Though we’re now far into the twenty-first century, misogyny is still alive and well. You’d think that in today’s world, equality between the sexes wouldn’t be such a far-fetched thought, but, for many people, it’s hard to imagine. Is there anything, anything at all, that we can do? If so, why do we still seem to be treading water?

What is misogyny?

Misogyny, simply put, is the dislike of or prejudice against women. Misogyny should have died in our society long ago, but somehow it’s still here. We see it every day, and for the most part, we ignore it. Sometimes we don’t even notice it at all. We think it’s normal.

It’s not normal.

Why should you care?

Many women think that there is nothing they can do to stop misogyny, and many men think that they’re not doing anything wrong.

Men who are misogynistic often are the ones that don’t even realize it, which is a huge part of the problem. They don’t know what it looks like, they don’t know that they’re part of the problem.

Well, first of all, we have to be able to identify the problems. What does misogyny show itself as?

It could be as blunt as hateful comments about women as a whole, or not letting a female do something solely because she’s a female. 

It could be your boss giving a task to a man because ‘he’s more equipped to do it’, or not letting you do something because they believe a man could do it better.

But often, misogyny is not this obvious. If it was, I like to think we would have called it what it was a long time ago.

Misogyny often comes in the form of jokes, jokes that just don’t sit right with you. Jokes about women being dumb, about them not being able to do things, or understand things. Maybe you’ve laughed at these jokes, or maybe you’ve even told these jokes, because it’s easier to laugh along than call it out. 

It’s easier to pretend like it’s okay, even if you know it’s not.

Even though we may not recognize it, jokes like these are slowly forming our brains to believe what they are saying, that women are stupid, or can’t do anything, or only their body matters. Even if we don’t think you believe the jokes, the second we laugh, our brains begin to believe that what is said is true. Slowly and slowly.

Even worse, when we laugh along, we’re encouraging the topic. We’re encouraging misogyny. And I’ve said it before, misogyny has no place in today’s society. It needs to be gone.

So what can we do?

Doing little things like not laughing at jokes, or telling someone to kindly shut up, is doing society a huge favor.

I get that it may be embarrassing to tell someone their joke wasn’t funny, or it may be hard not to laugh. After all, you don’t want to be the bummer in the room, but laugh at something that’s actually funny! And tell them that too — “Yeah I’m not going to laugh at that because I only laugh at things that are actually funny.”

It shouldn’t and doesn’t matter if you are a boy, or a girl, or anything in between. Misogyny isn’t something that only women should have to deal with. Guys have voices too. They should be able to recognize misogyny just as quickly and as well as girls. They can tell their friends to stop. And if their friends hate them for it, then it sounds to me like they need better friends.

My Final Pieces of Advice

No one should ever be able to tell you that you can’t do something just because you’re a woman. Unfortunately, no matter what you do, there will still be people who will underestimate you because of your sex. Your job is to prove them wrong, because that’s what they are. Wrong.

But as long as you know who you are, you know what you’re worth, you know what you can do, that’s all you need to carry you past the haters; far beyond and far above them.