Definition:
The Oxford English Dictionary Definition of Misogyny
Dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.
The OED defines Sexism:
Inability or refusal to recognise the rights/needs/dignity or value of people of one sex or gender.
Links to:
- entitlement/superiority
- notions of physical and emotional space
- violence against women, sexual harassment, and other crimes of ‘power over’
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is the organisational aspect or systemic aspect – it places men at the top of a hierarchy of importance – in terms of legal decision making, family/economic decision making, community decision making. We can talk about living in a total patriarchy, about families and groups being organised on patriarchal lines. Patriarchal expectations.
the system: of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.
Sexism
Sexism is prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination, language and inbuilt assumptions about “woman’s roles and places”. This prejudice is made up of assumptions, theories, and stereotypes that normalize and justify patriarchal norms as the most inevitable and desirable.
the supporting ideology: ‘Women are just more caring, or nurturing, more domestic”; “Men are more rational; better suited to power.”
Misogyny
Misogyny, is the hostile policing of those women who violate patriarchal norms and expectations, thereby setting a precedent for the cost of feminist transgression.
the enforcement: a dislike of certain behaviours that misogynists deem ‘unbecoming’, ‘inappropriate’ for women, such as power, independence, ambition, sex.
Human Rights channel gives us research that 63% of women journalists have been confronted with verbal abuse
80% of women in the research had been interrupted by men at work and experienced “mansplaining”
In the UK 66% of 16 – 18 yr old girls have experienced or witnessed the use of sexist language at school.
Sexism synthesizes a disregard of women; misogyny, then, acts out that disregard through acts of verbal or physical hatred.
To say ‘boys will be boys’ and something like “a woman should not… wear certain clothes/ be out running at night” — is sexism.
But, to make ‘she had it coming’ rape jokes — that’s misogyny.
An individual woman is capable of benefiting from some forms of sexism – women and children first, holding doors open for women, men who decides to pay the bill.
Women as a collective group are harmed by misogyny.
