Women! Dare you approach the Pyramid of Egregiousness? This is the new chart that’s been put together by women’s groups in the US to classify the hate words used against us, from bad to worse to really quite stinkingly repulsive.
Use your finger of defiance to log on and see it at NameItChangeIt.org There, a reeking sewage system of sexist sideswipes has been organised into a colourful triangle.
It’s the latest project in contemporary feminism’s use of the internet to network, campaign, critique and challenge, and it is spearheaded, among others, by renowned US feminist Gloria Steinem.
Looking at the Pyramid I am impressed by men’s creativity, tenacity, complexity, sincerity and commitment for the very first time. It’s a bit like the Top 40 Smash Hits countdown — a few old faves peppered among the contemporary classics, novelty jingles and one-hit wonders. At the pinnacle are terms classed as Severe Misogyny outright objectifying and dehumanising hate words such as bitch, whore, slut, cunt, feminazi, and new entries such as cougar and MILF.
BTW, MILF means Mom I’d Like to Fuck.
And FYI, the first time I heard it was in New York at an otherwise all-male meeting of advertising guys at a major women’s magazine corporation. Oh, how those men laughed among themselves as I worked out the acronym. I couldn’t protest, because I’d lose my job and be labelled — yep — a feminazi.
Next down on the Pyramid are words classed as Really Damn Sexist.
This is for all those backstabbing phrases, euphemisms, sideswipes and digs.
Think ice queen, nag, shrill, difficult, cold. At the base of the Pyramid is Just Plain Sexist. This is your daily, standard, bread-and-butter misogyny. It includes commenting on a woman’s appearance, calling her a girl, a babe, a sweetie or lightly saying she’s bossy or flighty. The point of the pyramid, so to speak, is not to have every word filed in its rightful place.
We are not 1950s librarians. All the terms are terms of hatred, originally invented (sometimes centuries ago) by men, now used by both sexes. The Pyramid
is a symbol, a resource, a focal point, a concentration of their hate and our anger. You can add to it, and on the same site you can also testify about examples of media sexism.
I’d like to add some words to the Pyramid myself. There’s humourless, paranoid, selfish, prudish, unable to take a joke, hysterical, man-hating, aggressive, butch: these words essentially just mean “shut up, woman”.
They’re for any woman who dares to get angry and, instead of letting the insults sink deep, asks the perpetrator just what the hell they think they’re doing.
Man-hater in particular makes me laugh. Women waste a lot of time submissively explaining to misogynists, like good schoolgirls, why they don’t hate men, how feminism benefits both sexes and how misogyny must be recognised by all of society. I’ll say this: I do indeed hate any man who hates women and expresses his hate in his language, his manner, his behaviour and his art.
Then there are the so-called ironic seaside-postcard terms for women and our body parts. How about funbags? I think the Pyramid should proudly bear a rack of funbags. Or how about some casual infantilisation? In his last series the British TV chef Jamie Oliver made a meal for some inmates at a women’s prison in Venice. He delivered it to them with a leer and the phrase: “Here you go, girlies”.
Like a square of shit-soaked toilet paper, the Pyramid is a repository for so much nasty matter. But much misogynist language is far subtler than one-word disses. There is the question of tone, which renders any word — even one as seemingly innocuous as “she” — totally malign. The cleverest, most belittling insult I ever heard against a woman was a posh man at the Tate Modern, talking about Rachel Whiteread’s Turbine Hall installation: “Yeah,” he said. “She’s fun.” Delivered with an infuriating, mocking grin.
Then there was the radio network head I heard talking to a male producer about a globally famous pop star who came in and was professional, articulate and intelligent: “She’s a funny one, isn’t she?” “Yep,” replied his flunky, “If you open her up you’ll just find batteries and wires.”
Even seemingly nice words are often used against us, delivered with sizzling spite and patent enjoyment of the victim’s discomfort. The hisses of “That’s good, keep doing that” and “That’s nice” whenever I go jogging.
The homeless guy who said to a friend, “Got a light? No? Well, you’re looking quite smoking to me, babe.” One afternoon at a road crossing in central London a man turned around and began harassing the woman next to me: “Hello! How are you, darling? You are so pretty. You look like a supermodel. Where are you going?” She didn’t reply, he didn’t stop.
All these arseholes would say they were “only” complimenting their victims.
What are we going to do with our pyramid when it’s all filled up, once we’ve exhausted ourselves typing our testimonies? Are we supposed to tote it, like a school art project, from pavilion to pavilion hoping to shame people into stopping? That won’t work. Misogynists don’t have any shame.
They really enjoy attacking women. They are not afraid of us. They enjoy the sight of our anger and frustration.
One of my qualms about online activism – particularly sites where we “out” harassers and other types of sex attacker, or anonymously post reports of the daily casual misogyny we all endure — is that, while we feel better afterwards, we have not changed anything in the outer world.
We have just invented a coping mechanism, a way to squeeze out and siphon off our rage. We have set up an online sympathy group, a survivors’ forum, a venting arena. But we have not fought the perpetrators.
Much as I like and applaud it, I want to see the three-dimensional foldout version of the Pyramid of Egregiousness. I want a 3D glow-in-the-dark dodecahedron, a planet-sized Matrix of Misogyny, a Trillion-Faceted Dynamo of Jet Black Turbo Hate. Then I’d heave it aloft and hurl it into the sun, where it would set off a massive chain reaction and shoot out sky-scraping beams of feminist rage which kill anyone, male or female, who’s ever used those words, wiping out (I’d say) 90% of human society, but leaving the non-woman-haters behind.
Then we could all relax and be happy. — Guardian News & Media 2010