The Misogynistic Gasbag

A misogynist, the technical term for an emotionally-arrested male who scapegoats women for all his problems, is very often a gasbag because he feels compelled to over-explain to the world his ongoing “predicament.” His problem, as he sees it, is with women and all of their “flaws,” but of course the real problem is that he is a disaffected narcissist who, too cowardly to examine his own shortcomings, blames others, and women especially, for his suffering. He has much in common with the Bill Murray character, who plays the misanthropic weatherman Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, and as such is so imprisoned by his bitterness and self-absorption that his life is a recurring cycle of self-destructive behavior for which he learns no lesson or wisdom that might free him from his ongoing torment. 

Unlike the cantankerous weatherman who eventually frees himself from his cranky ways and learns how to become a grateful lover to Rita, the beautiful Andie MacDowell character, the misogynist has a low recovery rate and his journey goes from self-centeredness to an even worse degree of self-absorption, what academic gasbags call “solipsism.” His bleak prognosis can be attributed to his psychological profile that thrives on pathological lying and at the same time repels outside checks and balances to his skewed view of reality.

To give an illustration, I refer you to an athletic coach I used to know whom I’ll call “Ted.” He once boasted to me that his girlfriend came to their shared apartment to find Ted in bed with another woman. There was the predictable outrage and hostility. Pots and pans were thrown. Ted suffered punches, kicks, and scratches. But Ted remained calm and collected through it all, quietly dabbing the blood from the corner of his mouth. You see, he had a plan. His plan was both simple and diabolical. As he giddily explained to me, he simply denied to his irate girlfriend that there was a woman in bed with him.

“But Ted,” I said with disbelief. “Your girlfriend saw you in bed with another woman. With her own eyes. There’s no denying that.”

“But there is,” he said smugly. “By repeating the denial over and over, you plant the seeds of doubt and eventually she’ll see it your way.”

In his case, it took his girlfriend six months before she doubted what she saw with her own eyes. She finally apologized for questioning Ted’s fidelity.

The story is sick enough if we end it right there. But it gets worse. Ted explained that after his girlfriend said she was sorry, it was almost impossible for him to “forgive” her. In other words, he had come to believe in his own lie.

This manner of deconstructing reality and eventually believing it to be bedrock truth strikes the misogynistic gasbag as a show of strength and an opportunity to brag to his fellow misogynists about his trickery. In the company of men, the misogynist becomes his worst gasbag self, boasting about how brazen and imaginative he is in coming up with all sorts of fabrications that leave women powerless and bewildered. He operates under the undying conviction that his ability to lie and get away with it shows his triumph over women and life in general. He assumes that other men, like him, see women as “the eternal enemy” and any opportunity to dupe them is a victory for the Men’s Team. But in reality as the misogynistic gasbag believes in his own lies he will discover when it is too late that he has made a deal with the devil and must enter a condition of perdition for which there is no return.

One such gasbag who journeyed down the Path of No Return, we’ll call “Leonard.” I met him at an apartment complex I lived at in Bakersfield in the late 1980s. In his mid-thirties and recently divorced, Leonard was an attorney who had just transplanted to Bakersfield from Los Angeles. He had the long eyelashes of a camel, lambent blue eyes, and a head of curly sandy brown hair.  Jogging five miles every morning, the six-foot Leonard had a long-limbed, slender body and tanned albeit wrinkled skin, which he showed off by wearing an expensive collection of hand-painted Speedo briefs, some of which were adorned with leopard spots, others with zebra stripes, and others with tropical flora.

Leonard liked to “hold court” by the pool, bragging to men about his exploits with women or complaining about their inadequacies. He seemed to be a man of extremes, either exulting in his sexual conquests or ranting about how he was the victim of a world that was unbelievably stupid and that the other men at the pool should infer that he was, because of his intellectual superiority, someone so misplaced that the only way to soothe his pain was through endless forms of carnal self-indulgence.

The first day I met Leonard at the apartment pool he remarked to me in his high-pitched scratchy voice about how quickly his Speedos faded. He put the blame on the apartment janitorial staff who was obviously dumping too much chlorine into the pool, and these idiots continued to do so even after he had complained to the apartment manager repeatedly. As long as he believed the stupid janitors were conspiring to ruin his custom-painted bikini briefs, he had good excuse to be peeved. After all, they cost him seventy bucks a pop and he had to periodically drive back to L.A. to pick up fresh replacements.

His ongoing struggle with the pool’s high chlorine concentrations was just the first of a long litany of complaints that day. He also grieved about his state of affairs with women, especially the women of Bakersfield. Compared to the sophisticated, “fast and loose” women he dated in L.A., the Bakersfield women were “dumb hicks” who wanted to rush him into marriage, pop out several babies, and deprive him of the intellectual stimulation that he, a highly-educated attorney, thrived on. He said that Bakersfield women were so dumb that when he had put a personal ad that stipulated that he wanted “educated women,” he received several calls from women who had, they boasted, graduated high school.
At first, I found the cynical, snake-tongued Leonard engaging and hilarious. Like him, I too had recently transplanted from a big city to the smaller town. We had that in common, at least, and Leonard invited me to his apartment so that I could listen to what turned out to be a drawn-out lament of his personal woes, especially as they related to “the Bakersfield dating scene.”

As I looked around his apartment, I realized Leonard’s inability find “the right woman” had less to do with his living in Bakersfield and more to do with himself. The bare apartment wasn’t really a home but a cavernous holding tank, a sort of limbo for someone who refused to believe had had really moved to Bakersfield. Inside, I saw the beige drapes closed, keeping out most of the hot summer sunlight. The walls were bare save the serpent-like shadows cast from the dozen ties that were draped over his ironing board. The brown imitation leather sofa was covered with a plain white sheet. He slept there. Uninhabitable, his bedroom was crammed with strewn clothes, mostly running gear, law books, and suitcases, which he still used as drawers. In the center of the living room was a small television perched on two cinder blocks. It was permanently set on MTV with the volume turned all the way down. In the adjoining kitchen was a metal fruit bowl full of Tootsie Rolls. By the sink was a garbage bag of old popcorn. His refrigerator only held boxes of cheap white wine.

In spite of his high-status job, Leonard had much in common with a homeless person. He lived in unnecessary squalor. He had poor hygiene. He had dandruff, he smelled of alcohol, sulfur, and other fetid body odors. For all his pride and his fanatical attention to his custom-made Speedo briefs, he was incredibly blind to the fact this his breath smelled like rotten eggs.

In addition to living like a bereft homeless person, he pitied himself for living in Bakersfield, claiming that he had settled, however tenuously, in this “armpit” because a lucrative law firm had tempted him with a five-thousand-dollar bonus and a leather executive chair with his initials carved in it. In other words, Leonard had moved to Bakersfield for a measly six-thousand dollars’ worth of enticements.

I believed none of this. The real reason Leonard wanted to live in Bakersfield, as far as I could tell, was that he loved being a big fish in a little pond and he could enjoy preying on his victims in a town with less competition than in bigger cities. And prey he did. Every couple of months or so, the whole apartment complex would be rattled by the enraged screams of a young woman, wailing “You promised!” or “You liar!” After a while, everyone knew Leonard had just broken things off with another woman whom he had led to believe was in a serious, committed relationship. On one occasion the aggrieved woman became so spiteful that she made hundreds of photocopies of his mug shot and stapled it around the complex with a caption: “BEWARE! MAJOR SLEAZOID ON THE LOOSE!” I saw one of the photocopies high on a telephone pole and imagined the aggrieved woman must have used a ladder to get it so far beyond anyone’s reach. Leonard looked exhausted after spending the whole day tracking down the photocopies and spent the evening nursing his wounds by the apartment hot tub while drinking wine coolers and uttering inanities to himself.

The aftermath of his monthly breakups with their usual tantrums and retributions weren’t the only source of Leonard’s grief. In fact, there was something that caused him a far deeper sense of self-pity: After being emancipated from Leonard’s clutches and dating men who took them more seriously, these women would invariably enjoy a sort of rebirth whereby they matured, regained their physical and emotional health, and became, ironically, suddenly “fine catches” for Leonard who, seeing them in their newly transformed state, would seek to get them back into his life again. But now these women would have no part of him since he had come to represent a time in their lives when they were lost and imprisoned inside his pathology.

For example, one of his girlfriends seemed like a ditz as I heard her talk in her mousey voice all day at the pool. She whined constantly and seemed to have no self-respect as Leonard bossed her around and criticized her in front of all the other sunbathers. Inevitably, he broke up with her and I had forgotten all about her until about a year later when I saw her managing a restaurant. I barely recognized her. Her demeanor looked confident, poised, and mature. She stood taller. Her hair was attractively yet simply styled. She didn’t have the same lurid make-up caked on her face. Seeing me stare at her with disbelief, she smiled graciously, then said hello. I was still having a hard time believing it was her. I was about to tell her how much she had changed,  but before I could say anything, as if reading my mind, she said, “I know. I’ve grown up. I’m married now. I’ve got a job. Life after Leonard. It’s done wonders.”

She was just one of many who had undergone a similar rebirth. The After Leonard testimonials had become so abundant that the forlorn attorney was having a harder and harder time meeting women who had not heard of his bad reputation. And worse, all around him Leonard could see the wounded women he had dismissed as losers suddenly blossoming into mature, confident ladies. And he resented it. “Why couldn’t they be like they when they were with me?” he’d ask. “Why did they wait for me to break up with them before they grew up?”

He complained that it wasn’t fair. He believed their good fortune was obviously the result of their exposure to him, a worldly man with a “genius IQ”, and that it was he who had spurred them into the right direction. He would get drunk at the pool and tell everyone who would listen that he was their “starter boyfriend” whom they had used in order to prepare themselves for the “real” relationships that lie ahead. And they didn’t even appreciate what he had done for them. To the contrary, they had accused him of deceiving and exploiting them. The world wasn’t fair! Women were liars! Women were users who took the valuable experience they had gained from the great Leonard so that they could apply it to another, better relationship, all the while leaving poor Leonard in the lurch. “They were nothing before they met me,” he was fond of saying. “They were a blank canvass and I was the artist who painted their newly-shaped identities for them. And did they ever thank me? Ha!”

Pitying himself for being the “unappreciated artist” who had given life to a bunch of “blank canvasses,” Leonard medicated himself with greater quantities of alcohol and dated women who shared his fondness for drinking and who lived more and more on the fringes.
To justify his dating of marginalized alcoholics, he had developed a philosophy for which he was eager to share with the other men at the pool: Love was a joke. All you could expect was a relationship that, from its very beginning, was based on a clear foundation of superficiality and cynicism. You had to realize that all human behavior was rooted in self-interest and that love, therefore, was nothing more than a self-flattering illusion. It was better to have no illusions whatsoever and in fact it was far better for couples to actually hate each other from the very beginning. The hatred was more honest and realistic, rooted in the reality that relationships are all about exploiting your partner as far as she will allow you to. Armed with his “insights” and having no expectations of fidelity, Leonard felt safe from disappointment and believed that, wise and world-weary, he was smarter and better than everyone else.

It was around this time that the apartment manager evicted him. Leonard’s violations were legion. He broke all the pool and hot tub rules, drinking wine and beer out of glass containers and staying in the hot tub beyond the 10 P.M. curfew. But most of all, it was the noise he made in his apartment as his scorned girlfriends, overcome by tantrums, made such a ruckus that on several occasions the police had to be called.

After he unceremoniously left the apartment complex, I didn’t see him for over two years. Then one evening I went to a club to celebrate my new full-time teaching job in Los Angeles and I saw him by the bar. I did a double-take because I didn’t believe it was him. His looked shrunken and his skin was more leathery than I had ever seen it. His loose skin on his small head reminded me of a geriatric elf. I said hello to him and he seemed to struggle to recognize me as well. But then in a great outburst he called me “Hank,” tightly grabbed my hand, and pumped it up and down in an exaggerated handshake. I tried to let go of his reptilian claw, but his grip was firm and my struggle caused him to spill his red wine on my shirt. His breath was insufferably rotten and I tried to step back but he insisted on keeping his face close to mine.

“Shit, Hank. You’re still here? I thought we promised each other we’d get out of this hellhole a long time ago. Oh well. We’re still here, aren’t we. No place to go now. No one would have us.”
As if this last thing he said was funny, he erupted in a spray of bitter laughter and I smelled a billow of dank rot. I tore loose from him and backed away several feet. I decided not to tell him my name wasn’t Hank. Instead, I told him it wasn’t too late to leave this town. I was leaving for a new job at the end of summer. He narrowed his eyes at me as if my leaving was an act of betrayal. He then shrunk away from me, wobbled toward the bar, ordered another wine and turned around again. This time he wasn’t looking at me or anyone in particular. He was looking at the sea of women’s faces on the dance floor. He had no doubt dated dozens of them. Nodding his head, he looked proud as if he were acknowledging this fact, but then his face turned to an angry scowl. He pointed at the women on the dance floor, shook his finger, and shouted, “You were nothing before I met you! Do you hear me? You were nothing but a blank canvass in need of an artist. And did you ever thank me? Ha!”

He continued with his tirade like a homeless person on a busy street corner. Parachutes of spittle flew out of his mouth as he jabbed his index finger. He was writhing in the torment he had created for himself, a self-proclaimed expert on women who appeared to be trapped inside a bad Hollywood movie and who, unlike Phil Connors, would enjoy no character arc, no transformation, no redemption, no Third Act. Just the Second Act for which there was no end.

Comments

[Ed S.]

I have to disagree with your assessment of Bill Murray as Phil Conners in "Groundhog Day." More than merely a mysogynist, he is a self-hating misanthropic Everyman ("I don't even love myself", he says) who is frustrated by the self-imposed limitations he has (unknowingly) put on himself which have kept him trapped in the shitty unsatisfying life he (many of us) find ourselves living, day after day after day. "Groundhog Day," btw, would be on my short list of one of the Best Movies with a Message.

[Jeff McMahon]

Ed, I agree with your analysis. I too love the film.

Perhaps I've used a Procrustean structure to fit Phil Connors into my gasbag model. But you're right. Phil's psychology is much more complex.

[Nico]

This one is very good, I am still somewhat shocked by the guy who used an old Nazi technique (repeat a lie until it is believed) and the Leonard. This is "Scared Straight" for young adults. lol

[Jeff McMahon]

So many of us believe our own lies over time. I suspect OJ thinks he's innocent. Jeff