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.
I'd like to return to what Nordic and 82_28 said for a moment, and explain why I tend to empathise with Project Willow's statement.
Nordic wrote:Can women be misogynists? And if so, how does this contribute overall?
First of all, it seems as if both posts suggest a degree of equivalency between the participation of both sexes within the skein of the misogynist culture. I think Nordic's question can be rephrased as "Can women hate women for being women?" And while the answer to that is obviously yes, the very question can be viewed as an attribution of guilt to women for the existence of misogyny in some way. It assumes complicity in the oppressive regime of patriarchy, and, to my mind seeks to dilute the issue by distributing the causes between both sexes, all the while the benefits of the cultural bias accrue continuously to the male oppressors. As well, some conjectured general hatred by women of women can only be viewed sensibly as a reaction to that culture, and imbued by the milieu of their oppression.
82_28's post has a variety of issues for me:
82_28 wrote:But you bring up a great point, Nordic. I just don't think misogyny is a gender specific issue, but rather a cultural one and a cultural issue that indicates a built in decline.
Again, here we see an attempt to move the discussion away from the issue of gender, which I see as counterintuitive and unproductive. Misogyny affects everyone, and colors our lives and thoughts, but it acts as an oppressive force specifically on
women. I guess you could say that living as a beneficiary of an oppressive hegemony is arguable deletirious to the oppressor, especially with regards to becoming a complete person or in terms of living a satisfying, self-realised life, but I'd like to be forgiven for weighing my sympathies in favor of those who are oppressed over the hardships of having to do the oppressing.
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. So, I really have no idea.
I'm not really understanding this part of your post, because my understanding is that our language is imbued with gender specificity and male-centric bias so entirely as to totally reinforce the hegemony of men. In some ways, language itself is a male construct, at least from the point of view of our cultural myths. You know, like the Gospel of John says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And that right there was pretty much the end of the matriarchy.
But on a person to person basis, misogyny need not exist if common respect is not only observed, but lived. There are just as big of assholes on the male or female end.
In some ways I think there's a parallel to certain discussions of wealth nequalities and class issues to this thought process. For example, in discussing the plutocratic nature of our society, one might say, "There are just as big assholes on the rich or the poor end." And people do say that sort of thing all the time, and attempt, quite successfully I might add, to dilute the causes and ills of plutocratic society across a spectrum of classes, drawing equivalencies all the while the benefits accrue to the most wealthy. I mean, you can blame the poor for acceeding to the power of concentrated wealth, but somehow that seems misguided to me. And here, the question isn't really about whether or not there are an equal number of assholes on either side of the gender line, is it? That seems like an entirely different thread, probably titled, "What constitutes assholery?" or something.
