Women are often asked why they still fear men, or still fight for equality when we have been granted equal rights after the suffrage movements. In fact, many men seem to be completely baffled by the idea that women do not feel as though they are equal. Why do they fear to walk down the street at night? Why don't we fully trust men? Why are we still so very hyper-aware of our safety.
I thought about this question myself recently, generally as a result of many different occurrences this past year.
The truth is that although legally, perhaps, we have achieved great victories in terms of equality; those same victories have not been won in terms of social perception. What's more, there has been a systematic attack of women's rights across North America. These usually mask themselves as being moral crusades, or such, but in truth many of them are nothing more than an attempt to put women back in their place.
The easiest example of this has to do with the legalization and legislation of birth control and abortion. If a man were told that he could not get a life saving operation on a part of his body, because the disease was a living thing and had as much right to life as he does, there would be outrage. This is the situation women across the US are put in every day. When it comes to certain states, one cannot help but wonder if women are even seen as human or as incubators for future generations of men and incubators.
The same people who legislate the rights to a woman's body are the same one's who have control over legislating a woman's rights in the workplace and of the criminal definitions and punishments for sexual assault. If these men do not even see women as having the right to medically decide what happens to their own bodies, do you really think they see them as having the right to decide what happens to them sexually? The fact that these are usually the same people who prevent access to the Plan B pill (even in cases of rape), one can't help but think the answer is a resounding NO.
The truth is that the two major sources for law and social guidance are politics and churches. Both of these have a low representation of women at the higher ranks. Atheists at this point may scream and shout that since they don't believe in a higher power, they don't subscribe to the morality of the church, thus their influence should be ignored with regards to atheist men. These men may not subscribe to the higher authority of the church, but they still live in a society that does. Although they may not absorb the propaganda directly, they are still influenced by the opinions and social traditions of those that are.
Before you start formulating your response in the comments think of this: most of what influences are society these days is media. Many media outlets use sexualized pictures of women in order to sell their products. At other times, they depict unfavourable depictions of women almost worthy of the term Gynocrasty. I refer you for example to the "Got Milk" commercials that feature a terrified man at the mercy of a PMSing woman, who is offering up milk in order to soothe her symptoms (in response to a new study showing that women may have their symptoms lessened by drinking milk). The various slogans can essentially be summarized as "Your being an unreasonable bitch, here's some milk". Funny, true, but think of what message those commercials are portraying.
Women who argue, who stand up for themselves, who dare to point out any mistake a man has made is a nag, or an unreasonable bitch, and has to be PMSing. The media often portrays women as being unreasonable, quickly provoked to anger, smarter than her husband and like to take advantage of that fact, domination women who control their poor victimized husbands through their anger. To find examples one only has to look at shows like "Everybody Loves Raymond" "Family guy" and many others. This then affects our own society: women who argue or are strong willed are just unreasonable bitches who want to dominate men and society.
While it may seem harmless, some studies show that after viewing images of sexualized women, men have a tendency to underrate the performance and intelligence of the women around them (even if dressed modestly). Now consider the fact that men and women are bombarded with depictions of sexualized women daily.
