A couple of weeks ago, as I flicked through the Review section of the Sunday Tribune, my eye was caught by a disturbing headline. The piece by Una Mullally – Stop insulting us females, you fat, sexist pigs – was as disquieting as its headline. According to Mullally, female bloggers (unlike their male counterparts) are victims of personal and sexual insults posted on their websites’ comment facilities.
“Most of the comments,” she wrote, “are far too sexually graphic and disgusting to print.” Women journalists both in Ireland and Britain confirm having received similar insults, she said. “While a man might get abuse for his opinion or his style of writing, women get the same abuse, but gender is used as the principal weapon of abuse. You’re never a stupid writer, you’re always a stupid bitch.”
It’s quite clear that despite our much vaunted education system – which is increasingly co-educational – our equality laws and all the legislation against gender discrimination and sexual harassment, misogyny is alive and well in Ireland. Sexist comments that would not be tolerated in the workplace, or even the pub, are perfectly admissible on the anonymous internet.
In her piece for the Tribune, Mullally wondered why men are so angry, and why they need to use the language of sexual violence when criticising a female point of view. They were questions I was asking myself as I read the piece. And then I turned a few pages to the New Irish Writing section.
Sketch of a Middle Aged Woman by Tom Clarke tells the story of a Trinity student waiting in a car park in Newbridge, Co Kildare for his father to pick him up. The protagonist has already admitted to being prejudiced against middle-aged women. “[They’re] always interfering,” he says. “Like at the supermarket, you always avoid the lines with the middle-aged woman, don’t you?”
In the car park, he meets one such woman, grabs her by the arm and threatens her with a knife. Terrified, she hands over her purse and he runs off down the road where he meets his father who, unknowingly, drives him away from the scene of the crime. Later, admitting that he had no need for the money, he casually wonders if he has ruined his victim’s life, but feels no remorse.
I, on the other hand, was feeling very angry. The callousness and the lack of humanity displayed by the protagonist in Clarke’s story sickened me. In theory, I am opposed to censorship, but as a woman well into middle age, I can now see that there are times when it might be necessary. Would this story have been accepted for publication by the Tribune if the victim had been, say, a Muslim or a Jew? Somehow I doubt it.
For me, the message of that story was that middle-aged women are fair game when it comes to ridicule and violence. And younger women? “Just pieces of meat,” according to horror film director Eli Roth, quoted in an Irish Times story by Kiri Cochrane last year. Roth makes so-called ‘gorno’ horror films in which beautiful young women are tortured for pleasure. The number of such extreme horror movies being made has increased ten-fold since the early 1990s.
“Of course, watching these films won’t turn a sane, decent individual into a killer or torturer,” commented Cochrane, “but you have to wonder what effect this widespread meshing of sexuality and graphic violence will have on the young men at whom they are primarily aimed.”
And while the boys are watching horror movies, fantasising about torturing and killing nubile young women and robbing and terrifying older ones, the girls are getting on with life. Figures from the Higher Education Authority show that the gender gap is widening and girls are increasingly outperforming boys in the Leaving Certificate.
In 2006, only 39 per cent of those accepting places on courses requiring 450 or more CAO points were male. Nowadays, over three quarters of students studying medicine and related areas are female. Women also account for 60 per cent of all students taking law degrees.
It is arguable that the future for young men is less rosy than it has ever been. How we, as a society, ensure that boys grow into well-rounded, thoughtful and integrated adults, rather than becoming misogynist bullies, is one of the major issues facing us all today.
Yvonne Healy is a former Irish Times journalist who has returned to Ireland from the United States. Her column appears monthly in Metro Eireann
