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GREER, Germaine The Whole Woman 1999

Loathing:

Women have very little idea of how much men hate them, when men hate them, or why. A few men hate all women all of the time, some men hate some women all of the time, and all men hate some women some of the time.

The deeper the morass of misogyny through which we all have to wade the more vociferous the condemnation of anyone who dares to mention it. It is as easy to vilify women as man-haters, which they most emphatically are not, as it is difficult to challenge men on the grounds of their woman-hatred, which is real, pervasive and obvious. Any woman who points out the obvious fact that men hate women will herself be branded a man-hater who has brought men’s hatred upon herself.

“Let’s say I committed this crime… Even if I did do this, it would have to be because I loved her very much, right?” O. J. Simpson

There is no point in trying to establish reasons for men’s hatred of women because hatred is irrational. A woman trying to understand men’s cruelty to women is confronted again by a simple antipathy, which is what sexism means. Sexism is an antipathy to persons of the opposite sex, whether felt by men or women, but in fact felt by men.

Though all kinds of women are reviled as man-haters no woman has ever tortured a powerless man in the way that some men torture powerless women. Women do not have the vast vocabulary of insults for men that all men apply to women every day. Nothing that any Englishman can call anybody is worse than the word ‘cunt’. A ‘prick’ though contemptible is a lovesome chap by comparison. Men whether straight or gay revile ‘cunt’.

“Men do not beat women because of low self-esteem. They are not a fringe group of society with emotional problems that need to be pitied. There is no cycle. A man beats a woman for any reason. Not because she becomes ‘more assertive’. But because she is there, as a target, with anything used as an excuse”. Vique Martin

“Inconvenient as it may be, the reality is that one can have great sex with someone one neither loves nor likes; indeed under the right circumstances hatred is an effective aphrodisiac”. Dennis Altman

Men’s cruelty to women cannot be explained as simple aggression or even blind rage. The British Medical Association issued a report in July 1998 estimating that more than one in four British women experienced domestic violence, ranging from being punched, choked, bitten or raped, and recommended that all women patients be asked about their experience of domestic violence as is already done in the US. The same report noted that attacks on women were more likely when they were pregnant.

When any woman is killed the most likely suspect is the man she lives with. The death is usually the denouement of a long history of hatred, hatred that the brutalized woman interpreted as love gone awry.
Domestic violence is not simply a saga of broken bones and black eyes, of mayhem and fisticuffs. Violent partners also persecute their womenfolk with threats and insults, justify their savageries as provoked by the women themselves, and keep them in a state of terrified contrition.

It is in vain to wonder whether men would beat up on women less if women were more submissive or whether standing up for yourself would be a better strategy. Men bash women because they enjoy it; they torture women as they might torture an animal or pull the wings off flies or kick the supporter of an opposing team as he lies helpless on the ground, because they get off on it.

Better educated men get the same thrill from torturing their partners verbally, undermining their confidence, sneering at them, jerking them about emotionally. Once a woman finds herself in this sadistic cycle there is only one thing she can do. She cannot hope to wean her partner off his savage satisfactions, or blunt his sense of grievance, or get him to love her as she deserves. She can only leave him.

In most cases the woman is slow to sense the implacable hostility that looks at her out of her man’s eyes. Women are abused and harassed not by rampaging strangers but by men they see every day, men they thought they knew or men they thought they could ignore. Dig it! The man is not born who will not hate some woman on occasion. Odds on it will be the woman with the greatest claim on his love. The law and the police can do nothing to protect her as long as she persists in the fond delusion that what looks and feels like hatred is really love.

“Sometimes boys say really NASTY things about the way you look, talk or act. But believe it or not it could just be their way of telling you that they like you!” Shout magazine