What constitutes Misogyny?

[Canadian_watcher]

I'm reminded on reading this just how much information of high quality that we take for granted in ordinary communication, from the raising of an quizzical eyebrow, the inflection of a curious voice to the reassurance of a poke in the ribs... how much of that vanishes on a message board...

quite true. it is very difficult, at times, to know just the right way to either write or read something without those all important non-verbal cues. I'm sure that all of us come off on this board as being slightly or very different from the way we come off face to face. Speaking for myself I know I'm probably a lot quieter than any of you would imagine - warmer - I smile a lot and am told all the time how nice it is to see a smiling face. But I bet I don't seem like that sort through my posts here.

It would be so interesting to meet everyone and see for ourselves.

[compared2what?]

He just likes to harsh on women. PERIOD > and I'm sick of it. I wonder when you will be?

I am sick of it. I'm also sickened by it. However, while I don't even know if Stephen is the real person he purports to be, rightly or wrongly, I perceive someone's non-narcissistic and unique humanity in his posts, along with all the usual fixings that go along with it in all their usual paradoxical complexity, including but not limited to the need to be understood, the need to understand, the need to be amused, the need to be amusing, the need to make sense out of chaos, and the need to feel safe and whole.

What I do not see in Stephen's posts at more than a truly exceptionally low level is the need to act with punitive intent towards another individual with the witting aim of harming or besting them as an act in service of ego. Or something more or less like that, anyway. It's a difficult thing to characterize. And I could very well be mistaken in my perception of it, this being an opaque medium wrt such things. But fwiw, I recognize it as a distinctive quality only because I've encountered it before in a distinct handful of unquestionably real and authentifiable people, all of whom had survived years of sustained physical and emotional torture. I've never seen it in anyone else and I haven't always seen it in people who've had that experience. That's a very small and elusive thing if it even exists, but it does have very strong and sympathetic associations for me.

Quite apart from that, I generally take people at their word absent a very strong reason not to. So when I read what Stephen writes, I remain mindful that the sum of the only known information about username Stephen Morgan that's available to me includes his having had his trust and his humanity severely violated by his abusive mother when he was helpless to protect himself against what would then have been, from his perspective, her superhuman power an control to do whatever she wished with the world as he knew it. Same with Plutonia, whom I also like, and with whom I have the same serious problems that I do with Stephen, as well as several others.

IIRC, you agreed with me at some earlier point when I said that bad acts were bad acts, and had to be dealt with as such, irrespective of one's sympathy or lack thereof for the bad actor. I'd still say that. But I also said then that I took it as granted that all people were sympathetic in some way simply by virtue of being people, whether their sympathetic qualities were discernible by me or not. And I'd still say that.

I do unto others, pretty much equally, as I would be done unto were I in the other person's position, adjusted in good faith for their sensitivities as I understand them. I'm as fallible as anyone else is wrt that, obviously. But I'm also really pretty fucking predictable as far as code-of-conduct stuff goes.

I do not and would not want to be silenced or ignored by anyone whom I did not put at serious risk and didn't intend to harm simply for speaking of a painful reality that I knew and they didn't. I do and would want to be told if I was harming them so that I could understand and desist from doing it. If I wasn't capable of understanding it, I would want the vulnerable to be protected from me, but I would also want to be treated with sympathy. Because I am also vulnerable. Very vulnerable. And I would not want to be shunned for having learned not to show it. I would want to be recognized as educable and worth educating.

Like I said, I find it validating to be understood. Agreement is strictly optional.

One other thing:

cCearly you and he have some sort of bond and that's fine by me. Bond away. Just do not lecture me on whom has shown me empathy or whom I should consider un-ignoring when I took enough shit and abuse from whomever I've put on ignore and I don't need any more of it, thanks.

(1) We don't have any special bond. He's a person. I'm a person. You're a person.

(2) I wasn't lecturing you. I was telling you affectionately that you had crossed over the line from self-empowerment to self-aggrandizement in a way that's derogatory to me and very unjustly fucking so. It's also to your detriment in my opinion, which is based on experience that I wish had included someone who was in a position to tell me.

But that's just my opinion, and you should feel free to disregard it. I'll keep right on liking and sympathizing with you quietly. It doesn't really matter to me one way or the other, except insofar as it might be useful to you.

(3) Don't talk to me about taking shit and abuse as a female poster to this board who's been persecuted for having the courage of her convictions as if you had an exclusive patent on it, as well as if I hadn't both opened and closed my post by acknowledging that you were one. That's not sisterhood. And it's also not an opinion. I sincerely and honestly don't think it's you, either, though you'd know more about that than I would. Whatever the case, please don't do it. I don't deserve it. I don't like it. I'm not really resentful enough honestly to say that I resent it. But that's just a personal quirk. If it's easier for you to understand in those terms, feel free to pretend that I do.

Okay? Okay, I hope.

[compared2what?]

I want to raise my hand here too, and please accept this as an offering and delivered with deep respect, and indeed as a bit of confusion, which is why I feel compelled to post.

Which it can't. So please remember yourself and those around you. While you're at it, you might want to spend a moment remembering that narcissists don't do empathy, which Stephen has shown to you on a number of occasions throughout this thread, albeit not very showily, for the most part, as he has to me and to others.

I just want to say that I read that linked response and I hold an entirely different view and I am at a loss to explain to myself how others came to different ones. What I read (past tense) in the linked response was manipulation, the use of someone else's trauma to draw focus to one's own with the purpose of advocating for a position which in turn negates the original person's trauma. It's brilliant, but if the entire thrust of the conversation is to accomplish the erasure, any statement supporting that intention, even if it sounds empathetic, is quite the opposite.

I respect your reading of it, which I'll take under advisement, honey. Thanks for telling me. I have to admit that I know myself to be prone to err in that direction sometimes. And while I guess that I would opt to if I had a choice between that and the opposite one, moot point, because in reality, I just err unwittingly. That's kind of in the nature of the downside wrt never having succeeded in becoming untraumatized, the dubious upside of which is that at least you can't be re-traumatized.

Much gratitude for your understanding and tolerance.

[Canadian_watcher]

I do not and would not want to be silenced or ignored by anyone whom I did not put at serious risk and didn't intend to harm simply for speaking of a painful reality that I knew and they didn't.

Beg pardon? Stephen knows of a reality that I don't know? Are we talking about his past again here, because I know some realities that he doesn't and that you don't and of course you know secret realities as does every other poster on this board. You cannot be raising this as a defense of his calculated and stubborn refusal to accept the real reality that we ALL know, surely.

Further, I don't like to silence people either, but I do have to draw a line to protect myself. I do not owe Stephen any courtesy, and neither does anyone else - not in the face of what I consider to be abusive acts. As far as 'serious risk' goes - I think there's plenty of research to demonstrate that people who are continuously verbally abused become depressed, experience anxiety, low self esteem, eating disorders, etc. My only options to avoid falling into depression etc from Stephen's (and others) insidious brand of abuse are:
a. ignore him here
b. leave here.

Since leaving here is tantamount to me losing some of my freedom I view Stephen's and others' abusive verbal behaviour as being an attack - I must flee from it. I can't see it any other way. Here's a personal anecdote:

I was involved in a theatre community here in my home town for nearly 15 years. It was a tremendous joy for me and had many friends there who I loved to interact with. It was something that served to round out my life and it was precious to me. At about the 14 year mark I began a relationship with a man and he eventually became part of that community. A few months later he beat me up - threw me around like a rag doll. I was absolutely devastated.
He didn't stop coming to the theatre group.
The people there didn't know where to draw the line and they accepted him into their midst hesitantly, but still, there he was.
I couldn't be around him.
I lost a huge part of my life.

I do and would want to be told if I was harming them so that I could understand and desist from doing it.

okay, BRB...

[Canadian_watcher]

Attention Stephen Morgan:

When you insist on injecting statements such as: "since mothers commit the majority of child abuse" and "I'm not willing to dismiss him as barbaric out of hand (wrt 'him' having thrown acid in the face of the woman who rejected him" or "we live in a world that favours women" or "women simply don't work as hard as men" or "prison rape and rape of boys is more serious and common than rape of women" it hurts me. These and others things you say which disregard the realities that countless women experience every single day of their lives, your abject hatred of the women's movement - these hurt me. I wish you'd stop.

I wish you would consider and balance your approach to this problem because women are people too - I'm one, so I know - and we *do* have unique troubles that are a result of a patriarchal male-dominated history of oppression of my gender as a class.

Thanks for your understanding, and I'm sure that you will utilize your empathy in dealing with these subjects now that you know it is very hurtful to me and does make a lasting impact on my day.

[Canadian_watcher]

(2) I wasn't lecturing you. I was telling you affectionately that you had crossed over the line from self-empowerment to self-aggrandizement in a way that's derogatory to me and very unjustly fucking so.

I'm sorry c2w, could you let me know where I did that? honestly, I believed that I was just expressing my observations.

Don't talk to me about taking shit and abuse as a female poster to this board who's been persecuted for having the courage of her convictions as if you had an exclusive patent on it, as well as if I hadn't both opened and closed my post by acknowledging that you were one.

I absolutely know and understand that there are MANY female posters here who have taken and continue to take shit and abuse - I just didn't want to speak for anyone else so I kept it personal.

Okay? Okay, I hope.

yes - it's okay. There's no hard feelings here at all. I mean that. I think this is good - thank you for the discussion.

[compared2what?]

(A lot of straw and willful blindness)

brekin:

When you tell someone who has just told you she was sexually assaulted that she did it because people were angry at her and she threw it in their faces in a juvenile and taunting way, it really doesn't matter what else you say. Because you have just said something that's too violent and dehumanizing to be amenable to any qualification or amendment. In any event, since you easily said two things that were just as bad or worse for every one I quoted, it's not exactly like I left out the rest of what you said in order to make you look bad.

As to the rest:



With this exception:

Okay you force the analogy.
compared2what what if I said right now that I've been sexually abused as a child?
Yeah, Where do you go from there?

You go here or someplace very like it:


brekin, oh my god, I had no idea. I'm very, very sorry for your pain, of course. But I'm even sorrier if something I wrote out of dumb pig-ignorance triggered or evoked it inadvertently. So I very much hope you'll forgive me if it did. I was too hung up on airing my own hurt feelings in connection with what I experienced as your willful blindness to remember that I might not be the only person who had any. Thank you for reminding me that I'm not.

yours, in humility and solidarity,

c2w

Do you continue to debate me on other matters?

To a certain extent, that might depend on what you're debating, the severity of your grievance, and the extent (if any) of the other party's misconduct. However, strictly wrt the hypothetical as phrased:

No, you do not. If it's important, it will keep and you can return to it later.

Would that be seen as insensitive?

I don't know. But it doesn't matter. Because it would actually be insensitive. So who cares how it would be seen?

Do you think people will line up to post about it?

About what? The abuse? Or the (in this case) willful blindness? I'm confused. In any event, I don't know. I can't speak for "people." Could you narrow that down a little bit?

How do you empathize with someone when you try to help them
after such a admission during a hostile thread exchange, are attacked for trying to help and
then are labeled worse and worse labels the more you
disagree? See sometimes others create the monster
they want to fight.

Well, for starters, you'd have to be genuinely trying to help them, as opposed to, let's say, "trying to preserve your won interests by silencing them under the guise of trying to help them on the grounds that you were only telling them to shut up out of concern for their own good." Which means you would have been scratched right out of the gate.

And that's about it. But please do let me know if you have any further questions on the matter. I'll be more than happy to answer them if I can.

[compared2what?]

Attention Stephen Morgan:

When you insist on injecting statements such as: "since mothers commit the majority of child abuse" and "I'm not willing to dismiss him as barbaric out of hand (wrt 'him' having thrown acid in the face of the woman who rejected him" or "we live in a world that favours women" or "women simply don't work as hard as men" or "prison rape and rape of boys is more serious and common than rape of women" it hurts me. These and others things you say which disregard the realities that countless women experience every single day of their lives, your abject hatred of the women's movement - these hurt me. I wish you'd stop.

I wish you would consider and balance your approach to this problem because women are people too - I'm one, so I know - and we *do* have unique troubles that are a result of a patriarchal male-dominated history of oppression of my gender as a class.

Thanks for your understanding, and I'm sure that you will utilize your empathy in dealing with these subjects now that you know it is very hurtful to me and does make a lasting impact on my day.

Well said.

[Canadian_watcher]

How do you empathize with someone when you try to help them
after such a admission during a hostile thread exchange, are attacked for trying to help and
then are labeled worse and worse labels the more you
disagree? See sometimes others create the monster
they want to fight.

Well, for starters, you'd have to be genuinely trying to help them, as opposed to, let's say, "trying to preserve your won interests by silencing them under the guise of trying to help them on the grounds that you were only telling them to shut up out of concern for their own good." Which means you would have been scratched right out of the gate.

And that's about it. But please do let me know if you have any further questions on the matter. I'll be more than happy to answer them if I can.

I know that this doesn't involve me, but since it is partially about me I'd just like to say YES to what c2w wrote here. All of it, actually.

Brekin, questioning someone's mental health and telling them you are just doing it for their own good is not helpful. Maybe it would be through a PM if you really were concerned and had good reason for that concern. But in this instance it was just a power grab by you in order to blame me for a problem that was not created by me.

[Canadian_watcher]

I just want to say that I read that linked response and I hold an entirely different view and I am at a loss to explain to myself how others came to different ones. What I read (past tense) in the linked response was manipulation, the use of someone else's trauma to draw focus to one's own with the purpose of advocating for a position which in turn negates the original person's trauma. It's brilliant, but if the entire thrust of the conversation is to accomplish the erasure, any statement supporting that intention, even if it sounds empathetic, is quite the opposite.

yes, I agree.

[compared2what?]

Since leaving here is tantamount to me losing some of my freedom I view Stephen's and others' abusive verbal behaviour as being an attack - I must flee from it. I can't see it any other way. Here's a personal anecdote:

I was involved in a theatre community here in my home town for nearly 15 years. It was a tremendous joy for me and had many friends there who I loved to interact with. It was something that served to round out my life and it was precious to me. At about the 14 year mark I began a relationship with a man and he eventually became part of that community. A few months later he beat me up - threw me around like a rag doll. I was absolutely devastated.
He didn't stop coming to the theatre group.
The people there didn't know where to draw the line and they accepted him into their midst hesitantly, but still, there he was.
I couldn't be around him.
I lost a huge part of my life.

I feel that in every way, top to bottom, from the inside out. The only difference is that the best way to make me flee is to stop bullying me in hopes that I'll depart and just ask me to go for a reason I can understand. I basically have no self-respect when I'm not resisting bullies, and very little strength to fight about anything when nobody weak is being persecuted by anybody powerful. So in the absence of bullies, I'm usually actually very accommodating.

That was more of a note to the bullies than it was to you, but they never believe me anyway, so I don't really know why I bother. Hope springs eternal, I guess. My main point was that I totally and completely understand that. I apologize for not seeing and/or remembering it.

This empathy stuff is a lot more complicated than a person might think anything that was the product of a tiny number of neurons firing in a great big brain full of 'em could possibly be. If a person thought that to begin with, which would be wrong. And I don't mean that in a harsh way. It just would be. I've been meaning to mention it.

That reminds me. Hava said some stuff about Judaism, Christianity, monogamy and women that wasn't very solidly founded, oh....Maybe 103 or so pages ago? Anyway. It's been preying on my mind ever since. Western religion and misogyny have gone hand in hand for centuries. So it's really kind of worth looking at up close, imo, if anybody else is up for it.

[compared2what?]

(2) I wasn't lecturing you. I was telling you affectionately that you had crossed over the line from self-empowerment to self-aggrandizement in a way that's derogatory to me and very unjustly fucking so.

I'm sorry c2w, could you let me know where I did that? honestly, I believed that I was just expressing my observations.

Here, for example:

Would you have defended the 'rights' of the posters on the Matthew Shepard memorial bulletin board? Would you have made sure that you said "It's their words, not the people themselves, that we should be finding offensive and posting our objections to." ?? Maybe some people don't want to have to digress into that area when the things being said are personally hurtful and more than personally hurtful they can be traumatizing..

But I really meant what I said about that post in general. It's like you're not talking to me and have never heard a word I've said, you're just reading out a generic criminal transgressor on your rights. I mean, Matthew Shepard? Do you really think that's equivalent? I said that I thought it was unfair to tar-and-feather Stephen, alone, for doing something he wasn't responsible for singly.

And I do think that it is. To the innocent and the guilty alike, not just to Stephen, as it happens. But also specifically to Stephen, as it happens. He may have many, many flaws, but you'll never see him waiting until someone's down and being pummeled before he comes in to deliver his personal kick to them, for example. I believe in credit where due, if there's any to be found at all. His views are still hateful. That and a kind of honor do sometimes co-exist. Maybe I'm wrong to think they do in Stephen, and I'm a sucker, if so. But it would be an honest mistake, not an outrage against you or all womankind, imo.

I felt like you were riding a high horse, basically. I didn't understand it. I might have been wrong about it. That seemed important in the moment, as I recall it. But I'm not so sure I can remember why right now.

Thanks for bearing with me.

[Canadian_watcher]

(2) I wasn't lecturing you. I was telling you affectionately that you had crossed over the line from self-empowerment to self-aggrandizement in a way that's derogatory to me and very unjustly fucking so.

I'm sorry c2w, could you let me know where I did that? honestly, I believed that I was just expressing my observations.

Here, for example:

Would you have defended the 'rights' of the posters on the Matthew Shepard memorial bulletin board? Would you have made sure that you said "It's their words, not the people themselves, that we should be finding offensive and posting our objections to." ?? Maybe some people don't want to have to digress into that area when the things being said are personally hurtful and more than personally hurtful they can be traumatizing..

But I really meant what I said about that post in general. It's like you're not talking to me and have never heard a word I've said, you're just reading out a generic criminal transgressor on your rights. I mean, Matthew Shepard? Do you really think that's equivalent?

Well I searched and searched for a message board that was closed down because of hateful comments about a heterosexual woman but it seems that newspapers, etc, like to leave those comments sections open. I also searched for commentary from judges, etc about hate-speech against women but there is much more out there about gay/lesbian and race/ethnicity/religion based hate speech. It's just another way that women as a class are kind of forgotten about.

I said that I thought it was unfair to tar-and-feather Stephen, alone, for doing something he wasn't responsible for singly.

And I do think that it is. To the innocent and the guilty alike, not just to Stephen, as it happens. But also specifically to Stephen, as it happens.

I disagree that it was all about Stephen - I believe we're also dealing with Brekin, WUaL, lyrimal, charlie meadows... etc
Yes, there were lots of posts specifically about Stephen's attitude but they were in direct response to something he posted. IOW, fair game to be singled out for. Right? Isn't that what's happening between you and I at this moment?

He may have many, many flaws, but you'll never see him waiting until someone's down and being pummeled before he comes in to deliver his personal kick to them, for example.

which I've thanked him for two or three times.

His views are still hateful.

You can say that but others cannot? That's kind of the message you're giving out here. There does come a point when hateful messages are enough to impugn the character of someone. The wife-beater is often very charming, too.

Thanks for bearing with me.

right back atcha. I do hope there are no hard feelings. But I do want to stop analyzing Morgan soon. I believe doing so is providing something called 'supply' and I don't want to be someone that feeds him.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Seeing as this thread title is a question, I have an answer. not the definitive answer, just a sordid example, but still ... what constitutes misogyny?

Among other things, this:

What happened to the victim is unfortunate as I've already said. There are many dimensions to this story however and if you want to dwell on the sordid ones, fine, that doesn't surprise me in the least. But there's more going on here than what you'll get from SkyNews and the NY Post.

Now it's up to six charges:

Strauss-Kahn faces six charges:

Criminal Sexual Act in the First Degree:
Attempted Rape in the First Degree;
Sexual Abuse in the First Degree;
Unlawful Imprisonment in the Second Degree;
Sexual Abuse in the Third Degree;
Forcible Touching.

Good thing he didn't try to steal any towels or he'd be up for grand larceny too. In any case it appears actual rape is not among the charges:

It wasn't an easy decision to post this here, but some people need to have a good look in the fucking mirror.

[Stephen Morgan]

Attention Stephen Morgan:

When you insist on injecting statements such as: "since mothers commit the majority of child abuse" and "I'm not willing to dismiss him as barbaric out of hand (wrt 'him' having thrown acid in the face of the woman who rejected him" or "we live in a world that favours women" or "women simply don't work as hard as men" or "prison rape and rape of boys is more serious and common than rape of women" it hurts me. These and others things you say which disregard the realities that countless women experience every single day of their lives, your abject hatred of the women's movement - these hurt me. I wish you'd stop.

I wish you would consider and balance your approach to this problem because women are people too - I'm one, so I know - and we *do* have unique troubles that are a result of a patriarchal male-dominated history of oppression of my gender as a class.

Thanks for your understanding, and I'm sure that you will utilize your empathy in dealing with these subjects now that you know it is very hurtful to me and does make a lasting impact on my day.

I don't really want to respond to this. I have been reading your and c2w's posts. I never mean to upset you, C_w. The post about the theatre group, and so on. Must be especially unpleasant being beaten up by someone you're close to, too, although I know that's not the point of the story.

You're not the only one who's been upset about these things, mind. Being told that I personally represent a physical threat to women, that was upsetting. Being called a brilliant psycho-manipulator, that was upsetting. Although the latter was also quite flattering, got to take the compliments where you can find them, not enough people call me brilliant at anything. Neither of those were you, of course, C_w. Although your own statements can be hurtful too, although in ways discussion of which is now probably prohibited. Perhaps my feelings mirror yours.

So it's not like I don't know or care how you feel.

Also, I think you've paraphrased one or two of my statements up there. I don't think rape of men is any more serious than rape of women, on the whole. Boys, maybe, because children have improperly developed psyches. And I don't want to dismiss anyone out of hand as a barbarian, I was just posting a defence of a Nazi war criminal in another thread, so obviously stretching my sympathy-for-the-devil approach to an acid-thrower isn't much of a stretch from there. Don't take it as condoning their actions, take it as hating the sin rather than the sinner, again.The bit about working hard (which I don't particularly regard as virtuous, mind) was a bit of symmetry for those claiming women work harder. Some study showing 55 vs. 53 hours total work in and out of the home I think. I don't know that any of that will make you feel any better, I like to believe in understanding, but none of it was meant as an attack on women and it certainly wasn't meant to upset you.