The ‘In Conversation’ Series Presents:

A conversation about Misogyny with Dr. Karyne Messina, author of recently released, Misogyny, Projective Identification, and Mentalization, in conversation with Dr. Jeana Jorgensen, folklorist professor and writer, teaching at Butler University in Anthropology/Gender studies.

Dr. Jeana Jorgensen: How did you become interested in misogyny?

Dr. Karyne Messina: My interest started with Clara Thompson, an important person in the development of psychoanalytic thinking in the US. After moving to Budapest to work with the well-known psychoanalyst, Sandor Ferenczi, Thompson came back to the States and began to talk about her new ideas related to the doctor/patient relationship, starting the 2-person movement in psychoanalytic thinking along with Harry Stack Sullivan in which the focus shifted from the authoritarian doctor and the subordinate patient to two people communicating as a more equal dyad. This was a revolutionary idea at the time, and Ferenczi couldn’t talk or write about because Freud did not approve of his disciples disagreeing with his theories or techniques.

Clara Thompson gets little if any credit in the annals of history and has in some cases been denigrated for not bringing Ferenczi’s “right” or “whole” message. I believe this is due in part because she was a woman. While doing research for my book on Clara Thompson, I realized how many women have had similar experiences. I began writing about other women and groups of women who have suffered from misogyny.

Particularly striking to me is the current atmosphere of misogyny presented by men is the desire to control women’s bodies. While this has been the case for as long as words pertaining to our history have been written, men are now trying to control women’s bodies at the legislative level by trying to ban abortion under all circumstances, even in cases of rape and incest. This is absurd.

JJ: This need to control [women‘s bodies] is long-standing. In terms of the past, the Brothers Grimm, wrote and then shortly thereafter revised Rapunzel was who pregnant out of wedlock in the first version. When the Grimm brothers published first in 1812 it was in part as a nationalist project. A lot of their tales were aimed for a scholarly audience.

[In] their early version of Rapunzel, when the prince starts to visits Rapunzel [as] she is locked up in the tower by mother Gothel the witch, she ends up pregnant. [With] no sex education in 19 century Germany, [Rapunzel doesn’t understand what is happening to her body], so she asks mother Gothel “why does my clothing no longer fit” and “why has my dress become so tight.” That is how the witch finds out about their liaisons.

But in the later version they’ve edited [the story so], Rapunzel blurts out to mother Gothel that she is much heavier to pull up than the prince.

She has a dumb blond moment, essentially [for the sake of decency] They take out the mention of the pregnant female body. Rapunzel is still pregnant, but it is not remarked upon, her body is not a focus in this text anymore.

KM: Thanks for providing details about Rapunzel. Your clarification makes it clear that the blatant and subtle versions of misogyny have been with us for many years and both types live on.

I did an interview about my book [recently]and the person interviewing me told me about an incident that he had with a friend.

He said he was with a woman friend who was driving. When she stopped the car and parked, she started to gather several of her packages. At that time, the interviewer indicated that he ran around to help her. She said something like, ‘What, do you think I can’t manage?’ I asked this man if he felt injured by this question. He admitted that he was somewhat taken aback and a little hurt by the comment.

He added that he might hesitate before helping a woman again. I said that in these situations, it’s always good to ask if a woman wants or needs help. As is the case when paying a bill while out on a date, when men insist on paying the entire bill, it can be a subtle form of misogyny, especially if a woman wants to pay for her half.

JJ: I think that people have the right to be wary of [these small subtle acts] because there are a lot of expectations of what women owe men. I think [also that] there is this sort of assumption of the right kind of woman that deserves a man’s help that excludes a lot of other women. I think men are not being as helpful and gentlemanly as they think of themselves as being because — I think they are actually excluding women, women who are not the ideal sort of women — — someone they would want to date or marry.

KM: Yes, I agree. I’ve developed a story to illustrate the subtlety of misogyny — it’s comical and it’s meant to be, I call it, “Opening Day at the Ballpark.” I think often men [in book talks] can be defensive to start with, so it’s a little icebreaker to get people thinking about subversive misogyny. There were about 29 misogynistic things that happen in this little story.

The story goes like this: a boss goes around and picks up five guys on his executive team, women of course on the executive team — don’t get to go. It’s assumed they aren’t interested (the first subtle instance of misogyny), and the men are picked up one by one by a female driver. Each man gets in the rented limo called, “Car rental paradise — female drivers and stretch limousines — get the best for less” and tells his story about what went on the night before.

It starts with subtle greetings like, “Hey babe, what’s up?”

I’ve started using it as a little quiz in bookstores — I’ve given people [who win] a gift certificate to the bookstore. In one place a very bright 14-year-old girl got almost all of the questions right and in another place a man got 2. Anyway, that’s an aside. It’s an indicator of something, I think.

JJ: I agree that there are a lot of subtle elements of misogyny related to your example of a man just rushing to help a woman unload her packages despite her saying she didn’t need the help. I think there is a large-scale tendency to assume that women are incompetent and that we can’t articulate our own needs and that men will always know better than us.

KM: I have a theory about why this happens — it’s a defense mechanism. [It’s called] projective identification and is an unconscious process, where something that someone can’t stand [about him or herself] is projected onto another person. Then the recipient of the projection is the one that holds the quality for the projector. I think that qualities of weakness are projected onto women and therefore they become the weak ones. Men can maintain their, you know, strong, brawny manliness [that way].

I believe that it happens in domestic violence [as well]. For all kinds of reasons, a man will come home mad because of something going on with their day and they project frustration onto [their wives for making] the mashed potatoes too lumpy or [for having] unbathed kids or whatever. It’s the women who are now the incompetent [or troubled] ones.

What also happens in domestic violence and in a lot of these cases where the identification part comes in is that the recipient can start to actually feel what the projector has put on them and they may start to think “maybe I’m not a very good mother” or “maybe I am pretty weak”. Then that erodes a person’s self-concept.

This mechanism was coined by Melanie Klein in 1946, I think it’s really important, it also happens in politics all the time, particularly currently. It happens in cyberbullying too. Again, somebody puts something they don’t like about themselves on somebody who they see as weak or vulnerable to get rid of it, so to speak.

JJ: I completely agree with you, actually to take your domestic violence example, a lot of the time there is emotional abuse along the lines of gas lighting too. I can see those things working together.

Further, I agree with your assessment of masculinity within the patriarchy, particularly needing to uphold their concept that: “I am the strong one” and “I am the powerful one.” A lot of the gender theorists working on hegemonic masculinity say that’s how ideas about manhood and manliness are maintained: the man has to show that he is more powerful than other identity groups. So, he is heterosexual. He is strong and able bodied, he is not weak. He is definitely not a woman. Whether a man is sort of displacing his fears of weakness onto other men who are of lower status or onto women there is always another identity that has to be below him in order for him to be one this high ground of desirable masculinity.

I think we see the same things with other power structures that require a sort of weak, non-dominant other. Right now, I am reading a book called “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo and it’s basically projective identification but with race. In the US, a lot of white people experience what is called white fragility or this inability to have conversations about race because they feel so attacked and so defensive, “Oh, but I am one of the good ones, I can’t possibly be racist because this, this, and this,” but whiteness exists as a sort of a cultural construct in the US in relation to blackness, so this need to maintain a superior sense of identity [through phrases like] “we’re the normal ones,” “we’re the good ones,” “we’re the healthy ones,” and “we’re the backbone of this country,” even when it’s not true, because you need to have a sense of dominance over another in order to just function in terms of how you view yourself.

KM: The more I read and think about various aspects of misogyny, the more I see similar dynamics operating around me. The idea that it goes from the subtle to the very blatant is interesting. A very blatant example of [this is] these groups of men called Incels, for example, who hate women as a group, as a whole class of people, because they say that some girl or young woman in elementary school or junior high rejected them. To hate a whole group of people because of an incident in junior high — it’s a little much, but they have found an online community who supports their hatred and encourages it. It is a scary movement.

JJ: I agree, I think this is where the parallel between white supremacy and patriarchy is useful because in a lot of instances in a white supremacist society, white people are encultured to see themselves as individuals. But then people of color are seen as being representative of their group.

I think in patriarchy there is a that same dynamic between men and women. Men are seen in the world as individuals, while women are contained to an archetype. There are powerful parallels between the ways in which these power hierarchies of white supremacy and patriarchy work.

KM: One interesting concept about patriarchy is associated with loss and loss of attachment. Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider recently wrote the book, “Why Does Patriarchy Persist?” I am extrapolating from my own thinking with this — but the gist is that patriarchy is a reaction to loss.

Say that, when there is a break up between a man and a woman, men don’t generally sit around with their friends and process the loss, they kind of move on and “man up,” they don’t cry because our society shames them for doing so, instead they don’t process their feelings in the way women do, they may not process them at all.

So, if you can’t have love, the next best thing is power.

It makes sense, because we all come into this world wishing to connect, but when that connection is broken then there are a lot of responses that emerge. According to this book, one possible response is seeking out power rather than dealing with the feeling associated with the loss. That is where I weave in projective identification, it is better to see women as weak and placing men’s own weakness onto them so men can remain powerful. The more vulnerable part of the human experience thus can reside in women.

JJ: I like the projective identification piece because it helps accounts for the mechanism of being taught hegemonic masculinity — in being socialized to be a man. Boys and men have to displace that vulnerability on to someone else. Men are socialized in western patriarchy to not show weakness, not show vulnerability, you may have these human emotions, but you cannot show them or else you will be essentially a girl. You won’t be a straight white dude, you won’t be powerful enough, and someone else will come along and make fun of you or take you down. It makes sense that this vulnerability would have to be placed onto someone or something else.

KM: I think there is some way to resolve this, repair the damage that hegemonic masculinity has inflected. I see neuroscience as a potential solution. Louis Cozolino talks about the importance of storytelling and how it builds new neuronal pathways. He talks about changing one’s own narrative. It kind of gives a person more power than just being a victim of the past. As a psychoanalyst, I know that the past influences the present and future, but I don’t think people just have to accept that and that only, so I like his idea about a new narrative arch — a new story. We need to tell a new story about men and masculinity.

JJ: That is interesting, I have heard a lot of that — without the neuroscience — but rather the rationale for why talk therapy exists and what it does.

KM: I came up with a new word: “redactional identification,” meaning, one can redact aspects of learning or memory and they can edit their stories; change what they have learned or been taught about life in terms of socialization. I think it’s important to do this in conjunction with another person to help see things and gain new perspectives. to which a person might not have had previous access. So, if a person can have an experience through the lens of another, that is often what makes the difference 9K the past. It’s not ever telling someone what they ought to do, it’s just showing them that there’s not just one reading of your story.

JJ: This has been awesome, thanks!

KM: This has been wonderful, thank you so much, Jeana!