Why misogyny?

Writing in Washington Monthly, Kathleen Geier argues that while the current debates over contraception and language are not new, the attacks on women are more extreme (I have some examples here) and the language more hateful.
“One way in which things are much, much worse for women these days than 20 years ago,” Geier writes, “is the sheer amount of virulent misogyny that is openly expressed, and tolerated, in our society. It feels to me that, in many ways, our culture is much more openly sexist now that it was then.”
I think she has a point. It’s hard to imagine Bill Maher publicly throwing out the c-word to describe Sarah Palin 20 years ago, or the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank calling Hilary Clinton a “mad bitch.” And while there were certainly politicians, pundits and activists who wanted women barefoot and pregnant, a bill requiring women to carry stillbirths to term wouldn’t have made it very far (IMHO).
Geier suggests the Internet offers new channels for men to vent their spleen anonymously (check out this article for examples). Also, our culture is a lot more sexualized, and the taboos about what’s acceptable to say are a lot looser. Beyond that, she proposes, “the new misogyny is actually a sign of feminism’s success, and that most of the sexism is perpetrated by old white guys bitter about using the patriarchal power they once had, yet refuse to go gentle into that good night. But plenty of young men engage in this kind of behavior as well.”
Kevin Drum, on the other hand, thinks the misogyny has always been there, it’s just more visible now.
I think all these are factors, but I’m going to focus here on it being a backlash to feminism’s success. As Martin Luther King famously said, there was never any trouble in Egypt when the Israelites submitted to bondage: The trouble came when Moses told Pharaoh they weren’t taking it any more.
The same with feminism. Hilary Clinton wouldn’t have taken anywhere near as much flak 40 years ago, because she’d just have been a First Lady without a career or political aspirations of her own. Women’s liberation in the 1970s horrified a lot of people by asserting women’s right to have careers, be treated equally, and not be slut-shamed, but we’ve come a long way since then. I think that’s making the right wing even more frantic to put women in their place.
For some people, fixed gender roles are hugely important. Because they define manhood by doing things women can’t do, or having authority over women, or controlling a woman’s sexuality or being acknowledged as superior to women (or other groups). Or maybe just knowing that a woman won’t leave them because she depends on their money (a couple of years ago, Forbes argued that as professional women with good incomes were more willing to exit a bad marriage, men shouldn’t marry professional women).
In the modern world, the male advantage still exists, but it can no longer be taken for granted. For men who see life as a zero-sum game, that’s unacceptable: Equality for both sexes is no different from female domination. As Echidne of the Snakes once pointed out, women’s equality is often presented in the media as if it were the extreme opposite of patriarchal dominance instead of the midpoint (the extreme would be giving most of the power to women, rather than sharing it).
Unlike Geier, I’m not surprised young men feel the same way. Even if they didn’t live in the days when it was acceptable to fire a woman just for being a woman, it’s not as if the idea of The Man Should Be Boss has become as fringe as Whites Should Dominate Black People. And the same emotional issues about masculinity still apply.
But new or old, I agree with Geier the misogyny is vile.