6 Absurdly Demeaning Conservative Attacks on Women

Everyone knows women can be bitches sometimes, right? Unless they're cougars, that is, on the prowl -- or if they're a bit younger, they're more like vixens, kinda foxy. They henpeck when married and go wet and wild when single. They can take out their claws out or put them away. (Who doesn't love a good catfight?). Less dangerous are the girls and the young women, softer and fuzzier, who are more like bunnies, or, as the English say, like birds. Either way, diminutive and harmless. Girls like these are more like pets. Chicks or kittens. Everyone does it, using language that renders women as animals;the list is endless. This culturally ingrained misogyny, as reflected in acceptable language that dehumanizes half the world's population, is not limited to any one country or religion, or followers of one or another ideology.

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1) They're domesticated: docile and tame.

2) They're often used for controlled breeding and reproductive purposes.

3) They're generally considered dumb and unthinking, and there is the implication that they are immature and dependent.

4) They're often thought of as unclean.

5) They're not dangerous or threatening (i.e. sexual and powerful).

6) They're a consumable resource.

Farm animals don't act independently. They have sex for breeding, not for pleasure, and the choice of partners and conditions of the sex they have are controlled by their masters. They certainly don't try to disturb the natural order of things, namely male dominion. When women are not domesticated -- i.e., operating beyond the control of white men -- whether they're white or women of color, if they demand the right to free agency or a social safety net that spares their children from starvation, they're depicted as sexualized and base, making them dogs or wild animals.

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To be sure, there are instances of men referred to as asses or pigs, but just Google images for "women as animals" and then "men as animals" and see what happens. When men are compared to animals, it is usually because they do something disgusting. It is an undesirable behavior, not an undesirable essence. The salient aspect of the animal names that girls and women are called is not their behavior, it is their gender. (Virtually all of the worst words one can call a woman, like the word "slut," are gender-specific.) Girls forge their identities through this dense fog of linguistic subjugation while boys tacitly infer their own superiority. Girls and women suffer direct harm because of it -- and boys and men, the indirect harm of living in a disordered and unjust society.

http://www.alternet.org/story/155362/6_absurdly_demeaning_conservative_attacks_on_women?page=entire