What constitutes Misogyny?

[Nordic]

The babysitter's wage and status versus the plumber's wage and status.

Well maybe I'm living in an enlightened community, but around here babysitters get paid pretty well! It's strictly a supply and demand thing here. Hard to find someone, someone you can trust, someone who's actually available, etc. So they get paid quite well here. $15 an hour most of the time.

We've had two babysitters who drive nicer cars than I do. Our latest has a BMW sports car. She's actually from a pretty rich family, who bought it for her.

(the previous message was mostly an aside. Please do not read any misogyny into any of my comments regarding babysitters)

[Stephen Morgan]

Yes, I agree. It's important not to lose those differences. When women say they want to be treated as equals to men, they don't mean that they want to be like men. They want their uniqueness from men to be understood as being as important as those things men celebrate in each other. And by celebrate, I mean pay respect to in both $$ and non-$$ format.

But would you want legal equality?

The babysitter's wage and status versus the plumber's wage and status.

A babysitter, when not just a member of the family, is most often a teenaged girl sometimes still in school. A plumber, on the other hand, is a skilled craftsman with a professional qualification and registration who may well be supporting a family. An equal wage would be fundamentally unjust.

I believe that American blacks know better than middle-class whites what it is to live as a black in this society,

Agreed.

and for that reason, have a far more authoritative opinion on just what constitutes racism.

Not agreed. Someone with an authoritative opinion on racism would be someone who had made a detached academic study of the matter. A knowledge of more than the victims of racism is necessary.

The misogyny question is roughly analgous.

Misogyny is not analogous to racism. Women are not an oppressed class.

Sheesh. Who knew?

barracuda knows what I mean.

[Canadian_watcher]

Men need self-respect and self-discipline just like women do. Biological fathers are the most reliable source thereof, and one of the main issues of the men's movement is that of access for fathers to their children, restraint of women's right to take their children to far off parts, stopping the belief that men are checkbooks to provide "child support" rather than proper support for children, a presumption of joint custody whenever possible, and so on. Organised feminists have uniformly opposed these moves.

I support the men's movement's position wrt access to their children. I'm sure there are specific cases where I'd not support someone - say an abuser trying to continue his abuse by bringing legal action upon legal action against the mother - but otherwise I consider it a part of my feminism to bring fathers way up in status. Equality, that's what I'm after. My motives are not entirely unselfish though. Women will never be equal in the larger society until fathers are equal in the smaller society.

The rappers and Gordon Gekkos of this world are the misogynists, although as they also hate most men the term loses some of its meaning. But they hate women, on the surface at least, for being women and men for other reasons. But they shouldn't be viewed as the wrongful father figures, but the wronged sons. They are the diseased minds produced by a diseased situation in their youth.

I agree. Perhaps you can extend this analysis to the women you rail against.

[Infanticide] is an example of a defence women have in court that men don't. Clearly it is unjust to be particularly lenient specifically because you kill your own children.

well, men can't have that defense since they can't give birth. I believe that the defense is based on hormones and post-partum psychosis.

Why did I start the thread if not to debate Stephen? To debate the rest of you. Stephen is a lost cause, any woman can see that. The rest of you though, that's different.

As with barracuda above, I reject the contention that woman have better vision that men. You, my dear, are a sexist.

well, I've just gone against my own better judgement anyway.

[Canadian_watcher]

I'm off to see "Adjustment Bureau" so I'm going to miss out tonight. have fun everyone!

[barracuda]

and for that reason, have a far more authoritative opinion on just what constitutes racism.

Not agreed. Someone with an authoritative opinion on racism would be someone who had made a detached academic study of the matter. A knowledge of more than the victims of racism is necessary.

We'll have to disagree there. Fredrick Douglas and Malcom X spoke with authority which couldn't be matched by academic detachment.

Women are not an oppressed class.

Not agreed.

[compared2what?]

Okay. I wanted to review the post I critiqued to see if I was putting words in Nordic's mouth unfairly, or if I still thought that the post really did use such universally understood and (sorry, N., not personal) classically cliched phrases and stereotypes to refer to women from start to finish that pretty much anyone reading them would know what their unstated implications were without even thinking about it.

And I'm sorry, but there's not really much to dispute on that score, as far as I can see. I mean, that's such widely recognizable language and stereotyping that sitcoms use it when the need to evoke this or that particular view of women arises. Everyone knows what they mean. I realize that Nordic might not have. Because writing, self-expression and communication just be like that sometimes. That's why my first post...Well, never mind. Not important. I'm just saying, again, that I'm not saying Nordic doesn't, as he says, love women.

Also, to err on the side of consideration toward those who have never heard anyone elaborating on what men are referring to with that when-a-woman-says-"We-have-to-talk" thing***, I thought maybe being more direct and taking out the loaded language might make the unstated stuff I was pointing to more accessible to those who don't see it. So here you go:

Hesitant to jump into this at all, because, well, when women say "we have to talk", it's usually a time where you REALLY have to watch what you say.

Women are emotionally needy and/or demanding, but you just have to tolerate that as cheerfully as you can in order to avoid an even more punishing scene of some kind.

Men don't have that problem. Just women.

I have found a few things in life.

One, women dislike women far more than most men dislike women. In fact, most men love women. But women? I don't know how many times I've heard women tell me that they don't have many female friends, they prefer male friends, they don't trust other women, don't even like them that much. I honestly have heard this from almost every woman I've ever gotten to know at all.

Again, women are motivated by emotion. And again, it doesn't reflect well on them. Because they're either unnecessarily hostile (men love women, after all, so why can't women?) or untrusting (ditto, more or less) or really actually untrustworthy and dislikable (ie, don't trust or like each other for a good reason).

Most men don't have that problem. Just all women known to the author.

Two, the men I know who seriously do not like women were all abandoned by their mothers as children.

In the very rare instances when a man doesn't like women, it's very understandably because a bad woman did something atrociously cruel to him when he was very vulnerable. I think it's clear who deserves sympathy and who deserves blame.

Me? I love women. I used to have more women friends than men. I was raised largely by my mother and my sister, and for most of my childhood my sister was my best friend, and my sister's friends were like my sisters. I found males to be mean and violent and generally interested in the most stupid stuff, like trying to leap over things on their bikes and breaking their arms, and torturing and killing small animals. Never saw a girl kill or torture a small animal, saw a lot of boys do that. Don't know why.

I love being the only guy in a crowd of supportive amiable women, less because women have specific good qualities than because they don't have specific bad qualities.

I do think that culturally, misogyny has been greatly reduced. Just watch a movie like "The Apartment" and you'll realize that women have come a LONG LONG ways in our society.

(Not very) implicitly: You're making a big deal out of practically nothing. Please see my first sentence for an indication of how I feel about that.

Are things equal? Hell no. Just a couple of weeks ago I found out some sophomore boy asshole was grabbing my stepdaughter's breasts in her geometry class. Did I kill the kid? No. Did I want to? Yes. Did we get him in serious hot water when we found out about it? FUCK YEAH. Where do these kids grow up, where they think they can just grab some girls boobs in class without her permission? Kid needs to have his ass kicked if you ask me, but I remained civilized.

There are always bad apples.

For a woman, there will always be the threat of sexual assault and that's problematic though for some unclear reason not indicative of any larger truth. On the upside, though I do say so myself, there are also sometimes good apples who contain their quite natural and even admirable violently angry impulses. Which, btw, don't just threaten women, but also keep them safe and protected. That's okay, no thanks necessary!

On edit: Watching my stepdaughter go from 4 to 15, and seeing what she's dealing with now, and has had to deal with in the last couple of years ...? Women have it a hell of a lot harder than boys. It's tough to be a chick, really damned hard, even if you're gorgeous and smart (like she is). It's tough!!!

A lovely and loving addendum. And a moving one, to me.
___________________

*** And I really don't know how you could have missed it, it's a classic of its kind, you hear it all the time. I mean, try googling it. Or its more common iteration, "We need to talk." Which yielded this from Salon:



To me personally, it has more of a clinging and emotionally demanding connotation than it does a scary and emotionally demanding connotation. But you see my point, right? It doesn't suggest lovely things. In fact, it suggests male resentment or fear of women. Seriously. Try searching it. That lame article I linked to must be about the 50th or 60th of its kind I've read since some point in, IIRC, the '80s when the cliche first burst upon the scene.

Or maybe that's just when it first came to my attention. I don't know. My point is: It has clear and widely known implications, and they either are or are very close to the ones I attributed to it when using the bad language etcetera.

I'm not trying to prosecute anyone, and will now drop it. I just wanted to make it as clear as I could do that I pointed to something because it was on-topic and because it was there, wittingly or otherwise. And not because I have an axe to grind or out of drama or out of the badness of my angry little heart.

And that's for Nordic as much as it is for anyone else. Because it was not a personal attack. And none was deserved. This stuff is, as I said, ubiquitous and routine and easy to overlook.

[Project Willow]

I'm not going to engage your defensive insults, well except to say, no, again, I don't hate men. (Let's all throw our hands up in a chorus of expasperation, 1, 2, 3, agghhhhhhh!) In fact, there are some in this very venue with whom I am masochistically overly-fond, in an almost sexist stereotypical way.

You actually accuse me of not having "the slightest interest in attempting to understand how she might view the world?"

Please. That is so fucking insulting. And nothing I've written suggests it to be REMOTELY true.

You are now just making shit up about me.

That was not a good choice for making a point, but in all honesty it crossed my mind. If I were to adopt an African American child, I would want to read folks like W. E. B. Du Bois, or Richard Wright, because I can't know what it's really like to live in darker skin, that would just be a choice that I hope I would make.

Again, it is obvious to me from your speech, (and a lot of it is language) not just in this thread but over the years I've been reading your various posts that you assess the woman problem almost strictly from your own male point of view. You don't show any sign of having been exposed to the ideas of fairly prominent female critics of patriarchy. We can't debate ideas that one party has no knowledge of. That's kind of what makes this exchange comically irritating.

[crikkett]

The babysitter's wage and status versus the plumber's wage and status.

Well see then you'd have to get people to value their children. Stop moving the goalposts!

[Project Willow]

Stop moving the goalposts![/color][/b]

And I'll cite you on illegal use of a sports metaphor, this a misogyny thread!

Upity feminists have no sense of humor anyway.

[compared2what?]

BTW, Nordic -- I know you don't like me, you make that quite clear. I don't dislike you, though. And that really wasn't a personal attack.

I'd say "actions speak louder than words" but we only use words here, so ........

I will try to like you more in the future. I really will.

This is, after all, just an internet forum, and if I were to meet you in person who knows how I might feel about you? I like to think I would really like everybody here, in person, with perhaps the exception of Sepka.

Seriously, no need. I hate myself, it's kinda nice to have some company!

By which I mean: Thanks, that was very gracious of you. I'm sorry I said that thing I hope but doubt you forgot I said. It was really, really bitchy of me.

Also: You know what? We probably would get along in person. Most people are easier in person than on discussion boards, I imagine. I know I am. Not so damn argumentative all the time, for example. But really, who cares? It's all okay whatever way it goes.

I mean, we disagree strongly on issues that are important to both of us. Neither of us has any problem declaring his or her convictions in no uncertain terms. This is an internet discussion board. A certain amount of heated and passionate conflict seems kind of inevitable. As long as no one's actually trying to hurt anyone else, I think a little imperfectly concealed dislike is perfectly okay. Okay? Because really: No hard feelings here. Just strong opinions.

One of which is that sweetness is to be much appreciated. So your sweetness is much appreciated. Thanks.

[wallflower]

In response to Stephen Morgan, his remarks in italics:

wallflower wrote:
Wow as a middle-aged white American male I know I'm stepping on thin ice trying to participate in this thread.

“Don't worry, dear. This board is extremely hostile to women and therefore you obviously have nothing to worry about. While we're on the subject of who we are, I'm a young white English man with a fondness for rational argument and a disdain for formal education.”

Simply pointing out that I am the beneficiary of privilege and that an aspect of privilege is being blind to the fact that privilege. In a sense stgnaling my willingness to have my eyes opened.

What's with the “dear?”

Quote:
Economic systems seem excruciatingly designed to disfavor women.

“In what sense? Ignoring the article in the other thread about how women are less likely to be unemployed, more likely to be university educated and so forth, ignoring that a capitalist system is designed to disfavour all poor people, in what way is out current economic system specifically designed to disfavour women?”

Capitalism encourages a genderless view of the workforce, but from a more general perspective of the way we live our lives gender has meaning. There are all sorts of activities we do to in order to participate in the the workforce. So for example a person may own a car and drive an hour long commute to work. The labor of driving the car daily to work is not counted in most economic measures but is real nonetheless. My contention is that women disproportionately are burdened by such unaccounted labor. This is one way in which our economic system disadvantages women.

Quote:
As a guy I am too often oblivious to misogyny.

“Alternatively as someone obviously caring about gender equality, as do we all, and who thinks women are worse off than men due to his cultural indoctrination, as don't we all, you may be overly zealous in seeking out misogyny, seeing it where it isn't and mentally objecting so as to lessen your subconscious guilt at being born into the alleged oppressor class.”

Perhaps I suffer from some “subconscious guilt” as man. But what I really am trying to do is to separate out various threads in re misogyny. One view is that misogyny is built into the cultural operating system. Another that misogyny is an ideology, or perhaps some sort of psychological pathology, that a particular person holds. Neither perspective is mutually exclusive, still they are different perspectives. So if the culture is generally sexist, there still can be men in the culture who are especially misogynistic. The existence of those men would seem to suggest that misogyny isn't exclusively caused by the cultural operating system.

Quote:
Third, looking at gender as a fundamental way of negotiating through the world, misogyny may entail strongly identifying male gender with good and any other identified with bad.

“I would argue that feminism, a gendered name for a gendered concept, reinforces the practice of seeing oneself primarily as a member of ones sex, the oppressed sex feminism supposedly seeks to liberate or the oppressor sex pressured to join up with feminism, a romantic notion to be Schindler. I don't see myself primarily as a man, not a woman, I see myself as a socialist, an poor person, a Christian, a football fan, a linux user, and several other things before being a man. A man I am but the mere fact of not being a woman isn't the defining aspect of my life.”

I hardly think I've made my arguments well, nonetheless it should be clear that I'm highly skeptical that adopting a gender-neutral position actually mitigates against disadvantages women in our society face.

I cringed a bit reading this post "Seriously, there’s nothing nice about Nice Guys®" at Pandagon. http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/seriously_theres_nothing_nice_about_nice_guysreg/ In part because my take on Stephen Morgan's view of me is a lot like Pandagon's "Nice Guys®."

Snip:

Notice the slight-of-hand? The quote from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is about a violent abuser, but our blogger Miguel says that this is about “socially dominant” men. I submit to the jury that “socially dominant” is not the same thing as being abusive or even insensitive. After all, by his own measure, Miguel appears to be proof of this. He is on a pity trip because he’s not socially dominant, but he is quite clearly an insensitive prick.

I would argue that it is true that women---and men---are quite often attracted to socially dominant, i.e. confident people. “Socially dominant” is a deliberately ambiguous term, and Miguel is choosing it so as to conflate a bunch of disparate personality traits, such as self-confidence and popularity with being aggressive or cruel. Which Miguel then proceeds to do, equating social dominance with “hyper-masculinity”, and blaming women’s biology. Without this assumption that confidence is always coupled with aggression, that popularity is always coupled with abusiveness, that straightforwardness equals pushiness, his entire argument falls apart.

In my previous post I tried to point out that while dominance and submission is a sort of complementary relationship, it seems to me that symmetrical relationships can be misogynistic too. Misogyny isn't rooted in the category of relationships, but rather in confusion about categories. The post at Pandagon makes this point in a funnier and more direct way.

[Searcher08]

I am now going to sit out on my back garden step and do my wee small hours (1am here in London) meditate with a smile on my face and gratitude for having RI and it's extraordinary, surprising people here :hugs:

[bks]

I hope I get to like a lot of you in person this summer

On the topic at hand, I think the bottom fact of mispgyny is the association of the female or feminine with weakness, and the concomitant association of the masculine with strength. Over time, those that see themselves as strong (or who wish to be seen as strong) can very easily come to regard those they see as weak with contempt.

There's pretty good anecdotal evidence for this in the content of male verbal sparring. What do males [particularly young males] call other males when they really want to insult them or degrade them? They call then names for women, parts of women, or names for homosexuals:

"Shut the fuck up, you whiny bitch!"

"Don't be such a pussy, you goddamn faggot."

Or simply: "Awww, what's the matter, are you going to cry? What are you, a little girl?"


Callin another man a 'woman' in an effort to insult him only makes sense if it is understood by all parties that to be seen as a woman is a very bad thing (maybe the worst thing).

Some have argued that contempt is part of the 'hard core' of fascist ideology. So yeah, misogyny is still a pretty big deal.

[Nordic]

Yeah, in one of the places I lived (I lived in a great many growing up), the standard insult to call a guy was a "woman." "You woman!"

I always thought that was just comically stupid. I never used it. Then again, I was despised by one and all at that particular school, a small town in Southern Wisconsin, where German-born new-kid actually-seen-part-of-the-world me, was a complete FREAK.

This was in the mid 70's. Anyone else experience this usage, or was it local?

[compared2what?]

I'm curious as to what you think about me. Not my political positions, but rather the interpersonal approach which I take to my interlocutrices, which I believe may be a real word.

I think you're an extremely smart, gifted, very funny and completely original writer/thinker. I'm also unaccountably fond of you. As I believe you know, since I've said as much more than once before. And I do realize that's a statement of how I feel about you rather than what I think about you, btw. Indeed, I mention it primarily in order clearly to distinguish it from an aspect of what I think about you, which....Hm. Well, it definitely occurs wholly and completely in the realm of intellect and not that of emotion. But it's very difficult to characterize in terms that convey qualities of thought rather than qualities of feeling.

But what the hell. I greatly enjoy and delight in the qualities of mind reflected in your posts sometimes, I must say. It's a literary reponse, I guess. Or maybe aesthetic-intellectual. Whatever the case, it just tickles me to death in a way that I like very much. And it's thought not feeling. But it's not thought that I could generate unaided. It's a thought response to thoughts originating with you.

Your stated views on women excepted. I should add, with a token nod in the direction of the topic. Because I both think and feel that those are profoundly misogynist. As well as politically misbegotten, sadly. By which I mean that being unable to agree with or even really understand you politically is a real loss, from my perspective. And I rue it, therefore. Whereas the misogyny is just misogyny. Seen it once and so on and so forth. Again, from my perspective, obviously.

Let's not talk about it, though, okay? Because we've been over it pretty damn thoroughly already. And while I can't speak for you with any certainty, it was at least my impression that neither of us gained so much as a single bare and pathetic scrap of any damn thing of any kind and/or in any form (known or unknown) throughout and quite likely beyond the universe during the process.

Despite which, I like you.

Neither reciprocity nor reply is at all necessary, btw. Although if I didn't address the question to your satisfaction, needless to say, please let me know.