Mommy, What’s Missagenknee?

That's how my six year old daughter pronounced it, when she asked me the question. "Mommy, what's misogyny?" And before I answered her, I knew exactly why she was asking.

For the past several months, there’s been some tough conversations in my house. You see, my 5th grader has been studying government, learning about the electoral college, watching the debates and reading about policies, politics and having a platform on which to run. So, she learned about what it means to be pro-choice versus pro-life; we discussed gun control, immigration, taxes, wages, conservative versus liberal, global warming, and the branches of government and their responsibilities. 

My kids started to develop strong feelings towards the officials running and often, I would hear my little one say, ‘donald is a jerk, I don’t like him.’ So, I would then ask her what she meant by that, and she would say because he doesn’t like people, he wants to build a wall and he hates women.  I would then reply, ok, I understand why you think he’s a jerk but no name calling…I didn’t want my kids to be like other people that would call Hillary a liar and not know why they thought that or had no evidence or basis for their thinking, they simply regurgitated what they heard. I wanted them to have an opinion based on facts.  

It’s very clear that while watching the news, we heard a great deal of reports describing Donald Trump as xenophobic, misognynistic and racist, that Hillary Clinton is a liar and cannot be trusted, so we had to talk about what those things mean. And from that my children drew their own conclusions.

It’s also very alarming that the school had to send home a letter assuring families that they are safe to come to school if they are undocumented. These are very crazy times when you don’t know how to explain the insanity that the white house has become. 

(art of MMM)

So, after correcting my six year old’s pronunciation, I explained that misogyny is the hatred or dislike or mistrust of women. And she said to me, why would anyone hate women, we are amazing. I said, you’re still my little munchkin and not a woman yet, but you’re absolutely right. Women are amazing!