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I mentioned here many times that I consider the gender (sex) divide the greatest factor in our model of understanding modern political thought and action.
Background; middle-class male, young, Catholic family, Mediterranean, living in a big, poor city. Moved to Central Europe to work in a big èlite public institution with many young people, especially females. History of belonging to Marxist organisations in the past btw.
As a passionate about history, I normally talk about it, especially in a highly-educated environment where discussions about complex topics are the norm.
What I noticed in the past year it is astounding and moulded a lot of my thought. Every time I talk with women about history, and the topics fall on some past event/political regime/ideology/whatever, there is a lot of disinterest towards it from the women's side. Not disinterest in the sense of "I do not care", because as I said it is a highly-educated environment where being uncaring about this kind of thing is uncool, but disinterest in the sense of:
"I understand that in the past things worked a certain way, but the past is always worse than now because women had it worse".
From there, after it happened dozens of times with dozens of different women, I elaborated:
Women are the true accelerationist.
I could not elaborate or argue about past political or moral issues or ideologies or sovrastructures, because, from the other side, the argument is always that every behaviour or ideology of the past is ontologically evil because it discriminated against women.
I will never forget how when I was arguing about how 19th-century European states had probably a higher state-capacity than contemporary European states, I was accused of sexism because I expressed a preference for a non-contemporary political structure. The same happened when I mentioned how I admire Charles De Gaulle (because Macron, while being bad, is better than him because he is more feminist).
The most amazing moment was when I said to a group of women (yes, a lot of weird moments this year) that the loss of Church participation alienated a lot of people and diminished the sense of belonging and social participation of the community in the public thing. They agreed with me (!) but still for them, it is better now because they prefer a more isolated society but with more feminism.
Women are true accelerationist because the consequence of feminism has been a weirdo para-futurism philosophy but without fascism. Everything that can be conducted to the past is suspected as part of a reactionary plot to be judged on moral grounds. No detached interests in History per se, but only moral condemnation of everything that is not the "current year".
For me, it was fascinating to discover how males and females consider history, especially when the topic of "in which historical epoch would you like to live?" and every woman answer "now".
The biggest consequence of this sex divide is, imho, that a feminist liberal society has a huge gap in understanding the context when society begins to decline after drifting from some past ideology or structure. It is not possible for them that something contemporary can be worse than something present in the past.
I would like to receive some input on my "theory" from the residents of the motte, expressed in the English language which is better than mine.
PS: for people who are curious, I never received any sort of cancellation or consequence for my brazen rhetorical behaviour. Europe is not as woke as the US, and I am a kinda of "high-status male" for several reason, so I noticed that women tolerate way more whatever I say.
Yes, I agree with you. There's a sense of solidarity by a modern liberal woman with anything perceived as progressive that overrides debate on certain issues.
I'd like to outline my meta-critique of feminism in relation to this phenomenon. It's a kind of speculative post-Jungian thing and doesn't attempt any evidence so take it with a grain of salt.
The first thing women know is that men are more powerful than them physically - they are stronger and more violent, so the average woman would lose in a fight to an average man. Additionally because of procreation they are more vulnerable- men desire to rape woman more often than they desire to rape men, so even a weak man will be safer on the streets from that kind of violation (though more likely to experience common assault).
Men also have higher representation in the tails of achievement across many different domains - this is not describing the average, but does mean that generally the smartest woman would have usually found a smarter man in her domain (of course there are spectacularly smart woman in the distribution as well).
All this means that deep in their psyches, women feel an inferiority complex in relation to men (men in turn have inferiority around the ability to procreate, hence a push to have the heavenly father dominate over earth mother in Western traditions). Also as an aside both men and women are misogynistic, projecting their existential disgust/despair onto woman as the closest to 'life/creation/existence'.
This inferiority combines with the actual injustice of historical patriarchy, servitude, male domineering that woman have experienced into feminism.
To avoid the knowledge of male primary power, feminism took up the ideas of social constructivism a la Foucault, where power relations determine the way things are. Thus the exclusion of biological science in discourse in favour of blank-slate ideas. And the explicit use of politics and solidarity to wield power.
But, political aims work against truth discernment and so feminism has wandered, and failed to integrate biology and evolution, and has, like a lot of social science, favoured novelty over synthesis.
This political wandering has led to internal factionism, first with intersectionality, which undermines solidarity across the category women, and now gender ideology and queer theory, the bastard sister of gender studies, which undermines the very category of women.
But modern liberal progressive politics demands solidarity across the sisterhood, and so more than anyone, women are responsible for sustaining the politics undermining feminism, and womanhood, itself.
I don't think that both men and women are misogynistic. Rather I think that both men and women are predisposed to hating men due to the essential power structure you outline in paragraph 3 above. If you hate a more powerful person who has power over you, it's righteous and empowering and normal to do so. If you hate someone weaker than you, you are a loser. I am not predisposed to hating women. When I think of my father, I think of him eternally as an adult who subjugated me as a youth, but when I think of my mother I just feel regret for ever having hurt her in any way. Indeed the things I fault my father for are for his weaknesses, not being strong enough, out of this grew my resentment toward him. Toward my mother I would never feel any hatred toward her weakness, to do so would be gruesome, especially as an adult.
As a gay man the only misogyny I can find in myself is a sort of irritation that straight men are attracted to women, but this doesn't really spark a deep seated hatred within me but if anything rather an irritation toward myself that I'm not what a straight man would be attracted to. I'm more predisposed toward hating men and it's downstream of hating myself which I believe all men are predisposed toward. As a young child I was resentful toward women because I imagined they would reject my love but this just made me seek male affection instead, not hate women.
What makes you draw the conclusion that men and women are misogynistic? It's funny that you mention projection in this sentence as I think it's male self-hatred and women's hatred of men that you are projecting onto men and women as misogyny.
Thanks for your input and personal experience. Yes, I think you're right. It seems a poor assumption that both men and women tend to misogyny and ironically wrong even for me, I don't hate women and feel somewhat aligned with them. Also, the cliche of the archetypal feminist is man-hating, so not consistent either if we take that cliche seriously. I'll abandon that bit then as it doesn't seem to pass the sniff test. The bit I'm trying to explain is that misogyny tends to be more prevalent in both men and women than misandry and it seems that in 3rd wave feminism, in upholding ideas that undermine the rights of women and viciously othering and attacking 'terfs', women are being fundamentally misogynistic - the whole trans phenomenon has a misogynistic thrust and it's mainly women supporting it. Perhaps it's just the 'dark mother', the projected dark side of the kindness and nurturing of women.
Though of course, these Jungian analyses could be just a lot of just-so bullshit and it's just contextual...
But persevering with the deep psyche as the explanatory frame, i know from experience an extraordinary amount of men are somewhat or very misogynistic - I wonder why that is, it seems like a mother issue and feels like an early imprint around early rejection in infancy around needs met. I speculate that woman could experience this same imprint and be misogynistic by virtue of mother being the first thing, while man being somewhat peripheral. Though of course many women have very good relationships with their mothers...
In exploring the self-hate, which I know well also (perhaps it's a universal?), I wonder if it is in fact not gendered in it's sense at all.
I think the power structure explanation you outline seems right.
I think it's really a projection of men's inner frustrations with themselves and their situation. They want sex, desperately, and they want it from women. They believe if they were more fit or attractive they'd have an easier chance of getting sex from women. They blame themselves for their lack of sex and try to pin the blame on women because it alleviates them from the pain of pinning the blame on the self. This is not born out of misogyny but self hatred. If the man believed the woman/object of his desire would love him back unconditionally and deservedly, he would have not be acting out in ways perceived as misogynistic. The most confident secure men who are sexually desired by the people around him are not misogynistic because they are comfortable with themselves and have no reason to project their self hatred onto women.
I'm not sure how to interpret this, it depends on if you're male or female. I think that all men are self hating. Women can also be self hating but they often grow out of it and find meaning through family and relationships at a younger age than men do. Many men grow to an old age and never escape their self loathing, or it can fluctuate throughout their lives based on their condition and perception of their lives.
Interesting, yes, I think projection of life circumstances onto the other sex plausibly accounts for a lot of male misogyny. Obviously a lot of different contextual factors might account for it, ie a patterns learned from their fathers.
But not necessarily an infant attachment thing, ie Bowlby. That seems to lead to deeper issues perhaps than misogyny/misandry.
Re the self-hate I just mean that it doesn't seem directed at man or woman per se. It has that empty-like ego quality, at least for me.
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