The purpose of this research is to examine the proposition that North American society is deeply misogynist. The plan of the research will be to set forth, with reference to a modern culture informed by Christian tradition, the effects of misogyny on women relative to their self-identity, their bodies, their relations with other women, and how sexuality itself is understood and affected by it, and then to discuss whether and to what extent misogyny may be internalized and practiced by women in the modern culture.
In recent years, there appears to have been an increase of interest in, discourse about, and indeed confusion over the status and changeability of social roles of both men and women in all cultures. Research into socially determined sex roles of men and women has been a part of this increase. By and large, research studies appear to indicate that, even in the midst of change, traditional patterns and perceptions of appropriate social behavior persist where sex roles are concerned. Indeed, there is evidence that, despite certain shifts in the public perception of men and women in society, the establishment of conventional, socially approved sex roles begins almost from infancy and continues into old age.
The importance of religious authority informing social sanction of approved sex roles cannot be overestimated. Nor can the religious sanction for biases favoring male dominance of society. Dominant culture has historically made difficult the project of asserting women's self-identity as a perfectly normal and natural aspect of human experience. Secker's observation that the Catholic Church either fails to speak to the experience of women or denies the moral legitimacy of articulating that experience as problematic relative to the moral structures embedded in Church tradition, even (or especially) when engaging in rhetoric about the impact of women's ideas on Church issues, illustrates this point. She cites the presumpti...