Misogyny of the world rots everything, often violently, and is fast destroying earth’s livability because misogynistic men in power seem to need to destroy … everything.
When I began speaking out publicly trying to warn people and communities about the harms caused by hydraulic fracturing, and regulators and politicians enabling Encana’s illegal fresh water aquifer fracs, what astounded me the most was how many men ordered me silent. Some even dropped in on me to do so, usually in a group (too chicken to come alone?). They told me I was not allowed to speak to media, that only men were, that I – as a mere woman – must stop. I replied asking, “But who then will speak with Alberta men silent?”
Those bullying men didn’t give a shit about the harms done to me, Alberta’s aquifers and drinking water or frac’d communities; they cared about shutting a woman down, their fragile egos upset that a “mere woman” was showing them up – without even trying to – as the cowards that they are. I believe there is so much misogyny because men know woman are more courageous than they are, and are always the first to sacrifice self to stand up for others, and for what’s right. Read Andrew Nikiforuk’s Slick Water for more details on this.
I expect Murray Klippenstein and the judges on my case (and the politicians that appointed, managed and shuffled them around – Harper Harper, Harper and Harper – to benefit the status quo and defendants) would not have treated me as badly as they did, if I were a white man.
And, if I were a man, Harper/Encana/AER would not have sent their anti-terrorist squad to invade my home trying to terrify me silent and drop my lawsuit (shortly after the defendants had been served their legal papers and W5 had run a short feature on my case; I live alone and was working in my home, not protesting). And, I bet these police would not have dared terrorize me at my home if I were a man.
Two must watch clips:
The misogyny of the anti-protest, Our reaction to the students who are protesting against what they see as genocide in real time speaks volumes about who we are by Aya Gruber, Law professor, 17 May 202417 May 2024, aljazeera
“Fat”, “ugly”, and “bitch” are just a few of the invectives hurled at female antiwar protesters by “counter-protesters”, a name the press has given to pro-Israel demonstrators, angry mobs, and frat boys gathered to jeer and perform monkey dances alike. Counter-protesters routinely shout that they hope female protesters voicing support for Palestinians in Gaza are raped. Pundits condescend that the antiwar protesters are coddled, silly, ahistorical, and misguided.
Female professors, like the former chair of Dartmouth’s Jewish studies department, Annelise Orleck, and Emory’s philosophy chair Noelle McAfee and economics professor Caroline Fohlin, have attempted to intervene in male officers’ “duty” to violently clear pro-Palestine student encampments only to be met with humiliation and brutality. “Get on the ground,” an enraged male police officer screamed breathlessly at Frohlin. When she did not take her place immediately at his feet, officers forced her there, smashing her head on the concrete. The taunts of the pumped-up bro attacking the UCLA encampment summed it up, “You stand no chance old lady.”
This is more than good old-fashioned sexism rearing in the heat of the moment. The female antiwar protesters have broken the unwritten rules of being a woman in the United States. They are neither on display for men nor acting like men. Hypermasculine antifa tactics are at a minimum, if not absent. The peaceful – even “culturally feminist” – encampments feature meditation, lectures, song and dance, and yoga.
These performances are not for the male gaze. Female students are swaddled in masks and keffiyehs and using social media for political messages, not painted in makeup and using Kardashian-filtered visages to amass likes. Why would any woman choose the former over the latter? Megyn Kelly has the answer. They are “homely”, she declares, adding that “attractive” women would not protest.
One viral video shows the Los Angeles police, after their night-time invasion of the UCLA encampment, stripping a handcuffed young Asian woman of her head coverings and facing her into the glare of news camera lights, almost reminiscent of the public stripping of heretical women in the dark ages. The LA police’s grotesque display of arrestees is nothing compared with the NYPD’s propaganda videos after its military-style raid of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall to arrest a handful of students within.
These women are not there to please the media either. They are wary of mainstream reporters who have portrayed them as pro-Hamas terrorists. They know to avoid opportunists who seek viral soundbites to prove protesters are silly and stupid or deadly serious and dangerous. They are tight-lipped and letting their presence, and copious posters, do the speaking.
One social media “influencer” sought clicks by “checking out” the UCLA encampment. Striding up, blond hair flowing behind, she said she wanted to just “speak to them”. After being referred to media liaisons, who said they “didn’t want to talk to someone who is going to push us”, she went back to a group of women, still demanding an impromptu interrogation. When they regarded her in silence, she called them “intimidating” and began to cry. The prototype of the crying, fearful woman has a long pedigree in this country, and the anti-protest camp’s publicity frequently features young, frightened women who feel “unsafe”.
Exemplifying the utter discomfort at female protesters’ unwillingness to play the role of people-pleaser is Wall Street Journal reporter Peggy Noonan’s hit piece on the Columbia demonstrators. At best, she says, these kids are clueless: “Critical thinking isn’t your strong suit, emotion is.” When have women heard that before? But, Noonan argues, something more nefarious is going on, as evidenced by the protesters hiding their faces, doxing risk notwithstanding, and not talking to her. “Friends, please come say hello and tell me what you think,” Noonan called to a group of women. Only the “beautiful girl” made eye contact and laughed at a quip Noonan made, but her grim “friends gave her a look and she conformed”.
Anti-protesters fault female demonstrators for being on the side of Palestinians, whose culture they say does not permit women to do things like protest. The apogee of this argument was a celebrity calling LGBTQ protesters “idiots” because Hamas would decapitate them and play with their heads “like a soccer ball”. Such characterisations of Gazan society are Islamophobic and overexaggerate sexism, but regardless, calling to end the slaughter of a civilian population does not make one a proponent of that population’s social mores. There is indeed a sublime hubris to invoking the argument that Hamas does not let women speak in one’s effort to shut female protesters up.
Our reaction to the students who are protesting against what they see as genocide in real time is eye-opening. From celebrations of militarised and gratuitously demeaning policing to tolerance of extreme misogyny as long as it is directed against the right women, this moment speaks volumes about who we are.
Refer also to:
How prevalent is racism (and misogyny) among Canadian lawyers & judges?
Nothing says diversity like eight white guys sitting round a table. Photograph: Twitter @CDS_Canada_CEMD
Not broken. Judicial industry & police working as intended by rich white men. In Canada too.
But, of course, it’s not going to stop because men have all the power, and appoint like-minded judges (mostly men, often misogynistic) into positions of more power, and misogynistic society votes for misogynistic politicians.
In Alberta, I used to ask women what they seek in politicians. They’d look at me stunned and reply, “Why? My husband tells me who to vote for.”
(The misogynistic bible runs rural Alberta where too many have told me they think women must lose the right to vote, because. .. no, not Trudeau, .. ’cause God.)
