Misogyny v Feminism, we thought having a look at the two polar opposites would be fun…

Bukowski’s Women.
This novel is Bukowski at his most misogynistic where he has had some success with his writing, no longer need do menial jobs to pay rent and mainly involves around several long relationships and multiple one night stands under Bukowski’s Henry Chinaski pseudo name.
There’s parties, there’s girls, there’s the horse track, there’s women but above all there is a lot of drink and not a lot of references to continued writing.
Some of the misogyny is fairly tame compared to authors such as Henry Miller, William Burroughs or even the authors own short stories however I picked it for this article since he occasionally flips position to a few of the ladies points of view where he is regarded as just a lecherous drunk or when visiting a lover upstate and fails to ‘get it up’ one even he is sent back home like a dog with his tail between his legs.
The famous Bukowski humour is in there as always for instance where his psychotic ex ‘Lydia’ find out where his new girl friends place is;
“I’ll go and buy more liquor. I’ll stay the night with Nicole, maybe a couple of nights.
I bent over picking up the glass when I heard a strange sound behind me.
I looked around. It was Lydia in the Thing. She had it up on the sidewalk and was driving it straight towards me at about 30mph. I leaped aside as the car went by, missing me by an inch.”.
When you begin to add up the number of girls who randomly turned up at his door you begin to wonder why considering he was relatively unattractive, liked to argue, a drunk however he was a mean street beat writer and told it how it was from his view point.
Despite Women being notorious and Post Office being his most acclaimed work I’d recommend Factotum, Ham on Rye and his short stories as Bukowski’s more essential and initial reading, but this is from someone who likes a good pop song and places ‘Women’ in high regard.

Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.
Mystique is touted as one of the 1960s most prolific insights into feminism. The concept is that housewife Betty Friedan investigated what her college mates got up to post college via an open answer survey and interview questions.
Her conclusions were that although the suffragettes had won the women’s right in the 1920s the girls who grew up post world war two had taken many of them for granted.
She puts across many good arguments in favour of this with her primary source material and secondary sources from other anthropological, sociological and psychological studies. Regarding the parts of the psycho analytical material “Finally!”, I thought to myself, “This middle aged woman has managed to explain some Freud in layman’s terms!”
The section that is often quoted is goes along the lines of housework done by a housewife needs the intelligence of an 8 year old child, therefore additional productive tasks should be done by a woman to give strength and growth.
One piece of secondary source material she quoted I found intriguing was;
“Many girls will admit that they want to get married because they do not want to work any longer. They dream of being taken care of for the rest of their lives… it usually concerns a man who has the strength of an indestructible, reliable, powerful father, and the gentle , givingness, and self sacrificing love of a good mother. Young men give their reason for wanting to marry very often the desire to have a motherly woman in the house, and regular sex just for the asking without trouble and bother…”
I feel this is still true today if you were to interview the readership of The Sun.
Perhaps due to the age, started in 1957, of the book aspects such as Autism are not fully explained and she has a bizarre argument on homosexuality beginnings (but does not end the argument) by explaining it is due to over mothered sons. I found this latter debate particularly bizarre, especially considering there is no reference to female homosexuality.
The first half of the book starts well, giving a relatively unbiased approach (in that women are sometimes as much to blame as men) however it goes astray along the way but the last two chapters are excellent reading.
Overall this is a good introduction to feminism but should be read with a large healthy pinch of salt.