Misogyny

Commentor -A ended one of his characteristically robust remarks with this:

All women hate each other. Mother, daughter, sister, friend, co-worker, niece, aunt...they all hate each other. Deep, deep down. There is only envy and suspicion. 

Although I am, in principle, allergic to universal statements, preferring the general, I am not immune to the rhetorical weight of the all, only, always. Been known to use 'em myself here on ExC.

Misogyny is typically applied as a charge against men, but -A's point is not without merit. A lot of women hate other women.

Feminism is a crypto-Victorian phenomenon. While it trumpets I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar most of its time is spent in tearful bleating about how this or that oppresses or victimizes "women." Once you get past the Phallic Female image, we find a vision of feminine vulnerability and special tenderness, a combo requiring both veneration and protection, that would have seemed quite normal to Dr. Watson.

Take the vile meme of the campus rape epidemic. (If there were ever a simple argument against co-education, this is it.) It's a lie, straight up, as the Ebonics say. But given the huge percentage of Drama Queen energy among the XX chromosomed population and the bitter anti-male resentment in the DNA of feminism, this emergency/crisis must be fomented and inflated. The most privileged and narcissistic women in history must see themselves --especially, it seems, if they are homely and emotionally warped by being raised by two psychiatrists-- as just rape victims waiting to happen.

Feminists wanna have their cake and eat it, too. And not gain weight.

It's enough to turn a man gay.

Anyway, back to women-hating women.

First off. It's no surprise. Both sexes are required by Mother Nature --a sexist Patriarch if ever there was one-- to compete against members of their own group in order to achieve social and reproductive success. They bond together against the opposite sex while at the same time fight against each other for access to it. Part of my compassion for the human condition is that it's a condition. It's a situation in which we find ourselves and have to adapt. So mixed feelings are hardly a moral flaw in either gender, though women tend to cover it up with a lot insincere kiss-kiss.

The most helpful Jungian shorthand for sexual difference comes from Antony Stevens, who combined Jung with evolution. He named rank as the heart of the archetypal masculine and affiliation as the feminine's core.

Since any social group must include both, I developed ExCathedra's corollary: men use rank to create affiliation; women use affiliation to create rank. Look at a male sports team and a female school clique. It's all right there.

Second, as a gay man, tone-deaf to the siren music of female sexual allure, I have been able to observe their behavior with a bit less self-interest than straight men. And if truth be told, a bit less interest in general! The phenomenon that -A describes in extreme terms does ring a bell with me.

With few exceptions, all of the most bitter and implacable interpersonal/ideological battles I have witnessed or been a party to have been female-driven and predominantly against other females.
The Toronto Lesbian Stalinists remain vivid in my mind, along with the Grim Feminist Nuns.

Synchronistically, there's the (rightwing media only) story of female doctors from Planned Parenthood haggling over the price of dead baby parts. Including, of course, dead female babies, the never-to-be-born "sisters" of the caring women involved...

Do all women hate all other women? Unlikely. Is misogyny just as much a home-grown phenomenon as the outsider version? Wouldn't surprise me at all.

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