Who else is expecting a tidal wave of self-righteous misogyny?

(99 Posts)

Given how much left wing men, in particular, love having what they consider justification for a bit of woman-hating, they're all going to be going into overdrive for the next few days...

Mrsrobertduvall Mon 08-Apr-13 13:32:25

Well the women have started already

Sunnywithshowers Mon 08-Apr-13 13:33:03

SGB, how will we be able to tell the difference?

BlingLoving Mon 08-Apr-13 13:33:15

Sadly, just a quick scan of the threads on here already show it won't just be men. No politician seems to have gathered so much vitriol ever. And I don't buy that it's because of her policies. Love or hate her policies, it's easier to hate her because she's a woman.

I think it's sad. And I am with you on this. I'm hoping some fabulous woman writer is going to come up with a great column / obit that talks about the good she did for women everywhere in terms of what she achieved.

TeiTetua Mon 08-Apr-13 13:44:58

Well, there are people who hate women (and they're not all men) and they'll say the predictable things. But then there are people who hoped for actions from Margaret Thatcher that she never delivered, basically not because she was an abnormal woman but because she was a Tory. So there's a certain kind of additional hatred that she picks up, for having the opportunity to show what great things women might do, and instead being the unbending Tory she was. The unfairness there was to expect anything else, as if women in politics are automatically going to be different from men.

MooncupGoddess Mon 08-Apr-13 13:48:30

Yes, it's grim. Quite apart from the fact that I think it is pretty gruesome to celebrate the death of any human being, there is a sort of gleeful nastiness to it that I have never seen when actual male mass murderers have died (e.g. Pol Pot, Harold Shipman). Indeed the only parallel I can think of is attitudes to Myra Hindley.

namechangeguy Mon 08-Apr-13 14:03:15


Ooh, this will be good. Shouldn't take long, I imagine. Here is a quote from the woman herself - 'I owe nothing to women's lib'.

You can have that to get you started.

namechangeguy Mon 08-Apr-13 14:20:10

Can I just correct my quote? It was incomplete. From the great woman herself;

"I owe nothing to women's lib. The feminists hate me, don't they? And I don't blame them. For I hate feminism. It is poison."

Alibabaandthe40nappies Mon 08-Apr-13 14:25:44

She wasn't a feminist, but the vitriol is misogynistic in the extreme.

WilsonFrickett Mon 08-Apr-13 14:27:12

I don't hate her. I do hate practically every one of her actions though. I don't think that makes me a misogynist.

MooncupGoddess Mon 08-Apr-13 14:29:20

Well, that's a blatantly stupid comment from Margaret Thatcher (would she have become prime minister if women hadn't gained the right to vote and sit in parliament? hardly), but it doesn't mean she didn't do any good for women.

(I'm not aware that she did, apart from the single and immensely valuable act of demonstrating that the UK can have a woman prime minister, but I'd certainly read an article on the subject.)

Oh I'm not acclaiming her as a feminist icon, I don't think she ever was (apart from the simple fact of being a woman who led the country - as someone else said, for those of us of a certain age, we grew up in a country ruled by two women: Thatcher and the Queen, and the fact of this did have some influence on us).
But there is no getting away from the extra layer of misogyny attached to a lot of the reaction to her death.

Mumcentreplus Mon 08-Apr-13 14:40:04

I didn't like the woman and I'm not going to be sentimental and pretend she was some great female icon..imo she was not, at least not to me I cannot speak for anyone else..just another moon-faced git... but she happened to have breasts.

namechangeguy Mon 08-Apr-13 14:43:33

SGB, I don't know how you can conflate misogyny with people's anger towards her. Firstly, it is not exclusive to men - can women really be misogynists? Ask those women who lived in communities in Derbyshire, or Nottinghamshire, or South Wales, or the North East in the 80's what they thought of her.

I think there was/is some disappointment because people expect a woman in her position to be more compassionate that a man, which in itself might be sexist, but is attributing a positive trait to someone a sign of hatred? I don't think it is.

grimbletart Mon 08-Apr-13 14:55:46

Yes, there is the extra layer of vitriol because she was female - didn't conform to the textbook stereotype of women i.e. not feeble, indecisive, over emotional etc. shock horror.

But those of use who were adults when she came to power in 1979 can point to parallels between Thatcher hatred and Cameron hatred i.e. they headed the PMs of governments who had been voted in after the massive balls-ups of a previous administrations. Trying to shovel up someone else's shit is a hatred magnet. So she gets a double whammy.

MooncupGoddess Mon 08-Apr-13 14:58:42

"Trying to shovel up someone else's shit is a hatred magnet."

Really? Surely it should have been an advantage - I can't remember Thatcher being elected but there was a lot of goodwill towards the coalition in 2010 because most people realised that New Labour had failed in a lot of ways. Unfortunately the coalition have blown it with their incompetence and nastiness (sorry, off topic).

In any case, though, there is much less loathing towards Cameron - even towards George Osborne! - than there is towards Thatcher.

I think she really did a lot to ruin the feminist cause.
actually, she did a fucking ginormous amount to kill everything in this country.

I feel really uneasy - I'm glad there's a thread here to discuss it on.

I don't think she was a feminist icon (!).

I do think her policies have harmed people deeply and continue to influence more policies that harm people.

I think there are many other women who had established, long before Thatcher, that women could do what men did. I am really sceptical about the idea that she was hated purely because she was a woman, even though I'm sure misogyny had a lot to do with the hatred, because it always does.

I'm finding it very hard to take her death is being portrayed. I have a knee-jerk reaction that she's dead and we should be respectful, because I find it very hard not to see an octogenarian like my granny, who had dementia, like my granny. I do feel it's awful we're so gleeful. Sorry, but I do. And I totally oppose what she stood for and I do blame her for other elderly people who're living in poverty.

I do think her bogeyman (!) status has to do with her being a woman, and I do think this 'tide of self-righteousness' is going to be motivated by that.

MrsClown1 Mon 08-Apr-13 15:35:29

I come from near Orgreave in Sheffield so I dont think I need to say anymore. We also have a huge lack of social housing because of her policies of selling them off for next to nothing.

Saying that, I cant celebrate anyone dying, she has a family who must be feeling very sad today.

caramelwaffle Mon 08-Apr-13 15:39:33

Unfortunately I think you a right SGB.

rosabud Mon 08-Apr-13 18:03:02

I do not think she was subjected to extra vitriol at the time (ie during the 80s when she was PM) for being a woman. I think, initially, there was criticism based on scpeticism as to whether a woman could do the job. Once she got going and proved that she could do the job, you either loved her policies (and, if anything, attached to that was a warm attitude towards her as a woman "bloody woman's only gone and pulled it off - good on her!") or you hated her policies - it was her policies which attracted vitriol not her being a woman. That is how I remember it, as someone who was politically active at the time. Of course, a personal opinion is always subjective.

However, it will be interesting to see if the virtiol re-remembered and re-commented on now, on the occasion of her death, will be more gender-based in light of the fact that many high-profile women are now subject to everyday, common-place misogynystic abuse, as we often observe on here.

Badvoc Mon 08-Apr-13 18:09:32

She was hated because she continued to pursue an agenda even her own party distanced itself from.
For all the bleating from Cameron, the Tory party disowned her after her fall.
She had started to have real delusions of grandeur though, and some of her ideas were pretty draconian.
She may have been the first woman PM but she did the least for women of nay PM I could think of.
She seems to have actively disliked her own gender.
Her relationship with Reagan was a bit odd too IMO....

Of course I loathe her an extra layer because she is a woman.

It's incredibly difficult to be let down so much by a member of your own sex- it was not unreasonable to expect her to be a woman who did things FOR women - instead of that she was worse than the men to prove a point.

When my dad went into jail in the 80's my mum, sister and I were sent to a housing estate in rural Scotland - no public transport, one very expensive shop. We didn't have enough money and by not enough my sister had malnutrition and the doctor prescribed orange juice.

Darkesteyes Mon 08-Apr-13 18:28:23

I saw this quote on another thread.
"she betrayed her sex on behalf of her class"

Darkesteyes Mon 08-Apr-13 18:30:31

Im nearly 40 and i remember her minion Peter Lilley (under her leadership and bidding) making a very mysogynistic speech about single mothers only just stopping short of saying they should have kept their legs closed.
It was vile vile vile. She was NO feminist

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