Love in a Misogynistic Society

Off Our Backs, May/Jun 2004 by Christian, Sena

We know what love is not. Love is not what a husband feels for his wife when he beats her. Love is not exchanged between a rapist and his victim. Love is not expressed when parents sell their daughter into sexual slavery. Love is not what a man feels toward women when he watches pornography, nor is it what a man experiences when he hires a prostitute. Love is not the driving force behind advertisements that represent women in objectified and sexualized images to sell products. It is not manifested in the degrading lyrics and videos of the mainstream music industry. Love is not what men and women feel toward powerful women. It is not out of self-love that women surgically alter themselves to fit a particular standard of beauty. Men who abduct and murder women are not doing so because they love their female victims.

Misogyny and Love?

Every day, the disrespect and devaluation of women and girls in patriarchal societies manifest themselves in both violent and subtle ways. Misogynist attitudes and views perpetuate, condone and excuse a society in which it is acceptable and understandable for men to hate women, for women to hate other women and for women to hate themselves. We live in a misogynistic environment in which women are continually disrespected, objectified, devalued and emotionally, psychologically and physically abused at the interpersonal, state and economic level. With so much hatred toward women, it is difficult to clearly define love in a patriarchal and misogynistic society. Does it really even exist?

A patriarchal society, such as the United States, is one in which male domination and female subordination are sustained through the oppression and mistreatment of women. It is a society in which women are understood primarily in terms of male use. Many feminists argue that in patriarchies men maintain their power through violence and force. In fact, the very threat of violence functions implicitly to maintain female subordination, extinguishing women's will to resist.

The Ideology of Love

On a more subtle level, discourses and ideologies also serve the maintenance of the dominant system. Love, for instance-as one element in a realm of interconnected discourses and ideologies that govern individual experiences, gender relations and systems of power-serves a very particular function in patriarchy. Our understanding and experience of love is organized around public, political, economic, religious and gender ideologies. These discourses and ideologies-expressed as common sense and presented as truth-carry with them values, classifications and meanings that both reflect and constitute people and the world around us. They establish what is normal and deviant through exclusion and marginalization.

It is not easy to define love, the various types of love, the different forms of its expression, and the role that love plays in a patriarchal society. Although members of patriarchal societies exhibit disrespect and hatred toward women, we also find evidence of love. It is difficult to reconcile the fact that many men do appear to feel love for some women at the interpersonal level, while hatred and disrespect of women continues to exist at the larger societal level.

Can Men Love Women?

How can we explain this discrepancy in which men tend to love women up close but hate them at a distance? It would be unfair and problematic to simply assert that as a member of the dominant group men never really love any women in their lives-whether it be their mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives, daughters-because their vested interest in patriarchy prevents complete and honest love between men and women, or between oppressor and oppressed. So I assume that there are many men who do indeed feel true love for women in their lives. Yet, the problem still remains that hatred and disrespect for women continues to exist at a larger level and is partially perpetuated through the actions of individual men and, unfortunately, also through women themselves.

Misogyny is complicated because it suggests aggressive feelings and deliberate actions by men who are continuously conscious of their negative feelings toward women. However, misogyny actually works most effectively at a much more subtle and indirect level. It is not that on a day-to-day basis men think to themselves that they hate women. Rather, it is more of an underlying mentality of disrespect and devaluation of women that weaves in and out of individual minds, interpersonal relationships, public discourses, media images, gender roles and societal codes and expectations.

Love Obscures

In patriarchal societies men have a compelling interest in perpetuating the ideology of love, while ignoring or dismissing any claim or reference to misogyny. When violence and force are not used, the ideology of love allows patriarchy to flourish. The abstract, conceptual ideology of "love" obscures the reality of women's individual experiences and struggles, gender relations and patriarchy. It conceals essential issues and problems and makes everything seem okay. The symbolic discourse of love contrasts sharply with the reality of women's experiences with love. The ideology and discourse of love confuse and oppress women, as too often we believe love actually exists and that every act of violence against, or disrespect of, women does not really involve an element of woman-hate. Because the discourse and ideology obfuscate the actual realities of women's experiences with love, the disrespect, hatred, abuse and systematic discrimination that women continually face is not addressed through public discourse. They are completely lost.