COMMENTARY: Why do men hate women?

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.) UNDATED _ I am constantly astonished at the hatred some men feel toward women. […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ I am constantly astonished at the hatred some men feel toward women. What goes on in the soul of a man to cause him to sexually harass, beat, or rape a woman?


Almost every day there are stories of harassment and rape _ in the military, the factories, the business offices across the nation.

Even if one grants some of the charges may be false or exaggerated, or that some consensual sexual behavior may be described after the fact as forced sex, still there is little reason to doubt many if not most of the charges are true.

During the war in Bosnia, for example, the armies engaged in rape as a matter of policy to destroy the morale of their enemies. The policy enabled men who hate women to have a grand time with _ at least so far _ impunity.

I suspect the avalanche of complaints about sexual and physical harassment in recent years is only the tip of an iceberg. Survey figures show that one out of every five women has been sexually abused; one out of three threatened with sexual abuse; one out of 20 the target of incest.

There is no reason to believe any of this abuse is a new development. Women have always been the target of the hatred of some men.

Feminists debate whether men abuse and rape women for sexual pleasure or for delight in male power. It is an unresolvable debate because both motives are involved.

Beneath those motives, however, is a common pathological need to degrade a woman, to use her and abuse her as brutally as possible so as to discharge anger at and hatred for her and for all women.


One of more sordid cases of late is the story of the Canadian military officers who bound a bare-footed woman colleague to a tree on a cold night and beat her as part of a”training”exercise.

What fun! You torture a woman and at the same time punish her for daring to enter a previously all-male preserve. The Canadians threw the leader of this disgusting bunch out of the army, but the rest are still around. The woman, of course, resigned.

That’s one way to get rid of women _ more effective, it seems, than the techniques of those at The Citadel military academy who only set fire to the women cadets’ clothes. Still, it should be clear by now to those men who sexually or physically abuse women that their behavior could get them into very serious legal trouble.

I don’t understand why a young woman would want to be a combat infantry person or a military cadet. Neither do I understand why a young man would want to play either of those roles.

Nonetheless, a woman has the right in our society to be a cadet or a”grunt”and the legislatures and the courts are correct in insisting on that right.

Moreover, a woman has the right to be free of sexual harassment and molestation in the work place and the courts will, still imperfectly, enforce that right. Abuse of women is now _ as it should be _ potentially dangerous behavior.


Yet some men engage in it as though the old rules of male privilege still apply. Their anger at women is so strong they cannot help it, even if they must pay a heavy price.

It is important to recognize that most men do not hate and abuse women.

Nevertheless, all too many males remain silent when other men engage in abusive physical or verbal actions. Too many men stand by quietly in a locker room when others speak disparagingly about women, exploiting them sexually in words, if not in behavior. Too few demand the abusers shut up.

Such men don’t hate women. But they are willing to tolerate those who do.

It is possible to name their problem: fear and social pressure.

But what is the problem of the verbal and physical abusers? Why the depths of their hatred? Whatever the motives, the sick men who need to abuse women must be stopped.

The men who can stop them and don’t _ those who stand mutely by _ must change their attitudes and behavior. And change them now.

DEA END GREELEY

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