The word itself seems outdated, as if it could only comfortably belong within a Hollywood film’s stereotypical portrayal of nineteen fifties culture.  It reminds us of a time we’ve never experienced ourselves: an era when few women went to college and the idea that a woman could join the infantry or become a lawyer was laughable.  It’s a word that has lost its sting outside of the crumbling worldview of a band of older feminists and other formerly potent remnants of the transitional period between our world and that of Mad Men.  A word that perhaps some ever-dwindling numbers of humorless humanities students hang onto here and there, but insofar as it has any real energy left usually refers to stale arguments having something to do with unequal pay.  The naiveté of our time, especially insofar as we naively think, like a teenager or bitter old fool, that we aren’t naïve, would be touching if it wasn’t so damn destructive.

We are blind to modern misogyny.  Consider the fact that 40% of children are born out of wedlock, and vast numbers of those kids end up being raised by their mothers without much assistance from their fathers.  Does this have nothing to do with male attitudes towards women? Nothing whatsoever? A friend was recently at a T.G.I. Fridays after work for dinner, and the bartender was casually telling a few guys at the bar about [insert name of sex act degradingly described in regards to women with a four letter word here] dot com, and how he was unable to [interact with the site sexually] because he found it rip-roaringly hilarious.  The argument that women choose to be filmed for such websites, and women choose to have children out of wedlock, and therefore the mere suggestion that either of these two disturbing trends are a problem is itself misogynistic rings hollow in the face of common experience.  (Yet this is a standard academic response, serving to cut off such uncomfortable discussions before they begin).  Of course, noting that these are new problems in need of solutions is not to suggest that we go back to the fifties, even if it were possible.  The fact that we feel the need for the sort of disclaiming sentences such as the previous one before having these discussions is a sign we are crossing some sort of border into the forbidden zone.

Misogyny is not the circumstantial product of the wrong mixture of religion and claustrophobic culture, or an impure thought crime that can be eradicated with the right antidote of therapy, sensitivity training and “girl power” Disney cartoons at a formative age.  You can’t get rid of it by promoting G.I. Jane and the WNBA.  All this sort of thing misunderstands the underlying problem: despite the wide variety of causes that might trigger misogyny, the state of mind is an ever present temptation of human nature.

At the heart of the thought that drives the behavior of many a misogynist there is often a peculiar contradiction: the misogynist simultaneously understands women to be grossly inferior or defective while understanding himself to be in some way powerless or beholden to women.

One can find an implicit critique of misogyny as far back as the book of Genesis, in spite of the fact that the ancient Hebrew account is routinely condemned these days for being misogynistic itself. Infamously, when Adam is asked by God if he has eaten the forbidden fruit, he doesn’t respond to the yes-or-no question by saying “Yes.” Adam says: “The woman, whom you gave me to be my companion, gave me of the tree, and I ate.”

Note two potentially implicit claims in Adam’s response. First, the woman succumbed to temptation and ate the fruit, and thus she is weak and defective. (And since God made her, Adam implies that God is ultimately responsible.) Second, she then gave the fruit to Adam to eat, and apparently he was powerless or beholden to her. Adam seems to say that she is at fault and an inferior creation—but also to blame for his actions.

Yet according to the simple facts of the story as presented by the author of Genesis, Eve falls to temptation only after a concerted effort on the part of a being that is understood by religious traditions to be the devil.  The devil is held by those same traditions to have been the most powerful, intelligent and beautiful of God’s creatures before he chose to make God his enemy.  Nonetheless, Eve initially resists the serpent, referred to in that same chapter as the most crafty or clever of animals.  Adam, on the other hand, merely takes what “the weaker sex” gives him, with no recorded resistance.  It is not even clear she spoke to him at all: the author of Genesis says only that she offered, and he took.  As soon as he is called to account for his actions, however, he immediately points the finger at her.  Thus it was, is, and shall be: the same man who decries women as inferior or defective or evil inevitably contradicts himself when he simultaneously blames women for his own base actions.  “She deserved it.” “She asked for it.”  “She wanted it.”  The hidden premise is that when she offers, I can’t help but take.  If you can’t help but take, however, aren’t you weaker than she is?  If you are her superior, how can you blame her for your fall?

This is a general mental ruse that all human beings employ individually in order to avoid blame for their own actions, regardless of the gender of the parties involved.  It also crops up whenever we feel the need to scapegoat some group of human beings.  For instance, the Nazi holds that Jews are simultaneously responsible for a masterful conspiracy causing all the world’s problems and an inferior race.  And so forth and so on.  Nonetheless, one of the most enduring, glaring examples is always in the realm of sexual activity between men and women.  The guys who loudly assert that women are weaker or in some way inferior to men are inevitably the same guys who blame women whenever anything goes wrong.  One wonders if they can really believe their own bravado, since if their own words were true they would have no one to blame but their superior, and therefore responsible, selves.

Examples flow through our culture every day. When a famous actor (Mel Gibson) who has seemingly attempted to follow traditional ethical teachings on these matters leaves his wife and kids of many years for the sake of another woman, it isn’t all that surprising when the bottom inevitably falls out of the new relationship.  Although it raises eyebrows, it shouldn’t be surprising when he is then recorded repeatedly hurling various accusations against the new woman, all of which hang on the notion that she is an ostentatious flirt, sexually promiscuous, a whore who will be inevitably raped on account of her immodesty, etc.  The common theme throughout the recordings is that she is guilty of assorted offenses, and that she should or will be justly punished for them in some way.  Of course, neither her disregard for monogamy nor her style of dress was hidden from him when they began their relationship. It became a fault only after their relationship began to falter, apparently.

Yet even if every one of his accusations are merited, don’t they condemn his own relationship with her?  Whether or not he is a misogynist generally speaking, consider the hidden premises of his tirades in regards to this particular woman.  What is left unsaid in his accusations?  She’s just a dumb whore, and she deserves what she gets, or whatever I deign to give her.  Especially after all she’s done to me.  All the trouble she’s put me though.  She tricked me. How was I supposed to help myself? Even if he is consciously aware of these internal contradictions, the recordings of him screaming at her provide a rather stark example of the tortured conscience of all human beings when they seek to transfer the crushing weight of guilt to another.  The recordings reveal a soul writhing under the increasingly bright light of outside reality while it tries in vain to shut that light out, clinging desperately to a self-drawn veil that is slowly being lifted without its consent. If she is as inferior (morally, intellectually, and otherwise) to him as he claims, how was she able to ensnare him? If she is as flawed a person as he claims, mustn’t he be even more flawed in order to fall prey to her wiles?

More extreme examples of full blown modern misogynists can be found writ large at nearly every cultural turn these days for those with eyes to read.  For those who aren’t squeamish and have become as culturally callous as I have, try one of my favorite profiles of an individual written in the last few years: the alarming, explicit, and chilling portrait of “Girls Gone Wild” founder Joe Francis entitled “Baby, Give Me A Kiss” by Claire Hoffman for the Los Angeles Times.  Plutarch would recommend it, I think, if he knew the world in which we live today.  See also the similarly explicit “‘The New Dating Game: Back to the New Paleolithic Age” by Charlotte Allen in the Weekly Standard. Or any number of articles by Kay S. Hymowitz writing for City Journal that can be found by scrolling through this list.

-Sheriff Bell, No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy

Sheriff Bell, No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

So say the wise: in the past, now, and forever.

If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?

The problem of course, is that this entails knowing what good we are aiming for.  What is good for us?  Clearly, from experience, lots of things.  What is “the good and the chief good” for us?  Clearly, from experience, we disagree about what this is, and the way in which it is or is not.  Perhaps all that can be agreed on initially is that for whatever reason, the chief good we should be aiming at is hard to determine.  Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics goes on to argue that this chief good for us is happiness, attained through living well: flourishing and fulfilling one’s nature.  In turn, this depends on Aristotle’s understanding of human nature.  In order to achieve this happiness, Aristotle argues that we must not simply follow our inclinations but form ourselves by means of a number of habits of living directed towards happiness.

Forget, for a moment, about the question of what is ultimately good for us and let’s shelve the debate about what happiness consists in.  There is an entirely different problem that goes to the heart

We ought to aim for the bulls eye rather than merely attempting to avoid hitting the wall around the target.  Once we adopt the mediocrity of mere avoidance as a strategy, we will be less likely to hit the target and more likely to simply say to hell with the whole thing for multiple reasons.  The point is that we hit the target by aiming for the bulls eye.  The likelihood of hitting the bulls eye itself is not particularly great, but it is practically impossible unless you aim for it.  More to the point, by repeatedly aiming for the bulls eye you will, in all likelihood and for the most part, hit the target rather than the wall with enough practice.

Christian moral teachings in the Western world have been mixed with an unfortunate strain in them for a longish while that ignores this truth.  The sometimes blurred focus this strain causes is likely not merely a doctrinal matter, but rather a temptation that is always present whenever moral teachings are taught or laws are promulgated. Regardless, I would argue that the best sorts of people living in the best sorts of times and places could agree that this simple aphorism is simply true, regardless of one’s understanding of religion.

It speaks to the importance of possessing a working understanding of what virtue is, which ultimately means knowing people we strive to emulate  We have to know what we are aiming for as well as what we wish to avoid.  Obvious?  Yes.  Aphorisms usually are, aren’t they?  Yet the point is often ignored.  We assume that we know where and what that bulls eye is, that we know the various habits of being we ought to cultivate in order to attain well being or happiness.  We don’t.  At least, not initially.  And even if we do come to some sort of understanding, which will no doubt be imperfect for a variety of reasons (let’s call this our limited vision for the sake of the analogy), we still don’t know how to get there (how to shoot that arrow).  Yet the majority of human beings act and speak as if how they ought to act is very clear to them.  Even when it isn’t.

Of course, we naturally and reasonably turn to history in order to understand human nature. Yet while we may use what we know of history to assist in our study of human nature and we may use what we know of human nature to assist in our study of history, the latter operation is prior to the former. You have to assume or take something to be true about human nature in order to learn about human nature through history. And you know something about human nature . . . since, well, you are one.

Historians spend much of their time investigating and verifying past thoughts and actions, but when these are examined and analyzed one cannot escape relying on an understanding of human nature in order to explicate the “bones” one has dug up. Of course, even in the pursuit of simply discovering what was, this same understanding of human nature will also guide one’s approach in choosing where and how to dig. It will, in fact, direct the entire historical enterprise in light of the fact that your understanding of human nature is necessarily a crucial element of the purpose for which you are acting as an historian in the first place.

The overarching point gets lost so often its hard to keep a grasp on it. History is about the past thoughts and actions of human beings, and how we understand such thoughts and actions will hinge upon how we answer the question: “What are we?” What is human nature? Do we have a nature? What is nature? When these questions go unanswered and/or are assumed in a facile manner any presentation of history ought to be tainted or suspect.

If we have seriously meditated upon human nature, and the extent to which we are ignorant on this score, I think most people readily understand the notion that history is not a science in the sense that, say, geometry is. Or, at least, not understandable as such a science to any of us humans living life as we know it. There are two extremes in this respect. Although the notion that history is such a science (perhaps even the highest science) is still with us (Progress!), the opposite notion is perhaps more prevalent these days, or at least its influence is rapidly growing. The explicit or implicit rejection of the very possibility of any sort of coherent understanding of history is now commonplace.

The first extreme relies on the explicit or implicit assumption that human beings are gods: functionally speaking or otherwise the highest thing in the universe. The second extreme relies on the explicit or implicit assumption that human beings are animals or worse, inherently worthless, and value-free. The universe in which human beings live in the first extreme is ordered to them, or should be made to. The universe in which human beings live in the second extreme is devoid of order, or functionally so in that we are not able to know one way or the other. Both views are obsessed with human beings flexing their wills for their own self-created purposes, but the variation on human nature betwixt them dictates different notions of history.

Something like that. The last paragraph is a tad too cute. Examples from experience anon.