It’s not an unknown fact that misogyny and sexism are rife in NI, but there’s often confusion surrounding the two. Sexism is the prejudice, stereotyping and/or discrimination against women (or men! But we’re talking women here). Misogyny is the (underlying) contempt or hatred for women and ensures that women are kept at a lower level than men.
Misogyny simultaneously enforces and maintains sexism. Women are oppressed, there is no doubt about it. Most people don’t view what women go through on daily basis / have gone through their whole lives as traumatic, they see the way women are mistreated as just the way things are and the women who are traumatised are simply the weak ones.
There’s way too much to cover about misogyny in one little blog but I wanted to shed some light on just how misogyny and sexism impacts the life of a woman, drawing on personal experiences and literal statistical facts.
Let’s start with sex. It wasn’t long after I started working at Ann Summers and promoting it online that I started receiving tweets from “men” making a joke of the job and sending me photos of sex dolls - just adding to the stigma really, that only men can talk about sex because only...men have sex.. right? Why is your masculinity so fragile that you’re intimidated by a woman speaking about sex? Similarly, on International Men’s Day, the same lads tweeted that “all women talk about is themselves”. Women talk about themselves on topics like sexual harassment, misogyny, and oppression and still aren’t heard. Maybe that’s why we need a day for awareness.
Misogyny has many different forms, and often we don’t think of the things we say as misogynistic, but they are. When I used to work in a local café I incessantly got told to smile by male customers. All of the time I got comments like “you should smile more”, “you’re too pretty to not be smiling”, “smile, it might never happen” – like, no. Women aren’t there to smile at you all of the time and men certainly don’t have the right to tell women what to do or how to conduct themselves. Never mind the fact that I am sure no one has ever seen a man tell a male waiter to smile more. One day while I was working, a customer slapped my butt because I wasn’t taking his order fast enough. He genuinely slapped it. A complete stranger. When he did that, the only thing I could do was stand out the back and cry because I was so shocked that I had been sexually harassed in broad daylight on a Friday afternoon.
One day just a couple of months ago, I was walking down a pedestrian walkway when a guy followed me and pulled his trousers down to show me his penis. This was an isolated path and I was completely alone. Obviously my first thought was I’m going to get raped. It was 7pm on a bright and sunny Friday evening, it wasn’t as if I was out after dark which is what women are of course told not to do – because it’s women that have to monitor their behaviour and not men. I can't even count on two hands (or remember) how many times I've been verbally harassed and physically harassed and that is terrifying.
The obscurity of the threatening behaviour women face in public is magnified by the reality that men don’t do this to women who are accompanied by other men. I have never been verbally or physically sexually harassed when my boyfriend has been with me. When a man doesn’t take no for an answer the first time round just because the woman is alone is problematic in itself, but to think that her ‘no’ is only valid because she is in a relationship is a whole different kettle of fish.
This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg on what I have experienced as a woman and it certainly isn’t the worst thing I have experienced, but it is an example of misogyny.
Something that absolutely astounds me (and it is said by women too!) is saying “she must be on her period” if a woman seems annoyed or pissed off. This snubs women’s opinions and labels them as crazy and untrustworthy. It widens the gap between men and women. Whether we like it or not, the word ‘hysteria’ literally comes from the Greek word for womb. We have a whole crazy emotion named after us – how amazing. Additionally, calling women “psycho” (red flag) when they have boundaries or are simply pissed off is only putting more emphasis on how women are supposed to be nice and gentle to make men’s lives easier, and when we defend ourselves, we’re branded as crazy.
What’s with calling a woman a slut when she exercises her right to bodily autonomy? Or when a woman dresses in a way that makes her feel confident?
When I worked as a waitress I got told by a woman that my bra was showing and that I needed to fix my top. Why? Also, I hate to say it but I come from a narrow-minded town where a lot of people turn their nose up at the powerful art form that is Burlesque – so much so that when I was performing a contemporary dance at a burlesque show, someone had the nerve to say to my dad “how can you let your lovely daughter dance like that”. Dance like WHAT?
I’m not saying it’s only men that say these things, women are guilty too and I’ve been working on myself to try to notice and eradicate the internalised misogyny that I have. I used to judge other women on their appearance when in reality I was just adding to the problem. Any woman can wear whatever she wants. Nothing is “too risky” because clothes don’t determine how a person is treated. Society has this idea of what a woman should look like (this is because of the patriarchy btw) or how much makeup she should wear or how many times a week she should workout when all of these concepts and ideologies are made up to please men.
Not calling out your mates is what I'll finish on. By staying silent you’re just allowing it the hate to continue. Anything relating to feminism / men that I post gets a stream of guys tagging their mates under my posts and I’m very honoured to be popping up in their group chats but all it’s publicly saying is that they’re happy to call themselves out as misogynists.
This blog hasn’t even covered a fraction of the impact misogyny and sexism has on women’s lives but this isn’t the end of my rants about it. xo
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