As someone who has access to male only spaces I’d like to bring a bit of attention to a specific type of indirect misogyny that’s acted out in these places, where the hatred of women is repackaged as a tool to coerce men into adhering to restrictive gender roles. I’d like to address this issue because I personally believe it has a direct effect on the perpetuation of “classic” direct misogyny and sex-based oppression (more on that later).
So let’s say for the sake of explaining my point that a teenage boy has a natural predisposition towards crying and emotional sensitivity. He’s not very good at sports and his peers make fun of him for it in the school locker room, causing him to get upset. This immediately attracts insults of a sexist nature, including the infamous “do you need a tampon bro?”. So to atone for the crime of being visibly upset, the teenage boy is likened to a woman - with womanhood being framed here as objectively inferior to manhood and performative masculinity.
If misogyny is defined as the hatred and contempt of women, it becomes easy to see how insults like “do you need a tampon bro” are misogynistic in both a sex-based sense (hatred of female biological functions) as well as a gendered sense (stereotype of emotional sensitivity as feminine and therefore worthy of insult) - but in the boys’ locker room, no women are present. This misogyny is indirect in nature, instead being weaponised against gender nonconforming behaviour in men. The teenage boy learns that misogyny is not only acceptable, unpunished; but from his peers’ laughter he learns that it is actually celebrated in his society. He also learns that femininity is regarded as a lesser other, that it does not belong to his sex and consequently his sensitive nature does not belong to him. This is an important lesson in masculinity.
So what happens to this teenage boy as he grows up? As someone who has personal experience of this phenomenon, I can say for certain that he will be on the receiving end of this indirect misogyny almost every time he cries or displays any emotional sensitivity other than anger. Eventually, he reaches a point where he decides that he doesn’t want to deal with these repeated attacks any more and learns to repress his feelings, choosing instead to either replace them with male aggression or suppress them entirely. As a result, he gains wide acceptance from his peers, becomes more popular in school and perhaps even gets his first romantic partner. He sees objective improvements in his life from performing masculinity “correctly”, which may be seen as a further extension of his existing male privilege.
Fast forward 20 years and the teenage boy is now a grown man - let’s say he moves to a new city and finds an all-male group of friends. One of these friends, funnily enough, cries easily and is prone to displays of emotions other than anger. The now fully-grown man thinks to himself “how can this friend not have learned the lesson I learned 20 years ago? That life gets so much better when you force yourself to be more masculine?”. he assumes that his friend must be less intelligent than he is (after all, why else would it take 20 extra years to learn something so simple? it can’t possibly be that he was just permitted to be himself) - but despite our protagonist’s feelings of superiority, he wants to share what he has learned to make life easier for his friend. He does this the only way he knows how, the only way he’s been taught - by becoming the boys who used to taunt him in the locker room. He comes out with “do you need a tampon, bro?” - because, after all, misogyny is acceptable. Misogyny is celebrated. His friends all laugh.
Now let’s apply this on a global scale, with the majority of gender non conforming men learning the same “lessons” on masculinity. It becomes clear that misogyny is in part perpetuated by the same men who were once collateral damage in the cycle of sex-based oppression. It also becomes clear that the fathers telling their sons to “stop acting like a girl” are often doing so because they heard the exact same thing in their own childhood. Misogyny is therefore not an innate trait of manhood, but a cyclical construct perpetuated by men who were themselves coerced into upholding the patriarchy. It’s an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail - this means it can be stopped.
As for where this all leads to - well, I won’t pretend to believe that this even comes close to showing the whole picture as far as misogyny is concerned (it doesn’t address male gaze, women’s bodily autonomy, or compulsory femininity for instance). However, I do believe this is where male allies to feminism come into the picture. This form of indirect misogyny is usually enacted in exclusively male spaces, making it difficult for women to tackle head-on. While women are focusing on whatever activism they deem necessary to ensure their liberation, it is the duty of male allies to break this chain and confront the spread of misogynistic rhetoric in male only spaces, to make sure it’s not seen as acceptable, as this likely makes a contribution to sex-based oppression. It is far easier for us to do this since we’re the ones with the access. Our male privilege can and should be weaponised in the name of freeing us all from the miserable confinement of gender.
