The Lady Vanishes - Imprinting Prejudices

Imprinting prejudices, usually prejudices regarding social stratum, is one of the most effective ways to maintain hierarchy and dominance over the weak. What I want to focus on is on the MYSOGYNY, by blaming system not individuals who are pouring barrages onto each other.

           I want to approach to the problem of misogyny under the view of capitalist system. It’s not women’s needs that reinforce social prejudice or hatred, but it’s the system conducted by people’s greed to intensify profits.

           So-called ‘benefits’ for women are so prevalent in our society. WOMEN-ONLY—these arrogant and narrow minded terminology calls upon unnecessary convenience for female and extreme rage to males. They play the role of licenses. Those licenses, though they are so clearly unequal and discriminative, are undergoing the process of growth as people are continuously building those facilities, and those facilities are the main reason of misogyny to rise, the stamp that imprints systematic prejudices deep inside our brain.

But WHY?

We have to raise these questions:

-       Who are building those facilities

-       What benefits would happen to whom by the construction of those facilities

-       What are the side-effects of these facilities

First and second question is significant because the ones who are building those facilities are not the ones who are using those facilities. Women-only zones are built by MALE corporate owners. For what? Definitely to increase profits. The corporate owners are aiming FEMALES to use their shops. Actually, the benefits obtained by those discriminative facilities are not for FEMALES, but for owners blinded for profits. And those facilities, though a lot of people finding them as unequal, will still exist, because those owners would only listen to the sound of 100-dollar bills entering his account.

And though these facilities seem to increase benefits for women, these facilities actually aid to reinforcement of gender prejudice. The corporate owners should bring more FEMALES to his shop, because they are more likely to be more profitable and stable customers. So the owners, rather than aiming risks to broaden the sales spectrum, chose to suck more from familiar stratum. They intend to hypnotize customers with amenities and benefits; at the same time they are intentionally consolidating gender prejudice. They try to reinforce the idea of ‘WOMEN SHOULD~’, as they should manipulate their customers to act as they want. WOMEN SHOULD go shopping. WOMEN SHOULD only concentrate to housework. WOMEN ARE DUMB, mindlessly wandering inside shopping malls. Implied messages hypnotize society, under the greed of profits.

So, moral licensing is not the phenomenon only carried out by an individual. It’s rather induced by the perspective of society. It’s no need to fight trivial maneuvers between individuals. But most people can’t acknowledge this background. And the side-effect, the gender strife, occurs. Maybe some people want this discord to use it politically. Vivid line between genders is so inflammable that only a spark will cloud any controversies. Moral licensing works this moment. Because the MALE perceive they are yielding a lot for the FEMALE, they stubbornly reject strivings for REAL EQUALISM. The equation of WOMEN RIGHTS = BENEFITS = FEMINISM = INEQUALITY is imprinted. Males think of unreasonable benefits of women (applied by others rather than women themselves) as FEMINISM and detest the concept. The yield males had to give because of unequal benefits becomes the reason to freely hate women. Males and females, they are both VICTIMS, dominated by systematic scheme and angered by their ignorance.

Moral licensing is not a phenomenon of individuals, I think. I don’t believe human morality to act that simply. I want to rather think moral licensing as a comprehensive attitude called upon by systematic irony that’s hard to acknowledge. And it’s the goal of enlightenment to let people know that irony, and make them join the movement to abolish contradiction of the system