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“In conformity with its peculiar nature, psycho-analysis does not try to describe what a woman is - that would be a task it could scarcely perform - but sets about enquiring how she comes into being.”
~ Freud, Lecture 33: Femininity
“One is not born a woman, but becomes one.”
~ De Beauvoir, Second Sex
“Get thee to a nunnery, go. Farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell. … I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp, you nick-name God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on it; it hath made me mad.”
~ Shakespeare: Hamlet to Ophelia
In the current moment - amid the long-deferred, now crucial and painful reckoning with our collective and individual racism, amid our nuanced, shifting recognition of the complexity within gender identity and sexuality - the persistent and insidious nature of misogyny appears to take a back seat. Misogyny, both the experience and the impact, can easily get lost; after all, women, especially heterosexual, white women, seem to enjoy ostensible and broad privileges and protections. As such, the consequences of misogyny and the resultant suffering might appear, well, inconsequential. Playing out in ordinary ways in everyday life, misogyny is often viewed and treated as if it were a less egregious, significant and harmful form of discrimination and hatred - an insult, perhaps, rather than an injury, an appreciative pat on the backside, not an annihilating assault. Yet, as most dramatically and immediately exemplified by the on-going abortion rights debate, a woman’s life and choices concerning the quality of her life, her body and her opportunities are frequently perceived as less important - a secondary consideration, if considered at all.1
Surely, there are numerous, multidimensional, and interlacing ex