"Subtle" Misogyny is Still Rife and I'm Tired of Fighting It.

Have we normalised misogyny so much so that we are all blind to it?

I pondered as I was writing this piece over the name of it, originally favouring a more clickbaity title about how terrible men are. I planned to soullessly use radical feminist messaging to secure more views (after all, I do want this to be my career). But to be honest, this essay is not aimed at feminists, because, you already know what I’m about to say. This is aimed at men who are open to listening to women’s issues, and who are able to empathise with us on some level.

I think the reason that many feminists generalise about men isn’t to alienate them but to tell them all as bluntly as possible that, yes, it’s not all men, but it is most of them. A lot of men have made me and other women feel the emotions that I’m about to share with you at some point. Perhaps not you, nor your brother, nor your best friend, nor your father, but a man, somewhere, makes women feel like this every single day. When women share stories like this, we are not asking for confrontation and aggravation; we are asking for solidarity and support. We are telling you that yes, actually, you and your brother and your best friend and your father might actually be guilty of this. But we don’t want to attack you, we just want you to listen and reflect.

This essay started in my childhood bedroom. I was spending the weekend with my parents for my Dad’s birthday and had expected it to be rough, to say the least. Without going into too much detail, my parents and I both have different visions for how my life should pan out, and I’m very much straying from their path, which has caused a lot of conflict of late. This will be relevant throughout the essay.

But one person who I didn’t expect to argue with was my brother. We are incredibly different people, yet we can usually put our differences aside for a few rounds of Mario Kart or a classic Simpsons binge-watch (we are both mentally fourteen years old, clearly). We still did those things, but they were tainted. There were a few little things he said that reminded me of how deeply misogyny is rooted in men, leaving me feeling deflated and diminished.

Allow me to set the scene.

We were watching Clarkson’s Farm, not a show that I’m particularly fond of but as the youngest sibling I rarely get remote control privileges. I had forgotten that it was custom in my family to mute the TV during ad breaks, and so had my dad, because he dared to let the Amazon Prime ads play. To be honest, I would fuck with this if it was in an anti-capitalist boycott kind of way, but they only do it because adverts annoy them. Understandable to be honest. My dad’s sloppiness and lack of advert-muting-urgency caused my brother to get impatient, and hassle him to press mute. It was an intense exchange. An exchange that warranted my question: Is it that deep?

Obviously, this was a ridiculous thing to ask, because my brother quickly told me that it was, in fact, that deep. “It’s deeper than the Mariana Trench,” he said. He then laughed at his own joke for about ten minutes. Typical sibling bickering ensued, and when I told my brother that nobody else found his joke funny he snapped back: “You don’t even know what the Mariana Trench is” as if I was too stupid to get his super funny joke.

I realise as I’m typing this out that it actually doesn’t seem that deep to even discuss this interaction on here. It just seems like, well, typical sibling bickering. But it was something about the way he’d said it that hurt me. He’d implied that I was stupid, that the Mariana Trench was something that only an idiot wouldn’t know about. The issue wasn’t that I didn’t know what he was talking about (I didn’t, in fairness), but it was the aggressiveness with which I was snapped at, and the implication that everyone else knew this apparent piece of common knowledge aside from me.

Did I perhaps touch a nerve when I pointed out that no one else was laughing? Did that trigger the defensiveness and hostility? Maybe. Did my light-hearted jab warrant this reaction? Maybe not.

To a man, this may seem incredibly trivial and contrived, and I can completely understand why. But to me, this response told me that my brother sees me as stupid, as a dumb bimbo. I’ve never claimed to be as academic as he is, and he knows that. But I’ve always been smart, well-read, and creative. This small interaction reaffirmed to me that my brother sees my film degree as lesser than his maths one, and my retail job as lesser than his engineering career. He is the more successful sibling, I’ll give him that, yet he still chose to punch down and insult my intellect. And I just wonder… would he have done the same if I was a man too?

I hadn’t told my family about my Substack when this happened, and it didn’t exactly inspire me to. I realised the potential for more ridicule if I failed, the scrutiny that I’d be under with every post. I imagined them hunting for and laughing at any mistakes and typos, telling me that my essays are too controversial and too political and that I’d never be successful. I wouldn’t be able to deal with them undermining my opinions and questioning my research.

Later, in the car on the way back to my flat, about an hour away from my parent’s house, my dad launched the inquiry into my career and finances - a conversation which I had been avoiding all weekend. We tend to have the same conversation on repeat and it never helps and just causes more tension, hence why I avoid it. But trapped in the car for an hour, I had little chance of escape. The conversation usually goes something like this:

Dad: You must choose a career.
Me: I don’t want a career.
Dad: Well, not a career, but at least speak to a career advisor.
Me: I don’t want to do that, I already know what I want to do.
Dad: Why don’t you ever tell us?
Me: I tell you all the time that I want to be a writer but you always tell me that it’s too difficult.
Dad: AI will make it impossible for you to be a writer, pick something else.

And so on a so forth. The parent is also interchangeable.

It was at this point in the conversation that I felt like I had no choice but to tell my Dad about my Substack, to tell him that I was actually trying to be a writer. I didn’t want to tell him. I know my parents see me as lazy, that they think I’m not doing anything with my life, and that I’ll work in retail for the next forty years. I had to change the narrative and explain that I was actually trying to get my writing career off the ground.

Furthermore, the “AI will kill humanities” argument is repeatedly used against me by both my Dad and Brother, who seem to forget that both of their jobs could also be replaced by AI, as could my Mother’s job, as could anyone’s. But it’s just me, and my creative goals that they focus on. When my brother started working as an engineer, there was no question of his job security, despite the fact that it too could be replaced by AI. But that’s not an issue for him, it is only brought up when I share my dreams.

Again, perhaps to a man, this is not misogyny. This is just fact, right? I have a rubbish job, I live paycheck to paycheck, and my film degree was a waste of nine grand. Maybe the frustration from my parents is valid. But I wonder whether my brother receives this type of questioning over his life choices, even though I know that he doesn’t because he has always been the better, more intelligent sibling. I also know that things would be different if I were an only child because I wouldn’t get compared to him all the time. Plus, if he wanted to be a writer, I’m sure that my parents would believe in him, unlike me. Apparently, this is because I’ve never mentioned it before.

The real facts are this: I have always wanted to be a writer. I used to write silly little books about a group of cats when I was a kid and I would excitedly read them aloud to my school friends at break times. I excelled in English lessons at school and wanted to study English, Philosophy and Religious Studies at A-Levels, but my parents said the exams would be too stressful, that I’d have to read (no shit) and that I’d find it too difficult. Instead, I did a BTEC in Creative Media Design. I’m not disparaging BTECs, but I know that I had the brains to do those A-Levels if I wanted to. At university, as I’ve probably said before, I wanted to study Creative Writing, but wasn’t allowed to, because according to my parents, there wouldn’t be any job opportunities aside from teaching at the end of it. We ended up going with Film Production, the lesser of two evils, and then COVID-19 hit, I got severely depressed, and hence, did not have a fun time at university.

Unfortunately, my Dad and Brother are not the only men to question my intellect and opinions. I used to end up getting embroiled in political debates with a male friend of mine, which always left me feeling like an idiot. I would always get steamrolled and dogpiled and generally interrupted as if my points were irrelevant. I find that in “debates” my intent was always to listen, learn, and share my thoughts, but for men, it was always about winning, usually through shouting the loudest. I, and other women, often try to nurture, whilst cis men especially tend to bulldoze any educational value or sense of unity. I don’t say this to generalise, but I’ve found it to be true with the majority of men that I’ve “debated” (I put “debated” in quotation marks because a man shouting over me is not a debate, that’s just a man shouting whilst I sit quietly until he finishes).

Funnily enough, though, that’s what inspired me to start working on my writing career and to start educating myself on leftist and feminist theory. I am tired of cowering and bowing down to patriarchy and misogynistic men, I don’t want to keep letting them win. Knowledge is power and I believe that outsmarting our oppressors is the best way to disempower them. Because… how else do we do it? Diplomacy and democracy have only got us so far, and indeed the riots and revolutions haven’t eradicated misogyny by any means. What else can we possibly do except slowly and painfully attempt to nurture and educate men? It shouldn’t be our responsibility to, but what else is there? Men who lack empathy and use Elon Musk and Andrew Tate as their role models are not going to do anything but laugh at us, regardless of what we do anyway.

But there is a fear that comes with sharing stories such as this one. A fear that I’m just overthinking and that what I’ve described here is not actual misogyny. Perhaps I am a misandrist, making sweeping generalisations about men, putting them down and reducing them to the mansplainer stereotype and nothing more. But what I find funny about that fear is the fact that when I do get those messages from men, telling me that this is not mansplaining nor misogyny, I will be able to tell them that they are invalidating my feelings, and in doing so, they are mansplaining. It’s a vicious circle of egotistical righteousness that nobody can beat.

Thank you for reading In Solidarity, Skye. This is a reader-supported publication, so if you made it to the end and enjoyed this essay, it would mean the world to me if you subscribed for free! Alternatively, if you’re feeling super generous, you can ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ at the link above, and help me turn this into my full-time career! Thank you, and solidarity forever.