Misogyny
Men put women on a pedestal to worship them from afar and to take better aim at them for the purposes of derision. Why is this paradoxical response to women so widespread, so far-reaching, so all-pervasive? Even men who consider themselves enlightened tell mother-in-law jokes, or create artwork that degrades women, or exploit women`s sexuality to market material goods. Misogyny, David D. Gilmore suggests, is best described as a male malady, as it has always been a characteristic shared by human societies throughout the world. MISOGYNY; THE MALE MALADY is a comprehensive historical and anthropological survey of woman-hating that casts new light on this age-old bias. The turmoil of masculinity and the ugliness of misogyny have been well documented in different cultures, but Gilmore`s synoptic approach that identifies misogyny in a variety of human experiences outside of sex and marriage is a fresh and enlightening contribution toward understanding this phenomenon. Gilmore provides evidence for the first time that misogyny is so widespread and so pervasive among men everywhere that it must be at least partly psychogenic in origin, a result of identical experiences in the male developmental cycle, rather than caused by the environment alone. Presenting a wealth of compelling evidence--from the jungles of New Guinea to the boardrooms of corporate America--Gilmore shows that misogynistic practices occur in hauntingly identical forms. He asserts that these deep and abiding male anxieties stem from unresolved conflicts between men`s intense need for and dependence upon women and their equally intense fear of that dependence. However, misogyny, according to Gilmore, is also often supported and intensified by certain cultural realities, such as patrilineal social organization, kinship ideologies that favor fraternal solidarity over conjugal unity, chronic warfare, feuding, or other forms of intergroup violence, and religious orthodoxy or asceticism. Gilmore is in the en

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