Misogyny
The Male Malady
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
"Yes, women are the greatest evil Zeus has made, and men are bound to them hand and foot with impossible knots by God."—Semonides, seventh century B.C.
Men put women on a pedestal to worship them from afar—and to take better aim at them for the purpose of derision. Why is this paradoxical response to women so widespread, so far-reaching, so all-pervasive? Misogyny, David D. Gilmore suggests, is best described as a male malady, as it has always been a characteristic shared by human societies throughout the world.
Misogyny: The Male Malady is a comprehensive historical and anthropological survey of woman-hating that casts new light on this age-old bias. The turmoil of masculinity and the ugliness of misogyny have been well documented in different cultures, but Gilmore's synoptic approach identifies misogyny in a variety of human experiences outside of sex and marriage and makes a fresh and enlightening contribution toward understanding this phenomenon. Gilmore maintains that misogyny is so widespread and so pervasive among men that it must be at least partly psychogenic in origin, a result of identical experiences in the male developmental cycle, rather than caused by the environment alone.
Presenting a wealth of compelling examples—from the jungles of New Guinea to the boardrooms of corporate America—Gilmore shows that misogynistic practices occur in hauntingly identical forms. He asserts that these deep and abiding male anxieties stem from unresolved conflicts between men's intense need for and dependence upon women and their equally intense fear of that dependence. However, misogyny, according to Gilmore, is also often supported and intensified by certain cultural realities, such as patrilineal social organization; kinship ideologies that favor fraternal solidarity over conjugal unity; chronic warfare, feuding, or other forms of intergroup violence; and religious orthodoxy or asceticism. Gilmore is in the end able to offer steps toward the discovery of antidotes to this irrational but global prejudice, providing an opportunity for a lasting cure to misogyny and its manifestations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Misogyny has been endemic from biblical times to modern. Yet this male fear and loathing of women, says the author, is usually accompanied by positive feelings of "gynophilia"; he adds that, while men can get hysterical about being "polluted" by menstrual blood, some perform excruciating self-mutilation rituals mimicking menstruation. Why are so many men the world over so panicked by women? Gilmore (Mankind in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity), professor of anthropology at SUNY Stony Brook, eschews one-dimensional theories Freudian, structuralist, materialist in favor of a more encompassing paradigm of male ambivalence. Males are both drawn to females sources of life, pleasure and heirs and fearful of their power, he contends. They handle this ambivalence by attacking women. Curiously, Gilmore considers only the attitudes of heterosexual males, leaving the reader to wonder if homosexual men are equally misogynistic. Some may also wonder how women have shaped or been shaped by misogyny. (Some biblical women Gilmore cites as misogynistic constructs like Delilah and Lilith have been celebrated by women as models of heroism.) Gilmore asserts that women have no comparable "passion" against men (excepting feminists like Andrea Dworkin), but doesn't adequately back up the claim. While the first half of Gilmore's treatise is filled with hair-raising tales of women-bashing, the subsequent analytical chapters equivocate, preparing readers for his mild-mannered solutions: more "integration" of the sexes, more active fathering, teaching tolerance of ambivalent gender feelings. Meanwhile, much of his research seems to show just how viable misogyny has been. Gilmore's academic focus and style (albeit leavened with occasional wit) will largely confine this controversial and stimulating treatise to college audiences.
