I Didn't Think Educated Men Would Be Misogynists Too
It goes beyond illiteracy
James Baldwin’s bafflement, almost childlike yet so deeply profound, expressed in his essay “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” comes to mind:
Negroes want to be treated like men: a perfectly straightforward statement containing seven words. People who have mastered Kant, Hegel, Shakespeare, Marx, Freud and the Bible find this statement impenetrable.
The same could be said about the case of women, although this time more encompassing — even the non-negroes are involved.
For most women, they just want equity, freedom and appreciation. They want fundamental human rights, to work and earn the remuneration their work deserves, to choose what to do with their bodies, and not to be “objects” in the hands of other people to do with as they see fit. How is this too much to ask?
Immanuel Kant’s philosophy is instructive. He states that rational human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else. The fact that we are human has value in itself. Therefore, maturing is realising that it is wrong to treat a conscious entity as a means to some other end; that it is wrong to take a girl to dinner with the hopes of getting laid. Because, like that, the dinner is only a means to a selfish end — getting…
