Going into my last relationship, I knew he was a misogynist. I wasn’t afraid of that; the great Degas was a renown misogynist and yet had the best friendship with Mary Cassatt. There seems to be some normalcy to men having certain levels of misogyny.
When perverse, misogyny caters to the cruel in a man. From it stems malicious violence against women, sadistic sexual practices and torture. That’s the extreme of the noxious personality disorder.
Milder forms are what many men fondle. Mild misogyny evidences itself in a man being stingy, abrasive in conversation, foul-mouthed when there is no need of abrupt, striking words. What many misogynists share is the knack to frustrate the woman in their lives. The frustration level comes from the monkey-wrench in the pudding effect where the man doesn’t seem to hear well.
And it also includes self-sabotage. This is the misogynist who never resolved loving and hating the Mother. How else to better torture one’s Mother than to hurt oneself continuously? I know that because of my own needing to break free of Mother’s sewn-in grip. But eventually, I worked it out.
I am not a misogynist. What I have trouble with is understanding and liking the homo sapien. I prefer the company of animals, nature and some people who are heartfelt human beings. So in my mystical fashion, I can relate to the misogynist. Our difference is that the span of my love/hatred counts down most of humanity; not targeted at a single gender.
Some religions are inherently misogynistic. I’d consider any religion who treats women with less status than men is such a religion. People say that Judaism and Christianity are misogynistic. In my mystical point of view, I’d say ‘yes and no’. I know that Judaism sponsored land ownership by women and held many women in high regard in the ancient stories. Jesus is the christianity I refer to and he surprised many of his time by even talking to women and welcoming them into his inner circle.
In distancing myself from my relationship, I felt the sting of the end of my heart’s affection. I suspect this is what he wanted me to feel. Consciously or unconsciously; but it wasn’t entirely personal to me. When a man is a misogynist, the anger against me isn’t entirely mine…I am not my gender. I’m sure I triggered all the old plugs that seemed decayed and rusted away. Wow, those old plugs relit themselves with fervor and fire. Yeouch.
So when I walked away, there wasn’t anything to talk about.
It is true insanity to try to talk a man out of his misogyny. He’s either willing to set it aside to grow more whole or he lives in it, half -baked as a being. Beans refried give me indigestion.