Men Who Hate Women

          I am currently reading "The Girl Who Played With Fire" by Stieg Larsson, the second book of the series, "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." I recently found out that the original, Swedish title is "Män som hatar kvinnor", which directly translates into "Men Who Hate Women". When I first found this out, I was pretty surprised. That sounds nothing like "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo". The more that I thought about it however, I started to see why it was originally titled that. 
          Throughout this story, there are many, to put it so, "men who hate women". When I was reading the book, before I had this new information, I hadn't really considered them like that, or really thought about just how much sexism there really was throughout the book. There are quite a few male roles in the first and second book that are extremely prejudice and gross towards women, and I never really realized the fact that they do just plainly hate women. It's gross. Many of these characters include Nils Bjurman, Martin Vanger, Gottfried Vanger, Nikolas Hedström, Gunnar Björck, Richard Forbes, Carl-Magnus Lundin, and Alexander Zalachenko. Nils Bjurman, Salander's "guardian", is a sadistic rapist. Gunnar Björck had hired prostitutes that were there against their will, and Alexander Zalachenko, the root of it all, repeatedly hired prostitutes and had many murdered, and continuously raped and beat Salander's mother. All of these men consider males to be superior to females, call woman by awful names, and often commit volatile crimes against women such as rape, murder, and other related offenses.
          All of these men are in some way related to, or have had some encounter with Salander. Lisbeth Salander, a moral, independent woman, with what some might call an odd physique. Salander is such a unique character. Although legally declared "socially inept" and not able to handle her own affairs, she is extremely smart, and fully capable of handling her own affairs. She is not socially or politically important or well known, and yet, all of those men mentioned above have been one way or another defeated by her, often physically, and in extremely dangerous situations, proving that women are clearly not inferior to men.
          I think this is one of the main ideas of this series. The first and second book (I haven't yet read the third) are filled with heinous crimes, and dangerous mystery that the reader often gets wrapped up in. Throughout the book, you find yourself wishing with all of your might that these "johns" will get punished, and that their crimes will be discovered, and that that sexist police officer will get fired, and that Mikael Blomkvist will publish another scandalous article on some sort of wrong doing, etc., but you get so wrapped up in it all that you don't think about the message as much.
          The fact of the matter is, there are still men out there who "hate women" and think of themselves superior, and there are racists, and people who's opinions are not morally right. There's always going to be someone out there like that, no matter what. In fact, something I really admire about Stieg Larsson's writing is that he's able to make the reader angry. By choosing specific phrases of dialogue, and giving minor details to actions and portrayals, he is able to get the reader to really hate those terrible men. He makes the reader fired up, and definitely gets the reader to root for Lisbeth Salander. Salander, who is bisexual, "incompetent", and doesn't confide in government and takes matters into her own hands, conquers all of those men. This shows that anyone, no matter who you are, can fight for yourself, stand up, and do something about terrible wrongs in the world, even if they are incredibly dangerous.