Though easily missed, March is Women’s History Month. This honoring, if it can be called that, of the gender characteristics that define more than one half of the world’s population, is an outgrowth of International Women’s Day, which is March 8 and was originally called International Working Women’s Day. The first observance of the day took place in 1911, making this the 100th anniversary.
I was kind of surprised that there wasn’t a bit more fanfare over it, considering the century angle and all, but then I spent a couple of evenings glued to cable television and was reminded, yet again, of something I’ve known for quite some time but that came to me – as it always does – with all the subtlety of a glass of ice water thrown in my face.
We hate women.
It’s not enough that many heterosexual wedding ceremonies still begin with the father “giving” the daughter away. The salary inequities aren’t enough, nor are the rape statistics. The blatant gender-based discrimination normalized by tax-exempt, global corporations with a religious bent is not enough. It is not enough that the mindless mobs of people blinded by a deadly mixture of zeal and fury have been allowed to metastasize throughout the most fundamental sphere of the human experience – the vocabulary, the narrative – by a gift from the media, which insists upon using the term “pro life” when there could not be two words that more honorably mask the true nature of that particular movement. And it’s not enough that we cannot manage to amend the U.S. Constitution to confirm that which should never require confirmation: Women and men are equal. It’s too controversial.
Since none of that is enough, there is cable television, where in a single hour on Thursday night I witnessed Wendy Williams asking Aretha Franklin, repeatedly, if she, as “the queen,” feels threatened by any other women in the music business (she does not), Joan Rivers and three of her giggly sidekicks (two female, one not) trashing female celebrities by the dozen for what they wore to various events, the new wife of a professional basketball player in New York being practically begged to “smack talk” the wives of other players – Have they said hello to you? Have they invited you to sit with them during the games? – a preview of an upcoming show about a woman named Holly who, in the clip, calls another woman a bitch and throws a tray of drinks in her face, LaToya Jackson gurgling and purring about her run-in with Star Jones on Donald Trump’s show, Kathy Bates’ confession to Joy someone or another that she didn’t “go public” with her ovarian cancer because she feared it would jeopardize her ability to land roles, one of the Kardashian people being booed by a studio audience because her new and improved bosom takes up too much room in a photo, the relentlessly faggy presenters on E! standing around with smirks on their faces as they regale the camera with one tale after another about female celebrities in sordid situations and, finally, a group of women from the show where they all compete to marry the same guy appear on a stage together to talk about the experience but end up hurling insults at one another regarding, among other things, the way one of them cared for her child, or did not, during the show’s filming.
For me, that was the beginning of the end. In traditional family situations, the father steps in to restore a kinder, wiser brand of order. In office situations, it is more often than not the male employees who are looked to for guidance on critical matters. They are insightful, they are decisive, they are leaders. And the women, as conventional wisdom dictates, are catty, petty and prone to gossip, so much so that saying, quite clearly, that you strongly prefer a male boss and male colleagues will barely raise an eyebrow. Just for fun, replace the word ‘woman’ with the word ‘black’ in any statement about the pitfalls of the archetypal female boss, then say the words out loud.
On cable television, as in real life, a penis was needed to calm the storm brewing among the beautiful women who had competed to marry the same man. The blandly attractive host of the program raised his right hand as if he were signaling a car to not enter the intersection. Such grace, such poise, as the utterly helpless gold diggers gave it their all to throw verbal gasoline on the fire that was, of course, the contender whose parenting skills were under scrutiny. And even though his wisdom was conveyed in the simplest of ways – he said “Really?” and then, once again, but not as a question, “Really” – the effect, as it often is when a male pulls rank on a group of females, was profound.
