What constitutes Misogyny?

[Canadian_watcher]

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.

[Canadian_watcher]

helloooo ladies

BTW - good one.

[norton ash]

I've had too many different definitions of what misogyny is for too many decades from too many conflicting sources.

I think my own misogyny makes up about 33% of my misanthropy. 33% is hating men, and 34% is justified self-loathing. I love humanity, I just can't stand people. Especially f**king Canadian men.

[Canadian_watcher]

I've had too many different definitions of what misogyny is for too many decades from too many conflicting sources.

I think my own misogyny makes up about 33% of my misanthropy. 33% is hating men, and 34% is justified self-loathing. I love humanity, I just can't stand people. Especially f**king Canadian men.

well thank you for your well thought-out response to my question.

[Canadian_watcher]

Here's an element of misogyny, for sure.

I admit, if it weren't so profitable it wouldn't happen and the fact that it is profitable means that there are too many gullible women out there who have $25.00 extra to spend on their pursuit of being 'attractive to men.'

[norton ash]

^ Well, there's one decade's misogyny, anyway.

Now let's leap into the wormhole and fast forward to Lady Gaga.

[JackRiddler]

Yeah, I was thinking the main front of it is the constant preying on girls' ideas of their bodies and image. There's a similar mental assault on boy adolescents, more than ever, but still not on the same scale. The fashion and cosmetics industries ooze with it. A lot of strong-girl rhetoric and imagery actually reinforces real-world misogyny. I think Hannah Montana is an example -- glorifying impossible standards and looking down on the uncool while pretending to be down-home, tolerant and free of all that. The strong, confident power-girl image allows no room for vulnerability, ambiguity, self-conflict. By contrast the trash-girl is obsessed over (for every media blah-blah day of Sheens there are more of Britneys, and the latter are identified with the gender more than the former). It's not all misogyny per se, but harmful.

[Canadian_watcher]

sure, sure.. but who gets the money from the cosmetics and fashion industries. Even women are quick to believe that it is other women. Is it? I don't know that.. I can't find the info.

I'm sorry now that I pointed that out, since two of you were eager to jump on the 'women pimp themselves' bandwagon.

[JackRiddler]

I'm sorry now that I pointed that out, since two of you were eager to jump on the 'women pimp themselves' bandwagon.

Hope you don't mean me because I don't believe that and would feel very wrong if I communicated it that way.

[23]

"Boy, am I glad that she believes in what the Bible says her role is."

[compared2what?]

I'd say:

Hatred of women as a cultural characteristic -- ie, in a misogynist culture, women are regarded as lesser, degraded, and simply not-quite-right-or-normal beings by most people, both male and female. Though an individual can be a misogynist, of course. If he or she has, like, a very pronounced and pathological hatred of women. Anyway. I don't know if that definition has any social currency or not, it could just represent the connotations I assign to that particular word. But fwiw, in general, I think that:

Misogyny = a cultural attitude and associated belief system.

Whereas I think that:

Sexism = discrimination against women by the culture or an individual that's not necessarily representative of strongly held views if the latter. I mean, it might be. But it might just be situational, too. Like a battle-of-the-sexes-type thing, or whatever.
___________________________

Maybe that's not the kind of answer you were looking for? Because it's not really that big of a thing, I don't think. (I mean the distinction, not one or both of the phenomena.) And they're definitely pretty interchangeable on a colloquial basis.

Nevertheless. To me, misogyny is (more or less) a systemic hostility toward women.

[norton ash]

I'm sorry now that I pointed that out, since two of you were eager to jump on the 'women pimp themselves' bandwagon.

Hope you don't mean me because I don't believe that and would feel very wrong if I communicated it that way.

Me neither. I'm just saying we'll get to Gaga eventually if we want to do hair, nails, corsets and heels as the manacles of misogyny.

[JackRiddler]

I'm sorry now that I pointed that out, since two of you were eager to jump on the 'women pimp themselves' bandwagon.

Hope you don't mean me because I don't believe that and would feel very wrong if I communicated it that way.

Me neither. I'm just saying we'll get to Gaga eventually if we want to do hair, nails, corsets and heels as the manacles of misogyny.

Right, leaving aside Gaga as an example that makes for controversy at RI...

I was trying to say that a particular misogyny generator nowadays is, ironically, the super-girl image. She's super-sexy and competent and strong and pretty and thin in one, she's so modern and advanced and juggles men and styles and jobs, and if it's a movie she machine-guns a hundred bad guys without hesitation or remorse and is more inscrutable than if she was from Mars.



Practically speaking, the intent sometimes may be benign. The effect is to encourage self-hatred among real human women and to get men and women generally measuring real women as wanting against the image. It's also ironic because super-man images don't (as often) translate into standards that men are supposed to meet. They aren't (as much) set up as ideals for the gender generally. But the super-woman images are specifically gendered and applied as the ideals to strive for.

[Nordic]

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!!!

[JackRiddler]

Then there's a great deal of the garden variety, inchoate kind that's still all over the place and sparks violence, brutality, control fetishism. I see big changes over a long run in institutions and social arrangements, but the emotions and syndromes be complicated!