Misogyny Is More than Mischief
by Kenneth Bagnell
A renowned lawyer and European scholar, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, once wrote a sentence that sadly is not yet fulfilled, not in his country nor in the entire world. It was this: “No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men.” One example that his vision isn’t yet fulfilled has taken place in Alberta. A few days ago, The Edmonton Journal revealed that Premier Rachel Notley has received innumerable threats, 26 of which had to be forwarded to the police. It’s not just an issue in this country but in the world, where female politicians are virtually always the target. The attacks are almost always dominated by the religious right, along with the crude and rude secularists. (Forgive me if the coming language hurts but you’re all adults and this is my blog). The target is always female politicians.
One of the latest victims was an Albertan conservative, Sandra Jansen, then a candidate for Premier. She was harassed so much she quit running and left the Conservative party. As she puts it: “I have never before experienced harassment like this… Insults were scrawled on my nomination papers…. Volunteers from another campaign chased me up and down the hall, attacking me for protecting women’s reproductive rights. My team was jeered at for supporting children’s right to a safe school environment.” She quit the Conservative party, then moved quietly to the NDP. That made it worse. She received the following comments on her twitter feed: “You are a disgrace to Alberta. Another: “Lying Bitch.” Another: “Useless tit.” Another: “Dead Meat.” Another: “Dumb broad….” Another: “A good place for her to be is with the rest of the queers.” How thuggish. Can you believe it?
So Sandra Jansen is now being put through the wringer by the usual crude right wingers. But please note: Ms. Jansen maintains her civility She thereby responds to the public in these rational words: “If you are stunned by the words you have heard in the last few days,” she said in the legislature, “if you reject the inherent violence behind them, you will know that harassment and abuse, even if it’s online is very real. And even if it’s directed at a political opponent, it’s poison. Let us be strong and clear in our resolve no matter where we sit along political lines, we stand together against this.” (She then crossed the floor to the NDP, and along with another woman, sought the party leadership; but wait: both dropped out, because of harassment, thereby leaving four males to seek the leadership.)
Sad to say it’s an ascending and very worrisome trend, now virtually everywhere on the globe. Take the US. There can be very little doubt that it was part of the reason for Hillary Clinton’s loss to big mouthed Trump. Consider this essay in the always credible Atlantic Magazine. An essay just before the tragic election read: “Fear of a Female President.” Its sub text went: “Hillary Clinton’s candidacy has provoked a wave of misogyny – one that may roil American life for years to come.” In the body of the essay were these facts: 52 percent of white men hold a “very unfavorable view of Hillary Clinton.” Other references and quotations are so ugly, I excised them here but one quotation confirms the rapidly rising anti-feminism in the United States: “Over the past few years, political scientists have suggested that counterintuitively, Barack Obama’s election may have led to greater acceptance by whites of racist rhetoric. Something similar is now happening with gender. Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is sparking the sexist backlash that decades and decades of research would predict…”
It’s true and we must address it, because we are facing a worldwide trend. Here’s one random example. It happened in February, 2017. It involves the British government’s gifted Home Secretary Associate, Diane Abbott, who oversees national security, criminal justice, immigration, the prison service and other matters that makes her job a very heavy and crucial portfolio. The Telegraph called her one of the best front benchers. Yes, you’ve guessed it: this revered lady is being so abused, she actually said if she knew it was going to be so rude and crude she would not have entered today’s politics.
For the very first time in my journalistic life I am going to give you a crude quotation just as it was written with her approval in the respected Guardian of mid-February. Prepare yourself: “Suppose that someone had told me back then that 30 years on I would be receiving mail like this: ”Pathetic useless fat black piece of shit Abbott. You’re just a piece of pig shit pond slime who should be fucking hung if they could find a tree big enough to take the fat bitch’s weight….” She receives such ugly ignorance almost daily. I despise it as much you despise it. But to me at least it must be put before thoughtful people to illustrate how dreadful and dangerous the growth in misogyny is becoming.
It actually expands beyond the British and Canadian parliament. Media inquiries of roughly fifty countries reported last autumn that threats have been uncovered in 40 countries involving women engaged in parliamentary life. A respected paper, South Asia News, says this, based on the Delhi based Centre for Social Research: “More than 40 percent of female MPs interviewed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union say they had received threats of death, rape, beatings or abduction while serving their terms of office, including kidnapping or killing their children.” Taken as a whole, the report I’ve read, in its entirety, is shocking in every way. Forty five percent of women candidates in India faced physical violence and threats compared with 21 percent in Pakistan and 16 percent in Nepal….. Even worse is this reference in the Asian news: “The study found that across the region, most victims were young women, new to politics, or first generation politicians, and the commonest experience was that of men expecting sexual favors in return for being selected as a candidate for a particular constituency…”
I have no qualification whatever to pronounce a strategy which might help end this horror. But as I wrote this, a line came back to me that might at least raise optimism as time goes by: “Here’s to strong women, may we know them, may we be them, and may we raise them.”
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All my blogs are archived on my website. www.kennethbagnell.com. Your comments are welcome there.
Two things have changed our cultural and political landscape greatly in the past 20 years: the rise of women in politics, as well as everywhere else in terms of careers; and the proliferation of social media, where anyone can say anything and reach a considerable audience of often like-minded individuals.
With more women than men enrolled in medicine and engineering, for example, which were once the domains of males, plus the fact that girls do better than boys in public school and go farther academically, the world is leaving behind the macho man. Add to this globalization, where white working-class males have lost their jobs and are unprepared for the knowledge-based economy of the future. And, finally, those men who feel inert and lost in society are often being led by political leaders who are women — whether it’s at the federal, provincial or state, or municipal level.
Misogyny has always been lying there in the underbelly of our Western nations — perhaps not as cruelly and state-sanctioned as in developing countries that are patriarchal — but there nonetheless.
Forty years ago, jokes and attitudes about women circulated in the mainstream. These wouldn’t be tolerated today. However, hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet, fools can find a forum to attack not only women, but also those of different races and cultures