Misogyny: When Dependency is Repressed
When dependency-anxiety is unexamined, it can harden into shame. Shame converts to anger. Anger seeks an object. The primary feminine becomes an archetypal carrier to receive blame, abuse, dismissal.
image created by B. Littleton
I was asked to explain my ideas in a previous post about misogyny. Can I translate my thoughts into simpler words, direct statements, ones not so politically correct? The original post is about my learning how extensive Jeffery Epstein’s financial influences extended into education, academic grants, government and scientific pursuits, and how his policy of aggressively excluding women scientists from the conversation has been revealed. My focus was why is misogyny still foundational in the world, today?
Here’s my take on it:
Somewhere in the middle of my post I wrote:
“For some men, witnessing the immensity of gestation and birth can evoke awe so profound that it destabilizes their sense of agency (read: power, certainty, control, belonging).”
My meaning is:
“when a man experiences the realization of what a woman goes through in childbirth, he is overwhelmed, and is challenged to come to terms with the idea he does not have this power, this ability, this capacity. There is absolutely no way he can do what a woman does with her body = give birth. This becomes psychologically specific and can destabilize, which is a key pivotal point: how does a male-dominate society deal with this inequality? What is destabilized?
Control.
Autonomy.
Centrality.
A man provides fertilization, yes. But he does not carry, metabolize, risk, bleed, tear, or labor in the same embodied way. That asymmetry can be metabolized as reverence — or defended against.
I wrote:
“All humans experience separation from the maternal field. But male identity, in many cultures, is organized around repudiating dependency more aggressively.” “In many cultures, masculine identity is formed through a sharper disidentification from the maternal field. Separation from the womb becomes not only biological but ideological. This dependency must be denied, wiped out, aggressively eliminated.”
My meaning is:
“once a male realizes he is in the world and has to make his existential way out of a womb and into a purpose, he experiences abandonment from being ejected from the feminine. In times where matriarchal powers were integrated into educational systems, into stories of life and death, this phase of abandonment was converted into inner strength, connected purpose, and alignment with the notion while humans are separate, but equal, working together is a primary construct to make life function well. We are not in competition with each other, we need each other to make life whole. This equates to working within the forces of Nature, and not believing Nature can be controlled. Yet, the opposite inverse is the norm in our history: efforts are consistently designed to rebuke Nature, we are in constant competition with each other, and abandonment issues fuel addictions which are repressed and ignored fears around dependency. In other words, if all of us were in better relationship with our needs of being dependent in the womb, and were able to transfer this dependency in to the non-womb world, our dependency would not be repressed, or live in our shadow self. We would love our dependency, and not covertly be in relation with dependency via addictions. Again, vulnerability is primary.
In times, such as ours, where matriarchal powers are diminished, punished, outlawed, and bullied, the option to take up the Hero’s Journey, to come to terms with profound vulnerabilities, realizations and challenges of Life, as written about by Joseph Campbell, Jung, Hillman, Robert Bly, can provide men a pathway and language of acceptance, understanding, wisdom. Yet, many men are curated to repress the call to reconcile their humanness, so in their repression, they excel in the opposite inverse: abuse, limit, ridicule, and legislate away any embodiment of matriarchal power or value. Controlling women is the exact pattern of controlling Nature. This is not a conscious choice, this is still a required beliefs normalized in our culture. I doubt that a guy sits at the dinner table and decides how he is going to deal with his existential fear by perpetuating misogynistic behavior. The system already has the tracks laid. He just has to show up and run the course.
I wrote:
“When dependency-anxiety remains unexamined, it can harden into shame. Shame can convert to anger. Anger seeks an object. The primary feminine becomes an archetypal carrier to receive blame, abuse, disrespect, dismissal.”
My meaning is:
Repressed and unmetabolized, dependency and fear turns into anger.
→ shame
→ anger
→ projection
→ punishment
This is classic shadow dynamics, a psychological process, not an accusation.
There is so much more to say, and read, and question, such as how do we speak about systems of dominance that weaponize disowned vulnerability?
Here are three authors I find helpful to find language for our conscious choices:
Simone de Beauvoir (woman cast as “Other”) Simone de Beauvoir.
Vandana Shiva (linking ecological exploitation and patriarchal systems) Vandana Shiva.
Susan Griffin (Woman and Nature as entwined symbolic targets) Susan Griffin.
written by Bren Littleton
image created by B. Littleton
Tin Flea Press c. 2026