Recently, musing about the obsessiveness some people exhibit in promoting and pursuing the subjugation of women in the name of God, I wondered again how they get that way. Like, if I wanted to create one (perish the thought) what would I have to do to get that result: a rabidly obsessed, grabbing at straws, desperate need to keep women down?
And, they do exist. Not a lot of them maybe, population-wise, but enough to lead the uninformed, unwary, and somewhat-to-quite-a-bit misogynistically inclined. They are persistent, loud and clangy, and, not a few of them, unprincipled in their methods.
I'm taking about the males. I know why the females do it. They have given up so much in opportunity and self actualization in loyalty to the premises hiearchicalism is based on that if it turns out to be not right, not valid, it's too devastating to face the loss. They must protect themselves from that awful realization, that terrible evaporation of their life's meaning and opportunities.
But, the males, why do they do it? They aren't being oppressed, they haven't lost anything, why ride that pony to its last breath?
Some possibilities:
1. Early trauma and deprivation. John R. Rice's mother died when he was three years old. I think it may have affected him profoundly for the rest of his life. His mother was an angel, but one who'd left him. How does one reconcile the two? I'm not sure such children ever do.
2. An authoritarian mindset. Authoritarians have their own particular thought process. They need to follow the rules. Those rules will keep them safe and out of trouble with God and others. Someone, an authority figure, will tell them what those rules are. Someone like Bill Gothard, for example.
3. Over influenced by a strong mentor. It's the authoritarian influence, and it can be a parent, a preacher, a teacher, or someone else. If that person hated women, resented women, or oppressed them, even if the follower thinks they don't have the same motivations, they have learned the thought patterns, logic, and behavioral patterns of the mentor.
4. A perception of sexual physical limitation or shortcoming. I hesitate to say this, but believe it is probably a strong factor for some men. That is, they may feel inadequate sexually, perhaps because they've decided their genitalia are too small, or out of the ordinary, or they, for some other physical reason, have been made to feel inadequate through bullying by other males or females. Or, they may suffer from some sexual misfunction such as premature ejaculation, sexual obsesssion, or some other aberration such as a perversion or need for or desire for fetishist sexual experiences. Rather than deal with what seems impossible to deal with, they transfer their own self loathing to women, and feel better when they put women in inferior positions and restrict them.
5. A feeling of personal inferiority. Proposing and promoting the subjugation of women, with no less than God as one's authority on it, provides a step up from the inferior position they feel they are in.
6. Undealtwith rage. Bigotry, which I suspect is at the root of much obsessive hiearchicalism, is always displaced rage. They are unhappy about something else, and it makes them feel better to dump it on someone else, either an individual or a whole group.
7. Obsessed with a desire for power. Some people are power hungry. They are never-enoughers. They get power where it can be found. If that drive for power can be combined with any of the other factors in my list here, then that's a favorite place to exercise it.
8. Hate. Some men actually, really hate women. They hate them all, to one degree or another. I remember the way I felt when I first realized that is the case. What a shock. That does not mean that all who hate women will admit they do, maybe not even to themselves most of the time. But, it's there, underneath it all, moving the oppression along, creating victims, justifying the cruelty and deprivation.
9. Jekyll and Hyde personality. Some people have split their personalities into facets of themselves, for several reasons. They have a good guy and a bad guy personality. This comes in handy when they feel the need to oppress anyone or any group of people. The bad guy does the dirty work for the good guy. And the good guy is the preferred face to the world.
10. Misinformation. I don't think misinformation, in itself, creates an obsessive subjugation promoter and enforcer. But, it could be an important element. Some people act on misinformation, without checking for themselves, because they are such authoritarians that they feel it's disloyal and wrong to not trust their authority figures' word on what is right and true. Some are misinformed because they are just plain lazy at going for the truth. And some are willfully misinformed because they are afraid of what they might find if they were to dig into the source material. It's comfortable where they are, and they don't want to rock their own boat.
But, what about egalitarians? Aren't some of them obsessive too? Probably, but they have good reason, for the most part. They've experienced oppression, and it hurts. They see it holding down women and children, whole societies in the third world, and they want to rid those people of one of the burdens that keeps them where they are, on the bottom.
Recent Comments