Misandry (/mɪˈsændri/) is the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against men or boys. Either "misandrous" or "misandristic" can be used as adjectival forms of the word. Misandry can manifest itself in numerous ways, including sexual discrimination, denigration of men, violence against men, sexual objectification of men, "or more broadly, the hatred, fear, anger and contempt of men".
Etymology
Misandry is formed from the Greek misos (μῖσος, "hatred") and anēr, andros (ἀνήρ, gen. ἀνδρός; "man"). Use of the word can be found as far back as the nineteenth century, including an 1871 use in The Spectator magazine. It appeared in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) in 1952. Translation of the French "Misandrie" to the German "Männerhass" (Hatred of Men) is recorded in 1803. Misandry is parallel in form to 'misogyny'.
Male disposability
Anti-misandry graffito scratched into a public table.
Activist Warren Farrell
has written of his views on how men are uniquely marginalized in what
he calls their "disposability", the manner in which the most dangerous
occupations, notably soldiering and mining, were historically performed
exclusively by men and remain so today. In his book, The Myth of Male Power,
Farrell argues that patriarchal societies do not make rules to benefit
men at the expense of women. Farrell contends that nothing is more
telling about who has benefited from "men's rules" than life expectancy, which is lower in males, and suicide rates, which are higher in males.
Religious studies professors Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young made similar comparisons in their 2001 three-book series Beyond the Fall of Man,
which refers to misandry as a "form of prejudice and discrimination
that has become institutionalized in North American society", writing,
"The same problem that long prevented mutual respect between Jews and
Christians, the teaching of contempt, now prevents mutual respect
between men and women."
Within feminist movements
Academic Alice Echols, in her 1989 book Daring To Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975, argued that the radical feminist Valerie Solanas, best known for her attempted murder of Andy Warhol in 1968, displayed an extreme level of misandry compared to other radical feminists of the time in her tract the SCUM Manifesto. Echols stated:
Solanas's unabashed
misandry—especially her belief in men's biological inferiority—her
endorsement of relationships between 'independent women,' and her
dismissal of sex as 'the refuge of the mindless' contravened the sort of
radical feminism which prevailed in most women's groups across the
country.
Andrea Dworkin criticized the biological determinist strand in radical feminism
that, in 1977, she found "with increasing frequency in feminist
circles" which echoed the views of Valerie Solanas that males are
biologically inferior to women and violent by nature, requiring a gendercide to allow for the emergence of a "new Übermensch Womon".
The author bell hooks
has discussed the issue of "man hating" during the early period of
women's liberation as a reaction to patriarchal oppression and women who
have had bad experiences with men in non-feminist social movements. She
has also criticized separatist strands of feminism as "reactionary" for
promoting the notion that men are inherently immoral, inferior, and
unable to help end sexist oppression or benefit from feminism. In Feminism is For Everybody,
hooks laments the fact that feminists who critiqued anti-male bias in
the early women's movement never gained mainstream media attention and
that "our theoretical work critiquing the demonization of men as the
enemy did not change the perspective of women who were anti-male." hooks
has theorized previously that this demonization led to an unnecessary
rift between the men's movement and the women's movement.
Although hooks doesn't name individual separatist theorists, Mary Daly's utopian vision of a world in which men and heterosexual women have been eliminated is an extreme example of this tendency.
Daly argued that sexual equality between men and women was not possible
and that women, due to their superior capacities, should rule men.
Yet later, in an interview, Daly argued "If life is to survive on this
planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will
be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic
reduction of the population of males."
Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young argued that "ideological feminism" as opposed to "egalitarian feminism" has imposed misandry on culture. Their 2001 book, Spreading Misandry,
analyzed "pop cultural artifacts and productions from the 1990s" from
movies to greeting cards for what they considered to be pervasive
messages of hatred toward men. Legalizing Misandry (2005), the second in the series, gave similar attention to laws in North America.
Wendy McElroy, an individualist feminist,
wrote in 2001 that some feminists "have redefined the view of the
movement of the opposite sex" as "a hot anger toward men [that] seems to
have turned into a cold hatred." She argued it was a misandrist position to consider men, as a class, to be irreformable or rapists.
In a 2016 article, author and journalist Cathy Young described a "current cycle of misandry" in feminism. This cycle, she explains, includes the use of the term "mansplaining" and other neologisms using "man" as a derogatory prefix. The term "mansplaining", according to feminist writer Rebecca Solnit, was coined soon after the appearance in 2008 of her essay Men Explain Things to Me.
In a study of 488 college students regarding ambivalent sexism
towards men, researchers found that women who did not identify as
feminists were more likely to be hostile towards men than
self-identified feminists, but also more likely to hold benevolent views
towards men.
In a study of 503 self-identified heterosexual females, social psychologists found an association between insecure attachment styles and women's hostile sexism towards men.
Asymmetry with misogyny
Sociologist Allan G. Johnson argues in The Gender Knot: Unraveling our Patriarchal Legacy that accusations of man-hating have been used to put down feminists and to shift attention onto men, reinforcing a male-centered culture. Johnson asserts that culture offers no comparable anti-male ideology to misogyny
and that "people often confuse men as individuals with men as a
dominant and privileged category of people" and that "[given the]
reality of women's oppression, male privilege, and men's enforcement of
both, it's hardly surprising that every woman should have moments where she resents or even hates 'men'".
Marc A. Ouellette argues in International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities
that "misandry lacks the systemic, transhistoric, institutionalized,
and legislated antipathy of misogyny"; in his view, assuming a parallel
between misogyny and misandry overly simplifies relations of gender and
power.
Anthropologist David D. Gilmore also argues that misogyny is a "near-universal phenomenon" and that there is no male equivalent to misogyny,
further defending manifestations of perceived misandry as not "hatred
of men's traditional male role" and a "culture of machismo". He argues,
misandry is "different from the intensely ad feminam aspect of misogyny that targets women no matter what they believe or do".
In literature
Ancient Greek literature
Classics professor Froma Zeitlin of Princeton University discussed misandry in her article titled "Patterns of Gender in Aeschylean Drama: Seven against Thebes and the Danaid Trilogy". She writes:
The most significant point of
contact, however, between Eteocles and the suppliant Danaids is, in
fact, their extreme positions with regard to the opposite sex: the
misogyny of Eteocles' outburst against all women of whatever variety
(Se. 181-202) has its counterpart in the seeming misandry of the
Danaids, who although opposed to their Egyptian cousins in particular
(marriage with them is incestuous, they are violent men) often extend
their objections to include the race of males as a whole and view their
cause as a passionate contest between the sexes (cf. Su. 29, 393, 487,
818, 951).
Shakespeare
Literary critic Harold Bloom
argued that even though the word misandry is relatively unheard of in
literature it is not hard to find implicit, even explicit, misandry. In
reference to the works of Shakespeare
Bloom argued "I cannot think of one instance of misogyny whereas I
would argue that misandry is a strong element. Shakespeare makes
perfectly clear that women in general have to marry down and that men
are narcissistic and not to be trusted and so forth. On the whole, he
gives us a darker vision of human males than human females."
Modern literature
Racialized misandry occurs in both "high" and "low" culture and literature. For instance, African-American
men have often been disparagingly portrayed as either infantile or as
eroticized and hyper-masculine, depending on prevailing cultural
stereotypes.
Critic of mainstream feminism Christina Hoff Sommers has described Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues
as misandric in that "there are no admirable males ... the play
presents a rogues’ gallery of male brutes, sadists, child-molesters,
genital mutilators, gang rapists and hateful little boys" which she
finds out of step with the reality that "most men are not brutes. They
are not oppressors".
Julie M. Thompson, a feminist author, connects misandry with envy of men, in particular "penis envy", a term coined by Sigmund Freud in 1908, in his theory of female sexual development. Nancy Kang has discussed "the misandric impulse" in relation to the works of Toni Morrison.
In the introduction to The Great Comic Book Heroes,
Jules Feiffer writes that this is Superman's joke on the rest of us.
Clark is Superman's vision of what other men are really like. We are
scared, incompetent, and powerless, particularly around women. Though
Feiffer took the joke good-naturedly, a more cynical response would see
here the Kryptonian's misanthropy, his misandry embodied in Clark and
his misogyny in his wish that Lois be enamored of Clark (much like
Oberon takes out hostility toward Titania by having her fall in love
with an ass in Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream).
According to sociologist Allan G. Johnson, "misogyny is a cultural
attitude of hatred for females because they are female". Johnson argues
that:
Misogyny .... is a central part of sexist prejudice and ideology and, as such, is an important basis for the oppression
of females in male-dominated societies. Misogyny is manifested in many
different ways, from jokes to pornography to violence to the
self-contempt women may be taught to feel toward their own bodies.
Though most common in men, misogyny
also exists in and is practiced by women against other women or even
themselves. Misogyny functions as an ideology or belief system that has
accompanied patriarchal, or male-dominated societies for thousands of
years and continues to place women in subordinate positions with limited
access to power and decision making. […] Aristotle contended that women
exist as natural deformities or imperfect males […] Ever since, women
in Western cultures
have internalised their role as societal scapegoats, influenced in the
twenty-first century by multimedia objectification of women with its
culturally sanctioned self-loathing and fixations on plastic surgery,
anorexia and bulimia.
Dictionaries define misogyny as "hatred of women" and as "hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women". In 2012, primarily in response to events occurring in the Australian Parliament, the Macquarie Dictionary (which documents Australian English and New Zealand English) expanded the definition to include not only hatred of women but also "entrenched prejudices against women". The counterpart of misogyny is misandry, the hatred or dislike of men; the antonym of misogyny is philogyny, the love or fondness of women.
In his book City of Sokrates: An Introduction to Classical Athens,
J.W. Roberts argues that older than tragedy and comedy was a
misogynistic tradition in Greek literature, reaching back at least as
far as Hesiod. The term misogyny itself comes directly into English from the Ancient Greek word misogunia (μισογυνία), which survives in several passages.
The earlier, longer, and more complete passage comes from a moral tract known as On Marriage (c. 150 BC) by the stoic philosopher Antipater of Tarsus. Antipater argues that marriage is the foundation of the state, and considers it to be based on divine (polytheistic) decree. He uses misogunia to describe the sort of writing the tragedian Euripides
eschews, stating that he "reject[s] the hatred of women in his writing"
(ἀποθέμενος τὴν ἐν τῷ γράφειν μισογυνίαν). He then offers an example
of this, quoting from a lost play of Euripides in which the merits of a
dutiful wife are praised.
The other surviving use of the original Greek word is by Chrysippus, in a fragment from On affections, quoted by Galen in Hippocrates on Affections. Here, misogyny is the first in a short list of three "disaffections"—women (misogunia), wine (misoinia, μισοινία) and humanity (misanthrōpia,
μισανθρωπία). Chrysippus' point is more abstract than Antipater's, and
Galen quotes the passage as an example of an opinion contrary to his
own. What is clear, however, is that he groups hatred of women with
hatred of humanity generally, and even hatred of wine. "It was the
prevailing medical opinion of his day that wine strengthens body and
soul alike." So Chrysippus, like his fellow stoic Antipater, views misogyny negatively, as a disease;
a dislike of something that is good. It is this issue of conflicted or
alternating emotions that was philosophically contentious to the ancient
writers. Ricardo Salles suggests that the general stoic view was that
"[a] man may not only alternate between philogyny and misogyny,
philanthropy and misanthropy, but be prompted to each by the other."
Aristotle
has also been accused of being a misogynist; he has written that women
were inferior to men. According to Cynthia Freeland (1994):
Aristotle says that the courage of a
man lies in commanding, a woman's lies in obeying; that 'matter yearns
for form, as the female for the male and the ugly for the beautiful';
that women have fewer teeth than men; that a female is an incomplete
male or 'as it were, a deformity': which contributes only matter and not
form to the generation of offspring; that in general 'a woman is
perhaps an inferior being'; that female characters in a tragedy will be
inappropriate if they are too brave or too clever[.]
In the Routledge philosophy guidebook to Plato and the Republic, Nickolas Pappas describes the "problem of misogyny" and states:
In the Apology, Socrates calls those who plead for their lives in court "no better than women" (35b)... The Timaeus warns men that if they live immorally they will be reincarnated as women (42b-c; cf. 75d-e). The Republic
contains a number of comments in the same spirit (387e, 395d-e, 398e,
431b-c, 469d), evidence of nothing so much as of contempt toward women.
Even Socrates' words for his bold new proposal about marriage... suggest
that the women are to be "held in common" by men. He never says that
the men might be held in common by the women... We also have to
acknowledge Socrates' insistence that men surpass women at any task that
both sexes attempt (455c, 456a), and his remark in Book 8 that one sign
of democracy's moral failure is the sexual equality it promotes (563b).
Misogynist is also found in the Greek—misogunēs (μισογύνης)—in Deipnosophistae (above) and in Plutarch's Parallel Lives, where it is used as the title of Heracles in the history of Phocion. It was the title of a play by Menander, which we know of from book seven (concerning Alexandria) of Strabo's 17 volume Geography, and quotations of Menander by Clement of Alexandria and Stobaeus that relate to marriage. A Greek play with a similar name, Misogunos (Μισόγυνος) or Woman-hater, is reported by Marcus Tullius Cicero (in Latin) and attributed to the poet Marcus Atilius.
Cicero reports that Greek philosophers considered misogyny to be caused by gynophobia, a fear of women.
It is the same with other diseases; as the desire of glory, a passion for women, to which the Greeks give the name of philogyneia:
and thus all other diseases and sicknesses are generated. But those
feelings which are the contrary of these are supposed to have fear for
their foundation, as a hatred of women, such as is displayed in the Woman-hater
of Atilius; or the hatred of the whole human species, as Timon is
reported to have done, whom they call the Misanthrope. Of the same kind
is inhospitality. And all these diseases proceed from a certain dread of
such things as they hate and avoid.
In summary, Greek literature considered misogyny to be a disease—an anti-social
condition—in that it ran contrary to their perceptions of the value of
women as wives and of the family as the foundation of society. These
points are widely noted in the secondary literature.
Religion
Ancient Greek
In Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice, Jack Holland argues that there is evidence of misogyny in the mythology of the ancient world. In Greek mythology
according to Hesiod, the human race had already experienced a peaceful,
autonomous existence as a companion to the gods before the creation of
women. When Prometheus decides to steal the secret of fire from the gods, Zeus becomes infuriated and decides to punish humankind with an "evil thing for their delight". This "evil thing" is Pandora, the first woman, who carried a jar (usually described—incorrectly—as a box) which she was told to never open. Epimetheus
(the brother of Prometheus) is overwhelmed by her beauty, disregards
Prometheus' warnings about her, and marries her. Pandora cannot resist
peeking into the jar, and by opening it she unleashes into the world all
evil; labour, sickness, old age, and death.
Buddhism
In his book The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity, and Gender, professor Bernard Faure of Columbia University
argued generally that "Buddhism is paradoxically neither as sexist nor
as egalitarian as is usually thought." He remarked, "Many feminist
scholars have emphasized the misogynistic (or at least androcentric)
nature of Buddhism" and stated that Buddhism morally exalts its male
monks while the mothers and wives of the monks also have important
roles. Additionally, he wrote:
While some scholars see Buddhism as
part of a movement of emancipation, others see it as a source of
oppression. Perhaps this is only a distinction between optimists and
pessimists, if not between idealists and realists... As we begin to
realize, the term "Buddhism" does not designate a monolithic entity, but
covers a number of doctrines, ideologies, and practices--some of which
seem to invite, tolerate, and even cultivate "otherness" on their
margins.
Differences in tradition and interpretations of scripture have caused
sects of Christianity to differ in their beliefs with regard their
treatment of women.
In The Troublesome Helpmate, Katharine M. Rogers argues
that Christianity is misogynistic, and she lists what she says are
specific examples of misogyny in the Pauline epistles. She states:
The foundations of early Christian
misogyny — its guilt about sex, its insistence on female subjection, its
dread of female seduction — are all in St. Paul's epistles.
In K. K. Ruthven's Feminist Literary Studies: An Introduction,
Ruthven makes reference to Rogers' book and argues that the "legacy of
Christian misogyny was consolidated by the so-called 'Fathers' of the
Church, like Tertullian, who thought a woman was not only 'the gateway of the devil' but also 'a temple built over a sewer'."
However, some other scholars have argued that Christianity does
not include misogynistic principles, or at least that a proper
interpretation of Christianity would not include misogynistic
principles. David M. Scholer, a biblical scholar at Fuller Theological Seminary,
stated that the verse Galatians 3:28 ("There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for
you are all one in Christ Jesus") is "the fundamental Pauline
theological basis for the inclusion of women and men as equal and mutual
partners in all of the ministries of the church." In his book Equality in Christ? Galatians 3:28 and the Gender Dispute,
Richard Hove argues that—while Galatians 3:28 does mean that one's sex
does not affect salvation—"there remains a pattern in which the wife is
to emulate the church's submission to Christ (Eph 5:21-33) and the husband is to emulate Christ's love for the church."
In Christian Men Who Hate Women, clinical psychologist
Margaret J. Rinck has written that Christian social culture often allows
a misogynist "misuse of the biblical ideal of submission". However, she
argues that this a distortion of the "healthy relationship of mutual
submission" which is actually specified in Christian doctrine, where
"[l]ove is based on a deep, mutual respect as the guiding principle
behind all decisions, actions, and plans". Similarly, Catholic scholar Christopher West argues that "male domination violates God's plan and is the specific result of sin".
Islam
The fourth chapter (or sura) of the Quran is called "Women" (An-Nisa). The 34th verse is a key verse in feminist criticism of Islam.
The verse reads: "Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has
made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their
property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as
Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion,
admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat
them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely
Allah is High, Great."
In his book Popular Islam and Misogyny: A Case Study of Bangladesh, Taj Hashmi discusses misogyny in relation to Muslim culture (and to Bangladesh in particular), writing:
[T]hanks to the subjective
interpretations of the Quran (almost exclusively by men), the
preponderance of the misogynic mullahs and the regressive Shariah law in
most "Muslim" countries, Islam is synonymously known as a promoter of
misogyny in its worst form. Although there is no way of defending the
so-called "great" traditions of Islam as libertarian and egalitarian
with regard to women, we may draw a line between the Quranic texts and
the corpus of avowedly misogynic writing and spoken words by the mullah
having very little or no relevance to the Quran.
In his book No god but God, University of Southern California professor Reza Aslan
wrote that "misogynistic interpretation" has been persistently attached
to An-Nisa, 34 because commentary on the Quran "has been the exclusive
domain of Muslim men".
Sikhism
Guru Nanak in the center, amongst other Sikh figures
Scholars William M. Reynolds and Julie A. Webber have written that Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh
faith tradition, was a "fighter for women's rights" that was "in no way
misogynistic" in contrast to some of his contemporaries.
Scientology
In his book Scientology: A New Slant on Life, L. Ron Hubbard wrote the following passage:
A society in which women are taught
anything but the management of a family, the care of men, and the
creation of the future generation is a society which is on its way out.
In the same book, he also wrote:
The historian can peg the point
where a society begins its sharpest decline at the instant when women
begin to take part, on an equal footing with men, in political and
business affairs, since this means that the men are decadent and the
women are no longer women. This is not a sermon on the role or position
of women; it is a statement of bald and basic fact.
These passages, along with other ones of a similar nature from Hubbard, have been criticised by Alan Scherstuhl of The Village Voice as expressions of hatred towards women. However, Baylor University professor J. Gordon Melton
has written that Hubbard later disregarded and abrogated much of his
earlier views about women, which Melton views as merely echoes of common
prejudices at the time. Melton has also stated that the Church of Scientology welcomes both genders equally at all levels—from leadership positions to auditing and so on—since Scientologists view people as spiritual beings.
Misogynistic ideas among prominent western thinkers
Aristotle believed women were inferior and described them as "deformed males". In his work Politics, he states
as regards the sexes, the male is by nature superior and
the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject 4
(1254b13-14).
Another example is Cynthia's catalog where Cynthia states
"Aristotle says that the courage of a man lies in commanding, a woman's
lies in obeying; that 'matter yearns for form, as the female for the
male and the ugly for the beautiful'; that women have fewer teeth than
men; that a female is an incomplete male or 'as it were, a deformity'.
Aristotle believed that men and women naturally differed both
physically and mentally. He claimed that women are "more mischievous,
less simple, more impulsive ... more compassionate[,] ... more easily
moved to tears[,] ... more jealous, more querulous, more apt to scold
and to strike[,] ... more prone to despondency and less hopeful[,] ...
more void of shame or self-respect, more false of speech, more
deceptive, of more retentive memory [and] ... also more wakeful; more
shrinking [and] more difficult to rouse to action" than men.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is well known for his views against equal rights for women for example in his treatise Emile,
he writes: "Always justify the burdens you impose upon girls but impose
them anyway... . They must be thwarted from an early age... . They must
be exercised to constraint, so that it costs them nothing to stifle all
their fantasies to submit them to the will of others." Other quotes
consist of "closed up in their houses", "must receive the decisions of
fathers and husbands like that of the church".
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin wrote on the subject female inferiority through the lens of human evolution. He noted in his book The Descent of Men:
"young of both sexes resembled the adult female in most species" which
he extrapolated and further reasoned "males were more evolutionarily
advanced than females". Darwin believed all savages, children and women
had smaller brains and therefore led more by instinct and less by
reason.
Such ideas quickly spread to other scientists such as Professor Carl
Vogt of natural sciences at the University of Geneva who argued "the
child, the female, and the senile white" had the mental traits of a
"grown up Negro", that the female is similar in intellectual capacity
and personality traits to both infants and the "lower races" such as
blacks while drawing conclusion that women are closely related to lower
animals than men and "hence we should discover a greater apelike
resemblance if we were to take a female as our standard".
Darwin's beliefs about women were also reflective of his attitudes
towards women in general for example his views towards marriage as a
young man in which he was quoted ""how should I manage all my business
if obligated to go everyday walking with my wife – Ehau!" and that being
married was "worse than being a Negro".
Or in other instances his concern of his son marrying a woman named
Martineau about which he wrote "... he shall be not much better than her
"nigger." Imagine poor Erasmus a nigger to so philosophical and
energetic a lady ... Martineau had just returned from a whirlwind tour
of America, and was full of married women's property rights ... Perfect
equality of rights is part of her doctrine...We must pray for our poor
"nigger.""
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer has been noted as a misogynist by many such as the philosopher, critic, and author Tom Grimwood. In a 2008 article Grimwood wrote published in the philosophical journal of Kritique,
Grimwood argues that Schopenhauer's misogynistic works have largely
escaped attention despite being more noticeable than those of other
philosophers such as Nietzsche.
For example, he noted Schopenhauer's works where the latter had argued
women only have "meagre" reason comparable that of "the animal" "who
lives in the present". Other works he noted consisted of Schopenhauer's
argument that women's only role in nature is to further the species
through childbirth and hence is equipped with the power to seduce and
"capture" men.
He goes on to state that women's cheerfulness is chaotic and disruptive
which is why it is crucial to exercise obedience to those with
rationality. For her to function beyond her rational subjugator is a
threat against men as well as other women, he notes. Schopenhauer also
thought women's cheerfulness is an expression of her lack of morality
and incapability to understand abstract or objective meaning such as
art.
This is followed up by his quote "have never been able to produce a
single, really great, genuine and original achievement in the fine arts,
or bring to anywhere into the world a work of permanent value".
Arthur Schopenhauer also blamed women for the fall of King Louis XIII
and triggering the French Revolution, in which he was later quoted as
saying:
"At all events, a false position of the female sex, such as has
its most acute symptom in our lady-business, is a fundamental defect of
the state of society. Proceeding from the heart of this, it is bound to
spread its noxious influence to all parts."
Schopenhauer has also been accused of misogyny for his essay "On
Women" (Über die Weiber), in which he expressed his opposition to what
he called "Teutonico-Christian stupidity" on female affairs. He argued
that women are "by nature meant to obey" as they are "childish,
frivolous, and short sighted". He claimed that no woman had ever produced great art or "any work of permanent value". He also argued that women did not possess any real beauty:
It is only a man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulse that could give the name of the fair sex
to that under-sized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged
race; for the whole beauty of the sex is bound up with this impulse.
Instead of calling them beautiful there would be more warrant for
describing women as the unaesthetic sex.
Nietzsche
In Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche stated that stricter controls on women was a condition of "every elevation of culture". In his Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he has a female character say "You are going to women? Do not forget the whip!" In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche writes "Women are considered profound. Why? Because we never fathom their depths. But women aren't even shallow."
There is controversy over the questions of whether or not this amounts
to misogyny, whether his polemic against women is meant to be taken
literally, and the exact nature of his opinions of women.
Women are capable of education, but
they are not made for activities which demand a universal faculty such
as the more advanced sciences, philosophy and certain forms of artistic
production... Women regulate their actions not by the demands of
universality, but by arbitrary inclinations and opinions.
Academics who study misogyny
Kate Manne
Kate Manne is an analytic philosopher, assistant professor of philosophy at Cornell University, and author of Down Girl, the Logic of Misogyny.
In her book, she argues that the tendency to treat misogyny as an
individual character flaw is a "naive conception". She writes that
misogyny is a cultural phenomenon that enforces gender norms and the
policing of women's behavior. Moira Weigel writes of Manne's book:
Manne
goes on to elaborate the gender norms that misogyny enforces. We exist
in a gendered economy in which women are assumed to owe men. The
rules are: first, we must give men moral goods – such as sex, care and
unpaid housework. Second, we must not ask men for the kinds of goods we
give. Finally, women are not supposed to take masculine coded
perks and privileges. (The presidency, for instance.)
Manne proposes that sexism and misogyny are distinct. Sexism is an
ideology, a set of beliefs, holding that it is natural, and therefore
desirable, for men and women to perform these taking and giving roles.
Misogyny functions like a "police force", punishing women who deviate
from them. Generally, this police force also rewards obedience –
elevating women who advance patriarchal interests. But because it
defines women in terms of a giving function, misogyny also tends to
treat women as interchangeable. In order to take revenge on female
classmates he felt had spurned him, Rodger set out to kill strangers –
most of them sexually active males.
In
other words, misogyny is not an individual character flaw. It is the
way in which cultures keep women in subservient stations and positions
within any given society.
Online misogyny
Misogynistic rhetoric is prevalent online and has grown rhetorically
more aggressive. The public debate over gender-based attacks has
increased significantly, leading to calls for policy interventions and
better responses by social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
A 2016 study conducted by the think tank Demos concluded that 50% of all misogynistic tweets on Twitter come from women themselves.
Most targets are women who are visible in the public sphere,
women who speak out about the threats they receive, and women who are
perceived to be associated with feminism
or feminist gains. Authors of misogynistic messages are usually
anonymous or otherwise difficult to identify. Their rhetoric involves
misogynistic epithets and graphic and sexualized imagery, centers on the
women's physical appearance, and prescribes sexual violence as a
corrective for the targeted women. Examples of famous women who spoke
out about misogynistic attacks are Anita Sarkeesian, Laurie Penny, Caroline Criado Perez, Stella Creasy, and Lindy West.
The insults and threats directed at different women tend to be very similar. Sady Doyle
who has been the target of online threats noted the "overwhelmingly
impersonal, repetitive, stereotyped quality" of the abuse, the fact that
"all of us are being called the same things, in the same tone".
Evolutionary theory
A 2015 study published in the journal PLOS ONE by researchers Michael M. Kasomovic and Jefferey S. Kuznekoff found that male status mediates sexist behavior towards women. The study found that women tend to experience hostile and sexist behavior in a male dominated field by lower status men.
According to the theory proposed by the authors, since male dominated
groups tend to be organized in hierarchies, the entry of women
re-arranges the hierarchy in their favor by attracting the attention of
higher status men.
This, the theory goes, enables women automatic higher status over lower
rank men, which is responded to by lower status men using sexist
hostility in order to control for status loss. This study was one of the
first notable pieces of evidence of inter-gender competition and has possible evolutionary implications for the origin of sexism.
Psychological impact
Internalized misogyny
Internalized sexism is when an individual enacts sexist actions and attitudes towards themselves and people of their own sex. On a larger scale, internalized sexism falls under the broad topic of internalized oppression,
which "consists of oppressive practices that continue to make the
rounds even when members of the oppressor group are not present".
Women who experience internalized misogyny may express it through
minimizing the value of women, mistrusting women, and believing gender
bias in favor of men.
Women, after hearing men demean the value and skills of women
repeatedly, eventually internalize their beliefs and apply the
misogynistic beliefs to themselves and other women. A common manifestation of internalized misogyny is lateral violence.
As a hate crime
The Nottinghamshire Police in 2016 was "the first force in the
country to recognize misogyny as a hate crime", applying to "incidents
ranging from street harassment to physical intrusions on women's space."
"In the first year, 97 incidents were recorded. This milestone
achievement arose from work by Nottingham Women's Centre and Nottingham
Citizens. Thanks to [Nottinghamshire's] police force listening to local
women's organisations, women and girls in Nottingham will receive the
message that this kind of behaviour isn't normal or acceptable, that
support is available, and that the problem will be taken seriously."
—Laura Bates, The Everyday Sexism Project.
On 7 March 2018 a debate that had the title "misogyny as a hate
crime" was held in Westminster Hall and at the end of the debate hansard
states that: "Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered misogyny as a hate crime."
A research briefing paper was placed in the House of Commons
library on 6 March 2018 and two parts of it, "police recording
practices" and "recent calls for change", are quoted in the following
paragraphs:
"Police recording practices: For example, in 2016
Nottinghamshire Police began recording misogynistic hate crime. The
change, which was initially a two month experiment in July and August
2016, is still in place at Nottinghamshire Police, with the success of
the trial drawing national interest from other police forces. Giving
evidence to the Home Affairs Committee in February 2017, Assistant Chief
Constable Mark Hamilton, National Policing Lead for Hate Crime, said
that five police forces tracked misogyny-based hate crime, but that no
national consensus had yet been reached. In December 2017, ACC Mark
Hamilton gave evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee in which he
provided a further update. He said that the police are still looking
nationally at the idea of recording misogyny as a hate crime, but that
if the police move forward with this they will be looking for it to be
supported by legislative action on enhanced sentencing."
"Recent calls for change: At a meeting in March 2017, the APPG,
all-party parliamentary group, on Domestic Violence looked at misogyny
as a hate crime, with a particular focus on police recording practices.
There was a 'clear consensus' from those present that the
Nottinghamshire Police policy had been 'an important step forward for
tackling street harassment and abuse, and challenging wider sexism and
objectification of women in society'. However, the meeting acknowledged
that there were barriers to adopting the policy within police forces,
'including rising demand and decreasing resources, the increasing
complexity of tackling modern crime, and reputational and public
relations issues'. There was also some concern that if the policy were
to be adopted nationally, it might need to be framed as "gender based
hate crime" rather than misogyny because of 'a view that men should be
treated equally under the law'. The APPG considered that this might be
problematic, as it would 'fail to address misogyny as a structural
problem, and could lead to widespread reporting of misandry, when in
reality it is very rare indeed for men to be victims of hate crime
because of their gender specifically'."
"In January 2017 the Fawcett Society launched a Sex
Discrimination Law Review, which involved an expert panel reviewing a
number of sex discrimination issues including hate crime. The Panel
published its final report in January 2018, which included the following
recommendations on hate crime:
Hate crime should be 'misogyny' hate crime, not gender
hate crime, recognising 'the direction of the power imbalance within
society'. The Fawcett Society said that this would be 'consistent with
the one-directional nature of transgender or disability hate crime'.
All police forces should be required to recognise misogyny as a hate crime for recording purposes.
Legislation should be introduced to establish misogyny as a hate crime for enhanced sentencing purposes."
Criticism of the concept
Camille Paglia,
a self-described "dissident feminist" who has often been at odds with
other academic feminists, argues that there are serious flaws in the Marxism-inspired interpretation of misogyny that is prevalent in second-wave feminism. In contrast, Paglia argues that a close reading of historical texts reveals that men do not hate women but fear them. Christian Groes-Green has argued that misogyny must be seen in relation to its opposite which he terms philogyny. Criticizing R.W. Connell's theory of hegemonic masculinities he shows how philogynous masculinities play out among youth in Maputo, Mozambique.
Social alienation is "a condition in social relationships reflected by a low degree of integration or common values and a high degree of distance or isolation between individuals, or between an individual and a group of people in a community or work environment". It is a sociological concept developed by several classical and contemporary theorists.
The concept has many discipline-specific uses, and can refer both to a
personal psychological state (subjectively) and to a type of social
relationship (objectively).
History
The term alienation has been used over the ages with varied and sometimes contradictory meanings. In ancient history it could mean a metaphysical sense of achieving a higher state of contemplation, ecstasy
or union—becoming alienated from a limited existence in the world, in a
positive sense. Examples of this usage have been traced to neoplatonic philosophers such as Plotinus (in the Greek alloiosis).
There have also long been religious concepts of being separated or cut
off from God and the faithful, alienated in a negative sense. The New Testament mentions the term apallotrioomai in Greek—"being alienated from". Ideas of estrangement from a Golden Age, or due to a fall of man, or approximate equivalents in differing cultures or religions,
have also been described as concepts of alienation. A double positive
and negative sense of alienation is broadly shown in the spiritual
beliefs referred to as Gnosticism.
Alienation has also had a particular legal-political meaning since at least Ancient Roman times, where to alienate property (alienato) is to transfer ownership of it to someone else. The term alienation itself comes from the Latinalienus which meant 'of another place or person', which in turn came from alius,
meaning "other" or "another". An alienus in ancient Roman times could
refer to someone else's slave. Another usage of the term in Ancient
Greco-Roman times was by physicians referring to disturbed, difficult or abnormal states of mind, generally attributed to imbalanced physiology. In Latin alienatio mentis (mental alienation), this usage has been dated to Asclepiades.
Once translations of such works had resurfaced in the West in the 17th
century, physicians again began using the term, which is typically
attributed to Felix Platter.
In the 17th century, Hugo Grotius put forward the concept that everyone has 'sovereign authority' over themselves but that they could alienate that natural right to the common good, an early social contract theory. In the 18th century, Hutcheson introduced a distinction between alienable and unalienable rights in the legal sense of the term. Rousseau
published influential works on the same theme, and is also seen as
having popularized a more psychological-social concept relating to
alienation from a state of nature due to the expansion of civil society or the nation state.
In the same century a law of alienation of affection was introduced for men to seek compensation from other men accused of taking away 'their' woman.
In the history of literature, the German Romantics appear to be the first group of writers and poets in whose work the concept of alienation is regularly found. Around the start of the 19th century, Hegel popularized a Christian (Lutheran) and Idealist philosophy of alienation.
He used German terms in partially different senses, referring to a
psychological state and an objective process, and in general posited
that the self was an historical and social creation, which becomes alienated from itself via a perceived objective
world, but can become de-alienated again when that world is seen as
just another aspect of the self-consciousness, which may be achieved by
self-sacrifice to the common good.
Around the same time, Pinel
was popularizing a new understanding of mental alienation, particularly
through his 'medical-philosophical treatise'. He argued that people
could be disturbed (alienated) by emotional states and social
conditions, without necessarily having lost (become alienated from)
their reason, as had generally been assumed. Hegel praised Pinel for his
'moral treatment' approach, and developed related theories.
Nevertheless, as Foucault would later write, '...in an obscure, shared
origin, the 'alienation' of physicians and the 'alienation' of
philosophers started to take shape — two configurations in which man in
any case corrupts his truth, but between which, after Hegel, the
nineteenth century stopped seeing any trace of resemblance.'
Two camps formed following Hegel, the 'young' or 'left' Hegelians who developed his philosophy to support innovations in politics or religion, and the 'old' or 'right' Hegelians
who took his philosophy in a politically and religiously conservative
direction. The former camp has had a more lasting influence and, among
them, Feuerbach
differed from Hegel in arguing that worship of God is itself a form of
alienation, because it projects human qualities on to an external idea,
rather than realising them as part of the self.
Marx
Marx was initially in the Young Hegelian camp and, like Feuerbach, rejected the spiritual basis, and adapted Hegel's dialectic model to a theory of (historical) materialism. Marx's theory of alienation is articulated most clearly in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and The German Ideology (1846). The 'young' Marx
wrote more often and directly of alienation than the 'mature' Marx,
which some regard as an ideological break while others maintain that the
concept remained central. There is generally held to be a transition
from a philosophical-anthropological (Marxist humanism) concept (e.g. internal alienation from the self) to a structural-historical
interpretation (e.g. external alienation by appropriation of labor),
accompanied by a change in terminology from alienation to exploitation to commodity fetishism and reification. Marx's concepts of alienation have been classed into four types by Kostas Axelos: economic and social alienation, political alienation, human alienation, and ideological alienation.
In the concept's most prominent use, it refers to the economic and social alienation
aspect in which workers are disconnected from what they produce and why
they produce. Marx believed that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism.
Essentially, there is an "exploitation of men by men" where the
division of labor creates an economic hierarchy (Axelos, 1976: 58). His
theory of alienation was based upon his observation that in emerging industrial
production under capitalism, workers inevitably lose control of their
lives and selves by not having any control of their work. Workers never
become autonomous, self-realized human beings in any significant sense,
except in the way the bourgeoisie wants the worker to be realized. His
theory relies on Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity (1841), which argues that the idea of God has alienated the characteristics of the human being. Stirner would take the analysis further in The Ego and Its Own (1844), declaring that even 'humanity' is an alienating ideal for the individual, to which Marx and Engels responded in The German Ideology (1845). Alienation in capitalist societies occurs because in work
each contributes to the common wealth but they can only express this
fundamentally social aspect of individuality through a production system
that is not publicly social but privately owned, for which each
individual functions as an instrument, not as a social being. Kostas
Axelos summarizes that for Marx, in capitalism "work renders man an
alien to himself and to his own products." "The malaise of this
alienation from the self means that the worker does not affirm himself
but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy....The worker only
feels himself outside his work, and in his work he feels outside
himself....Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact as soon as no
physical or other compulsion exists, it is avoided like the plague.".
Marx also wrote, in a curtailed manner, that capitalist owners also
experience alienation, through benefiting from the economic machine by
endlessly competing, exploiting others and maintaining mass alienation
in society.
The idea of Political Alienation refers to the idea that
"politics is the form that organizes the productive forces of the
economy" in a way that is alienating because it "distorts the logic of
economic development".
In Human Alienation, individuals become estranged to
themselves in the quest to stay alive, where "they lose their true
existence in the struggle for subsistence" (Axelos, 1976: 111). Marx
focuses on two aspects of human nature which he calls "historical
conditions." The first aspect refers to the necessity of food, clothes,
shelter, and more. Secondly, Marx believes that after satisfying these
basic needs people have the tendency to develop more "needs" or desires
that they will work towards satisfying, hence, humans become stuck in a
cycle of never ending wants which makes them strangers to each other.
When referring to ideological alienation, Axelos proposes
that Marx believes that all religions divert people away from "their
true happiness" and instead turn them towards "illusory happiness".
There is a commonly noted problem of translation in grappling
with ideas of alienation derived from German-language philosophical
texts: the word alienation, and similar words such as estrangement, are often used interchangeably to translate two distinct German words, Entfremdung and Entäußerung.
The former means specifically interpersonal estrangement, while the
latter can have a broader and more active meaning that might refer also
to externalization, relinquishment, or sale (alienation) of property. In
general, and contrary to his predecessors, Marx may have used the terms
interchangeably, though he also wrote "Entfremdung...constitutes the real interest of this Entäußerung."
Late 1800s to 1900s
Many
sociologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were concerned
about alienating effects of modernization. German sociologists Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies wrote critical works on individualization and urbanization. Simmel's The Philosophy of Money describes how relationships become more and more mediated by money. Tönnies' Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (Community and Society) is about the loss of primary relationships such as familial bonds in favour of goal-oriented, secondary relationships.
This idea of alienation can be observed in some other contexts,
although the term may not be as frequently used. In the context of an
individual's relationships within society, alienation can mean the
unresponsiveness of society as a whole to the individuality of each
member of the society. When collective decisions are made, it is usually
impossible for the unique needs of each person to be taken into
account.
The American sociologist C. Wright Mills conducted a major study of alienation in modern society with White Collar
in 1951, describing how modern consumption-capitalism has shaped a
society where you have to sell your personality in addition to your
work. Melvin Seeman was part of a surge in alienation research during
the mid-20th century when he published his paper, "On the Meaning of
Alienation", in 1959 (Senekal, 2010b: 7–8). Seeman used the insights of
Marx, Emile Durkheim and others to construct what is often considered a
model to recognize the five prominent features of alienation:
powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation and
self-estrangement (Seeman, 1959).
Seeman later added a sixth element (cultural estrangement), although
this element does not feature prominently in later discussions of his
work.
In a broader philosophical context, especially in existentialism and phenomenology, alienation describes the inadequacy of the human being (or the mind) in relation to the world. The human mind (as the subject
who perceives) sees the world as an object of perception, and is
distanced from the world, rather than living within it. This line of
thought is generally traced to the works of Søren Kierkegaard in the 19th century, who, from a Christian viewpoint, saw alienation as separation from God, and also examined the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices. Many 20th-century philosophers (both theistic and atheistic) and theologians were influenced by Kierkegaard's notions of angst, despair and the importance of the individual. Martin Heidegger's
concepts of anxiety (angst) and mortality drew from Kierkegaard; he is
indebted to the way Kierkegaard lays out the importance of our
subjective relation to truth, our existence in the face of death, the
temporality of existence and the importance of passionately affirming
one's being-in-the-world. Jean-Paul Sartre
described the "thing-in-itself" which is infinite and overflowing, and
claimed that any attempt to describe or understand the thing-in-itself
is "reflective consciousness". Since there is no way for the reflective
consciousness to subsume the pre-reflective, Sartre argued that all
reflection is fated to a form of anxiety (i.e. the human condition).
As well, Sartre argued that when a person tries to gain knowledge of
the "Other" (meaning beings or objects that are not the self), their self-consciousness has a "masochistic desire" to be limited. This is expressed metaphorically in the line from the play No Exit, "Hell is other people".
In the theory of psychoanalysis developed around the start of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud
did not explicitly address the concept of alienation, but other
analysts subsequently have. It is a theory of divisions and conflicts
between the conscious and unconscious mind, between different parts of a hypothetical psychic apparatus, and between the self and civilization. It postulates defense mechanisms, including splitting, in both normal and disturbed functioning. The concept of repression has been described as having functionally equivalent effects as the idea of false consciousness associated with Marxist theory.
Figures associated with critical theory, in particular with the Frankfurt School, such as Theodor Adorno and Erich Fromm, also developed theories of alienation, drawing on neo-Marxist ideas as well as other influences including neo-Freudian and sociological theories. One approach applies Marxist theories of commodification to the cultural, educational and party-political
spheres. Links are drawn between socioeconomic structures,
psychological states of alienation, and personal human relationships. In the 1960s the revolutionary group Situationist International came to some prominence, staging 'situations' intended to highlight an alternative way of life to advanced capitalism, the latter conceptualized as a diffuse 'spectacle', a fake reality masking a degradation of human life. The Theory of Communicative Action associated with Jürgen Habermas emphasizes the essential role of language in public life, suggesting that alienation stems from the distortion of reasoned moral debate by the strategic dominance of market forces and state power.
This critical program can be contrasted with traditions that
attempt to extract problems of alienation from the broader socioeconomic
context, or which at least accept the broader context on its own terms,
and which often attribute problems to individual abnormality or
failures to adjust.
After the boom in alienation research that characterized the
1950s and 1960s, interest in alienation research subsided (Geyer, 1996:
xii), although in sociology it was maintained by the Research Committee
on Alienation of the International Sociological Association (ISA). In the 1990s, there was again an upsurge of interest in alienation prompted by the fall of the Soviet Union, globalization, the information explosion, increasing awareness of ethnic conflicts, and post-modernism
(see Geyer, 1996). Geyer believes the growing complexity of the
contemporary world and post-modernism prompted a reinterpretation of
alienation that suits the contemporary living environment. In late 20th
and early 21st century sociology, it has been particularly the works of
Felix Geyer, Lauren Langman and Devorah Kalekin-Fishman that address the
issue of alienation in the contemporary western world.
Powerlessness
Alienation in the sense of a lack of power
has been technically defined by Seeman as "the expectancy or
probability held by the individual that his own behaviour cannot
determine the occurrence of the outcomes, or reinforcements, he seeks."
Seeman argues that this is "the notion of alienation as it originated in
the Marxian view of the worker's condition in capitalist society: the
worker is alienated to the extent that the prerogative and means of decision are expropriated by the ruling entrepreneurs".
Put more succinctly, Kalekin-Fishman (1996: 97) says, "A person
suffers from alienation in the form of 'powerlessness' when she is
conscious of the gap between what she would like to do and what she
feels capable of doing".
In discussing powerlessness, Seeman also incorporated the insights of the psychologist Julian Rotter. Rotter distinguishes between internal control and external locus of control,
which means "differences (among persons or situations) in the degree to
which success or failure is attributable to external factors (e.g.
luck, chance, or powerful others), as against success or failure that is
seen as the outcome of one's personal skills or characteristics". Powerlessness, therefore, is the perception that the individual does not have the means to achieve his goals.
More recently, Geyer
remarks that "a new type of powerlessness has emerged, where the core
problem is no longer being unfree but rather being unable to select from
among an overchoice of alternatives for action, whose consequences one often cannot even fathom". Geyer adapts cybernetics to alienation theory, and writes (1996: xxiv) that powerlessness is the result of delayed feedback:
"The more complex one's environment, the later one is confronted with
the latent, and often unintended, consequences of one's actions.
Consequently, in view of this causality-obscuring time lag, both the
'rewards' and 'punishments' for one's actions increasingly tend to be
viewed as random, often with apathy and alienation as a result".
Meaninglessness
A sense of meaning has been defined by Seeman as "the individual's sense of understanding events in which he is engaged".
Seeman (1959: 786) writes that meaninglessness "is characterized by a
low expectancy that satisfactory predictions about the future outcomes
of behaviour can be made." Whereas powerlessness refers to the sensed
ability to control outcomes, this refers to the sensed ability to
predict outcomes. In this respect, meaninglessness is closely tied to powerlessness;
Seeman (Ibid.) argues, "the view that one lives in an intelligible
world might be a prerequisite to expectancies for control; and the
unintelligibility of complex affairs is presumably conducive to the
development of high expectancies for external control (that is, high
powerlessness)".
Geyer (1996: xxiii) believes meaninglessness should be
reinterpreted for postmodern times: "With the accelerating throughput of
information [...] meaningless is not a matter anymore of whether one
can assign meaning to incoming information, but of whether one can
develop adequate new scanning mechanisms to gather the goal-relevant
information one needs, as well as more efficient selection procedures to
prevent being overburdened by the information one does not need, but is
bombarded with on a regular basis." "Information overload"
or the so-called "data tsunami" are well-known information problems
confronting contemporary man, and Geyer thus argues that meaninglessness
is turned on its head.
Normlessness
Normlessness (or what Durkheim referred to as anomie)
"denotes the situation in which the social norms regulating individual
conduct have broken down or are no longer effective as rules for
behaviour".
This aspect refers to the inability to identify with the dominant
values of society or rather, with what are perceived to be the dominant
values of society. Seeman (1959: 788) adds that this aspect can manifest
in a particularly negative manner, "The anomic situation [...] may be
defined as one in which there is a high expectancy that socially
unapproved behaviours are required to achieve given goals". This
negative manifestation is dealt with in detail by Catherine Ross and
John Mirowski in a series of publications on mistrust, powerlessness,
normlessness and crime.
Neal & Collas (2000: 122) write, "Normlessness derives partly
from conditions of complexity and conflict in which individuals become
unclear about the composition and enforcement of social norms. Sudden
and abrupt changes occur in life conditions, and the norms that usually
operate may no longer seem adequate as guidelines for conduct". This is
a particular issue after the fall of the Soviet Union, mass migrations
from developing to developed countries, and the general sense of
disillusionment that characterized the 1990s (Senekal, 2011).
Traditional values that had already been questioned (especially during
the 1960s) were met with further scepticism in the 1990s, resulting in a
situation where individuals rely more often on their own judgement than
on institutions of authority: "The individual not only has become more
independent of the churches, but from other social institutions as well.
The individual can make more personal choices in far more life
situations than before" (Halman, 1998: 100). These choices are not
necessarily "negative": Halman's study found that Europeans remain
relatively conservative morally, even though the authority of the Church
and other institutions has eroded.
Relationships
One concept used in regard to specific relationships is that of parental alienation, where a child is distanced from and expresses a general dislike for one of their parents (who may have divorced or separated). The term is not applied where there is child abuse. The parental alienation might be due to specific influences from either parent or could result from the social dynamics of the family as a whole. It can also be understood in terms of attachment, the social and emotional process of bonding between child and caregiver. Adoptees can feel alienated from both adoptive parents and birth parents.
Familial estrangement between parents and adult children "is
attributed to a number of biological, psychological, social, and
structural factors affecting the family, including attachment disorders,
incompatible values and beliefs, unfulfilled expectations, critical
life events and transitions, parental alienation, and ineffective
communication patterns." The degree of alienation has been positively
correlated with decreased emotional functioning in the parent who feels a
loss of identity and stigma.
Attachment relationships in adults can also involve feelings of alienation.
Indeed, emotional alienation is said to be a common way of life for
many, whether it is experienced as overwhelming, or is not admitted to
in the midst of a socioeconomic race, or contributes to seemingly unrelated problems.
Social isolation
Social isolation refers to "The feeling of being segregated from one's community".
Neal and Collas (2000: 114) emphasize the centrality of social
isolation in the modern world: "While social isolation is typically
experienced as a form of personal stress, its sources are deeply
embedded in the social organization of the modern world. With increased
isolation and atomization, much of our daily interactions are with
those who are strangers to us and with whom we lack any ongoing social
relationships."
Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, migrants from Eastern Europe
and the developing countries have flocked to developed countries in
search of a better living standard. This has led to entire communities
becoming uprooted: no longer fully part of their homelands, but neither
integrated into their adopted communities. Diaspora literature depicts the plights of these migrants, such as Hafid Bouazza
in Paravion. Senekal (2010b: 41) argues, "Low-income communities or
religious minorities may feel separated from mainstream society, leading
to backlashes such as the civil unrest that occurred in French cities
in October 2005. The fact that the riots subsequently spread to
Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, and
Switzerland, illustrates that not only did these communities feel
segregated from mainstream society, but also that they found a community
in their isolation; they regarded themselves as kindred spirits".
Among returning war veterans
Because of intense group solidarity and unique daily hardships
brought by combat, many veterans feel alienated from citizens, family,
and friends when they return. They often feel they have little in common
with civilian peers; issues that concern friends and family seem
trivial after combat.
There is a clarity of focus and purpose that comes with war that few in
civilian life will ever know. Afghanistan veteran Brendon O'Byrne says,
"We were really close. Physically and emotionally close. It's kind of
terrifying being in such an emotionally safe environment and then
suddenly be expelled into an alienated, fractured society."
The challenges of re-entering a civilian life where few people have
experienced combat may contribute to the sense of loneliness.
As filmmaker and war correspondent Sebastian Junger says, "They didn't
want to go back because it was traumatic, but because it was a place
where they understood what they were supposed to do. They understood who
they were. They had a sense of purpose. They were necessary. All these
things that young people strive for are answered in combat." Veterans often see their wartime experience as the most selfless and meaningful period of their lives.
Some veterans have expressed the sentiment that "even in the quiet
moments, war is brighter, louder, brasher, more fun, more tragic, more
wasteful. More. More of everything."
The experience of the Vietnam veteran was distinctly different from that of veterans of other American wars.
Once he completed his tour of duty, he usually severed all bonds with
his unit and comrades. It was extremely rare for a veteran to write to
his buddies who were still in combat, and (in strong contrast to the
endless reunions of World War II veterans) for more than a decade it was
even rarer for more than two or more of them to get together after the
war.
Korean War veterans had no memorial and precious few parades, but they
fought an invading army and they left behind them the free, healthy,
thriving, and grateful nation of South Korea. No one spat on them or
called them murderers or baby killers when they returned. Only the
veterans of Vietnam have endured a concerted, organized, psychological
attack by its own people. Never in American history, perhaps never in
all of Western civilization, has an army suffered such an agony from its
own people.
The Vietnam War was a long, contentious conflict (1955–75) which in the
mid to late 1960s started to lose political and domestic support, most
notably in academia and film that often portrayed soldiers of this
conflict as ignoble adding to their social alienation. That the Vietnam
War was ultimately lost on April 30, 1975, furthered the sense of
meaninglessness and malaise.
It has been demonstrated that as the perception of community alienation
increases, an individual's sense of confidence or mastery in decision
making will decrease, and so too their motivation to socially engage.
Political alienation
One manifestation of the above dimensions of alienation can be a feeling of estrangement from, and a lack of engagement in, the political system. Such political alienation could result from not identifying with any particular political party or message, and could result in revolution, reforming behavior, or abstention from the political process, possibly due to voter apathy.
A similar concept is policy alienation, where workers experience a state of psychological disconnection from a policy programme being implemented.
Self-estrangement
Self-estrangement
is an elusive concept in sociology, as recognized by Seeman (1959),
although he included it as an aspect in his model of alienation. Some,
with Marx, consider self-estrangement
to be the end result and thus the heart of social alienation.
Self-estrangement can be defined as "the psychological state of denying
one's own interests – of seeking out extrinsically satisfying, rather than intrinsically satisfying, activities...".
It could be characterized as a feeling of having become a stranger to
oneself, or to some parts of oneself, or alternatively as a problem of self-knowledge, or authenticity.
Seeman (1959) recognized the problems inherent in defining the
"self", while post-modernism in particular has questioned the very
possibility of pin-pointing what precisely "self" constitutes. Gergen
(1996: 125) argues that: "the traditional view of self versus society is
deeply problematic and should be replaced by a conception of the self
as always already immersed in relatedness. On this account, the
individual's lament of 'not belonging' is partially a by-product of
traditional discourses
themselves". If the self is relationally constituted, does it make
sense to speak of "self-estrangement" rather than "social isolation"?
Costas and Fleming (2009: 354) suggest that although the concept of
self-estrangement "has not weathered postmodern criticisms of essentialism and economic determinism well", the concept still has value if a Lacanian reading of the self is adopted. This can be seen as part of a wider debate on the concept of self between humanism and antihumanism, structuralism and post-structuralism, or nature and nurture.
Mental disturbance
Until
early in the 20th century, psychological problems were referred to in
psychiatry as states of mental alienation, implying that a person had
become separated from themselves, their reason or the world. From the
1960s alienation was again considered in regard to clinical states of
disturbance, typically using a broad concept of a 'schizoid'
('splitting') process taken from psychoanalytic
theory. The splitting was said to occur within regular child
development and in everyday life, as well as in more extreme or
dysfunctional form in conditions such as schizoid personality and schizophrenia.
Varied concepts of alienation and self-estrangement were used to link
internal schizoid states with observable symptoms and with external
socioeconomic divisions, without necessarily explaining or evidencing
underlying causation. R. D. Laing was particularly influential in arguing that dysfunctional families and socioeconomic oppression caused states of alienation and ontological insecurity
in people, which could be considered adaptations but which were
diagnosed as disorders by mainstream psychiatry and
society.(Laing,[1967] 1959).
The specific theories associated with Laing and others at that time are
not widely accepted, but work from other theoretical perspectives
sometimes addresses the same theme.
In a related vein, for Ian Parker, psychology normalizes
conditions of social alienation. While it could help groups of
individuals emancipate themselves, it serves the role of reproducing
existing conditions.(Parker, 2007). This view can be seen as part of a
broader tradition sometimes referred to as critical psychology or liberation psychology,
which emphasizes that an individual is enmeshed within a
social-political framework, and so therefore are psychological problems.
Similarly, some psychoanalysts suggest that while psychoanalysis
emphasizes environmental causes and reactions, it also attributes the
problems of individuals to internal conflicts stemming from early
psychosocial development, effectively divorcing them from the wider
ongoing context. Slavoj Zizek (drawing on Herbert Marcuse, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan's
psychoanalysis) argues that in today's capitalist society, the
individual is estranged from their self through the repressive
injunction to "enjoy!" Such an injunction does not allow room for the
recognition of alienation and, indeed, could itself be seen as an
expression of alienation.(Zizek, 1994).
Frantz Fanon, an early writer on postcolonialism, studied the conditions of objectification and violent oppression (lack of autonomy) believed to have led to mental disorders among the colonized in the Third World (in particular Africans) (Fanon, ([2004] 1961).
A process of 'malignant
alienation' has been observed in regard to some psychiatric patients,
especially in forensic units and for individuals labeled 'difficult' or
who aren't liked by at least some staff, which involves a breakdown of
the therapeutic relationship between staff and patients, and which may
end in the suicide of the patient.
Individuals with long-term mental disorders, which may have originally
stemmed from social alienation, can experience particular social and
existential alienation within their communities due to other people's
and potentially their own negative attitudes towards themselves and
'odd' behavior.
Disability
Differences between persons with disabilities
and individuals in relative abilities, or perceived abilities, can be a
cause of alienation. One study, "Social Alienation and Peer
Identification: A Study of the Social Construction of Deafness", found that among deaf adults one theme emerged consistently across all categories of life experience: social rejection
by, and alienation from, the larger hearing community. Only when the
respondents described interactions with deaf people did the theme of
isolation give way to comments about participation and meaningful
interaction. This appeared to be related to specific needs, for example
for real conversation, for information, the opportunity to develop close
friendships and a sense of family. It was suggested that the social
meaning of deafness is established by interaction between deaf and
hearing people, sometimes resulting in marginalization
of the deaf, which is sometimes challenged. It has also led to the
creation of alternatives and the deaf community is described as one such
alternative.
Physicians and nurses often deal with people who are temporarily
or permanently alienated from communities, which could be a result or a
cause of medical conditions and suffering, and it has been suggested
that therefore attention should be paid to learning from experiences of
the special pain that alienation can bring.
Sociologist Harry Dahms has analysed The Matrix Trilogy of films in the context of theories of alienation in modern society. He suggests that the central theme of The Matrix
is the "all-pervasive yet increasingly invisible prevalence of
alienation in the world today, and difficulties that accompany attempts
to overcome it".
See also Langman's study of punk, porn, and resistance (2008) and Senekal's (2011) study of Afrikaansextreme metal.
