What constitutes Misogyny?

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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby vanlose kid » Thu Mar 17, 2011 8:02 am

seeing that it has been established that, at least as far as this thread is concerned, we live in a misogynist culture it obviously follows that misogynists come in both sexes.*

i don't see that as a point of contention here at all. but maybe i've missed something?

whether misogyny expresses as self-hatred, hatred of one's own "kind" or hatred of the "other" isn't what the thread is about, i.e, "what constitutes misogyny?" not "who is (more or less) misogynous?" and so on. (even though that of course may play a role in answering the question in the OP.)


_______________
* c2w? somewhere around page 17 of this thread.

*
"Teach them to think. Work against the government." – Wittgenstein.
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby marycarnival » Thu Mar 17, 2011 8:08 am

82_28 wrote: However, our common languages have built in genders. We're kinda "lucky" with English as we do not observe linguistic/etymological genders. I do not know what role this plays in the formation of a human mind as the child learns its respective language and customs.



And let me just say that I agree, 82....I remember when I was learning French, so many of my fellow students got so hung up on the concept of 'gender' for nouns in that language, ie the French word for 'car'is 'feminine', and the word for 'horse' is 'masculine'....it's a device for the language, has nothing to do with the word itself or who's saying it.
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby Canadian_watcher » Thu Mar 17, 2011 8:21 am

fwiw, I think that Nordic & 82's observations that women can also be misogynists are on target - esp in the way they framed it: the culture has absorbed a low-level misogyny and so we all display it unless we really work to see it and to fight against it.

That fight, unfortunately, does make some people extremely defensive. That can happen when your personhood is being attacked on a regular basis.

Willow I'm not sure I understand your popped cherry comment - could you elaborate?
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.-- Jonathan Swift

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. -- Jonathan Swift
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby Canadian_watcher » Thu Mar 17, 2011 8:27 am

marycarnival wrote:
Project Willow wrote:Well, I do believe you two have just discovered the un-popped cherry atop of the cake of your infuriatingly, mystifyingly uninformed, and insensitive contributions.

Congratulations! :partyhat


What? Bullshit. Sorry, but that's bullshit. Man, some of you people have blinders on...and PW, you're just proving 82's point...

'There are just as big of assholes on the male or female end.'

Yes, that's right, PW, I'm calling you an asshole. Because you're being one. If this gets me banned, I don't care, because...

I'm sick of this shit. Apparently, 'misogynist' means anyone who has a valid point.

I don't effing care if this gets me 'court-martialed' on this board....fuck this stupid shit. And yes, I am an actual woman, not someone pretending to be one on the interwebz....

I have felt unable to really express my feelings on this subject, because a hostile environment has been established...not by guys, but by the women....I feel like if I actually say what I feel, I will be ripped to shreds, just like everyone else who has questioned anything put forth by a woman on this thread....but now I just don't care....I have to express my feelings about this.

Goodbye, RI.


Marycarnival, I'll refer you to the posting guidelines. Please look them over.
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.-- Jonathan Swift

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. -- Jonathan Swift
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby psynapz » Thu Mar 17, 2011 9:15 am

Cedars of Overburden wrote:Here's my big fat two cents: Anyone of any gender or genetalia who thinks rape is sometimes okay is a mysognist. Period.

Well, I think we can all agree on one exception...

Image

Thank you,
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby Searcher08 » Thu Mar 17, 2011 9:41 am

Thank you cedars and marycarnival :)

Ive been surprised at what has surfaced as well, because it feels different than some other difficult discussions eg zionism / Israel...

For me, what I detest is the conflation of two universes.

These are the universe of 'Ideology'
Exceptionalism ("All menz = Evilz") /
Demand for conformity (Compliance to our rules is mandatory and questioning them indicates bad intent) / Subjectivism ("If I feel it, it is a fact. Nothing matters more than what I feeeeeeel" )

versus the universe of 'Values'
Humanity ("All people = human beings first")
Allowance of Cognitive Diversity (A rule based approach is often what people with a certain thinking style do to maintain comfort with the world - they avoid looking at the fact that it may produce counter-intuitive results)
Objectivism (Physical matter reality doesn't give a fig about how you 'feel', Queen Canute)

My intuition is that a lot of the conflict (self-included) has arisen because of this conflation not being acknowledged.
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby norton ash » Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:14 am

Disclosure: I will be using this thread as source material for an opera I'm writing for dogs.

******

Duke: I am going to provoke you, provoke you now!
Bitsy: You will not. You are a brute and a fool!
Duke: I have a factoid here, a provocative factoid.
Bitsy: It only proves that you are missing the point!

Duke pisses on the statue of Athena.

Bitsy: Like that, you pig, you lose more dignity than I! Pig-dog!
Duke: Admit I have a point.
Bitsy: No! You miss the point!
Duke: I have a point!
Bitsy: Your brain is bad from eating your own shit!
Duke: That's really unfair. Behold... a SQUIRREL!

Duke, leaping, exits stage left

ENTER Scruffy and Bobo stage right. They join Bitsy to sing 'Duke is a Bad Dog.'

ENTER Rollo, running in circles.

Rollo: Duke has bitten the letter carrier! The letter carrier! The sheriff's men are on their way! Bitsy, you have made him MAD.

Bitsy: Oh, for fuck's sake.

to be continued

*****

Anyway, it sounds much better in barking.
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby Searcher08 » Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:18 am

You, sir (or madam) are one of the most deranged humans I have ever met.
And ...er... people usually say that about me.
<bows> :mrgreen:
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby Cedars of Overburden » Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:27 am

Norton is a deranged genius! I usually just can't stand opera, but since it's dogs & all, I wanna hear this.
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby Kate » Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:34 am

Now that I've read the entire thread, I feel like one of those marathon runners who shows up some significant number of hours after the main group of fast runners crossed the finish line....It took me more than a week to read every post to catch up. Whew!

Only part of the reason it took a week was because "real life" kept intervening, but MOSTLY it was because I kept pausing to digest, ponder, meditate on the whole swirl of ideas, personal experiences, the tentative reaching across boundaries toward some sort of partial (but inevitably[?] elusive) consensus, cool analysis, and flaring/flaming passion, too, and many other qualities of this discussion.

Of course, most of these same facets of the dialogue have played out in my own mind as I've sought to listen intently to each person's contribution and imagine myself in others' shoes.

Some of the more heated arguments "make sense" to me as a reader, while others are mystifying.

HOWEVER, I've found this thread, on the whole, to be (for me) a great experience. While some of the arguing made for painful reading, that's just a fraction of what's been posted, and the rest of it has had an interesting effect on me which I wonder if others also experience(d).

I found that over the week it took me to read everything, many, many memories that I had even forgotten I'd forgotten (if that makes sense) over the years and decades of my life came floating to the surface, unbidden (even once or twice emerging in my dreams).

Has anyone else experienced this? Leaving out dreams for a moment, has anyone else found this discussion helped resurrect old buried memories of pain, struggle, joy, friendship, childhood, parents, adolescence, anger, humorous moments, experiences of injustice, frustration, all-too-brief moments of transcendence beyond divison, etc.:?: And that you sought to resolve inner conflicts, or move through a dialectical process within yourself?

[Or, egads, is this just me being weird? :jumping: ]

No, seriously, I'm grateful for this thread. And while I don't in any way want to trivialize the situation when any hurt feelings were experienced by posters, this thread has been MUCH more than that. And I'd hate to see the whole discussion end with a focus on primarily that part of this communal discussion.

I'd like to turn to an excerpt posted by Wintler2 (Thanks, Wintler!) from Derrick Jensen:

Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state--where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised--to a more acute and obvious manifestation.

Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized.

Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remain underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.


This excerpt reminded me a lot of the writings of Patricia Evans on emotional (psychological) and verbal abuse. She's written a good few books on the topic, which has drawn the interest of a number of writers, researchers, therapists, cultural observers, etc. in recent years. Most everyone I've read on the topic seems to agree that emotional/psychological and verbal abuse always precede physical abuse in relationships, and that even when those relationships don't escalate to violence or threats of violence, the damage done by psychological and verbal abuse takes much longer to heal than the physical damage to the body from physical abuse (uh, provided that the violence doesn't end in fatalities or permanent disabilities, of course).

Her early books, although they don't provide a definition of misogyny, nonetheless focus on utter disrespect and hatred for women by husbands/lovers/boyfriends. A rose by any other name, methinks, at least regarding the domestic sphere. While she always agrees that there are many women who are emotionally and verbally abusive of spouses and children, and cites examples of same, in her therapeutic practice her experience revealed an imbalance such that women were much more frequently victims of abuse from men than vice versa.

And in the writings of a considerable number of men on the topic, there appears to be a consensus on that. (I suppose that certain mens' rights organizations would vociferously disagree, but I'd like to leave any dispute on "who is more abusive to whom" aside to finally! get to the point I want to make.)

In her more recent book, "Controlling People," Evans places the whole question of emotional/psychological and verbal abuse in the much larger framework of AUTHORITARIANISM, and expands from the domestic and personal realm into a much more expansive consideration of the cultural, historical, and political dimensions of abuse. (By the way, she and other writers have noted that under the category of "verbal abuse" you ALSO find the type of abuse which uses neglect, silence as a weapon, "gaslighting," communicative styles which in fact purposefully work to UNDERMINE any genuinely constructive and mutually respectful communication, passive aggression in verbal form, etc. etc. -- i.e., COVERT aggression as well as the more obvious OVERT aggression in forms of verbal communication.)

Evans contends that there are two types of "power" -- namely, "POWER OVER..." vs. "PERSONAL POWER."

And now, finally, I've reached the point where I think Derrick Jensen's quote relates. "POWER OVER," to Evans, means authoritarian exercise of power over another individual or group of people -- maintaining one's own individual or group "SUPERIORITY" (which is always false, if one believes in the fundamental inherent dignity of every person and in universal human rights) and DOMINANCE over other individuals or groups, along with the never-ending effort on the part of the abuser(s) to CONTROL the person or group held to be inferior.

In this respect, the personal and the political are two sides of the same coin.

"PERSONAL POWER," by contrast, is the term Patricia Evans uses to describe the individual's power to learn, to grow, to develop creativity, to foster healthy community, to project from within one's self one's own self-respect, dignity, and integrity. This type of personal power does not seek to diminish others because it is not threatened by any "others." It seeks to cooperate with the personal power of others rather than to impose one's will on others, as the authoritarian does by denying the equal humanity of others.

This is where I think misogyny ties in with racism, classism, religious intolerance, tyranny, both in corporate structures and political regimes, and any other manifestation of the authoritarian mentality.

While Patricia Evans is not an intellectual heavyweight, but I appreciate her works because they've helped me in my own life to attempt to heal from the damage of an emotionally/psychologically and verbally abusive marriage.

Well, I'm late getting to bed, and this is post is too long, anyways!

Thanks to all who sought constructive discussion here; you've all helped me think a lot about these matters!
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby Kate » Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:38 am

Dammit! My posting timing sucks. That overly long thing I wrote is WAY too serious to follow directly on the heels of a delightful comic opera, and especially one starring DOGGIES, my favorite 4-footed creatures.

Oh, well.
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby norton ash » Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:45 am

Sorry, just screwing around. My gravity-sensors have burned out.

Please continue. The discussion is all good and valid, it's the hand-to-hand combat and hurt feelings between individuals that gets deadly for me.
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby Kate » Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:55 am

Norton, that was sweet -- no worries! I enjoyed it. DOGGIES, I loves 'em.

As to continuing, while I need to overcome sleep deprivation now (zzzzz....), I look forward to reading everybody else's contributions when I awaken. And my very own (almost 14-yr.) old pupster insists on staying up with me, so it'll be a blessing to her too when I conk out.

Carry on, only please be kind to each other, y'all!
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby crikkett » Thu Mar 17, 2011 11:26 am

Posting to register the irony in how the thread title "douchebag of the day" sits right next to a 31-page discussion on misogyny and a brand new anti-sexist update of this site's posting guidelines.
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Re: What constitutes Misogyny?

Postby Searcher08 » Thu Mar 17, 2011 11:34 am

From Urban dictionary

douchebag

Someone who has surpassed the levels of jerk and asshole, however not yet reached fucker or motherfucker. Not to be confuzed with douche.
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