What constitutes Misogyny?

[compared2what?]

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.

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.

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

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 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. 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.

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!!!

So summing up: You love women, as do most men. In your case, that's because even though they dislike each other (those crazy trouble-making broads, who can figure 'em) and it's bad news when they say it's time to talk (those crazy bitches, they never let up), they're not dumb, violent or interested in killing small animals.

Further, you were raised by women, have always had women friends, and feel that womankind has come a long way while misogyny has diminished since 1960, although you have observed that there are still some problems. For example, it's evidently still so routine for adolescent girls to be sexually assaulted in the course of their normal, everyday activities that it's (evidently, as in my day) socially tolerated by everyone, absent effortful parental intervention.

In light of the spirit of your remarks on-edit, is there maybe some part of that you'd like to reconsider?

[wallflower]

Wow as a middle-aged white American male I know I'm stepping on thin ice trying to participate in this thread. On top of that I'm sure my thought, as in most things, are muddled.

One lens that is often used to view ideas about gender is an economic perspective. This is a useful perceptive, but at least as is customary in thinking about economics today, a rational basis for decisions is presumed. Perhaps it's not so hard to find rationales for hatred, but there seems something wrong about thinking misogyny is a rational choice. I mean that just doesn't feel right to me. So while I think an economic perspective is very useful for thinking about sexism in various incarnations, I'm not so sure an economic lens is particularly helpful for understanding misogyny.

Money is a poor measure of qualities. I think that's why when economists talk about social goods, they always seem to be talking about stuff and not what people think about when they think of "goods." Social meanings are of course bound up with economic matters. Economic systems seem excruciatingly designed to disfavor women. Surely there are negative feedback loops which reinforce disadvantaging women, but I suspect that gendered relationships and the general category of gender are not merely economic. That is the meanings of gender are separate from economics, and probably prior to economics.

In capitalism where every exchange is an exchange of a commodity there's a gender neutral presumption; one hand is exchangeable with another. This is not how people have lived for the most part, instead our shared meanings have tended to be particularly gendered.

As a guy I am too often oblivious to misogyny. Nevertheless at least some of what I tentatively think of as misogyny is like Henry Higgens in "My Fair Lady" exclaiming: "Why can't a woman be more like a man!" The confusing part is equality is something good and gender neutrality seems as though it's a stance toward equality. So people get really hot defending gender neutrality, even when there are men who can't stand women because they're not more like men. It seems to me that social meanings of gender difference require some examination.

In some cultures activities are the exclusive domain of men, whereas in other cultures ostensibly the same activities are the exclusive domain of women. The point here is it's not activities or even shared attributes which contain the social meanings. Rather it's a sets of metaphors which various people use to map out reality. It's the relationships between and among which are more important than the visible activities or attributes.

Most people think of themselves containing all sorts of identities, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, bosses, workers, and on and on: we see ourselves in terms of relationships. Relationships can be imagined as symmetrical, so that in a pair A doing more of something will stimulate B to do more of that something. Or relationships can be complementary where in a pair A doing something will stimulate B to do more of a fitting behavior. So a boxing match is an example of a symmetrical relationship. But the spectators of a boxing match are rather in a complementary relationship to the boxers.

Not just between men and women, but between people in general, complementary relationships are good and symmetrical relationships are useful too. But knowing what sort of relationship is essential. Some forms of mysogyny probably do emerge from confusion in the perception of the nature of the relationship. Misogynist may see a time for competition when everyone else is looking for a complementary relationship. Or a misogynist may presume that the proper relationship is one where a man dominates a women. It seems to me that the confusion about the nature of the relationship is more trouble than whether the relationship is symmetrical or complementary.

Sorry, I'm as clear as mud, I suspect I'm just writing too late at night. But I'll try to recap what I'm trying to say. First, we participate in an economic order which systematically disadvantages women. That's not good, but I doubt it explains misogyny. Second gender constructs probably do have something to do with misogyny. One can be a cisgendered man and not hate women--most men don't hate women. 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. Being man is goodness and goodness is against badness and women. Finally the root of the problem of misogyny has to do with the sense of self in relation to others.

[Nordic]

In light of the spirit of your remarks on-edit, is there maybe some part of that you'd like to reconsider?

No.

[compared2what?]

No.

Rhetorical question.

But I do have a new response to the OP.

A misogynist culture is one in which it's so normal to look down on women that no man need feel shame for complacently answering a question about misogyny with a post that represented women exclusively in terms of hackneyed stereotypes (ie -- nurturing and pleasant companions, objects of male sexual desire, emotionally needy and/or bitchy).

As well as one in which he doesn't have to worry that anyone will perceive him as overly emotional when he makes a point of irritably standing by the self-indulgence, vanity and overall disregard for the OP that led him to write a post purportedly about how much he loves women and how diminished misogyny is that reaches its hackneyed and stereotypical conclusions about women's experience by considering it exclusively from the perspective of his own emotional centrality and superiority.

I mean: There they are, raising him, or providing an occasion for him to protect their honor and feel big, or validating how exceptionally and loftily non-hostile-toward-women he is really is by obligingly being petty and catty enough to hate each other, or having no discernible personalities or features apart from boobs, an occasional annoying need to talk and a strong devotion to and/or trust in him. What's not to love? It's almost as if the highest role on earth to which women could aspire was "supporting player in Life, starring A Guy."

And why doesn't he have to worry about that, you may wonder? Because, even though what he wrote was thoughtlessly sexist and the topic justified pointing that out, and the poster who did so didn't do it in particularly angry or hysterical or personal terms, he's a guy. And therefore normal. Whereas she's a woman doing something that would make most guys uncomfortable. And therefore either a bitch or crazy or both.

That's misogyny. It's much too much the rule for it to feel like there even is one. Or to feel like hatred of women, for that matter. But that's what it is. Just your basic, normal hatred (or fear) of women. And it's just about always there, really. You just get too used to it to notice it most of the time.

Kind of a shame, imo.
___________________________

Nordic's no more of a misogynist than I am. That's not what I'm saying. We all live in a misogynist culture. And that is.

[82_28]

Misogyny is fucking bullshit. We have different ways about ourselves as these "demarcated" sexes. Yet we don't. The more we believe we do, the greater the divide that never ever existed.

it's bullshit? I must misunderstand your use of the term, because it really seems to me that you're saying that it doesn't exist. It exists. Maybe you've never felt the hot breath down your neck of someone that ought not to be there and who you haven't the power to get rid of, but for the majority(?) of females, we have. Whether it comes in the literal form or it comes in the lack of upward social mobility form, or it comes in the single-mother form, or in the you're really hot form, or whatever form it's there. As for progress in this regard, I suppose the best thing I can say is that now, in the second decade of the 21st century there is maybe enough time in between incidences that a woman might have time to recuperate enough that she forgets that it *is* there, and so each new incident blind-sides her. then again, that might just be due to the fact that I'm not longer in my teens or twenties, and tongues don't wag like they used to.

HOWEVER:

I will join in on an argument that pits women against men within reason. Like I was saying to a friend of mine earlier today (female), when you're in your teens and twenties you can't figure the "chicks" out, as all you want is sex and a future, yet get neither to your satisfaction. Then you get into your thirties and you wind up with some "hag" who you also happen to love for all of time and she wants sex, but you don't. Then she gets to pull on you the "oh, so we're just friends now?" routine. In my head, I've given females in my life everything I could according to my age at the time and then as I get to the age where I can recognize them as non sex objects, it becomes suddenly awful that I'm not "chasing" her with the youthful aplomb I once did.

seriously correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like you're saying that you suffer from the madonna/whore complex. In which case I feel like I'm sunk, because my husband loves me more than words can say and I've noticed that his sex drive has responded inversely.

See, it always comes down to sex. I can't motherfucking stand that. Have you ever stopped to think that some of us men are also ruled by our moods too? Some of my best fucking friends are women? Why? Because they helped me out of a horrible depression! Not because the were women, not because they're walking vaginas, not because of anything. They are my friends. Yet, when I can't get it up, I get shit in the fucking commercials, the magazines and the shows she watches. I get it out of the fact her friends brag about "nasty" sex with their "new boys" and she doesn't get anything "nasty" out of me. I perfectly resent the statement that I suffer from the "madonna/whore complex". Absolutely resent that. However, you're no more sunk than I am or my lady is. Jesus fucking christ. I really fucking wish thoughtful women would cease putting their gender first before the basic emotional needs of life. Sex comes via love and comfort. This is why I HATE pornography. The women I've known only love when love suits them, it has never been the idealistic love I "require" or that I want. This "requirement" is a difficult one sometimes. But I am who I am and she is who she is.

Since I have now gotten a pretty sweet job, things have fucking stepped up a bit in the romance dept. Before that? Nothing. Not that I didn't appreciate her sticking by me and daily moral support by all through the lack "giving her sex" for christ's sake. But because, I fucking have emotions too and sometimes you don't fucking feel like it because you feel low. This is where FRIENDS come in and who she is to me. Which, believe this shit or not, my feelings are far more attuned to a female's than you even want to know, except I don't have or pretend to have the same equipment. Friends, loves, unconditional friends and loves are infinitely more important than any fucking orgasm in the universe.

Sometimes people just need to be and also stick with one another. Hope your sex life is sweet C_W, that's fucking awesome. But I don't care whether it is or isn't, it's your life, not mine. I also want to be judged by my persona of 82_28 and what people know of me here -- not as a man who doesn't give a fuck if sometimes my sense of humor or opinions may offend. This is who I am. I kinda hold nothing back and I enjoy that.

[Searcher08]

[

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.

Err, at least to myself, that comes across as amazingly patronising.
Any woman? Really? When were you elected President of Earth Women?

Stephen's views might be really different than the vast majority of posters here, however, within the debate paradigm (cos that is where you want this, rather than exploration), describing someone as a 'lost cause' in this context comes across as "I cant engage him in debate without being pw0n3d". Seriously - he thinks that because he has thought about it, not because he is some Archie Bunker character. Debating him on this issue isnt debating Sepka on zionism, gnome sane?

[Hammer of Los]

Hi Canadian-watcher. I always enjoy your contributions.

I took a very brief look at some of the materials you presented. I did actually come across some similar writings many years ago, which amply demonstrated to me that folk use their emotional responses and outright prejudice and build entire philosophies out of them. Really this is not unusual, and it is not unique to misogyny, but it is especially disturbing when the object of your prejudice is over half the people on the planet. I guess perhaps some of them have been hurt by a woman(/women) in their lives so they then take it out on all women. In similar manner, I suppose if you were hurt by a Jew, you might develop anti-semitic feeling.

I believe that clarity of thought is only obtained when prejudice is left to one side. Prejudice and preference arise as a result of hurt. We have to understand where and how we have been hurt and see the mark it has made. Can we have that hurt and not carry the mark of it?

The Mind is ultimately free of gender.

My own experience, limited and subjective as it is, flawed by being viewed through the prejudice of my own beliefs and misconceptions, indicates to me that actually women and men are not so different as we are led to believe.

Certainly there's a ton of misogyny about, thats true.

But we all like to jump to conclusions about how others think and feel. And there's rather a lot of folk putting words into people's mouths, or thoughtlessly confusing stereotypes with real people. All sentient beings should be polite to each other and refrain from putting words into their mouths or thoughtlessly misreading them. So be nice to each other, lovely people, lest you hurt each other and leave a mark.

I agree with Wombat, as I often do;

Really, I think treating the noun "women" as if it has any inherent, objective qualities is right where it starts. Just like "Blacks" or "Mexicans" -- no good will come of that simple but fatal mistake. I believe it's called a Category Error but I might be mixing up my, uh...categories.

Please Note: for reasons involving quaternions and clifford algebras, this principle does not actually apply to my frequent and liberal libel of the white race, or as they're scientifically known, "Crackers." All of my generalized observations about Crackers are not only accurate, they're also piercingly astute and brilliantly written.

Where it starts is surely in childhood conditioning - differential treatment and valuation based on sex, well beyond anything that could be come from biological differences alone. Categorical fallacies are always a part of the answer, but the categories are generated in the first place by a social consensus.

Well, I wouldn't say it was a category error, nor would I say the category of "women" was generated in the first place by a social consensus. I would say the category of women is determined by biological fact.

But Wombat is quite on the money I feel when he asserts it is problematic to use the term "women" and then go on to make assertions which imply they are some sort of homogenous group, just as we reflexively do with racial or national or class descriptors, which actually are largely generated by a "social consensus," or something of that sort. Two women can be just about as different as it is possible to be for two things that share just a single feature.

You know, when the subject of gender comes up, I am often tempted to say awful things about men, and really nice things about women, because in my life, the women have been nice, and the men not so nice. That's how it works, I think. In fact, I aspire to be more womanly, and I'm really quite womanly already.

But you see, that is all actually a result of my prejudice.

Nope, I'm a genderless, ageless, eternal spirit. Yup.

One last rambling silly note: I try not to even think about the gender of posters, when I can avoid it. I mean, how can I tell whether you are a gal in a sharp suit working for an agency, or a guy? I mean, they probably have equal opportunities policies in place, right?



Enough rambling for now, love you all!

[Searcher08]

Wombat, you wrote

Please Note: for reasons involving quaternions and clifford algebras, this principle does not actually apply to my frequent and liberal libel of the white race, or as they're scientifically known, "Crackers." All of my generalized observations about Crackers are not only accurate, they're also piercingly astute and brilliantly written.

Have you been smoking Grassmann?

[Hammer of Los]

Finally the root of the problem of misogyny has to do with the sense of self in relation to others.

You know I think that is true wallflower.

Furthermore, it is likely true of all our problems.

[crikkett]

It's much too much the rule for it to feel like there even is one. Or to feel like hatred of women, for that matter. But that's what it is. Just your basic, normal hatred (or fear) of women. And it's just about always there, really. You just get too used to it to notice it most of the time.

My giggling over your excellent writing woke up my husband, the poor thing. You really know how to turn trollbait into a standing roast.

To take the OP seriously, I vote for "fear of women" over hatred as the root cause of misogyny, and maintain that people secure in their own selves see, express and experience far less misogyny than insecure people.

A note on the "makeup as oppressor" point that was brought up on page 1 or 2, most of the time women dress up to impress other women.

[wintler2]

Am i too late for the party? Ewww, whats with all the blood?! OMG, is that a ..? In his ..? lol.

..That's misogyny. It's much too much the rule for it to feel like there even is one. Or to feel like hatred of women, for that matter. But that's what it is. Just your basic, normal hatred (or fear) of women. And it's just about always there, really. You just get too used to it to notice it most of the time.

Agree on the invisibility, but i'm not sure hatred is the best indicator. Patriarchy provides men with certain *rights* to exploit women, and hatred is not a prerequisite. As you say, it is so frequent that it is often unnoticed, certainly by those abusing their power, and they don't need to work up to hatred to do it.

To try & restate by attempting to answer a slightly different question to thread title: misogyny happens when men exploit a power imbalance, an imbalanced supported by wider society, to assault the person or dignity of a woman. The way and degree to which a given man may use that imbalance varies, due to how much shit that man is incapable of dealing with themselves, how good they are at conning women, what social networks might support him or her, etc.

A 'successful' executive man with a pretty obedient wife and 2.4 successful kids might only need to belittle his secretary one a week, while an unemployed drunk might swear at barmaids nightly. The executive could never be convinced that he hates his secretary, "maybe i'm a bit rude sometimes" he'd say, while the drunk may confess his hatred of the whole female gender. Both are on the same spectrum, imho, cowards exploiting a power imbalance basic to the violent heirarchical ponzi scheme they were born into. Gender is one of the ways rank is allocated in our society, women are 'ranked' lower than men and men exploit/parasitise women as and when they can and 'need' to. I wish it was limited to just the florid exemplars like Stephen Morgan, but it isn't.

[Canadian_watcher]

norton and Jack - yes, sorry. I see what you're both saying now. I was up too late and read into what you were saying and I was mistaken. You're right about the media's portrayal of the female body and the supergirl image. Ironically instead of having this improve at all over the course of time the same is now being applied more liberally to males, too. Male superheros have always been an impossible standard, but now we've got 'metrosexual' things like male skin care lines, etc.

mascara ads bug me because they seem to assume that women are dumb enough to believe that there are what amount to paint products which can curl or lengthen lashes. !

[Canadian_watcher]

a lot of things to discuss here. C2Ws 'new response to the OP' directed at Nordic was excellent (and I agree, I don't think Nordic or anyone posting here is a misogynist) There certainly is a sense that men will respond to women's issues only if they feel like it, not because they are genuinely important. And I guess I can see that that is partly because their guards are up. Fair enough. It's tough to discuss these things without emotion.

Also, the issue that misogyny stems from fear.. I'd agree. For the most part people don't hate things that don't threaten them. I really don't like tomatoes but I couldn't say I hate them (although I am in the habit of dismissing them rudely at parties) Child molesters, on the other hand, I hate. They are threatening.

Misunderstandings and social clumsiness are not misogynistic - Wallflower makes the point that we sometimes fail to grasp the nature of our relationships to each other. While that's true, I think it's important that we try to pay attention, because misunderstandings and social clumsiness, if not corrected, become habit which then become culture.

Finally 82_28 - I have to say that I only wrote the sex part in response to you writing the sex part. It was half your original response, IIRC. I hear what you are saying and I've been in your shoes. I absolutely never speak of my sex life to anyone and now I regret that I mentioned what I mentioned. I was trying to take the edge off by being open with you, but I see that was an example of the 'misunderstanding and social clumsiness' as above. I support you being yourself here and not holding anything back!

[brainpanhandler]

mascara ads bug me because they seem to assume that women are dumb enough to believe that there are what amount to paint products which can curl or lengthen lashes. !

Yah, but mascara really does make your lashes appear longer if you have thin or light eyelashes.

[Canadian_watcher]

mascara ads bug me because they seem to assume that women are dumb enough to believe that there are what amount to paint products which can curl or lengthen lashes. !

Yah, but mascara really does make your lashes appear longer if you have thin or light eyelashes.