Holy Hormones Honey! Serious? Obviously the media’s portrayal of women has a very strong impact on how women are perceived.
Nerd Dads Discover Women are People After Having Baby Girls
Jezebel
July 2012
by Erin Gloria Ryan
Almost 100 years after being granted the right to vote and several decades after the Women’s Movement, it seems there are still many, many men — especially in the sweaty boys’ locker room of internet nerdery — who don’t quite grasp the fact that women, like them, are actual human people with intelligence and worth. But maybe the key to the winning battle against internet misogyny that the forces of Gloria Steinem, the Spice Girls, and Beyonce couldn’t win lies in the tiny hands of baby girls, and their fathers’ subsequent attitude adjustment toward women.
Male nerd culture has a problem with women. From Reddit’s creepshots and MensRights subpages to male gamers who were excited to see Tomb Raider heroine Lara Croft get almost raped in the game’s impending reboot to a low-on-the-totem-poll tech blogger attacking prominent female gamer Felicia Day and accusing her of being nothing more than a glorified “booth babe,” even though her gaming credentials surpass those of most men, male nerdery breeds an especially hateful type of anti-woman sentiment. But what’s the solution?
Earlier this week, one Reddit user asked other forum participants if having a daughter changed their attitudes toward women, and most male respondents with daughters replied that yes, having girls made them see ladytypes differently. Like actual humans! Humans just like men! Imagine that! One father remarked that he no longer lusts after barely legal women, because they look like girls to him. Another said that he doesn’t think it’s funny to watch strippers almost get hit by cars as they try to cross the highway on their way to work anymore. Women are people!
Being a member of the subset– one in 3…women who have been abused I cant see any correction method to the functioning of male response to females. Only part is socialised. A significant percentage are born without the ability to love, lack empathy, guilt, remorse or conscience. Manipulate, project, mimic and get off on others suffering. This minute my view is to have a separate universe totally ignoring men, no more colluding, backstopping, supporting and being their punching bag with male legal structures to enforce their power and abuse over women. Basically we let them get away with it. Women are genetically stronger and are not testosterone challenged in the womb or later getting a cognitive haircut as do men, who lose connections which give complexity of understanding. Its up to women. Exploiters and abusers stay that way, it needs empowerment or taking back power by the subjected to remedy the situation. Look at Ireland naming the Vatican as narcissist and the Pope stayed away.
As a 4 year old girl, on my birthday, I reflected that I had wanted to die for a long time. The father projected his narcissistic self hate and saw me as a servant, and now a bigger girl to be more of a servant to my mother, his servant. A beautiful, shiny, bright coloured more intelligent than he, slave mother. And I had no right to expect anything any gift, any recognition. This informed my relationships to men for the rest of my life. Statistically I also had little chance of finding an intellectual equal. My 96 year old father sniggered this week at recalling beating my 5 year old back, covered with 3 blisters, sunstroke, with a hard red plastic belt.
The ‘nerd’ fathers and the non nerd fathers get to the daughters young, by age 3 the personality and character is constructed. Sure later on some of these guys can congratulate themselves on seeing females as people, but they have been getting in early and done over and programmed their daughters and their sons.
Ideally women need to know this. And get proactive.
Janet – Thank you for your brilliant insights and sharing your thoughts with my readers. Yes, we have a lot to overcome as women. And we do need to be proactive. All of us have memories have being abused, belittled, dismissed, and betrayed by the men in our lives. I interviewed a woman on my radio show one time who felt that women remain powerless because we still carry the memory of the witch burnings in our DNA. The late Daniel Schlain wrote in his book, Sex Time and Power that once women were prescribed(?) manipulated into taking HRT – hormone replacement therapy and synthetic hormones (i.e. birth control pills, injections and implants) we lost our power. He made a great comparison to the number of women leaders pre-HRT vs. post-HRT.
Thank you for opening women’s eyes with your comments.
You are always welcome to post here.
And we do need to get proactive.
Otherwise we will always remain victims.
Leslie