Just your ordinary misogynist Saturday

We must point to examples of misogyny we’ve been accepting as normal

Oprah Winfrey was widely lauded for her recent Golden Globe Awards speech about a “new day” being “on the horizon” for young women, now that females could “speak their truth.”

I preferred Natalie Portman’s succinct presentation of the award for best director: “And here are the allmale nominees.”

Winfrey was vague and clichéd; Portman pointed explicitly to an example of why we need a new day.

Historian Mary Beard explained the difference between these two approaches during an interview to promote her latest book, “Women and Power.” She said it’s not enough to say something is misogynist — you have to identify how it is misogynist, and what the effects are. You have to be specific in order to recognize what needs to change, and how.

I considered this after a recent, normal Saturday morning.

Shortly after I woke, I took a few minutes to skim the Spec. My eye caught a book review in which the male reviewer congratulates the male author (and male translator) for writing a book with a “believable” female protagonist. … A protagonist who is soothed by a grenade between her legs and who is taught how to masturbate by another female character … in a concentration camp.

This should ring some alarm bells on the old B.S. detector. I just love it when one man praises another man’s ability to understand women — to write a “profoundly, triumphantly feminist book,” no less! — and approves of plot elements that, while they might satisfy male sexual fantasies, are damned implausible. (Lord knows concentration camps were arousal central, but do women need to be taught how to masturbate? Really?)

But these thoughts were fleeting, because I’d read that the Canadian Women’s Under-18 team was playing in the World Junior Championships in Russia, and one (one!) of their games was going to be televised. I wanted my hockey-playing daughters to see it. Thus began a three-way tech logistics coordination, as my 12-year-old, 11-year-old and myself manned the desktop, the smart TV and the cable box searching for clues as to where this game might be found. “It’s not listed anywhere!” “Where did you hear about this?” “Are you sure it was this morning?” “Google it!” “Just go to YouTube!”

We found a slightly fuzzy recording of the game on YouTube, with Russian commentary. I probably don’t need to mention that during the World Junior Hockey Championships it was impossible to open a newspaper or turn on a newscast without getting an update on the junior men’s regularly televised games. In English.

Next, during the drive to the kids’ jiu-jitsu class, I heard an interview on CBC Radio in which the male host interviewed media critic Matt Wilstein about David Letterman’s new show featuring an interview with Barack Obama. The critic noted Letterman was clearly enjoying an interview with some substance, rather than having to talk to young actresses “who didn’t really have anything to say,” as poor Dave was “forced” to do on his late night TV show. Despite analyzing media for a living, it would appear that Wilstein is unaware that there are also many young male actors who don’t have anything to say.

By this time, it was 10:55 a.m. Like any other day, it was a series of reminders that women — pushed to the margins, excluded, belittled — are held in contempt by our society.

If you think it’s an overstatement to call this another typical misogynist Saturday morning, try imagining the opposite: try imagining a review in which a woman congratulated another woman for writing a believable male protagonist in which he is taught to masturbate by another male in a death camp. Try imagining, after the women’s junior hockey team being all over the news, not being able to find one of the men’s junior hockey team’s games on TV.

Try imagining a radio show in which the female host interviews a female guest about a show where one famous woman (age 71) interviews another famous woman (age 56), and thank goodness there were no young male actors around, who never have anything interesting to say.

Giving women the same space, attention, power and respect as men is almost impossible to envision in our culture, where the exclusion of women has been normalized to the extent we might not even notice it.

Some people will read this and think, “Jeez, not another thing about #metoo.” I’ve wondered how much is too much — if I should lay off the gender topics for a while.

But Beard reminded me that we need to disrupt things as they are, by pointing to the specific examples of misogyny we’ve been accepting as normality. And keep pointing, until there’s nothing left to point at.