Over the previous week, many scandals have arose that have been brought to the attention of social media. From the matter of image-based sexual abuse to men of influence cheating on their pregnant girlfriends, there has been a recurring theme. Y’all ready to spell it with me? M-i-s-o-g-y-n-y. Misogyny.
If you are a woman, this behaviour shown towards us is certainly is of no surprise, but that does not invalidate how harrowing it feels each time. Women are subject to dehumanising treatment day after day after day. And I promise you that we are tired of it. Earlier last week, thousands of nude images of Irish girls (yes, under-age girls) and women were shared non-consensually on Discord, an online group chat platform. The outrage about this certainly wasn’t enough to make men feel shame, because the search for these images was discovered to be trending on other websites later that week. How disgusting.
The objectification of women’s bodies has grown to an all-time high. It grieves me that on a daily basis I see men referring to women as though they exist solely for their pleasure. I see men reduce the value of a whole human being to something that is only worth their respect if they are attractive to them. I see men only being able to empathise with women when they are asked to imagine their mother or daughter or sister in that same situation. Basically: I see men treating women as second-class citizens. Not as much as we think has actually changed since the 1800s, has it now?
From music videos to songs themselves to magazines and media in general, women are only seemed to be valued for their bodies. We are used as props in advertisements and live-motion statues in video art. God did not create the human body to be exploited like this. Our bodies are sacred. Sacred things are to be respected. The disregard shown towards women’s bodies goes far deeper than the animalistic attitude of certain men, however. I dare to say that it is rooted in things that manifest in many people’s daily life, including the lives of women themselves. Why? Because misogyny is more than just disrespect shown towards women by men. Rather, it is a system upon which much of the bed of our society has been laid on.
“Female: of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.”
This is a word that on a daily basis I see women being referred to as. Many people do not see a problem with this word in itself, and neither do I – but only in the right context, i.e. as an adjective. I have observed the use of this word when it comes to referring to women. People tend to term women as females when referring to negative behaviours that a woman may practice, or when it comes to describing a woman that someone may not be very fond of. People utilise this word when mocking women, when seeking to patronise women, and when they decide to be condescending to women. I rarely hear somebody say “My mother is the smartest female I know”, but very often I do hear “These females are so dumb / All you females know is to blah blah blah”. I have come to learn that people choose to use the word ‘woman’ in a different way than when they choose to use the word female. But I rarely ever see that word-fluidity when it comes to men. I don’t see men being explicitly referred to as males. Many a time, I see the word ‘female’ and ‘men’ in the same sentence, and I wonder why. For example, in the middle of writing this, I went to search the term female on twitter. I found in the top searches a tweet that said “why do females joke about taking another female man”. Isn’t it interesting how men can simply be men but women have to be either women or female. When will we uproot this misogynistic foundation?
Another strange issue I have noticed is the treatment of women that have been cheated on by their partners. Most people will not blame the woman, but many will say “how could he do that? she is so beautiful” as if a woman should be respected because of her beauty. The majority of people, women and men, will try to make sense of the matter by comparing the woman in the relationship to the other woman. This comparison is mainly done based on the appearances of both women, because obviously the respect for a woman should only be determined by how pretty she is perceived to be. As you can see, the objectification of women runs so much deeper than simply viewing women in pornographic ways, but it rather infiltrates even how we women see ourselves.
Men get away with a lot of disturbing behaviours toward us. This isn’t anything new. The person who leaked those nude photographs probably did it as some sort of joke. Because, you know, humiliating thousands of women is hilarious. This is probably the same mentality that the thousands of men who went out of their way to seek these pictures also had. Either that, or they didn’t care that the images they were seeking to view were actually human beings. All they cared about was obtaining some sort of pleasure from it. No regard for human feeling, emotion, or dignity at all. On a side note, this is one of the problems that I hold with pornography. For it perpetuates the objectification of women to a terrifying level, and it advocates for the desensitization towards the human body in general. And somebody will argue that it is only the viewer’s problem if they let this happen to their mind. But let’s be real. We are not about to absolve blame here just because you don’t want to admit that these sites are wrongful in nature. I digress.
Dear woman reading this. You are not a female, you are a woman. Don’t you dare let society tell you otherwise. Don’t you dare let them reduce your value to your external appearance. Don’t you let anybody ask you ‘what do you have to offer?’ as though you are an all-you-can-eat buffet. You are a human being, not a plate for somebody’s temporary satisfaction. When the world tries to limit you to appearing a certain way or having a certain body figure, I beg you to spit in its face. Own who you are and work tirelessly until you love yourself for the boss that you are. And no, loving yourself does not just mean accepting yourself and trying to prove to everybody that you have accepted yourself through posting explicit pictures or speaking down on others. It means embracing who you are. It means realising that you are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. It means understanding that you have a fire within you that nobody can extinguish. And it means owning that. So own it. And never let anybody take that away from you.
