Reference: Cat hate = misogyny?

So, I just ran across this on Facebook:

roach-works

hey so, as a man who works with other men, here's a quick relationship tip: if he doesn't much like cats, that might just be a personal preference. if he hates cats, if he tells you he hates cats as soon as he hears that you have a cat and love your cat, he's an asshole. he's telling on himself.

every guy i've ever worked with that makes a point of telling me how much he hates cats as soon as i mention that i have a cat and love my cat, is always someone who is regularly cruel for fun and who laughs in the breakroom about the mean things they do for fun to their girlfriends and children

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luscious-theomorphic

I wish I could articulate all the ways this makes sense and why it makes sense and stuff but it's just like... something something misogyny something something resentment of creatures that don't need you and don't hang on your attention and approval all their lives.

As Marie-Louise von Franz says:

The cat, in contrast to the dog, has never sold its soul to man. It has a kind of egocentric reserve. The cat says, ‘You may stroke me and you may serve me,’ but it never becomes your slave. And if you annoy it, it just walks out on you. In women's dreams, therefore, the cat often is an image of something feminine, independent and sure of itself, just what modern women so often lack. That's why the cat goddess comes up in women's dreams as a positive model of feminine behavior. It is not brutal; it does not display any masculine features. It is feminine and, at the same time, very firm, very identical with itself. The cat is not very amiable, but very true to itself.

(The Way of the Dream)

Also, drawing a connection to serial killers and cult leaders; these brutes hate nothing more than independence in those they're trying to control. For centuries, during the middle ages, women were accused of witchcraft and murdered if they showed affection to animals. This same time saw some of the most horrific torture and murder of cats, and a fear and hatred of them. If someone doesn't like cats that's one thing, but if they hate cats, maybe you should GTFO of there.

What women want

I'm continuing to post amazing quotes while I work on other stuff. The below is from a highly recommended podcast of interviews with Jungian analysts by Laura London. This particular interview is with Russ Lockhart, one of my new Jungian heroes. Enjoy!

Russ Lockhart: (Said to Esther Harding at a party) "Freud asked the question 'What do women want?' and I want to know your answer."

And she was quiet for a bit, then she looked at me and then she put her hand on my shoulder and she said "Women want men... But there are so very few."

So that was like a one of those lightning bolts that go through one, you know? That pierces you and you know that that is a truth. And you’ve really got to take that into account, you know? Where are the men? What’s happened to the men?

Laura London: Well what do you have to say about that?... What did that comment mean to you?

RL: Well, it’s meant a lot to me in a lot of different things over the years. Certainly when I did the Jung lectures that became Psyche Speaks there’s a lot of material in that book that was prompted in a way by her comment. Later, as I thought more and more and more about it, it relates to this problem of power and how so consumed most men are with power. And the near absence of any real consideration we’re taking into account Eros. By Eros I don’t just mean females, I mean the genuine principle of relatedness is not very big on most men’s radar. Power is.

LL: What are they looking for in pursuing power?

RL: The solution or the cure for inadequacy.

LL: The solution or the cure for inadequacy.

RL: Yes.

LL: And they’re not finding it there. Or are they?

RL: No. No. They find all kinds of things, of course. There’s so much that reinforces that collectively and in the way other people respond to power that people enact, whether by rejection of that power (by the way rejecting power is not the same as Eros). Not having power is not the same as Eros. So Eros in that sense is not quite the opposite of power. The opposite of power is powerlessness. Eros is a completely different realm.

You might think of power as vertical, and if you think of power as vertical then there’s obviously all the symbolism of verticality is male oriented. Eros is horizontal. Much of the symbolism of the horizontal is feminine. So vertical power tends to be the enclave of the male. I’m not even going to say masculine, because I don’t feel like you can have a truly masculine quality or presence unless you have a relationship with Eros. And that’s what Esther Harding was saying.

Speaking of Jung podcast #16: Russ Lockhart, (1:11:40)

Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

- Jung, "On the Psychology of the Unconciousness"

Symbolism: Cat

"Playing Cats" Takahashi Shotei

(Image from Etsy store ArtPink)

Re-post number 6 from Queen of the Night:

Cat symbolism

As with owls, cats are often associated with the night – both animals hunt at night, both are characterized by their ability to see well when we ourselves can’t. And since the unconscious is like the unknown night, how you feel about the unconscious will generally be reflected in how you feel about animals of the night, whether you hate and fear them or find them fascinating and helpful.

In keeping with their connection with the unknown and unseen, one idea that often crops up with cat’s is invisibility:

Albertus Magnus, the teacher of Saint Thomas Aquinas, insisted that a man could become invisible by wearing on his thumb the ear of a black cat, boiled in the milk of a black cow. Apparently the recipe was never tested; or if it was, the negative results were ignored."

The Arabs assigned very peculiar properties to such a stone [tiger’s eye]. They believed it could make its wearer invisible in battle. They also believed it could prevent an adulterous wife from conceiving children by her lover, provided her husband made her drink milk in which the stone had been dipped, before he went away on a journey. Perhaps the stone, perceived as an eye, was thought to affect various phenomena of vision and watching.”

http://www.wisdomportal.com/Cats/CatSymbolism.html

All of this is pretty obvious I think and not super interesting, the whole black cat thing and everything. The first interesting thing I found about cats was Marie Louise von Franz's description of the cat and how it often symbolizes a kind of independent femininity:

“The cat in our country stems originally from Egypt, where it was once a divine animal. There, they had a cat goddess who was the goddess of music, sexuality, pleasure in life, and life-embracing feminine fertility. The cat, in contrast to the dog, has never sold its soul to man. It has a kind of egocentric reserve. The cat says, ‘You may stroke me and you may serve me,’ but it never becomes your slave. And if you annoy it, it just walks out on you. In women's dreams, therefore, the cat often is an image of something feminine, independent and sure of itself, just what modern women so often lack. That's why the cat goddess come up in women's dreams as a positive model of feminine behavior. It is not brutal; it does not display any masculine features. It is feminine and, at the same time, very firm, very identical with itself. The cat is not very amiable, but very true to itself.

(von Franz, Marie Louise, The Way of the Dream)

Cats are usually thought of as female... which makes it a bit weird for me because most of my cats have been boys. People are always asking me how “she” is doing, even though I've told them repeatedly that “she” is a he. There's just something about cats that people intuitively feel is feminine, and, this is just based on a very small sample but my impression is that people who don’t like cats often generally don’t like “girly” things either. Cats are Aphrodite-like animals; sensual, associated with pleasure, fertility and drinking (not just Bast but Sekhmet, Bast’s blood-thirsty sun-lion twin, was only appeased by alcohol mixed with blood). Bast’s temple in Egypt was described as small but beautiful, surrounded by water on three sides (very Aphrodite).

Another god associated with cats and alcohol is Dionysus, the god of drink, who’s usually portrayed wearing a leopard skin. The Dionysus man is sensual and fascinating, like a leopard, and also as dangerous emotionally. Cats have that Dionysus quality of sensuality but without the danger. Maybe that’s what people who hate cats really hate; the desire for sensual pleasure which refuses to be controlled. That independence and refusal to be controlled is an integral part of the cat:

This calm, cool exterior bleeds over into the Tarot to convey a sleek mood of secretiveness and obscurity. The cat is an ultimate authority of its own inner realms. It needs no permission to behave in one way or another - therefore the cat must be given full reign to rule as it sees fit.

http://www.tarotteachings.com/cat-symbolism-in-tarot.html

It makes sense that under Christianity cats would fall out of favor; cats are sensual animals, animals of Aphrodite (pleasure) and Dionysus (ecstasy). Body-negating and full of hatred for earthly pleasures, such a religion would hate animals that symbolized pleasure. (“Christian: Satan; darkness; lust; laziness.”) (http://www.wisdomportal.com/Cats/CatSymbolism.html)

All these ideas of connection between human and animal were more or less diabolized under the Christian system, which regarded animals as soulless or demonic, or at the very least devoid of any feelings that needed consideration. Men, jealous of women's propensity to make pets of animals and treat them with love, soon found ways to condemn women for sensual, affectionate relationships with their dogs or cats. A woman seen fondling or talking to her pet fell under suspicion of witchcraft. Even a woman who spoke to any animal, as one might say "Hello there" to a squirrel or a bird, could be considered a witch. During the centuries of persecution, women were often burned for keeping cats, or nurturing lambs, or talking to frogs, or raising colts, or even for having mice in the house or toads in the garden.

What really surprised me about the cat symbolism in my own dreams is my sudden realization that, for me, they’re one half of a split animus complex. This may be why they’re always male in my dreams (I’m sure the fact that my cats are all boys has something to do with it… or it may be that my cats are always boys because of my complex??) I read the following recently and a bolt of realization hit me:

The animus in the dreams of a woman in psychotherapy often displays an even sharper split, appearing again as two quite different ego-projected complexes. One is the dominating, judgmental, condemning side, personified as a patriarchal father, dictator, judge or menacing animals such as a tiger or bear. These animus personifications seem to attack the woman dreamer, corresponding to involuntary thoughts that may attack her in waking life, saying, "What good are you? What could you accomplish? All you do is worthless."

In the same woman, a complementing ego-projected complex may be weak, helpless, or impotent. He may be an oversensitive artist; a deformed, crippled, or crazy boy; a distant, indifferent, or frigid man unable to love; or a weak, helpless animal.”

(Donald F. Sander & John Beebe, Psychopathology and Analysis, from Murray Stein’s Jungian Analysis, p. 312)

This is true, for me at least. In all of my dreams, whenever cats have appeared, they’re always in danger. I always have to protect them and keep them out of danger. Or if it’s not a cats it’s another weak, helpless animal. I always thought these weak animals were my inner little girl but it may be that they’re really images of the weak, helpless half of a split animus. I do know that at least part of my animus is cruel, domineering and, at least until recently, degrading. Are these cats and other helpless animals the other half of my animus? It seems so to me, right now at least.

One final facet of the cat that I’d like to explore, one which is particularly appropriate in light of the way cats are in my own unconscious: the role they play as protectors. Cats, at least in Egypt, are actually seen as protectors of the Pharaoh. Cats kill not only grain eating vermin but also snakes and scorpions. In Egyptian mythology cats were protectors of the Pharaoh; the cat goddess Bast fought Apep, the snake god of evil, and killed him: “[I]n other myths, it was the cat goddess Bastet, daughter of Ra, who slew Apep in her cat form one night, hunting him down with her all seeing eye” (and here again is the association with vision and night-sight.)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apep)

Cats are, in an obvious way, associated with sensuality and pleasure, independence and the night. But they’re also warm-blooded protectors against that which is poisonous, or that which would devour the nourishment the unconscious depends on for life. Perhaps the independence and joy in earthly pleasures is one way of protecting ourselves from these things in our lives.

Posts:

The Cat: Redeeming the feminine

Cat hate = misogyny?

Response: Can women have an anima?

[The original article by Karen Hodges, “Reflections on Women, Depression, and Soul-image,” is available on the internet as a download (I can't get a link to include in this post - you're going to have to search Google for it. And you should, it's a great essay.)]


I don't know what this woman experienced, whether she does in fact have an anima or she's mistaken. Maybe what she's experiencing is actually the anima. Or maybe it's the Self/the Wise Woman. The powerful, Goddess-like woman with a scythe is the Goddess of Death, the most mysterious part of our lives (along with rebirth - we come from Mystery and return to Mystery, this Goddess is both the usherer of the mystery as well as the Mystery itself.)

The more I think about it, the more her description of her experience feels like she encountered the Wise Woman, or possibly an inner Goddess figure (i.e. the Self). We women need contact with the deep, powerful, numinous feminine in our lives; it's such a desert out there. This may be why so many feminists dislike the Jungian concept of the animus and anima. The most obvious reason is because they (and others - I've actually found men's rights activist Jungians!!!) confuse archetypal attributes with blanket statements about all members of a specific gender ("Jung says the anima is nurturing, and the animus is good at thinking! That means he thinks women can't think!!!") Clearly, I don't think this is what he was saying but I'll save that for another post.

The truth is, there's not enough of the feminine out there, whether it's the nurturing side, or the Goddess as the devourer. The nurturing Great Mother and the sexy Aphrodite Goddess of attraction may be more sought after, but even they're not really given respect. The Great Mother is demeaned as "merely" a stay-at-home-mom, while Aphrodite is called a slut and a whore. The only Goddess who gets any respect is the meek, inoffensive Maiden. But even the Great Mother and Aphrodite are treated better in this society than the Reaper Goddess; a woman may be denigrated for being a mother or a sexual being but society will try to obliterate her if she manifests Kali. I believe that what offends the author, and other women, is the lack of space for, and respect for, all the different parts of us; the ugly, the terrible, the horrifying, as well as the pretty and nice parts.

Then again, the point isn't to prove what's "right" and tell people what they "should" believe. It's not a goddam religion. From my perspective it looks like this and not that. That's what's important; if anyone else gets a little shock of recognition that shocks them into understanding their truth, then that's great. But the important thing is for us to discover our own truth, as much as possible. Then we can see if maybe it has value for others.