The Misogyny police get the wrong men
There's a lot of misogyny about these days. When the American novelist John Updike died, we were reminded that he was a misogynist (because sometimes his male characters had less than flattering thoughts about the female ones).
And in recent weeks, the Miss Great Britain beauty pageant was called misogynist, and the French rapper OrelSan was attacked by the misogyny police for his depiction of male-on-female violence in one of his songs.
One writer (in the Guardian, as such writers often are) said that didn't go far enough, that we should also crack down on Nick Cave, who dramatises violence against women in his murder ballads.
'Misogyny' as a word, has always rubbed me the wrong way. Taken literally, it stands as a pretty serious allegation: hatred of women. If there's a reason why it should be any less bad than being racist, I can't think of it.
But those who like to bandy it about seem to include a whole spectrum of supposed sins under its banner.
It irritates me to see artists of the breadth and depth of Updike and Cave reduced to nasty little sexists by the M-word. And it insults me to think that every time my eye is caught by some passing babe, I'm guilty of a moral failing.
Apparently, not only is violence against women (or the dramatisation of it in song or literature) misogynist, desire for women – those beauty pageants – is too. Because male sexual desire, some feminists argue, is violence.
At which point I want to throw my hands up in despair. Or, depending on my mood, run out and buy a copy of Nuts, a six-pack of Stella Artois, and a ticket to the Wet T-shirt night at my local sleaze pit.)
Don't misunderstand me. Some rap lyrics are poisonously sexist. (Hence their appeal to insecure teenage boys.)
And I can see that there are legitimate objections to the institutionalised objectification of the female form. But it says something about us as a species that they persist.
Plenty of intelligent women clearly get a kick out of parading their bodies for the admiration of men. Just as plenty of enlightened men will enjoy the animal pleasure of ogling them.
In such circumstances, it is far from clear to me whether the women are demeaned, and the men abusing their power, or vice versa.
But that's sex for you. The eternal cat-and-mouse dance of aggression and submission will remain forever indifferent to the narrow-minded rectitude of the misogyny police.
Most annoying of all about those who cry 'misogyny' at the stroke of a novelist's pen is that they are far too quiet on the subject of genuine, murderous misogyny.
In some parts of the world, adulteresses are stoned to death, women can be shot in the street for not wearing the veil and genital mutilation is routine.
Most of us know this. And yet the misogyny police are, in the name of feminism, lobbing bricks at male artists in the liberated west.
I suppose that's easier than tackling the thorny subject of atrocity committed in the name of religion.
Feminism is supposed to fight for the rights or women everywhere. Instead of fighting for the fictional victims of Nick Cave's murder ballads, feminists should stand up for the terrorised of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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