Soraya Chemaly: Male Supremacy
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Why is misogyny so widespread, even when men claim to love and care about women, even among those who believe they are feminists? Male supremacy helps explain this phenomenon.
The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism defines male supremacy as follows:
[A] cultural, political, economic, and social system, in which cisgender men disproportionately control status, power, and resources, and women, trans men, and non-binary people are subordinated. Such systems are underpinned by an ideology of male supremacism, the belief in cisgender men’s superiority and right to dominate and control others. While male supremacism also intersects with other axes of oppression, such as racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, and heterosexism, it motivates and undergirds the types of events described above. Male supremacism manifests in various ways, including physical and sexual violence, militarism, and exertion of control over women’s, trans men’s, and non-binary people’s bodies.
These norms pervade everything we do, even if we rarely or never speak about them out loud.
Soraya Chemaly has been writing about, and fighting, male supremacy for decades. Her new book, “All We Want is Everything,” analyzes male supremacy, cogently demonstrates its existence, and offers insight on how we build a better world. I truly loved this book. It’s so tightly argued, chock full of accessible statistics. It might be the book to give to the man in your life, if only to see that his beliefs do not change in response to new information.
This is Soraya’s second appearance on the podcast, and I’m so lucky we got to talk again. In this episode, we discuss a wide range of topics, such as:
What male supremacy is, and how it interlocks with other systems of oppression.
Why and how male supremacy conceals its own existence.
The myth of a boy crisis in education, and the social purposes it serves.
The norm of affirmative action for men in colleges and elsewhere.
How schools reinforce gendered labor in parenting and marriage.
Men’s refusal to accept anything women do as work.
The weaponization of women’s fatigue, and why depriving women of rest plays such an important role in their oppression.
The nature of activism as a group struggle across generations, and how we sustain activism when we become demoralized.
You can find “All We Want is Everything,” all of Soraya’s books, and all of the books I mention on the podcast at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.
About Soraya Chemaly
Soraya Chemaly is an award-winning author and activist, who writes son topics related to gender norms, inclusivity, social justice, free speech, sexualized violence, and technology. She is the director and co-founder of Women’s Media Center Speech Project. She is also the author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, The Resilience Myth, and the newly released All We Want is Everything.
You can find her articles in numerous publications and anthologies, in talks and media appearances, and just about everywhere anyone is discussing gender.