I do not understand misogyny.

                  Neither in an Ivy League frat house – nor the Offal Office – nor in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

                  This is no brag. I wish I understood it. Many violations of our common code I steer clear of though they tempt. When pomposity slips on a banana peel, I laugh, knowing I oughtn’t. Younger I reveled in salacious dreams. No choirboy I. But to abhor and abuse a woman for being a woman? What humiliation! What damning self-reproach! Even to fantasize “grabbing by the pussy” would suffuse me with self-disgust.

                  The misogynists in a frat house or White House are easy to loathe. But Shakespeare? No more magnanimous or comprehensive soul walked the earth. Yet Shrew is a vilely misogynistic play. Shakespeare idolaters contort themselves to excuse it: the playwright, just starting out, needed a hit (which he got); he was angry at the wife he’d abandoned in Stratford; he was wrestling with his sexuality; he didn’t really mean it, etc.  No dice. The text damns him. He wrote it – and did nothing to suppress it, knowing better. True, fifteen years after Shrew, he painted a loathsome rapist’s portrait indelibly – in Measure for Measure – and after his early efforts, his female heroines radiate grit and grace. He loved women at least as much as he hated them; but hate them he did – in the Sonnets he confesses it – he couldn’t help himself. Why?

                  Here’s my hunch. Men are humiliated by our lust, penalized by penises whose importunacy overwhelms judgment and transforms us into fiends. It’s infuriating: we’re better than the guidance of our groins. We don’t want to want what we want so much. Instead of damning ourselves for our weakness, which is no fun, we blame those who tempt us. Men who hate women hate themselves.

                  Why don’t other creatures detest their opposite gender? Because they have no choice. They’re the only way they can be. Right and wrong only exist if optional: good can’t be good without the chance of being bad. I can envision a preferable version of me – and when I fall short of my promise – and do I ever! – it gets my goat.

                  Why are some men misogynists and others not? Culture contributes to our corruption. The bros in frat house or White House cheer each other on, making a virtue of their vileness. Detestable testosterone becomes a manly test. I doubt all those Cornell frat boys engaged in that gang rape with equal zest – but who wants to play the wimp and endure the scorn?

                  Sexual insecurity inflames hatred. Timidity about capability often translates into bravado. Those who enjoy intimacy seek to keep it joyous – why spoil one’s sport? Rapists indict themselves.

                  Education sets expectations. All of us need to be whipped into shape. The parents of those White House and frat house bros share the blame for their behavior. My parents, though stingy with affection, left no doubt about propriety. “Thou shalt not rape” feels as ingrained as my DNA – never, no-how, under any circumstance. Shakespeare may have felt like a brute toward women – his Petruccio is persuasive – but I doubt he ever brutalized. Few have loved as fervently. And love knows when to say when.

                  Barbarity is resurgent in our society. Crudity, cruelty, criminality, violence, vileness are becoming more common. Our news is as noisome as it is noisy. Our collective mouth needs rinsing with soap. Goodness suffocates beneath the sludge.

                  How to mend our ways? One decency at a time. Do not acquiesce to the putrescence. Denounce, do not shrug. Let your light so shine.