What constitutes Misogyny?

[Canadian_watcher]

brekin, this is ridiculous.
I'm not going to engage you about this topic any more.

[Project Willow]

The wisdom of "choose your battles" has been at play since the inception of this thread and all of its predecessors. If any perspective might be respected, than those choices can and should be.

To C_W:

[brekin]

Canadian_Watcher wrote:

brekin, this is ridiculous.
I'm not going to engage you about this topic any more.

This is wonderful. We agree completely with one another.

[WakeUpAndLive]

It has been said before in this thread and said again, it is all about power....I don't feel that women should hold an ultimate authority on what constitutes misogyny, not only because males experience similar scenarios, but because it then gives females a similar power they were complaining about men having.

A man's experience of misogyny is like a man's experience of child-birth. You want to try and tell me what it felt like for me?

I wasn't stating we experience misogyny, just that we experience similar events (that aren't labeled under a term because there hasn't been one created to incorporate women behaving negatively towards men because of their sex). As for either experiences, I can't comment on how it feels, namely because I haven't been exposed to these scenarios as I recall. I do FEEL there needs to be a balance which has yet to be found in discussions on this thread.

And C_W, I will just ask if any positive thought can be garnered about misogyny based on your persistent posts in regards to brekin (specifically the responses that comment on his actions in this thread and not on his ideas about misogyny)?

Can any positive thought be garnered about misogyny because I kept responding to [i]brekin's[/i] persistent posts? Why yes, I believe we can take from the exchange that I, as a woman, don't feel as inclined to keep my mouth shut as, say, my great-grandmother might have.

Can you not see how he kept posting the same shit over and over again.. "I'm telling you not to relate a personal, traumatic experience here, it has deeply affected you, it is only going to cause harm." Did you think I should just say, "Oh, okay brekin, you're right. I shouldn't have mentioned anything so embarassing and humiliating. I am obviously unable to think straight. Thanks, Daddy."

There has been no negative fallout from my exchange with brekin, except that two or three people have had to go over the same stuff numerous times, which is really rather boring.

Once again this boils down to perspective. From my perspective it is sometimes a good thing to not respond, especially when our emotional involvement and investment is more likely to fuel the fire or cause a response we wish to have worded differently (not saying you have or haven't, I honestly skipped over the posts back and forth between you....so technically that is in my opinion a negative fallout). I also don't expect you to respond in such a way. I'll go back to my point of balance....it is there somewhere, lets work on finding it?

[WakeUpAndLive]

OK then, given your distrust, are you satisfied with the status quo of women? Are you pleased that we occupy inferior positions in society and experience daily the disrespect and deprivations of our position? Do you deny us our quest for equality in the first place? If not, then what remedy do you suggest?

Please do not try to pull my personal opinion on women from the few posts I've posted. I understand I may be coming into this looking like the standard male unwilling to give up his position in society, that is far from the truth. If you want my honest opinion no I'm not pleased with how most humans today act. Both male and female are way off base when judging each other, and this thread further demonstrates said facts.

I think the most important points keep getting overlooked:


Perspective, people

Balance, people

[Canadian_watcher]

The wisdom of "choose your battles" has been at play since the inception of this thread and all of its predecessors. If any perspective might be respected, than those choices can and should be.

To C_W:

[Canadian_watcher]

OK then, given your distrust, are you satisfied with the status quo of women? Are you pleased that we occupy inferior positions in society and experience daily the disrespect and deprivations of our position? Do you deny us our quest for equality in the first place? If not, then what remedy do you suggest?

Please do not try to pull my personal opinion on women from the few posts I've posted.

She is asking for your opinion, not 'trying to pull it' from your posts. I notice you didn't answer her questions. Why not?

[WakeUpAndLive]

OK then, given your distrust, are you satisfied with the status quo of women? Are you pleased that we occupy inferior positions in society and experience daily the disrespect and deprivations of our position? Do you deny us our quest for equality in the first place? If not, then what remedy do you suggest?

Please do not try to pull my personal opinion on women from the few posts I've posted.

She is asking for your opinion, not 'trying to pull it' from your posts. I notice you didn't answer her questions. Why not?

Lets see:

OK then, given your distrust

distrust? I'm just saying that no single group should have authority on a subject, it leaves the door open to exploitation. It is like the president of the NRC being the ex-head of some nuclear company. I feel males would do the same.

, are you satisfied with the status quo of women?

No, but i'm not satisfied with the status quo of men either.

Are you pleased that we occupy inferior positions in society and experience daily the disrespect and deprivations of our position?

How can anyone have pleasure at these scenarios....they must be twisted if they do.

Do you deny us our quest for equality in the first place?

No.

If not, then what remedy do you suggest?

I honestly don't know, hence i'm posting in this thread looking for an answer. I've as well included my opinions about what can help us get there.

[druff]

I honestly don't know, hence i'm posting in this thread looking for an answer.

Surely you have enough info by now to know that you should run from this thread as fast as possible.



What is the sound of one hand fapping?

[Peregrine]

I probably should have said "mental health at the time." But yes, choosing to share something so vulnerable and personable to (at that time an unsympathetic audience) in a taunting way is someone who appeared to me to be in a very angry, pressurized place. Mental Health wise not feeling very good. If I get in an argument in a bar and things start to get hostile I don't decide then to pull out traumatic episodes from my past. That's me and if others do that and are able to, then hey go for it.

Maybe I'm just splitting hairs here, but it's kinda hard to gauge someone's state of mind when it comes to text on a screen. I thought it a little goofy to question her mental health. I dunno, I thought she was providing another, albeit more serious, example of what she experienced in the way of misogynistic behaviour. And it is quite possible, at least for me, to relate tramautic experiences without having the horrendous emotional attatchment to it anymore.

And the Na Na video? Your a mod right? If gold should rust what of brass then?

Hey man, don't take it too personal, it's the song that immediately popped into my head when you said you had to go & I had trigger-finger posting. And because I'm a mod I can't indulge in a little harmless juvenile behaviour once in a while? 'cmon, jeeze...

Of course no good deed goes unpunished and I must now stand in the line up with Furnace Man

Why stand in line with furnace guy? He was a complete jerk. I personally wouldn't have told him I didn't like him because he was late, I would have told him that I didn't appreciate that he was late but that I decided not to hire him because he copped a shitty attitude when I asked him why he was late.

If you want to try it, run at someone swinging a golf club and ululating wildly. Not that I recommend that sort of thing, but the key is convincing people that you're best avoided.

heh. I, uh, will remember that when walking down the street in the wee hours of the morn.

note to self... carry golf club

Now had C_W done this to furnace man, I totally would understand why one would question her mental health...

[Project Willow]

distrust? I'm just saying that no single group should have authority on a subject, it leaves the door open to exploitation. It is like the president of the NRC being the ex-head of some nuclear company. I feel males would do the same.

You're projecting onto women the same motives and drives of men to achieve power over and this is a fallacy. Let me tell you, as a radical feminist, I have no desire whatsoever to exercise power over anyone. I simply seek equality for my sex, I simply seek redress and relief from the deprivations I experience every day. Regardless, you cannot work towards redress for misogyny if you do not give certain views more credence than others. It's simply impossible, so the task is to find a workable way of dealing with that reality, given, yes, your distrust, if indeed, your insistence of it holds sway with the rest of society.

, are you satisfied with the status quo of women?

No, but i'm not satisfied with the status quo of men either.

OK, but do you place women and men on the same footing? If so, why?

If not, then what remedy do you suggest?

I honestly don't know, hence i'm posting in this thread looking for an answer. I've as well included my opinions about what can help us get there.

Help US get there? I beg your pardon, but you've swaggered into this thread preaching perspective when you haven't yet deigned to listen to or even consider the perspective of women. Spare us, please.

[Stephen Morgan]

Nature and nurture work together. Through the application of enough will power you can fundamentally alter your body, even at a genetic level with great physical stress and adaptation changing epigenetic factors. On the other hand women are more likely to have their natural physical flimsiness worsened by their natural mental leanings, against extreme physical exertion and that sort of thing.

d'oh! It was shaping up so well there... I'll fix it:

Nature and nurture work together. ... On the other hand women are more likely to have their natural physical bodies worsened by social pressures which give them strong messages against extreme physical exertion and that sort of thing.

All better.

Do you think some massive male conspiracy puts out those "messages"? Those messages are aimed at our own natural inclinations, even advertising simply seeks to manipulate what is already there. The culture whence those messages is generated by people following their nature, as their nature has in turn been influenced by culture. Sexual dimorphism, whether mental or physical, is a result of the men and women of earlier generations.

If there are lines of work, and I don't accept this, where women are institutionally paid less for the same sort work,

There's a pretty good resource you can try and use to prove your point here: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswom2009.pdf

I'll pick out a couple of samples, all of which come from the Bureau's Statistics from 2009:

Postal Service Mail Carriers: females earn 96.2% of what men do.
Dispatchers: Females earn 82.2% of what men do.
and you'll like this one, particularly:
Data Entry Keyers: females earn 82.4% of what men do.

Lots more there but I don't think you're going to find a single incidence where the percentage works in favour of your argument. I was looking specifically for data on nursing, because I can find many, many references to male nurses out-earning female nurses. I didn't see anything there specifically for nursing though.

I could see male nurses out-earning female nurses, when they can find work, because they're disproportionately likely to be psychiatric nurses, which is dangerous and unpleasant and therefore better paid, but requires people able to physically restrain violent and delusional patients.

Otherwise your source follows the standard pay gap dogma, specifically not taking into account hours worked and level of experience.

There are no similar lines of work for men because professions dominated by women will commonly simply refuse to ever hire men, rather than recruiting them on lower wages. I and other people I've encountered have experienced this in trying to work as carers, any work with children, certain office jobs and so on.

So you've reported. The only time I've ever seen a man-ban live and in person was for a job at the Sexual Assault Crisis Center in my area. (And by the way, I applied to that - you'd think that with my degree I would have at least gotten a CALL)

Well they don't exactly put up a sign in the lobby, "no boyz allowed". It's a cultural thing, what one of my favourite socialists and anti-feminists, E Belfort Bax, called "sentimental feminism". A Victorian-style belief that women are all nurturing and emotional and good with kids, while men are atavistic predators who can't be trusted with children.

I disapprove of bans on men working in rape crisis centres, too. Probably illegal, definitely immoral. Even the police go in for that, though. Rape victims get given female officers to look after them, although if they've been raped by a black man they don't necessarily get a white officer. Don't know what happens with women raped by women, with objects and so forth. Better for the long-term psychological health of the victim if they don't get this idea of men being too dangerous to deal with immediately internalised.

[Stephen Morgan]

I wasn't stating we experience misogyny, just that we experience similar events (that aren't labeled under a term because there hasn't been one created to incorporate women behaving negatively towards men because of their sex).

The word is "misandry".

You're projecting onto women the same motives and drives of men to achieve power over and this is a fallacy.

The idea that men are driven by an innate will to power while women are morally pure and harmless is sexism in it's most blatant and vicious form.

[Canadian_watcher]

Why stand in line with furnace guy? He was a complete jerk. I personally wouldn't have told him I didn't like him because he was late, I would have told him that I didn't appreciate that he was late but that I decided not to hire him because he copped a shitty attitude when I asked him why he was late.

This is an interesting point, because I've thought of that too. I wondered why I didn't explain it to him better. When I review the whole thing I realize that there was certainly an element of fight or flight going on for me. I don't think it would have been the right thing for me to do to be antagonistic. I was at home alone and he was giving me bad vibes.

-- side note -- my hips took a beating during childbirth, too - that pain was worse than any of the rest of it.

Do you think some massive male conspiracy puts out those "messages"? Those messages are aimed at our own natural inclinations, even advertising simply seeks to manipulate what is already there. The culture whence those messages is generated by people following their nature, as their nature has in turn been influenced by culture. Sexual dimorphism, whether mental or physical, is a result of the men and women of earlier generations.

I agree that advertising seeks to manipulate that which is already there, but that doesn't mean that these things are innate, unless you're talking about our drives toward personal security and needs for food, shelter, sex and love. Other things that are there to be manipulated are results of many, many years of cultural training. Like you said here:

It's a cultural thing, what one of my favourite socialists and anti-feminists, E Belfort Bax, called "sentimental feminism". A Victorian-style belief that women are all nurturing and emotional and good with kids, while men are atavistic predators who can't be trusted with children.

One of my favorite feminists, Barbara Welter, calls it "The Cult of Domesticity" or "The Cult of True Womanhood." - There's a really excellent piece online, I was thrilled to have found exactly what I was looking for here: The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860

Funny that - here we've got an anti-feminist and a feminist drawing on exactly the same crappy Victorian attitude to prove his/her points! I love it!

If you look through it you'll see that it does not vilify men for this phenomenon, this was something that middle and upper class women perpetrated fiercely on their own sex. However, in describing what they saw as the true nature of women the people of that era also described the opposite - what they perceived to be the true nature of men. It's interesting reading, really.

One of the roots of the problem as I see it is that somehow man and woman have been placed as opposites, and therefore when we think of an attribute like gentleness, for example, we want to assign it and its opposite to one or the other of the genders. Somehow as a culture we've gotten so lazy as to put everything into either/or categories.

I could see male nurses out-earning female nurses, when they can find work, because they're disproportionately likely to be psychiatric nurses, which is dangerous and unpleasant and therefore better paid, but requires people able to physically restrain violent and delusional patients.

Otherwise your source follows the standard pay gap dogma, specifically not taking into account hours worked and level of experience.

Yes, that's true - there is evidence that male nurses specialize and therefore get the higher pay for those jobs requiring higher learning. I wonder what this is a function of, though. There is an argument to be made that there are a lot of one parent female-headed households, increasing the demands on the time and energy of the woman so that it makes it nearly impossible for her to get more training. This seems like an unbalanced situation.

Re hours of work and level of experience. Neither of us know how those data were collected, but you could be correct. Let's assume that you are. I have a couple of questions springing from that:

1. How is it that males would generally have more hours worked in any of these professions?
2. Do you think that data entry is field wherein your average male would have more experience than your average female?

I disapprove of bans on men working in rape crisis centres, too. Probably illegal, definitely immoral.

I absolutely, categorically disagree with you. It isn't illegal where I live, first of all. And I do not think it is immoral - trauma from rape is something that only those who have been raped can possibly understand, and if they have voiced their opposition to having to be left alone in a room with a man who will ask her personal questions in the immediate aftermath of the assault then we should respect them. No?

I do, however, think it is tragic that there are no male-run male rape crisis centers.

[WakeUpAndLive]

distrust? I'm just saying that no single group should have authority on a subject, it leaves the door open to exploitation. It is like the president of the NRC being the ex-head of some nuclear company. I feel males would do the same.

You're projecting onto women the same motives and drives of men to achieve power over and this is a fallacy. Let me tell you, as a radical feminist, I have no desire whatsoever to exercise power over anyone. I simply seek equality for my sex, I simply seek redress and relief from the deprivations I experience every day. Regardless, you cannot work towards redress for misogyny if you do not give certain views more credence than others. It's simply impossible, so the task is to find a workable way of dealing with that reality, given, yes, your distrust, if indeed, your insistence of it holds sway with the rest of society.

I as well have no desire whatsoever to exercise my power over anyone, but many males do, just as many females do. I am not saying that women will abuse the authority if given, until that time comes it will be hard to qualify. I am saying that the door is left open if one organization is left to have complete authority over a subject. I WANT women to have a say in every aspect of their life, but to have complete authority in judging the actions MEN take to determine misogynistic behavoir could be used in a negative manner, especially when emotions are high and decisions are made rashly. It is normal reaction for most people, men included.

OK, but do you place women and men on the same footing? If so, why?

I do place both groups on the same footing. We are 99+% genetically the same, to me that constitutes no difference.

Help US get there? I beg your pardon, but you've swaggered into this thread preaching perspective when you haven't yet deigned to listen to or even consider the perspective of women. Spare us, please.

I'm sorry you feel such a way, I do feel like I'm listening to your perspective and reflection my personal opinions about them by posting. By help us, I mean that misogyny is a two party occurrence. Without a male perpetrator, no misogynistic act can be completed. Until men understand and consciously realize when they are performing a misogynistic act there will be no way to deal with it. What I've gleamed from this thread so far is that the labeling is done by the victim, making this task all the more difficult, maybe impossible (?)