Misogyny Or A Bad Streak Of Nasty Women? There Are Enough Of Them Out There To Make A Man Wonder

Robbie Norton had had an unbelievably bad string of luck when it came to female bosses.  There was Betsy, hounded by management for low sales figures, a natural bully, and a bad marriage.  She tried to keep her noxious badgering and open hostility for her staff under control, but there was no tamping down such a one-track, simple mind; and each one of her senior staff dreaded the call, hauled on the carpet for God knows what inefficiency, infraction, or error. 

The thing of it was, she had the CEO's ear - rumors had it that they had been particularly friendly at one time and the job was subsequently hers.  Of course she was no dummy, and her performance in lower-level positions in the company hierarchy was creditable, so the rumors were scotched although never completely forgotten. 

In any case the CEO was no dummy either, so when he saw sales in Betsy's department fall off, he did not hesitate to call her upstairs, give her a good talking to, and send her down with clear marching orders. 

That of course was a clarion call, and in a hastily assembled meeting of her department, she was a dervish of fierce, wild energy.  She howled and yelled, thumped her fist on the table, banged the sales chart until it rocked on its hinges, and said in no uncertain terms that she would have the scalp of anyone who failed to meet his sales targets. 

 

Now, all of this might be excused or explained because of the nature of sales, a brutal business by any measure, a no-holds barred gladiatorial combat with fields of battle littered with dead and dying bodies; but Betsy brought more than just an uber-competitiveness to the table.  She was a mean, nasty, arrogant bitch of a woman who had torn through every office she had worked in and every one of her failed marriages.  

Robbie had heard of the woman's reputation, but caught her on a good day, offering an important position and a generous salary, so like most men, he was certain he could handle anything that came his way.  When the buzz saw was powered up, and Betsy slashed her way through office and cubicle, he knew that he would have to do some fancy footwork to escape her. 

'She's a cunt', said Harold Bates, one of the more recently culled, 'no ifs, ands or buts about it'.  She was a devouring, castrating, man-eating machine, and Bates was glad to be out of her way. 

Here Robbie paused and reflected on the scene.  He had always been pro-woman, if not a feminist then close to it.  He had been raised by a sensible, talented, and ambitious woman who made her way nicely in the business world while keeping a good home and raising a respectful family.  His sister was a sweetheart, a bit shy and retiring, but honest, true, and temperate.  

Politically he had joined progressives in their demands for women's rights, and saw no threat whatsoever to the rising enrollment in professional schools and the ubiquity of women in senior positions; so it was with great reservation that he even listened to his colleague's misogynist harangues, for that was exactly what they were. 

Nevertheless, Betsy was indeed a harridan, a vixen and a succubus, there was no way around it.  He had worked for tough, ambitious, and disciplining women managers before, but there was no precedent for her swath of scorn, distaste, and laying waste. 

She was a product of three failed marriages all of which went to court and ended in sheer mayhem and nastiness, so anyone knowing this and working for her would reasonably assume her guilt.  This was a woman who must have been born a cunt and only developed into an even more vile one as the years wore on. 

Misogyny is not defined as the hatred of a single woman, but of all women; that is, that women as a class are innately manipulative and misandrous - born that way.  God gave them two X's instead of a Y, and sent them on their business.  The Bible after all, makes it clear that the human race was condemned to a life of penury and pain because of a woman.  It was Eve after all who tempted Adam to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge to satisfy her own arrogant demands. 

Robbie had not come to the misogyny conclusion but couldn't avoid the following.  Bryce Patton's wife, sick and tired of his desultory inattentiveness, his slavishness to his work, and his clueless and childish fixation with Sudoku puzzles, took a series of lovers, bolted off to St. Bart's with the last, and never gave her husband the time of day thereafter.

Sister Mary Joseph, Mother Superior of the Convent of the Sacred Heart and chief catechetical supervisor of St. Maurice's Church, singled out every boy in Sunday school, berated him, humiliated him, and badgered him for his disrespect to Our Lord and Savior and to God Almighty himself.  

Sister Mary Joseph had made her way up the ecclesiastical ladder by currying favor not with priests and the archbishop but with her cohorts whom she favored and pleased. Men, whether close to God and the Pope or little snotty boys from Broad Street were not worth her time and whatever fraction of the day she had to spend on them, it was to make them penitent and miserable. 

Miss Turnbull was the fifth grade teacher at Jarvis Elementary School, and she was as brutal and nasty as any teacher that had taught in the public school system.  She was an execrable menace, and took out her animus and deep-seated resentment against the boys in her class whom she blamed for every disturbance, annoyance, and problem; and she did her best to neuter them before they graduated, making life easier for Miss Fenwick, the sixth grade teacher only slightly less carnivorous than she. 

August Strindberg was accused of misogyny throughout his writing career, and critics pointed especially to Laura in The Father, and Julie in Miss Julie, women of will, defiance, and certitude who thought little of men and chose to ignore or dismiss them.  Laura in particular was an unstoppable female force out to eliminate her obtuse, clueless, staid husband from her life.  Iago-like she sows doubts about the paternity of their daughter and drives him mad, has him institutionalized and rendered incompetent.  Thanks to all this she gains complete control over her daughter. 

Miss Julie makes the valet, Jean, jump through hoops like a trained animal, and takes pleasure in humiliating and disgracing him.  She willingly sleeps with him, then gets her comeuppance and wanders off incoherently after he refuses to go with her.  

Strindberg, critics said, created a hateful, misandrous character but one who at the same time is so weak and emotionally feeble that she falls under the spell of a virile, confident man.  Double trouble. 

Robbie was on the fence - child of a loving, caring mother; brother to a warm, affectionate sister, lover to a number of lovely, adoring women; but subject to the insults and horrible abrasive nastiness of many others.  He knew that Betsy, Sister Mary Joseph, Miss Turnbull, and Bryce Patton's wife were just the tip of the iceberg.

It all came down to this - a savvy man is always comfortable around women, knowing them as well as he does.  He could be a Casanova, a good husband, or a trusted employee.  Women do not perplex him or surprise him.  Therefore the misogyny-nasty women debate is moot.  He knows how to deal with women, come out on top, or leave the scene before the battle begins.  Washing dishes, cleaning the bathroom, calling when late works wonders.  It doesn't take much to keep things on an even keel and to make out just fine. 

Cynical? Hardly, just a bit of field strategy in the War Between The Sexes. 

Robbie was a happy man because of this insight, this skill, and this savvy.  He found many women irresistible, fascinating, complex, alluring figures, and others not worth spare change; but life was like that, a complicated mish-mash of conundrums, puzzles, and traps.  Most men were befuddled by women and by life.  Not him.