My dogs spotted a squirrel
the other day and couldn’t help lunging forward, even though they knew they
were leashed. That made me think about men who treat women the way dogs treat
squirrels.
Some men want to physically
engage every woman they see who fits their image of sexy. They interrupt
everything, get too close, use their hands, and won’t take “no” for an answer.
When it doesn’t work, they try it again with another woman. Over and over again
they manhandle women, because they think about them as the dog thinks of the
squirrel, as lesser but attractive beings who must be chased.
There used to be lots of guys
like that. When I grew up in the 1960s, they attracted everyone’s attention.
Other guys watched them in awe and wonder at their boldness. At a time of much
less free love, no matter what their success rate, they gained a reputation as
very good at what they did. Their form of masculinity was taken for granted as
an acceptable variant, not for every man, but worthy of respect and sometimes
envy.
Other men, observers of this
uninvited and unwelcome pursuit, were torn between two conflicting masculine
imperatives: the ancient code of chivalry obligating men to protect women in
danger, and a very modern respect for tough, aggressive, egotistical and
physically dominant forms of serial conquest. The hunters may not have been
universally admired by other men, but they were not recognized as the creeps we
now see.
Before the 1960s, there were a
few voices decrying the connection between female inequality and male sexual
violence. As early as 1641, the Body of Liberties of the
Massachusetts Bay colony included a prohibition against wife-beating: “Everie
marryed woeman shall be free from bodilie correction or stripes by her
husband.” But as late as 1970, male predators could still assume that few would
try to stop them.
We still see men like that,
but their days of unashamed hunting are gone. They are much more careful in
their use of their hands, and perhaps more sophisticated in employing wealth,
status, connections and unscrupulousness as persuasive arguments. But two
things have really changed. The social approval of men which had surrounded
them has turned sour. And the willingness of women to tolerate the boors is
disappearing.
The species of predatory men
is in decline, here and across the globe, because they were defeated culturally
and politically. As our attitudes about men and women moved toward equality,
laws were passed which attacked the hunting rights of men. The first
significant national legislation to reduce violence against women was passed in
1994, the Violence Against Women Act. That law attracted bipartisan support, but the next
year conservative Congressmen tried to cut its funding.
Neanderthal Man is not yet
extinct. Their species keeps getting infusions of new life, mostly by the
fundamentalist wings of the West’s major religions. Conservative politicians
give a nod toward traditional male superiority every time they lionize openly
misogynist commentators, like Rush Limbaugh.
Men will continue hunting
women for the foreseeable future. Changing cultural assumptions developed over
millennia is a slow and frustrating business. The ideological argument that
women should be equal to men may have won the public debate, but human habits
go much deeper than rational discourse. Those who demand gender equality occupy
the moral high ground, but below, in the bushes, the struggle goes on. Conservatives
still fight rearguard actions against equality in pay,
in child care, and
in politics
itself. One third of Democrats in Congress are women, but only one tenth of
Republican legislators.
None of the momentous
social-cultural-political shifts of my lifetime are over. Each step toward
equality faces obstacles which have been built over centuries. The more that
ancient texts are revered, the harder it is to find a path to equality. But the
progress during my lifetime has been breath-taking.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
Published in the Jacksonville
Journal-Courier, October 13, 2015
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