What constitutes Misogyny?

[barracuda]

Jeff and Barracuda must have access to all the IP addresses, no? phpbb, right? If this were my forum, which of course it is not, I would make it a condition that all new members admit (at least privately to the mods) to previous monikers as a condition of their membership. If nothing else it would ease your mind.

It's not quite that simple, unfortunately.

super duper fuck off.

Not helpful.

[Plutonia]

I see your point, but I'm tired. I cannot abide this blame blame blame. To simply discuss misogyny in our culture is tiring ... it makes women remember and re-experience a whole host of insults and injustices... but then to be BLAMED essentially for the very treatment we get at the hands of our oppressors..

it gets too much.

I agree. It is very difficult and wearying. And re-traumatizing.

If you choose to step out, take a break for a while, that entirely understandable.




(It's a lame video but a great song)

[tru3magic]

I would like to ask this of the women here....do you feel a male cop letting you off a ticket due to being female is a misogynistic act?

I wouldn't know because it's never happened to me, or any female that I know. I have been dealt with incredibly harshly by law enforcement on more than one occasion, not the worst of which was when I called them to rescue me from being beaten by my boyfriend and they actually threatened to press charges on me because I had defended myself with the PHONE, which I had been holding while calling 911 and he grabbed me so hard that the antenna of the phone gouged a mark into his chest.

Oh, I just remembered - another time a cop tried to force himself on me in his car. He was off duty though, so maybe that doesn't count. And I just remembered something else - a current big-wig in my local police department RAPED my best friend. She never reported. it was before he was a cop in this city. There was the one time that one cop treated me very nicely - it was after one of the incidents that I've just described, actually. He told the other cops to back off of me - maybe that's the evidence you're looking for????

I am extremely sorry to hear. I am honestly gritting my teeth reading those stories, there are no words. Some cops will be assholes. I have my experience with them as well, though not to that extent. Personally I have known multiple women who have been pulled over and let off, which is why I wondered some other views. Experiences from the far end of each spectrum?

Tell them it's all women's fault.

If anyone thinks this (i.e it's their fault) about any opposing group, in my opinion their viewpoint is flawed.

I believe the asshole who posted above you that started this latest tirade has that 'flawed viewpoint.' If you'd be so kind as to say that directly to him instead of filtering it through ME, a woman who didn't make such and outrageous claim, it'd be appreciated.

Come on people - you can see right from wrong here. Go after the bad guys FFS.

My point was that if anyone thinks that, which you are implying he is, then IMO the viewpoint would be invalid. apologies you took it personally.

[tru3magic]

Those are very harsh *and damaging words. From the little I know you have experienced some personal pain/invalidation, I don't see the purpose benefit or positives of imposing those same feelings on others.

hello again - kiss my ass

Do you feel being rude to people is of service to women's empowerment?

[Joe Hillshoist]

Why are folks putting words in my mouth?

I didn't blame our misandrist(sic) culture on women. I wasn't attacking or blaming women.

...And I ain't pittin' the blacks against the womens. African Americans have their own valid grievances against our generalized American system of 'justice', as do men in general... as do women.

...And I'm not downplaying womens' issues. I'm countering the OP artist herself, and others, that maintain we live in a predominantly misogynist culture, as opposed to 'what constitutes misogyny'. The thread really ought to be retitled based on the content, including by the author herself.

You said this:

Would you like to know how it came to be so easy to scapegoat such a disproportionate number of men in this society? By holding them to matriarchal standards. Men are expected, genetically and, ironically, culturally, to be less subservient, and on the flip-side, more confronting, and they are punished mercilessly for it, both legally and extra-legally. When women do demonstrate less subservience... as a related and potent example, men and women are pretty evenly divided on drug use representation within society, yet many, many more men are imprisoned for drug crimes.

If you can't see the difference...

I mean what you said effectively constitutes misogyny. You are blaming women for the state of the US prison industrial complex and its racist incarceration ratios.

I mean what else are you saying? Am I misinterpreting you?

Where did these "matriarchal standards" you are blaming for the current incarceration rates come from? The obvious conclusion is women.

If its somewhere else perhaps you should explain where.

[wallflower]

When we broadly define misogyny for purposes of discussion as a cultural attitude against women, it's quite reasonable to begin to address approaches to cultural change. But culture is the big thing so conversations about it tend to sprawl. That's not a bad thing, it's just that probably it means we need more and different threads.

My feeling is that my liberation as a man is intimately tied up with women's liberation. As a man I don't get hit with the bloody end of the stick of misogyny, but I'm still harmed by it. I'm harm by other cultural attitudes too, for instance the unconscionable penal system in the USA. Misogyny is a wicked problem and as such touches on all sorts of other problems. It is important to talk about problems. But it's also important to recognize that the rhythm and flow of threads sets up somewhat informal boundaries. I'm not so good at recognizing those boundaries.

Anyhow I do hope that those who want to develop discussions about problems which are interrelated with misogyny will do so. Perhaps even a thread discussing what sorts of interrelationships would make for productive discussion threads more or less growing out of this thread is in order. I'm not sure, except to say there is much unfinished business here.

Having said that bit about unfinished business, this thread is a genuine accomplishment. Misogyny is not talked about enough in general discussions because it's a difficult subject. This thread has been very productive and I've enjoyed the contributions of everyone who's posted.

[Plutonia]

My feeling is that my liberation as a man is intimately tied up with women's liberation.

Yeah. I think so too. We aren't going to do it without each others help.

[Stephen Morgan]

Morgan could probably tell you more about the monastic social order of Medieval England. I think the figure is 60% of the population lived collectively in monasteries.

Well, most of the population were peasants, it didn't make much difference if your immediate landlord paid his rents to the monastery, the bishop or the earl. Just wanted to point out that abbeys, mixed sex monastic establishments, were always run by a woman, the abbess. That was pre-1066, mind.

[Stephen Morgan]

@lyrimal (AKA embittered former poster, no doubt).. hmmm. after re-reading I think current poster. but anyway...

That isn't meant to be me, is it? I know you think I'm a horrible person, but I hope you don't think I'm ashamed of my views, or cowardly enough to hide behind sock puppets and so on.

There are many terrific and useful discussions that we could get in to about the justice system and why people end up in jail, etc. Poverty and lack of education, cyclical abuse, in the case of aboriginal and native peoples there is a serious culture clash that makes for a spiral towards encounters with the 'justice system' and the unfairness of these things needs to be looked at. NO DOUBT.

But you know what ANOTHER really important aspect of the fact that there are far far more men in jail than women is?

Men commit more crimes.

Deal with it.

Women don't apply for so many high-paying jobs, women do work they enjoy instead of whoring themselves to the highest bidder, women make up most the voters but don't vote for women. Suck it up and quit your whining.

And by 'deal with it' I mean not only that you should accept it, but that if you want to see it change you'd better get off your ass and get busy educating young men that might otherwise be ensnared in the prison system - work with them on addictions, gang interactions, literacy, mental health and psychological problem. If you want to KEEP them going to jail in record numbers here's what you do:

Tell them it's all women's fault.

Now get your head out of your ass because that's the end of my patience with your bullshit.

What we need to do is provide a proper education and a realistic path out of poverty, so that social scientists asking poor boys what they want to do get answers other than "go on the dole" and "professional footballer". Obviously the feminist bias of the education system isn't the only thing that needs to be overcome there, the main thing that would help would be to reduce inequitable wealth distribution with nice high tax rates for the rich which would need to be ruthlessly enforced. That doesn't mean there shouldn't also be a systematic rebalancing of the education system toward the class disadvantaged by the current system.

Of course even that aspect is "feminists", not "women". However, I see some virtue in teaching people the identity of their oppressors, one of which is feminism (of girls as well as boys, although boys get the worst of it). Isn't necessary, though, they'll probably figure it out themselves eventually.

Men commit more crimes.

Men are convicted of more crimes. I don't know the exact numbers, but this is true. It is my opinion males also commit more crimes. Lastly, it is my opinion that females are more likely to not be issued a ticket/fine from a male cop, probably further skewing the statistic.

I, too, believe men commit most crimes, even though some of those crimes shouldn't be crimes. Women commit an equal share of crimes in the home, things like domestic violence, but less outside the home.

I would like to ask this of the women here....do you feel a male cop letting you off a ticket due to being female is a misogynistic act?

IT is a statistical fact that women receive considerably shorter sentences when convicted of the same crime, even when convicted with a man for having been partners in the commission of literally the same crime.

what the fuck do you care - are you trying to find a job?

Casually, it's been known to happen. It's a question of working potentially being less unpleasant than signing on. I am pragmatic about these things. But either way, as I've said before, I base my interest in these things on abstract justice, not the nitty-gritty of my own life.

I think he is trying to prove his point about male and female job opportunities being fairly equal from 10 pages back(?) That study has NO WHERE NEAR ENOUGH information to be considered acceptable though.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=12287887

"Female candidates who didn't include a photo with their resumes were called in for an interview 16.6 percent of the time [...] and 13.7 percent of men who didn't include a picture."

Same information, different study. The facts are plain, the same CV with a female name is more likely to get you the job, or at least an interview.

nothing he ever says has anywhere near enough information to be acceptable.

in fact almost nothing he says is acceptable in any way.

Flattery will get you nowhere.

The single most damaging statistic to modern American domestic equality and human rights (from the American domain, with which I am familiar) is the fact that nearly ten times more men than women have their very freedom and lives taken away from them by our supposed system of justice... letting alone for now all the other very real ways men have it terribly worse than women. Because we live in the most incarceration-happy nation on this planet, this disparity, in turn, translates to American males living in a state of omnipresent jeopardy with which most American women simply cannot relate.

That would be "insecurity", per the evolutionary psychology style article from before. Obviously it's the business class cashing in on the suffering of others, paying for false convictions, lobbying for harsher sentences, to keep their private prisons going. The role of men in modern society is to suffer for others, whether in the military or in prison or in the nastier parts of the workforce. Men are commodities of little value which can be made to suffer for a healthy profit. The same thing can't be said of women.

Would you like to know how it came to be so easy to scapegoat such a disproportionate number of men in this society? By holding them to matriarchal standards. Men are expected, genetically and, ironically, culturally, to be less subservient, and on the flip-side, more confronting, and they are punished mercilessly for it, both legally and extra-legally. When women do demonstrate less subservience... as a related and potent example, men and women are pretty evenly divided on drug use representation within society, yet many, many more men are imprisoned for drug crimes.

To be fair, due to the greater pressure on men to earn to spend and be in positions of apparent authority men might be more likely to take up dealing, on top of using. Although in American I'm not sure how much that would raise the chances of incarceration.

...In no way, shape, or form am I advocating more women be locked up or executed.

Isn't the incarceration rate in the states a race issue (with other shit on top like privatisation, drug laws etc.). This thread is about misogyny.

They are both forms of bigotry but to set them up in opposition like you have done is to play both sides against the bosses.

Well, race is an important issue but the disparities are greater in regard to sex. Differences in sentencing for the same crime, for example, show quite clearly that blacks get longer sentences than whites, and men longer than women, with the sexual difference being bigger.

[lyrimal]

If you can't see the difference...

I mean what you said effectively constitutes misogyny. You are blaming women for the state of the US prison industrial complex and its racist incarceration ratios.

I mean what else are you saying? Am I misinterpreting you?

Where did these "matriarchal standards" you are blaming for the current incarceration rates come from? The obvious conclusion is women.

If its somewhere else perhaps you should explain where.

I should explain to you?

super duper fuck off.

American men are disposable and American women are treated unfairly, oftentimes inhumanely. What does it matter how I answer where this campaign originates? It'd be like answering "who brought down the towers?"

It'd be like answering "who decides that 14 to 52 year-old males within conflict zones be summarily rounded up and executed or imprisoned?"

"Matriarchal standards" is not meant to mean matriarchy imposed standards, but rather a proven strategy for men to avoid the more dire consequences of dutifully falling to more brutish impulses.

[Stephen Morgan]

Where did these "matriarchal standards" you are blaming for the current incarceration rates come from? The obvious conclusion is women.

If its somewhere else perhaps you should explain where.

As it was actually me who introduced the word matriarchy into this thread, which might not have been a very good idea, I feel like I should address this. It doesn't come from women, it comes from the collective views of society. If the same thing were happening to women there would be much more outrage, not just from the political feminist movement but from men burdened with the protective impulse imparted to them by their allocated role in society. When school kids were asked if women, and then men, should be able to stay at home to look after the kids, both sexes tended to say yes for women but only a few percent more said yes for men amongst the boys than the girls, hovering around 50/50. These ideas and feelings, which are responsible, neither stem exclusively from women nor are found exclusively in women. Women are the major beneficiaries, but that doesn't make them responsible.

I mean, there are working class people who vote Tory.

[compared2what?]

I'm countering the OP artist herself, and others, that maintain we live in a predominantly misogynist culture,

afaik, no one has been arguing that we live in a predominantly misogynist culture, in the sense that it's more misogynist than it is any other kind of oppressive.

WRT the prison stuff, may I point out once again that the threat of prison does not affect men as a class. So it's not misandry. Do you get the distinction? It's this:

Men who haven't committed crimes do not go to prison for being men. The wrongfully convicted of both genders tend to end up in prison: (a) because they're poor; (b) because the cops and courts are fucked up; or (c) both.

Women who haven't done anything besides be women, on the other hand, are paid less than men of comparable experience for the same work; are charged more for the same services; are frequently subject to harassment and assault for being female; aren't considered authoritative enough to hold most positions of authority; and (on and on and on) just because they're women.

Ergo: Women are discriminated against as a class. So are numerous other groups of people who can be classified by a common characteristic. Obviously.
_____________

Life is very rough for practically all people, including practically all men. No one denies it. But you can't fucking change that by changing how you think about men. Because the problem is that life is rough for practically all people. That does not have gender implications. It is not capable of a gender-oriented solution.

You are sowing dissension. Please desist.

[compared2what?]

I would like to ask this of the women here....do you feel a male cop letting you off a ticket due to being female is a misogynistic act?

Never even heard of this happening. There's no tradition of cops giving the ladies a break.

[compared2what?]

Though I question the idea of “sociopathic monsters that are born evil” because even though we all have the capacity to be violent and abusive, I think that social conditions are deliberately fostered and perpetuated to make it more likely to behave that way.

I have no strong views on the subject. I just meant "evil people whose evil isn't explicable by any conventional means that anyone's aware of."

But consider that if the (aprox) equivalent number of women that are raped is the same as boys and rape of women = misogyny, then the rape of boys = ________ ? Then misogyny and ________ are equally represented in the culture, the idea of which (potentially) makes our idea of the culture take a different shape.

The number is not approximately equivalent. The 1-in-6 stat in that study was for boys who had been touched sexually. That's on the same continuum as rape, but it's not rape. Further, the rate in that category of abuse is 1-in-4 for girls. The sexual abuse of children is a cultural phenomenon of its own, and it's not limited to the abuse/rape of boys.

There's just no way to make sexual-violation numbers gender-equal. Even approximately. I'm sorry. But girls and women are sexually abused, harrassed, assaulted and raped more than boys and men. I don't say that because I'm happy about it or because I relish the thought, obviously. It just is the case. There's nothing I can do about that.

[Canadian_watcher]

I went to bed, woke up, and realized that I'm a masochist.

So I'm here to cop to my hangups etc:

1. I am trying too hard to keep this discussion "on track" when really, as wallflower pointed out, these discussion always and necessarily wander (which is a positive)
2. I seriously *am* tired... this is a draining subject matter
3. I am impatient with people who join the discussion in such a way as to make us go back to the position of explaining that this isn't a thread about how bad men are, or an attempt to make the case that women have it any harder than the vast majority of men, albeit for different reasons.
4. I wonder if I have a bit of ADD as I am always doing three or four things at once and I sometimes miss the point of what people are saying, which leads to all kinds of confusion and repeated effort on everyone's part
5. I sometimes feel very alone in this (don't we all, though?)

--------------

I apologize for going off the rails and letting my freak flag fly.