Modern Misogyny – A personal review | The Socjournal

These writings are not those of a typical feminist – because I am writing not only from a critical view, but also as a form of catharsis, as a self-awakening from a heavy nightmare, into which I have ridden myself in the acceptance and condolence of abuse towards women and are now slowly opening my eyes while adjusting the brightness of seeing what is Here. So this is me rising myself – not rising against men or in defense of women.

I am simply Here to speak that which has remained unspoken within and as myself and within and as this world. Within this article I am thus drawing from own observations and experiences as well as analyzing specific cultural and sociological traits relevant to gain an understanding of why women submit themselves willingly to the abuse and degradation by men and why we accept ourselves as societies and culture that does not honor or dignify ourselves as life. Let’s begin:

The other night a couple of girls were having a party at house next to mine. They were preparing themselves to go out clubbing and from my window, I could see how they were dressing themselves, putting on make-up and getting drunk, meanwhile music was playing with a thumbing bass out the window. I noticed that most of the songs they were listening to were these techno/house tracks with male singers and with lyrics sounding like “eat my ass bitch” in a monotone and generic fashion or it was female singers with lyrics such as “I wanna give it up to you”. I then embarked on researching this point a little further as I found it to be interesting and fascinating how these women were listening to music that was clearly degrading and misogynistic as though it was actually empowering.

Here were these girls, partying as ‘single women’, with ‘their own money’, ‘beautiful and free’ – for example compared to their great grandmothers, who were slave bound to kitchens, not allowed to vote, considered dumb and irrational simply for being a women or if we compare them to women in other cultures that do not have their own money, education or the cultural freedom to express themselves, for example sexually.

And still they were listening to degrading abusive music with male voices singing to them to get ‘get on your knees’ or the infamous “eat my ass bitch” as though it were a celebration of life. When I placed myself in their shoes, their immediate and conscious experience of themselves were as ‘power-women’ – I mean, that was the game they were playing. “We’re players” “Women can be players as well” – and even though that is true, I can say from personal experience that this is also a matter of joining them, because you can’t beat them – and in this case it is the male dominant culture, where women are valuable and valuing themselves as objects for the attraction of men and where men are supposed to be tough and brutal, seen, defined and perceived as the ominous “Cool”.

“…see whore you’re the kinda girl that I’da 
Assault and rape and figure why not try to make your pussy wider 
Fuck you with an umbrella then open it up while that shits inside ya”

Eminem in the song “Stay Wide Awake“

Jackson Katz, an anti-sexism activist writer describes it in these words:

“Is it truly possible that women’s lives have been so thoroughly devalued that {Eminem}  a multi-platinum musical artist with nine Grammy awards to his name can sing multiple songs about raping and mutilating women and hip sophisticates can’t even bring themselves to utter the words “woman-hating?”[1]

Yes – it is most certainly possible, which the story above clearly exemplifies. Because when not only men degrade women, but when women also degrade themselves and when children are brought up to an implicitly immanent misogynistic culture – how can we expect ourselves to live any differently? There is this collective delusion in the wealthiest countries, that women have become liberated (hell that men have become liberated as well) – all conjured up in a comparison to cultures of past times, which apparently makes us liberated because we’re no longer stuck slaving in kitchens, carrying children on our arms and now instead can slave for cash at McDonalds or Wendy’s. And obviously women can get abortions and divorces, but how exactly that’s ‘liberating’, remains the question.

So back to the story of the girls next door. As I placed myself in their shoes, I saw that they were, behind the roles of ‘liberated power women’ who are ‘playing the game’, insecure, self-conscious human beings who were doing what they were doing specifically with the purpose of getting a man, either to have sex with or to love and hold – in both cases, for reproductive intentions.

How do I know this? I have been there and have done it myself. As a woman going out clubbing, your primary asset and value is your looks which has to meet specific standards or preferences. So these girls were constantly going from the living room where they were partying to the bedroom, both of which I could see from my window – to put make-up on and check their reflection. Some of the girls did this many times, many 10 or 20 times during the night of 4-5 hours before they were going out. And these girls were normal, standard, good-looking girls as one would imagine such. There was nothing out of the ordinary about them – and they would check their reflection in a certain way – with critical, sharp eyes of either approval or disapproval. And in the back-ground of the mind, the image of a man accepting them, loving them, feeding them with attention (or money and drinks) were constantly running like a movie in their head. They were drinking heavily as well, which people do to ‘uplift their spirits’ – basically to push beyond their own boundaries so that they become able to speak, dance, flirt and have sex.

As a girl and woman listening to this music, the ‘eat my ass bitch’ from before, the experience is that of being empowered, of being strong, invincible and specifically that of being a part of the male (superior) environment, showing the males that we can ‘match them’ and that we’re not whiny little sissies that can’t keep our liqueur sort of thing – is the psychology behind this point. I realized something fascinating a while back in relation to this point: that men do not specifically want woman to ‘match them’, meaning to be tough or strong – many men has a fantasy about a feminine, fragile virgin-like girl to whom they can either ravage or cherish or both, quite like many women has a fantasy about a beast of a man who fittingly ravages her or cherishes her like a delicate flower or both.

So this specific point is about women matching and attempting to empower themselves through matching the degrading nature of a male-dominant society – it is a quite strange application of self-empowerment. Yet – if we as women have seen men and what men represent and present themselves as, as free, empowered and self-authoritative, then that becomes our aim for empowering ourselves – because in a male dominated society, there are no alternatives.

I am not speaking here about strictly of male-dominant as being run by males – more that it is specific characteristics connected with being male that are predominant and valued as such amongst all members of society, whether it degrades and enslaves them or not. So in terms of the discussion about the male-dominant society, it might as well be a man that is degraded and enslaved by, to fulfill a role by putting on a suit or pumping iron or suppressing himself and his self-expression.

So the topic here is not physical men vs. physical woman. That is exactly seen in how women, when attempting to empower themselves, will end up doing exactly the opposite. That is because our entire society and the systems within which we manage our lives, our bodies and our minds – are male-dominant. In this specific case, it is women who have actively taken upon themselves to enslave themselves and degrade themselves through participating in the degrading of women through music, fashion and social behavior – as though it was in fact empowering.

Women (or men) don’t have an alternative to empower themselves –and power in this current system is equivalent with brutality, abuse cynicism, ego and self-interest. Thus we’re Impulsed to shape and form ourselves as personalities in relation to this definition of power, which is why many relationships will exist within a reversed constellation where the woman dominates the man in exactly the same way as a man would have dominated a woman.

Therefore – it is time to give ourselves an alternative. Obviously in order to do so, we first of all have to understand how we’ve defined power, worth and value as it is – so that we can start redefining what power, worth and value is and should be, when it is no longer abusive and unequal.

You can read more about this in the article, where I wrote about the enslavement of reproduction, and I will return to this in coming articles. I will also continue with investigating the male perspective in this, where males become equally enslaved to and within the point of degrading and abusing women and thus degrading and abusing themselves. For now I will remain with this point of how woman are trapped in a self-degrading and inverted chauvinism that is expressed through the example of music.

We shall here take a look at and analyze a brand this Katy Perry song. Katy Perry did most likely not write this song, yet I am deliberately referring to it as such, because 1) there is a communal pretense that money-making-mainstream-music –performers DO write their own material and 2) because Katy Perry does let this song represent her – she is singing it  – it is “a Katy Perry song”. I shall not analyze the entire song here, merely highlight some fascinating expressions that show how the acceptance of abuse towards women, is Impulsed and groomed into us via mainstream music that pretends to be innocent and harmless via it’s glossy exterior and it’s Disney- meets-Demon-like front-figures.

The song from Perry’s most recent album appropriately called “Teenage Dreams” is called E.T and  it circles around the theme of Katy falling in love with an alien man. (Katy Perry, who got married to another celebrity, notorious playboy Russel Brand in an spiritual ceremony in India last year)

The song starts with a rap intro by the infamous Kayne West that lays the foundation for the perspective of the song presented as a ‘boyish’ tease, like the constant chase on the playground where the boys pull the girls pigtails and the girls scream. Yet – this is not children or teenagers who are presenting this – they are adult, successful artists with large audiences specifically in the segment of children and teenagers. And behind the boyish teasing, is a far more cynical and brutal truth about this and these types of songs and artists.

The topic of why adult artists are making music targeted towards children within creating an entire ‘world’ around them as a fairytale, is another story for another time. Take a look at the lyrics here. This is the fantasy man that Katy Perry in these lyric’s dream universe is feverishly submitting herself to:

K[Kanye West]
“I got a dirty mind
I got filthy ways
I’m tryna Bath my Ape in your Milky Way
I’m a legend, I’m irreverent
I be reverand
I be so fa-a-ar up, we don’t give a f-f-f-f-ck
Welcome to the danger zone
Step into the fantasy
You are now invited to the other side of sanity
They calling me an alien
A big headed astronaut
Maybe it’s because your boy Yeezy get ass a lot”

So first Kayne calls himself a ‘reverend’ meaning the man who speaks the word of god to the clergy or the following of a specific church and later goes on to complimenting Katy for making him ‘the big man he is’ by him having anal sex with her. To that Katy Perry answers:

[Katy Perry]
“You’re so hypnotizing
Could you be the devil
Could you be an angel

Your touch magnetizing
Feels like I am floating
Leaves my body glowing.”

Here Katy are referring to the energetic reactions attached and played out – to which many people are addicted – between man and woman. The “electric” spark that is experienced. Here Katy has associated this to a specific man, a special man – that thus makes it even more intense. The man is thus placed on a pedestal sending the signal that such a man could exist, but also within polarizing and idealizing him to such a degree, she herself becomes implicitly inferior and irrelevant.

“They say be afraid
You’re not like the others
Futuristic lover
Different DNA
They don’t understand you”

There is here an entire topic on it’s own with the references to aliens and spirituality, which I will not discuss in this article, but merely mention as a point to consider critically.

“Your from a whole other world
A different dimension
You open my eyes
And I’m ready to go
Lead me into the light”

This is a clear reference to the biblical “god” and the man is in this fantasy now uplifted to the status of a god.

Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me
Infect me with your love and
Fill me with your poison”

Love is referred to as an infection and sperm as a poison which is from a certain perspective quite accurate, but the point that follows through her is the point of submitting oneself to abuse, to the desire and want to be abused, which clearly can be seen in the lyrics below:

“Take me, ta-ta-take me
Wanna be a victim
Ready for abduction”

The rest of the song goes on repeatedly in the same fashion and upon investigating more of the current music listened to specifically by teenagers and adolescents, these type of lyrics are not uncommon – quite the contrary. So the question is then if this is merely harmless wordplay or mating-games within a fantasy that is not supposed to be lived out into reality and if the average adolescent is so desensitized from seeing and hearing about rough sex that they do not take something like this seriously. Or if the desensitization is actually something that this music is indicative of, where we as human beings abdicate self-dignity and the ability to see others as equals and thus come to believe that we either have the right to treat others as objects or that we are no more worth than the objects we use without care.

I have as a woman – but even more so relevant, as a human being in this world, desensitized myself to abuse and suffering, to the abuse and suffering inflicted upon my own human physical body as well as the abuse and suffering within and as this world. I have found it easier to submit myself, because I believed and accepted that standing up was impossible – my world left me no alternatives. Yet when everybody says this, does this, creates this – we end up with a world of self-abdicated beings who are abusing each other and all claiming their freedom from responsibility.

I have realized for myself that the extend to which I have desensitized myself from what is here, specifically as suffering and abuse, is what has allowed it to escalate – because if it is not me, I cannot feel it, if it is not happening to me, I am not responsible, If I do not see it, I am not here as it.

I have realized that the extend to which I have desensitized myself is so vast that I require a total re-education of myself to actually re-learn how to care – not only about the world, about other life-forms and people, but equally about myself. Because self-abdication in all its various compromises is the self-degradation of separation that I have willingly submitted myself to.

Separation = Self-Abdication

When we return to the girls across the street in the house who were partying and getting ready to go out, they are themselves responsible for what they are doing – – they might even experience that nagging feeling of “why am I doing this, why am I compromising myself like this?” and then they look around and there is no alternative and everyone is doing the same and if they don’t do this they wont get a man and if they don’t get a man they stand no chance at getting that perfect life or at least surviving so that their genes can be transferred and they may live forever through the generations to come … WTF?

Is that the kind of human beings we want to bring into this world, continuously without end? Is surviving more important than being able to exist in self-dignity without being abused or abusing others? Unfortunately we have been programmed and have programmed ourselves to believe and accept this to be true to the extend where the this is infused into and as our bodies so that the mind sends an energetic surge or shock through the body a signal that it is time to get to work, to get that ass on the dance floor and mate at all costs and at any price – because the survival of the human species is our sole purpose in this world.

And within that single point of self-abdication, we have collectively as men and women – as human beings – submitted ourselves to exist within and as the honoring of abuse instead of life, of being entertained by the suffering of others and in believing that the continuous enslavement of ourselves, is what freedom looks, feels and smells like – there at the bottom of the human physical body that has become the object of our blind devotion. We have truly become assholes of our own demise.

I realize that I first must re-learn myself to take self-responsibility, to live dignified and principled, to not compromise or abuse myself, mentally or physically – to not submit myself to ideas or preprogrammed definitions about who I should be or what I should enjoy or desire or dislike. I realize that I have never really cared and even if I did, the world does not even facilitate human begins that do care.

grew up surrounded by women who hated men. Perhaps they did not all hate men, all of them, all the time, but a lot of them did. They also loved them… a lot – sometimes too much. It was an ironic dichotomy that I did not quite understand as a child. These women that I grew up with, had been part of “the movement” in the 70s and had experienced the restraint and limits of growing up in the shadow of fathers, brothers and male teachers.

They often had experienced and how they were taught to be ashamed of their sexuality, sit with their legs crossed and not send out the wrong signals. By the time they’ve reached their twenties, they were pissed off angry. So they became pissed off angry at the men and either directed their anger that way or towards the symbol of “the man” – the capitalistic system of inequality. The women had sex and relationships once in a while. Some of them became lesbians, out of shear spite of males.

In the relationships they did have with men, often the men was cheating as much as possible, drinking too much, wining too much or becoming violent, so most of the time, the women were alone. They hated their jobs as well ironically, many of them worked as some form of child-caretakers, in a daycare center or at a school – and I guess they felt pretty pissed on by life. I remember how they came home, tired, with creasy hair and long heavy breasts under their sweaty shirts, as the last sad remaining symbol of their victorious bra-burning that had marked the beginning of the end of their oppression.

Their rebellion against the system, the authorities and against men had not paid off and they were now in exactly the same position they fought to get out of: underpaid and unappreciated housewives and mothers, often without a man as support, with full time jobs being single parents, bitter and broken.

When they sat around the table at night, drinking red wine, the woman often talked about their youth, about feminism, and how women should stand up for themselves with pride in their voices. What I saw, as a little girl sitting there, with dangling feet at the edge of the chair, was people that were angry, tired and desperate and that was not the life I wanted.

It was not because the men around me, had more happy lives, but they did seem freer. They could come and go as they wanted, they laughed more often, they did not look as burdened as the women did. Often the men also moved on and created new families with younger women and had new children and they seemed to be able to simply brush off the past as were it a flick of dust and walk on as though nothing had happened. They looked invincible from that perspective, or at the very least; not as miserable as the women did.

Lately as I’ve been taking my daily walks around the neighborhood, I walk by these houses, these expensive houses with fancy cars in the driveway. I’ve looked in through the windows and seen beautiful women and men with beautiful children eating dinner and I’ve caught myself desiring to be them because in the mind’s eye, these people have the perfect life. They are happy, they don’t sweat.

One day as I walked by one of these houses, I started realizing for myself that what I was seeing was not happiness, but money. Everything that I saw, all the happiness that were “shinning through” the windows of these perfect houses, was bought and sold for money. Some had bought a rustic happiness that gave associations with childhood visits to the countryside; others had bought New Yorker chic happiness with steel and raw concrete as their portrait designed happiness. I realized that I had not the faintest idea what went on in those houses, as all I saw was an illusion of happiness, created and facilitated through glossy magazines and commercials on TV as the contrast to what I saw as a child, where the adults did not have any money and were miserable because of it.

The problems of this world are not at the fault of men or women. That is too easy. It is however a system of inequality, of abuse, ego and deception that we’ve allowed to be the directive principle that manages all our lives – from politics to economy and relationships. And as it is, to a large extend, males have been the ones in the frontline of the business of inequality. There is however no doubt that we’ve all contributed, participated and played along in this tragic masquerade, where some have power so that others have not and where some have money so that others have not.

What I saw growing up, was not an unfair and uneven relationship between men and women – or it was that as well – however the point is that all and everything is facilitated and dictated by our submission to money. Money is the remedy with which we abuse and control each other. And everyone accepts it or has no choice but to accept it, within the belief that happiness and fulfillment can only be achieved through money – that money does in fact make one happy, successful and achieved.

I had never thought that I would ever declare myself a feminist, exactly because of my upbringing of seeing these women as everything I certainly did NOT want to be anything like. The stories here has now interwoven, from where I started with sharing why I am slowly becoming a feminist, but not a feminist as in a woman that despises men, but as a human being realizing that the current capitalist and patriarchal system is only in support of more of itself in a complete irrational frenzy of greed, power and self-delusion and that to stop it – we require an entire new way of managing our lives and ourselves, a way where women are standing up – and men – to not accept or allow ourselves to continue existing this way without any regard for life whatsoever.

Therefore – I am here to re-educate myself to become a trustworthy and dignified Human Being, with whatever means and measures it takes. Then it doesn’t matter who is woman or man or what is the cause – as long as we dedicate ourselves to changing what is Here, one step at a time.

I do not wish to live the life of the women I grew up around, hating their lives and the men they blamed for their position. I do not wish my children to live the life of me as I have – therefore – to change the future for our children, there is only one way possible: to change what is Here as ourselves, in each breath of self-compromise or self-judgment – to Stop and Stand up. In each breath, where we make excuses or justify why we only care about ourselves – to Stop and Stand up. In each breath of lying to ourselves or each other about what is here or how we really experience ourselves – to Stop and Stand up.

A veil is being ripped from my eyes – it is an astounding experience, as something I have always taken for granted as real and valuable, is suddenly revealing itself as fake through and through. It is even more astounding to see now how obvious it is that it was fake and that I have been existing for all this time on a complete lie.

I have been living a lie, together with everyone else in this world and the lie that I am talking about is: The Lie of Giving Life – The Lie of Reproduction – The Lie of Family – Relationships – Beauty – Love – and Sex.

As I am slowly ripping the veil from my eyes, I walk in my daily participation and see everything as had I gotten brand new eyes and trying them on for size or as am I seeing everything for the first time, yet still too bright and blurry. I am aware that even still what I am seeing now – is but another layer, another veil and that it requires a total unveiling – a brutal, self-honest unveiling of all delusions and illusions about what Life is.

Basically how it works is that I participate in my reality, read the news or listen to someone speak on the street or experience something within and as me and it shows me yet another point where what I believed were real, true and valuable turns out to be yet another point of deception.

What I have realized is this:

The entire world of fashion, healthcare, dating, drinking, having children, buying houses, Hollywood –  is set up like one big giant fertility clinique where everyone is groomed to become producers of “life” like flesh-machines or flesh-factories that are here to serve one basic function: re-produce and clone more flesh-machines.

We are “brought to life” to clone the system that is infused everywhere, Impulsing everything and everyone to only serve it, as a god almost that requires absolute obedience and devotion – and what is even worse: we are not even aware of it – or ourselves as it.

Because the deception has been so carefully designed and orchestrated that everyone believes that they’re in fact “living life” – that they are each living in something called “my life” which is almost like a game-sequence or a level in a computer game, where one must collect the most amount of points and scores – and the most important aspect of this is the game of reproduction.

For some it is mostly about the act itself – which entire industries, such as the porn- and clubbing industry are build upon. For others it is about the goal of producing the best possible offspring – for others again it is about “making the best out of” “the journey” – again with entire industries build upon these programs and impulses, which humans follow and call “family values” and “family first” or “I am a bachelor for life” and nod with this warm feeling of purpose and worth.

I have myself been 100 % controlled by this specific point of enslavement to the point where it is in deed shocking to realize even this singular point as an example of the extend of self-deception and enslavement I have submitted myself to – completely oblivious. I believed that my yearning desire for a little house on the beach with a loving husband, a dog and three children was a pure, honest wish for a happy life.  I was willing to go through hoops to maintain relationships, get sex or even flirt. I never questioned the sexual arousal I felt when I saw a man on the street that fit the profile of someone who is “powerful”.  And what is amazing is that this is a complete collective delirium that everyone is participating in maintaining – lovesongs, Tv-shows, romantic movies, hardcore porn, family-discount, bridal showers, baby showers, bachelor parties, beach parties, date rape drugs, you name it: we’re hooked on it. And this is why it is so hard to see and realize the self-delusion as the spell that we’ve placed ourselves under.

Because even if you were to see it – the entire world around you would live this as reality and thus eventually you would end up believing yourself to be insane or dysfunctional. It is like in the story about the emperor’s new clothes where everyone believes the emperor has clothes on; even though they can see that he does not – simply because they fear losing public appearance. Only when a child who has no concept of keeping up appearances, speaks up, the spell is broken.

It is time to break the spell, people – there is no such thing as love, as relationships, as “the one”, as “the perfect life”. The “perfect life” is – look around – only facilitated and made possible by money. When looking at the various representations of this scenario and those we’ve believed to have such a life, what we see is the facade, the make-up placed on top of the face of reality, stuck in a stiff smile – – what we are seeing is the emperor’s new clothes and we believe it to be real because otherwise we would have to face the lies we’ve been telling ourselves.

Sex is not some magnificent, sacred, spiritual or exhilarating event that will blow the boundaries of reality if only it is performed correctly with the right partner – the experiences of sexual energy charging around in the body is like the sweetener they put in cough syrup to make sure it gets down and stays down.

The entire purpose of this, us existing as flesh-factories in various grooming, fertility and nesting systems — is to replicate and reproduce more clones, more systems like ourselves – cloning what is here as this system of self-enslavement and propelling energy that we’ve accepted and allowed ourselves to become – and thus fear letting go of, because we’ve diluted ourselves to the extend where we now believe that this is all we are and will ever be – which unfortunately is true as long as we allow it to be. As long as we praise and submit ourselves to these systems – in their honor and in spite of life – we will remain self-enslaved and self-inflated, giving value to the act of enslavement itself.

The expression “bred in captivity” is fitting here – because only a race as stupid and arrogant, as we humans have allowed ourselves to be and become, would speak proudly of enslavement as though it was a sign of their evolved intelligence and power over nature – when in fact, all it reveals is the extend of our own self-enslavement.

The point here is not that sex is bad or that relationships are bad and that we should all now go into celibacy. Quite the contrary – the point is for us to realize how we’ve enslaved ourselves to reproduce ourselves as clones of our own enslavement and to break that cycle by willing ourselves to change.

We do this by changing the very nature of our relationships – – from pre-programmed and automated fertility-programs to living agreements where we come together in the purpose of supporting ourselves and each other as Life to stand up. We do this by changing the way we have sex and the starting-point within which we have sex, from mentally and energetically charged reproduction maneuvers to physical self-expression and amalgamation of and as ourselves in the touch of equality. We do this by stopping participation in thoughts, emotions and feelings – within the realization that all of these are pre-programmed for us to follow the pattern of survival through reproduction. We bring ourselves back Here – – in and as the Physical, as Life, Equal and One.

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