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Sissy, faggot, "wuss", pansy, and wimp. What do these terms have in common? These terms are used to devalue or demean boys and men to imply that they are or have female or feminine characteristics.
Were it not for an ingrained, deep-rooted hatred of the female species, this, some of whom never realize they carry, the violence being perpetrated on fellow humans may have never erupted.
With constant repetition, the message to males young and old is, "Men don't cry." "Men aren't soft." "Men don't want to be like women." "Women cry." "Women are too emotional." "Women aren't leaders." Being anything like a woman is less than acceptable.
With this anti-woman hammering, boys are and have been growing up being completely and totally insulted and angered at the mere mention or implication of them being a faggot, a sissy or any of the several words the English language has come up to imply femininity, with an American twist.
This is not an American problem. Misogyny is practiced daily by nearly every religion in every country in the world.
Its unmistakable stench wafts out of even the sweetest men. And women. With men holding the property, money, controls and everything else that women want, women are sucked into the misogynistic mode that that keeps they themselves trapped in serving men's visual, egotistical and sexual fantasies.
The difference between years past and now is that now the violence that is so accessible in today's media allows impressionable boys to plant this anger in a large pot of emotion, cultivate it into a blossom of hate so enormous it becomes a pot-bound monster with no control.
Boys learn at a young age that it is taboo to be caught hugging or loving his mother. They also learn at a young age that women are for sex and visual aerobics. Skinny and malnourished-looking women are high on the want list. Plastic surgeons, Hollywood, music, cosmetic companies, professional sports, courtier designers who keep fashions racy on the runways keep misogyny fresh and alive for each new generation who'll become trapped on one side or the other.
This observation, which has been discussed with some people, has been dismissed as "hatred of men". The evilness of misogyny is like a drug that is so addictive so insidious that the mere mention of a man hating women will draw an insult and a reaction of anger and denial on its own. Why won't this man wear a pink shirt? Why does a Sticky-Note pad of pastel paper make this man uncomfortable? Men seem to be so preoccupied with the fear of anyone thinking that they are a homosexual that anger lurks beneath the surface of all but the most gender-confident of them.
Why are boys killing people with so much regularity? They are afraid someone will think they are woman-like. Some of the best people in the world are woman-like.
sunshine@pinn.net
Sunshine for Women encourages you to support our feminist sisters by purchasing their books, reading them, disseminating the ideas they contain, but most especially, by making their book available to our sisters, our daughters, and the community at large by requesting your school library, your public library, and area bookstores to carry their books. Remember it is not enough to write literature, history, and theology, we must pass these works on to future generations. Help us to preserve these works for a new generation by putting them on library bookshelves.
last updated April 1999