All posts tagged "Misogyny"

President Donald Trump's repeated claims that girls will have to get along with fewer dolls as his tariffs work their economic magic reveals an underlying MAGA misogyny that reinforces the beliefs of the manosphere, according to Salon's Amanda Marcotte.

A week ago, Trump seemed to speak off the cuff when he said, "maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls." But Marcotte wrote that the "doll" talk became an actual talking point, as evidenced by the fact he told NBC's Kristen Welker, "I don't think a beautiful baby girl that's 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls," then told reporters , "All I’m saying is that a young lady, a 10-year-old-girl, 9-year-old girl, 15-year-old-girl, doesn’t need 37 dolls."

Marcotte argued that "Trump defended his trade-destroying tariffs by lecturing parents about not spoiling their daughters" who are inherently "frivolous" due to their gender, a point that speaks directly to the MAGA base that helped Trump get elected....

Damon Wayans uttered the most disturbing defense of Bill Cosby yet after he appeared on Power 105.1's The Breakfast Club and claimed that Cosby couldn't have assaulted his accusers because they weren't attractive enough to be raped.

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There's been an interesting surge lately in protests against online misogyny, kicked off by the rather strange case of douchebags dogpiling of Alyssa Rosenberg for having the nerve to be an even-tempered pop culture blogger for Think Progress. Oh yeah, and with a vagina. That, it is believed, was her real crime that justified a torrent of unprovoked abuse in the comments at Think Progress, which led her to start speaking out about online misogyny. Sady Doyle has now joined up with a Twitter hashtag called #mencallmethings, which is useful for an eyeful of the routine abuse dished out at women online for daring to think they have a right to write. I added some examples of my own. 

[rebelmouse-image 24749414 original_size="1042x744" expand=1]You know, I want to believe the Catholic church defenders when they say that it's not about misogyny. I want to believe them when they say the priesthood excludes women because of tradition. I want to believe them when they say that the bans on contraception are about marriage and the sanctity of sex. I want to believe them when they say the ban on abortion is about being "pro-life". But it's so hard, and not just because they seek out small children that are rape victims that need abortions, and move heaven and earth to ruin those girls' lives and health by preventing it. It's also this. (Hat tip.)

I think one of the ongoing problems with the term "misogyny" is that, for many people, it conjures up strictly images of those men (and some women) who exhibit a really obvious hatred of women---people who say rape victims were asking for it, the scary dudes who troll Salon Broadsheet and seem to think every woman is out to castrate them and steal their wallets, wife beaters and pimps, the anti-choice protesters who scream vile shit because they blame women for all their life's failures. Because of this, people who exhibit a more patronizing attitude towards women are assumed to be well-meaning if misguided, and don't get treated like misogynists. Frankly, this troubles me, in no small part because condescending assholes often let the uglier hatred come out if challenged, and also because the assumptions the ones affecting a "well-meaning" pose promote are just as damaging to women as overt hatred.