Misogyny
“Sodini felt that he was entitled not just to sex and a romantic relationship, but to sex and a romantic relationship with a much younger woman. And he was following the advice of a love-and-romance guru who encouraged him to cling to that belief. Not normally a problem, I suppose. But Sodini wasn’t just another socially maladapted schlub furious with the world—and with women—for denying him the twentysomething ass he felt he had coming. Sodini was a nut.” - Dan Savage, in his August 12, 2009 column regarding George Sodini, the man who went on a crazed rampage and shot up an aerobics class in Pittsburgh in early August
For the past few years, I have been coming to a slow boil about misongyny. I have some very sprawling and disjointed thoughts to put together and I hope you’ll humor me for a while.
I grew up in a house full of women and more or less grew up not understanding that misogyny exists. Domestic violence, yes. Rape, yes. Sexism, yes. But it took a very long time for me to start noticing that there is a darker undercurrent in almost every aspect of life, which spells out that a very large chunk of mankind is extremely angry at womankind for being desirable. Like, many of you are fucking pissed at us about your erections, like we collectively caused them on purpose to make your lives miserable. Only in the past year or so have I begun to understand that about rape, in particular. Like, I might get raped at any point in my life because someone else rejected my rapist when he was a disturbed 14-year-old.
I am obviously not speaking to anyone who would be reading this blog. But I am unnerved a lot of the time in my daily adult life these days and I want to specifically call out primetime television on this point. There is a ridiculous amount of sexual assault being portrayed on TV these days and it is fucked up and it speaks to a larger truth. There is a sense of entitlement in men that is starting to make me very, very angry. A sense that men have every right to reject and cheat on a woman, but may very possibly kill that same woman if she does the same. A sense that men have every right to go after every piece of young ass they feel attracted to, but if a woman goes after a younger man, she is to be mocked. She is to be mocked and portrayed on TV by Courtney Cox. What is that? What is with this “cougar” bullshit, when I don’t have a similar ridiculous moniker to call every guy over, say, 10 years older than me who asks me out? I’m very much not bragging when I say that makes up the majority of men who show an interest in me. And I’m sick of it.
I am sick of turning on the TV and finding a rape scene being fetishized. Of a woman’s dead body shown, and it looking sexy. Of the constant killing off of strippers and prostitutes, as though they had it coming. Of a woman being raped and then avenged by her man, and it being revered in films as the pinnacle of manhood and bravery. My gender shouldn’t have to suffer so that you can be awesome. Cut it out.
And I am sick of a woman’s sexual problems being the cause of many a divorce, but when I turn on the radio, I hear ad upon ad for erectile dysfunction. Why do you divorce us over the same thing you get to take a pill for? Where’s our erectile dysfunction pill? I am tired of putting up with all this and so should you be.
Fuck, can we all just stand in a room and yell “SO SAY WE ALL” and make it all go away?
