April 24, 2008
A Big Education
“A man and a woman’s relationship was always primary. Women, your own friends, were always secondary relationships when the man was not there. Because of this, there’s that whole cadre of women who don’t like women and prefer men. We had to be taught to like one another. Ms. Magazine was founded on the premise that we really have to stop complaining about one another, hating, fighting one another, and joining men in their condemnation of ourselves– a typical example of what dominated people do. That is a big education.” –Toni Morrison, The Paris Review Interviews, II
Thank you for that. At times I’ve felt like I’m on a one-woman crusade to convince (other) women that hey! their own gender isn’t the enemy. The worst? Those women who say, “Well, I hate other women because: they’re bitchy/catty/stupid/jealous/choose your own negative adjective.”
I find it interesting when this problem is used to perpetuate sexism. That it becomes okay to knock down women because, after all, look at the women doing it. In my mind women justifying misogyny actually underlines the weight of the problem rather than underMining it. And all of us– men and women– should be held accountable for this, because it’s a problem that compromises us all.
This is wonderfully put. I guess things TM says usually are.
A self-hating anything is of course first their own problem, but they are also the symbols of a culture that hates that anything often enough that it gets under the skin.