one fell swoop, and gives you a sop to throw to the rest. "Sure, you may be a poor, mistreated, and ultimately powerless male, but at least you aren't a woman! Go kick her around to make yourself feel better."

Lydia Nickerson @ 33:"The thing that makes misogyny complicated is that it is a cross-cultural, ancient aspect of civilizations, civilzations as different as China under the Han, Greece during their Golden Age, Victorian England, and every other culture about which we have sufficient information to make educated guesses. Women's rights within those circumstances are different, but they are always second class."

Sexism is universal in a way that racism isn't because sexual heterogeneity is universal in a way that racial heterogeneity isn't. When situations of cultural/racial heterogeneity arise, you'd better bet that they're promptly used to exclude "different" groups from power--even when they are actually the majority.

Sexism is universal in a way that racism isn't because sexual heterogeneity is universal in a way that racial heterogeneity isn't.

That would explain why there is sexism in all cultures, but it doesn't explain why it only goes one way. There are no cultures, and to my knowledge (admittedly, I'm no historian) there have never been any cultures, in which men are systematically oppressed by women.

When I got to this part of Joss's piece:

There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing, but the footage of the murder was taken – by more than one phone – from the front row. Which means whoever shot it did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool.

I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world in which everything is shown and everything is game, but honestly, it’s been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda. I like to think that in America this would be considered unbearably appalling, that Kitty Genovese is still remembered, that we are more evolved.

...I thought that we should remember that in the U.S. we have a far deeper tradition of this than simply Kitty Genovese. For years photographs of lynchings -- with the faces of the perpetrators clearly visible, smiling, taken "to commemorate it. To share it," sometimes with police looking on -- were very common. They were made into postcards and sent around the country.

If you've never seen them, they're readily available on the web. Look here or here.

Racism rather than misogyny at work here, obviously. But it's worth reminding ourselves that we, as a culture, have done fairly similar things to that honor-killing video on a regular basis, not all that long ago. And not just in the movies.

Scott @ 37: "If you educate women, give them the full suite of rights, and tell them that they're women (and that women are different from men) most of them will become housewives? Japan isn't much like the rest of the world, is it?"

Really, it's quite the opposite: a significant percentage of women are opting out of marriage altogether, because Japanese culture makes being a working wife--much less a working mother--utterly untenable. If it seems like many are still becoming housewives, it's because previously they ALL became housewives. These days, fewer and fewer women are making that choice. Even many of those who do choose to get married choose not to have kids, because of the enormous pressure to quit and be a full-time mother that they know will be brought to bear against them. If you want a single-cause explanation of Japan's crashing population, look no further than Japan's unwillingness to let married women out of the house, and women's growing reluctance to enter the house in the first place.

Here I am getting out of my area of expertise, but I have heard that a similar trend is developing in Germany, where there is also a strong expectation that women with children will quit in order to parent full-time. Women are being forced to choose between kids and jobs, and unsurprisingly, many are choosing their job.

"That would explain why there is sexism in all cultures, but it doesn't explain why it only goes one way. There are no cultures, and to my knowledge (admittedly, I'm no historian) there have never been any cultures, in which men are systematically oppressed by women."

There are still a few matriarchal societies where men don't hold property rights, and have no formal status as husbands or fathers--the Mosuo are the only ones who come to mind right now--but I don't know enough about the culture to say whether or not the men would consider it a marginalization of their personal worth, a type of freedom from obligation, both, or neither.
The power to choose lovers and fathers for their children rests squarely with the girls, who pass into adulthood at age thirteen, while the boys are not "free" until eighteen.

I wonder if it's observer bias--I see England as a man and hear about America from women--but I do get the feeling that the USA is much more hostile to women than the UK.

Which maybe has something to do with the apparant shocked reactions of a certain little old lady who recently visited with Bush and Cheney.

PublicRadioVet @ 39: Your idea of men placing themselves in "the service of women" seems poorly thought-out. Women are not gods. They are human. They do not warrant worship. They will, as humans inevitably do, disappoint. And how will their worshippers respond when they do? No good will come of treating some humans as innately superior to others, no matter how good your intentions.

And why, why, why is it so hard to imagine a world where men see women as nothing more and nothing less than fellow human beings?

Lizzy, I've been around my DV-working super-feminist wife long enough to know where you're going with that. And really, what can I say? The greatest harm inflicted on women in the U.S. is always inflicted by boyfriends, husbands, and fathers. We, as husbands and boyfriends and fathers, are damaging OUR GIRLS. The ones closest to us and the most dependent on us to do right by them; and who suffer the most ill if we do wrong by them.

I'm not trying to disempower or make claims of proprietary, objectifying ownership.

I would also say that "our" works both ways.

My wife? "He's MY husband." My daughter? "He's MY daddy!" In fact, I'd dare say they have a greater claim on me than I do on them. But then, this is part of the Service ethos as well.

Anyway, I know you were not nitpicking. Well, okay, maybe a little? But I understand the sentiment was benign and that you're just trying to keep me honest. It's appreciated.

Jen Roth @ 45: "That would explain why there is sexism in all cultures, but it doesn't explain why it only goes one way."

Any conflict, if it cannot be solved any other way, will be solved by appeal to physical laws, i.e. by violence. Men have a substantial advantage over women when conflicts come to that.

I probably should have said "matrilineal," instead of "matriarchal." There are elements of both, but on the whole, the Mosuo seem more interested in a sort of balance between the sexes.

PublicRadioVet @39 -- Sorry, but your concept of chivalry gives me the creeps.

My cure for sexism can be summed up in three words: Women are people.

They're not weird aliens we men can never understand. They're not property to be cloistered away, or servants to be ordered around and beaten, or sacred icons to be placed on pedestals. They're people. They're our friends and relatives and co-workers.

I can't imagine how much poorer my life would be if I had to regard all my female friends through a window of exaltation-as-life-bringers.

Heresiarch @ #50: Allow me to expound a little further. The "Service ethos" I mentioned ought to also be grounded in humility. In this way the import or worth of the service is not necessarily tied to the "flawlessness" of those who are served.

When I exhort guys to "Serve women!" I am saying that I think men (all men!) need a mission in life, and that service to wives and daughters and mothers and grandmothers and sisters... This is a good mission, a worthy mission, a necessary mission. It harnesses the male and binds him to a higher purpose than his own selfish lusts, desires, wants, etc. In this way the male transcends himself and becomes something greater than he is capable of becoming all on his own; certainly greater than any stature attained through hurtful dominion or abuse.

Yeah, maybe things get a little worshipful at times. But in a good relationship I think the "worship" often goes both ways. I've been with a peer partner since 1993 and we really do complete each other, as cliche as that sounds. I really do worship her. And not because she is inhuman or flawless, but because I think she is perfect for me and I am grateful that she has chosen to stay with me in spite of all my shit. And she feels the same about me.

Does this make sense?

Avram, see post #55.

I don't see why PVR's idea of service has to be so very gender-defined. Why "Serve women"? Why not just "Serve"? If it is good for a man to serve a women in order to subsume his baser instincts into a cause higher than himself, then it is good for any person to serve another cherished person that way. It is not only women who are valuable, nor men who have baser instincts.

There's also a nasty little side-effect that comes into play with all this elevating of women to Fertility Goddess stature (the idea of serving *women* because they are the source of life). When we overvalue someone for a particular quality, we give the message this quality is *all* they are valued for, that their other qualities do not merit attention. I, for one, do not plan on bearing children. I hope that doesn't make me less valuable as a woman--or as a human.

Another quibble I have is that PVR does not seem to make allowance in his proposal for homosexual couples. It makes his proposal sound like another argument for the obvious natural rightness of the heterosexual norm, which I'm sure he doesn't intend.

PublicRadioVet.

"It's a cookbook!"

PublicRadioVet, please, pretty please, don't serve me. That kind of behavior incites fits of violence in me. In fact, I find few things as insulting as a guy who won't hit women on principle, even if she took a swing first. A general policy of pacifism can be noble, but refusing to meet me on the same terms you would somebody else with non-metaphorical balls is disparaging, and since I don't pick fights I don't expect to win, might get your ass kicked, and by a girl. If you need something to subvert your inherent masculine foibles, save African children from war and starvation.

Every woman here who's argued that men have the upper-hand when a situation becomes violent is making excuses that don't count. Honestly ladies, a shot gun works just as well for you as it does for your abusive male whatever. Read the thread about guns and what it takes to be a good gun owner that was up here a while back, take the advice seriously, and then if your size is such an issue, hit a shooting range and find out what works for you. Better yet, if you really want to thwart male brutality, get yourself some training and learn how to make your size and weight work for you. I'm not going to say it's easy, but you've got a responsibility to do what it takes to take care of yourself and if you're afraid of violence, then prepare for it. The argument works historically, but it's not a justification for anything going on in the United States (or much of the western world I suspect) today.

I'm dreaming rather idealistically of the day when people are people, where women don't get to cite wonky cyclical estrogen levels for moodswings, and men don't get to cite testosterone for violence. There are inherent differences between the sexes that come down to the effects of different biological makeups, but on the grand social scale of this day and age, they don't matter much.

PublicRadioVet: but don't you also serve your son, your father, your grandfather, your brother -- what exactly is the difference? You are describing family love, and it's not split up by gender - do you really become a better person by loving and helping your daughter than you do by loving and helping your son?

(Your wife of course is a different case, because the dynamics in a romantic/sexual relationship are different, but we're not talking only about women in sexual relationships with men - that is half the point).

I have more reservations about this:
'Every boy should aspire to be a Real Man. Real Men are men who embrace Service. Perhaps the highest possible expression of Service can be found in serving a female. She could be your mom, or your sister, a cousin, a girlfriend, a wife, a daughter, a grandmother, etc.'
but I'm not finding the words to express them very well, and I think I'm joining a queue, anyway.

Dave @ #58: LOL! I had forgotten that cultural reference.

Nicole, lots of women never have kids, either because of choice or because of biology or because of lack of opportunity. My cousin is such a woman, and she's a fine woman IMHO.

As for childbirthing being given too much importance.... I dunno. What's the whole thing with "womb envy" then, if not placing overt importance on the fact that women (and only women, so far) can produce viable human offspring?

My wife thinks the womb and the ability to make children is an immense and sacred power that women enjoy. She's intelligent and multi-talented and educated, but when it gets down to the baseline stuff of survival and Why We Are Here, she typically sticks childbirth right at the top of her list. Notice, SHE puts it there. I don't touch it. This is her choice for herself. And it doesn't seem to shake her faith in the value of all her other talents or abilities. Nor would my appreciation of her diminish had we been unable to have our daughter. Heck, with how long we waited to have kids, it almost worked out that way anyway.

Now, as to the heterocentric nature of my comments, what can I say? DV is overwhelmingly a problem created by hetero males against hetero females. Obviously it's the hetero males with the problem, hence I am discussing a "solution" in terms of hetero males needing a mission for their lives and a way to change their paradigm and escape the shackles of misogyny.

PublicRadioVet @ 55: "It harnesses the male and binds him to a higher purpose than his own selfish lusts, desires, wants, etc."

Not getting any less creepy, PRV. I don't really think that males need to be "harnessed and bound to a higher purpose," certainly not a purpose like being someone's personal servant. Humility is all well and good, but let's give self-respect a chance too, okay?

I don't disagree that helping others is a worthy mission, but why confine it to inter-gender assistance? Why is helping women a more worthy goal than helping other men? And why aren't women in need of a similar life-structuring mission?

I don't mean to knock your personal experience. It seems like this philosophy has enriched your own life. Nonetheless, I seriously doubt its universal applicability, much in the same way I doubt the philosophy of women who go about exhorting other women to devote all their energy and passion to taking care of their husbands and children. If it works for you, then great, but it pretty much gives me the heebie jeebies.

Rad Geek had a good three part series on what men can do. Part II sounds pertinent.

"I for one welcome our Overladies."

Jenny: I think there is worth in all honest service. I'm not trying to say that men should serve women to the exclusion of all else. I am saying that if the majority of hetero men in the world made service to their wives, daughters, sisters, mothers, etc, a top priority, and turned the traditional me-first male paradigm on its ear, then the world would be a vastly different and vastly better place.

anaea: I think there is a lot to be said for context. For instance, if I am riding the train on a weekend and it's crowded and a woman gets on who can't sit down, my old-fashioned sense of decorum might kick in and I'll give her my seat. The same is not true if I am riding the same train and it's a work day and we're all headed either to or from work. The context has shifted and in the modern work world gender does (should?) cease to exist as a factor, so the minute I am in "work mode" a lot of my old-fashioned sensibility in this regard goes to sleep.

Also, I think it's important to note that I have intentionally mentioned the following: wives, daughters, mothers, sisters, yadda yadda. Notice, they are all close relations to the man doing the serving, if not a blood relation. I am not advocating "stalker" service, wherein a man picks a total stranger and then throws himself at her in a bizarre attempt to prove himself. No. I am talking about men doing more for the women and girls already in their lives, the people they are closest to and who (according to statistics) are the most likely to suffer DV or abuse at their hands.

Again, we're discussing women-hate and violence against women. My clarion for "Service to Women!" is my personal answer to women-hate and DV, and I practice it every day of my life.

And no, I do not believe when a man serves a woman, and does it humbly, he in any way is sending a message that he thinks she can't do things for herself.

Case in point. My wife hates to make the bed. Hates it, hates it, hates it. She leaves it a rumpled mess, which suits my bachelor instincts just fine. But you know what? I make the bed. Because as much as I know she hates to make the bed, she likes to get into a made bed at the end of a long day, and since I don't mind making the bed and she does... Well, that's a good, modest example of service. We both know she is CAPABLE of making the bed. That's not the point. The point is, I perform a service for her that she appreciates. And that's all I am saying really.

There's a huge heterosexual assumption in all this, and it's one that, 20 or 30 years ago, I might have shared.

The world has changed, and so have I.

It sometimes looks as though the whole male power business is driven by a general hunger for power, and the attitude to women is at its heart an effort to eliminate half the competition.

How much were lynchings about the purity of white women, and how much about the maintenance of power? It wasn't just "uppity niggers", it was people such as Ella Watson.

Yes, the current political inferences are obvious. And promoting the power of men over women lets the power-hungry give some politically insignificant power to those who support them.

Sexism has an overwhelming stench of fear in it. Violence gives false bravado and disguises the fear. Causing terror and fear in others to deny your own. Misogynists are cowards.

Scott @ 37 and Heresiarch @ 47

Pretty much zero pressure to be a stay at home mom is one of the major reasons the Icelandic population is actually growing (not super fast but I think it's currently at around 2.3 children per woman on average). Childcare is cheap compared to most places, i.e atleast half of what it is here in the UK. They also provide childcare and support (and more importantly no social stigma) for universtiy students with children so when I was studying there would occasionally be a sleeping baby with us in class because a babysitter had flaked out.

There isn't stigma either attached to single mothers. I mean yes having two parents is ofcourse recognized as being better for everyone, but there's not a taboo about being a single mother.

I grew up with not a single of my friends having stay at home mums (or dads) and thought the whole concept was just bizarre when I heard of it first.

Also children born out of wedlock are more common than in. On account of the population in general not being hugely religious and tending to get married when they have a 3-4 year old children that can then carry the rings up the aisle in the church.

Things are far from perfect over there but I've had a few culture shocks running into more conservative cultures.

anaea @ #59 - Er. Telling other women to carry guns and go out and get some training to protect themselves is all very well and good, but your post feels uncomfortably close to blaming the victim to me. Not all of us have access to/money for/the ability to use/want to use martial arts or guns, and in a hell of a lot of situations where men attack women, the women don't have a good reason to expect it - and not all attacks start out physical.

Was it my fault my second boyfriend berated and abused me until I felt like I should accept his physical abuse, too, because I didn't want to shoot him or beat him up?

Please tell me I'm reading your post wrong. I really hope I am.

#42: the point about "our women" reminds me of that Draco Tavern story about the language that has three different forms of the possessive, depending on whether it's "my leg" (intrinsic), "my car" (possessive) or "my sister ("relational").

Also Chesterton's "The Absence of Mr. Glass", which makes the distinction between a man's hat and a hat that is his. My hat is the one I wear. If I own a hat shop, there are hundreds of hats that are mine, but only one or two that are my hats.

English, as a language, needs improving.

Power structures and power trips are imposed on people from without: oppression is quite literally top down. And that can't be changed at the top, because the ones in charge are the ones who benefit most from the status quo. As a number of commenters have pointed out, a lot of oppression of women comes from giving men with little power themselves someone else to hold power over, to keep them content with the rule of those who really hold power.

Cultures always change in the long-term bottom up, because people start acting differently and ultimately make the old structures irrelevant and powerless. It's a matter of education in the largest sense: raising people who are educated to recognize as a fundamental part of their world view, not just intellectually, that the old notion of superiority/inferiority is unacceptable and undesirable.

That sort of education comes from being raised by and knowing people who believe it themselves: the people commenting here and their ilk. The idea that misogyny is a bad thing is not new, but it seems to be growing in acceptance, perhaps because it really does have survival value to the human race over the long run. It's clearly not time to pat ourselves on the back, or Dua Khalil would still be alive, and we would not be facing a presidential election in the US where the white electorate might actually vote for a black man because the alternative might be a woman. But it just may be that there is hope for the future.

As a personal example, I was raised in the Eastern US in the mid-20th century; as misogynist a culture as you'll find in Western civilization. The only reason I didn't assimilate that culture and its views completely is that I come from a family containing a number of strong women, including one aunt and one female cousin who were* among the best and most recognized in their respective professions, and several others who had successful professional and family lives.

This exemplar of strong women was what led me to marry a woman who is also strong, and our marriage has lasted 37 years for the simple reason that we are partners, we have each other's back. Neither of us would be alive today without the other, and that's a whole lot stronger a bond than any notion of proper station or a role in life received from above.

* before they retired; both of them are alive, my aunt is going to be 95 this year.

Stephen Frug@46: I had not previously encountered those pictures.

The first site you linked to has 100 pictures. I had to stop after 25. I simply could not keep going. I don't have the words to describe my feelings right now.

anaea at 59:
"I'm dreaming rather idealistically of the day when people are people, where women don't get to cite wonky cyclical estrogen levels for moodswings"

A woman's hormone levels can and do change radically from one day to the next, and it DOES cause mood swings. One of the treatments I'm on for my bipolar disorder is Seasonale, precisely because it evens out those levels to a large extent for months at a time. Since my hormonal cycle was making my bipolar cycles more severe, it's helped a lot. And when it's time for the week of sugar pills, I can d*mned well fall apart.
While yes, women use it as an excuse to be assholes and men use it as a way to put down women, and both of those things are wrong, it's still a very, very real phenomenon. Acknowledging that both men and women are people doesn't and shouldn't mean ignoring the very real physiological differences between us. It should instead mean that we treat one another with respect and compassion.

ajay @ 70

In "The Dispossessed" Ursula Le Guin describes a society whose language has no possessive form at all. Instead of saying "my partner", they say "the partner". As in the Draco Tavern atory, this leads to a different way of thinking.

If you think that the way you speak doesn't fundamentally affect the way you see the world, contemplate martial arts for awhile, and note how training is designed to make action automatic, to create correct habits. Speech is a collection of some of the most basic habits we have, and everything about it affects the way we think of, feel about, and react to the world. Speech about relationships is especially powerful because it describes those relationships to us.

Bruce Cohen @ 70:

On the other hand, it's worth noting that the problem of "honor killings" exists in societies that speak very different languages, e.g., Turkey, numerous Arab-speaking countries, Kurdish speakers like the Yezidis that Whedon wrote about, and Pakistan (several different languages). As a language, Turkish is arguably less "gendered" than English (for example, Turkish lacks gendered 3rd person pronouns like "he" and "she"), and certainly less so than French or Spanish (no grammatical gender for nouns and adjectives). This doesn't necessarily mean that Turkish society has more gender equality than the US or Spain or France, however.

Fiddling with minor bits of language like possessive pronouns sounds like an appealingly easy solution to society's ills, but I suspect it's like treating a minor symptom instead of the underlying disease.

D'oh. My previous comment was meant as a reply to Bruce Cohen's comment @ 74, not "70". (Although it was also a reply of sorts to ajay's original comment @ 70...)

Peter @ #75: In another example of your point, Mandarin Chinese also lacks a gendered personal pronoun. (I'm not suggesting here that language doesn't inform thought, but rather that monkeying with pronouns is unlikely to produce gender equality.)

Public Radio Vet: I do appreciate your attempt to oppose evil with good, but among the reasons your position makes me nervous are:

1. It prescribes "correct" behavior for a very large category of people
2. It assigns an active role to all men and a passive role to all women
3. It mandates that all men must be in relationships with women and vice versa

and

4. The attitude you suggest as proper for men is completely compatible with the obsessive, posessive, stalkery attitude my daughters and I have encountered in a few of our male acquaintances.

In short, I honor your intent, but no thanks. Given a wish, the behavior I'd most wish for from the men I know is either (a) treat me as a fellow human being, with due attention paid to my individual likes and dislikes, or (b) LEAVE ME ALONE! (Luckily, most of the men in my life are perfectly willing to do one or the other.)

There's a truly creepy moment in Deepa Mehta's film "Fire"; a woman asks her husband, who has become celibate in search of spiritual perfection, what HER reward will be for giving up sex and the hope of having children; his startled reply is along the lines of "the glory of having served me!"

#43 Serge, that would be "crossbow" weddings, ballista are hard to get inside the church. Although, I believe "at the point of the sword/spear/dagger" would also work. A traditional bow would be tiring to hold in the ready position for the whole ceremony.

All right, longer post that I've been trying to formulate. The odd thing about PRV's concept of 'service to the females in your life' is that it seems to mirror a traditional view of how women should behave. Just try reversing the genders...

'Every girl should aspire to be a Real Woman. Real Women are women who embrace Service. Perhaps the highest possible expression of Service can be found in serving a man. He could be your father, or your brother, a cousin, a boyfriend, a husband, a son, a grandfather, etc.'

... and watch the hackles rise.

Now, I think the notion of treating your partner (of whatever gender) with the consideration and kindness that PRV describes is a very fine one, and I appreciate his desire that men should behave well towards the women in their lives. But I object to this talk about what makes a 'Real Man' or a 'Real Woman': how about discussing the way a Decent Person acts? It's recognising the common humanity in others that leads us to treat them well -- not some idealisation based on gender, which can just as well swing the other way into a kind of contempt, or worse. (Actually I think that women who take the 'real-women-serve-their-menfolk' line sometimes do seem to have a kind of contempt for the male gender: 'oh, men are really very simple' etc., which I'm none too keen on).

Also, what about women who don't have a male partner/ close male relative/ whatever? Why should they be worse off without anyone to 'serve' them? What I envy about men is not any kind of biological equipment (ha!) but just the freedom to go your way about the world without the worries that stack up on you for being female. I've had male friends go out of their way -- with the kindest intentions -- to walk me home after a party (I've sometimes wondered if *I* should be worried about *them* walking back on their own), and I've walked home alone when there was no such offer forthcoming. I love walking alone at night. It would be wonderful to be able to do this without feeling like a prey species. (In fact it's fairly safe where I am, but I have been hassled sometimes, and I'm always aware there's a certain risk, even when I choose to take it...)

In other words, PublicRadioVet, I'd rather be on your work train than your weekend train -- though it's sometimes nice to be on the receiving end of a chivalrous gesture without sleazy undertones, I'd trade that occasional event very, very gladly for being seen as a human being first and foremost and as a female human being... let's say, only at times in my life where my private parts are relevant. I'm sure that on the work train you would still give up your seat to someone who was infirm, or had small children with them, or was physically uncomfortable standing for whatever reason, and that's what really matters.

Peter Erwin @ #75, I agree with you. I didn't know that about Turkish, but Hungarian also has no gender in the third person (which can lead to some odd effects in translation: I've heard a Hungarian speaking English consistently refer to his daughter as 'he', which gave me a real mental jolt!). I can't see any particular evidence that this has made Hungarians less sexist than their neighbours; I think it's only one facet among greater cultural forces.

Finally, Sica @#68, I am getting the increasing impression, from what I've heard and read, that Icelandic society is pretty awesome, and different/quirky in an agreeable way. I hope I get to visit there someday.

Heresiarch #47

For callibration purposes, I live in a "second tier" city (Fukuyama) which will be less cosmopolitan, modern, and expensive than the "first tier" cities (Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, maybe more).

In my experience, there are definitely women who are avoiding marriage, and housework. But it's far from a majority. I'm sure it's grown since whenever before. I wouldn't even blink an extra time if somebody told me that the number of women who don't want a family (different from don't want to be housewives) was the same as the number of Japanese men who don't want to join a company and start the last-job-they'll-ever-have (also an increasing number).

Another thing that is very different now than a few years ago for birth-rate is the number of 1-child families has positively skyrocketed. Women who want a child have one, but having 2 is a hassle or whatever. Japanese society, overall, seems to provide just about zero support to a mother. Some random newspaper article (in the Daily Yomiuri) I read said that Japan is still moderately hostile to men as primary caregiver for a child.

An electrical engineer I know is married and has 2 children, works the full run of insane Japanese working hours and still finds time to let her mother to complain that her cooking isn't up to snuff yet. I don't get it but I am in awe. This reminds me that I need to figure out how rude it would be to ask about her husband...

For contrast, at a 2-year college, there's a class of 23 IT/Programming students, 6 of whom are women (girls?) 3 of whom describe their future as doing office-work... maybe. Eh? I restate, I don't get this place.

PRV, have you read Anne Bishop's Dark Jewels trilogy? It's set in a society based on male service to female-- and sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. It's one of those worlds that says it's feminist, but sort of isn't.

Your Service does make me a little nervous, but not because of what it is. I'm often wary of unknown people declaring themselves to a cause. Add anything involving sex and gender and I'm going to stay well away until I know it's not going to cause harm. I can understand how someone who has encountered stalkery men would stay well away *period*.
Some of it is also the dichotomy between men (lustful, selfish, violent) and women (chaste, giving, nurturing) you seem to accept. Lately, it seems I'm been running into that a lot-- if men are X, women must be -X. Men only want one thing, so women have to be coaxed or coerced into it. Men are strong, women are weak. Men are good at numbers, women are good at words. Women form strong social groups, men must be solitary.
It's a stupid way to order the world because gender and sex aren't binary. And because the traits people often take as fixed-- men are lustful, for example-- are really, really not. Up until pretty recently, women were wanton and sinful and men had to protect themselves against them. Men had to guard and protect women against the female nature.
And the result was somewhat the same. Serve women or bad things will happen. If women don't have men to help out, they will be unhappy and the world will be worse off. Women cannot live without men.

I know you don't mean to suggest these things, and you live in a way that's right for you, plural you. It seems sometimes that everything I take in involving sex and gender tells me that the world is a messed-up place. I've learned to watch for the barbs past experience tells me are there. Stories, essays, manifestos on sex and gender are almost always bad news or worse news.

Jenny @#79

Gender equality etc. still has a way to go back home in Iceland, the average salary for women is still a fair bit lower etc. But the lack of taboo around working and/or single mothers is great.

I also like the fact that we still have a last name (patronyms) system that doesn't involve changing your name when you get married. That's another concept I found completely bizarre when I encountered it first and I still can't really get my heard around it.

As a side effect of that, children of a couple have get the same name, no matter if the parents are married or not which probably is one factor in the "lets not get married until we have a house and a few kids" thing that a lot of people do.

That's hardwired enough into me so that I went to a wedding in the UK where the bride and groom to be had borrowed a child the bride used to babysit to carry the rings up the aisle and it felt really *wrong* (in the truthiness place) to me, to have an intruder that wasn't a part of the core family fulfilling that function. It should either be their child or no child at all. Heh..

Anyway to be slightly on topic, I wonder if the lack of surnames has shaped the culture. I.e there isn't the concept of a family linage that hinges only on male children being born.

Some random newspaper article (in the Daily Yomiuri) I read said that Japan is still moderately hostile to men as primary caregiver for a child.

Unless you're talking about "Lone Wolf and Cub", of course.

To PublicRadioVet:

Every boy should aspire to be a Real Man.

Whenever I see something like that, it looks to me like "I'm trying to take your self-respect hostage. You don't get to like yourself unless I approve of what you're doing."

I've been told by men that the Real Man vulnerability is just built into boys. If that's true, of course I'd rather have a relatively sane and civilized standard of Real Manhood, but is this really necessary? Is it commonly accepted nonsense, deep psychological truth, or true for some temperaments but not for all?

In re making your wife's bed because she strongly prefers having a made bed but hates making it herself: Does this need an ideal of Service, or would reasonable (and probably reciprocal) kindness be enough?

Steve Buchheit... A few years ago, during a staff meeting, one of my co-workers announced that she was getting married. That took us all by surprise because we had no idea she was seeing someone. Everybody congratulated her. I, since my mission in life was to tease her, asked if it was going to be a shotgun wedding. People actually gasped, except for my co-worker because, being from Hong Kong, she didn't know what that means. I proceeded to explain. Which gave her nightmares from then until the actual wedding that she'd become pregnant, and visibly so, by the time of the ceremony. Heheheheh...

As a man, I'm a bit reluctant to jump in here. However, I think (and it's been stated above) that some (most?) misogynistic behavior is based on male fear. If you're afraid of something, you may react violently.

Misogynistic cultures seem to treat sex as something women have and men want, and go to great lengths to "protect" women from men. The whole point of the burqa is hide a woman's form, so that men don't get "carried away" by a woman's sexuality. Ditto Victorian female attire.

Ritual, violent and public deaths, whether lynchings or "honor killings," are a form of control. They are a symptom, not a cause.

I don't have the training or background in psychology to cite studies in support of this, so all of the above is my opinion, YMMV.

Paula Helm Murray #27: I would say that education is the one "vaccine" that will work against honour killings. That, and making clear that they are going to result in condign punishments for the killers.

#75 ::: Peter Erwin: Fiddling with minor bits of language like possessive pronouns sounds like an appealingly easy solution to society's ills, but I suspect it's like treating a minor symptom instead of the underlying disease.

#77 ::: Lila: (I'm not suggesting here that language doesn't inform thought, but rather that monkeying with pronouns is unlikely to produce gender equality.)

Agreed. But reading Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness is a very different experience from reading her short story 'Coming of Age in Karhide,' in large part because of her conscientious use of pronouns. These pronouns didn't change the world. They did, however, change my world a little bit.

linnen #30: Honour killings occur when the woman in question takes up with an 'unsuitable' man, that's true. The man is unsuitable precisely because he has not been chosen by the family (i.e., by the elder male or males in the family), so the 'dishonour' resides in the woman's sexuality being outside the control of her older male relatives. This is also why a woman 'dishonours' her family by being raped. Her virginity is a commodity to be prized because it can be sold, in essence, to a suitable man. Anything which brings that commodity into doubt is going to be treated as a threat to the stability of the family, the social order, and the natural order of the universe.

In the process, women are completely dehumanised.

Will A@ #88, I was musing the other day about whether or not The Left Hand of Darkness was a book that it would be possible to film...

heresiarch@47

It's not just happening in Japan.

The US Census Bureau has reported that the number of women in marriages (well, marriages in general) have decreased a lot from 100 years ago. IIRC the number is around 50% of the population now where before it was 90 to 95%. (I got the information second-hand and have no links or cites.) Reasons are listed as: Divorced (and not doing that again), Looking (without success), and Just Not Interested.

I also heard that t