By Amanda Knox
 
About a fortnight ago, some friends and I decided to watch The Maltese Falcon together. Seeing as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? has always been one of my favorites, I thought I would like it. Instead, I ended up storming out of the living room. It turned out I couldn’t stomach sitting through this moment:

Brigid: It's more than I can ever offer you if I have to bid for your loyalty.

Spade: That's good coming from you. What have you ever given me beside money? Have you ever given me any of your confidence, any of the truth? Haven't you tried to buy my loyalty with money and nothing else?

Brigid: What else is there I can buy you with?

[Spade kisses her roughly]

Let’s back up. The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 film noir based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett. The hero, Sam Spade, is a private detective investigating the case of a beautiful and mysterious client, Brigid O’Shaughnessy. From the get-go, Spade is portrayed as hyper-masculine. After his partner is murdered, he demonstrates no emotion except controlled aggression, because “it's bad business to let the killer get away with it.” He openly despises effeminate henchmen like Dr. Cairo, who he can easily disarm. As for the women in his life, Spade’s demeanor depends on his sexual relationship with them. Spade patronizes his strictly-professional secretary, calling her “angel.” He barely disguises his contempt for Iva, his clingy ex-lover. And finally, Spade showers the principal femme fatale, Brigid, with judgement and possessive lust.
 
It’s one thing to know, on an intellectual level, that women have always been subordinated, degraded, and objectified by men. It’s another thing to see it with your own eyes, particularly when it is so taken for granted. What most struck me about the misogyny of The Maltese Falcon was how it didn’t pronounce itself. It just was.
 
It reminds me of my conflicted feelings when listening to one of my favorite genres of music: R&B. The soulful crooning of my favorite singers—Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Etta James, Ray Charles—portrays a deeply misogynist America.
 
There are some obviously misogynist songs, like Jimmy Soul’s “If You Want to Be Happy.” He says women are untrustworthy because they’re not properly subordinate. Unless, of course, they are ugly:
 
A pretty woman makes her husband look small
And very often causes his downfall
As soon as he married her and then she starts
To do the things that will break his heart
But if you make an ugly woman your wife
You’ll be happy for the rest of your life
An ugly woman cooks meals on time
And she’ll always give you peace of mind
 
Barbara Streisand’s “My Man,” portraying the woman’s side, is even more devastating:
 
I don’t know why I should
He isn’t true
He beats me, too
What can I do?
Oh, my man, I love him so
He’ll never know
All my life is just despair
But I don’t care
When he takes me in his arms
The world is bright
 
These kinds of lyrics are occasional, and stand out as cringe-worthy—a kind of sweet, lullaby version of today’s pimps and hoes. Insidious are the much more common and seemingly innocuous lyrics about unrequited love. The man can’t afford his woman. The good woman’s place is in the home. The bad woman wants to be free. Oh, I just can’t live without him…  
 
Nowadays, we’re used to hearing about bitches and sexual violence. It took me until my mid-to-late-twenties to come to appreciate much of hip hop and rap because I felt so alienated by its content in my more tender, impressionable youth. I internalized, rather, the subtler misogyny pervasive throughout classic entertainment—Dean Martin and Disney. Only with years of experience and introspection have I been able to reconstruct my own perspective and observe misogyny from a distance, so that it doesn’t hurt to hear.