What constitutes Misogyny?

[compared2what?]

As brevity is the soul of wit:

If Shakespeare had intended those words to be received as wise rather than tragicomedic, they would not have been spoken by Polonius. One who hath not wit enough to wotteth that must wotteth naught of wit what can in no wise but briefly be said, though eer shall he wotteth it not. Quoth I.

I'm sorry.

Like hell.
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Would anyone be interested in talking about what constitutes misogyny as its represented by Jonathan Demme in Silence of the Lambs? Or some other suitable movie/text/whatever that we're all generally familiar with?

Taking a little breather on neutral ground might prove to have its uses, is what I'm thinking.

[Kate]

c2w,

To be truthful, I saw that film once, and never again. I found it very triggering, and if everybody else would want to discuss it, I certainly wouldn't want to get in the way of that. But I would bow out.

Also -- would you mind explaining what you mean by neutral ground? I'm aware that there have been some flash points, and a couple of people who have seemed not to want to discuss things respectfully, but I've also been enjoying the serious posts from quite a few folks here.

On the other hand, if I know what you mean specifically by the term "neutral ground", then maybe it's something other than what I perceive when I read that. My initial perception is that you might be thinking that there are two (or more) contingents who are somehow "battling it out." If that's the correct perception, then maybe I'm dense about something here, but I thought folks who are looking for battles are few and far between. Not that such a thing isn't unpleasant, but I find just skipping around and on to serious comments works pretty well -- for me. And of course, ymmv. Am I missing something?

I thought that Sunday's contributions were, for the most part, some good food for thought. And if I weren't so tired and in bad need of sleep, I'd enjoy replying thoughtfully to a number of them.

Thanks in advance.

[compared2what?]

No problem. And needless to say, driving you away is a deal-killer. So forget I mentioned it.

Your initial perception was certainly of something other than what I had in mind when I used that phrase. Would you mind explaining where you perceived it? Because I have no doubt that I'm dense, and if it's something that's actually there, I'm definitely missing something I wouldn't want to have overlooked. So thanks in advance in return.

I really just meant that it might be easier to consider and understand what constitutes misogyny as it occurs on the ground in the life of a woman -- ie, as a routine feature of daily life that informs and colors all aspects of her existence in and experience of external reality -- if we were all looking at the same organized representation of it and were all on equal footing wrt [stuff like our access to, knowledge of and absence of bias due to personal investment in] her life, her body, her weakness, her strength and -- in a nutshell -- her.

TRIGGER WARNING: I'm going to say a little bit more about why I thought of that movie following the buffer-zone of line-breaks, just in the interests of providing an example that might act as a spur to the thought whereby someone puts my idea to shame by having a better one.

It's not like there's any gruesome content upcoming, or anything like that. But if you just don't want to risk being reminded of the movie at all, better trigger-warned than ambushed, right?

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Jonathan Demme pretty much shot the book as it was written with only one substantial deletion in literal terms, but thematically speaking the movie is more of a counterpoint to what Thomas Harris put on the page than it is an interpretation of it, solely because the axis of the principal question on which the movie turns has shifted from "How do you solve a problem like societal exile Hannibal Lecter and his sub-iteration Buffalo Bill?" to "How do you solve a problem like societal exile Clarice Starling and her sub-iterations every-other-woman-in-the-movie-plus-the-woman-Buffalo-Bill-wants-to-be-as-he's-conceived-womanhood-based-on-his-hatred-of-women-and-himself?"

I mean, it's not like Katherine spends the twenty seconds of screen time during which you get to know her as well as if you'd grown up next door to and graduated from high school with her singing along with "American Girl" for no reason at all. The entire movie is an extended contemplation on what it means to be a woman in a world that never stops telling women what it means to be them, apart from whatever time it may take either to punish them for being it or to punish them for not being it, as the occasion demands.

It's a very observant movie that way, especially in that it doesn't fail to observe that just because women are often (or even usually) every bit as equal to that punishment as they need to be (iow, they're not usually victims of it in any stereotypical sense of that word) that doesn't mean it's not punishing. Or, to an extent, lethal both to some male and female persons and to society. Or that part of the price we pay for accepting the compound injustices that arise from it isn't that innocence dies screaming all around us and in us all the time.

And yet, in its own little way, I'd say that it ends on an upbeat note.

[Canadian_watcher]

Catcalls are evidence of misogyny. Is that right?...

The point I am trying to make is that it doesn't seem to me that an answer to the question "What constitutes Misogyny?" can be arrived at by adding together data about ill treatment of women by men. I'm understanding the question as more like: What are the reasons for misogyny? rather than Can we make a list of examples of misogyny?

I agree with you on this, but I'm finding it difficult to approach the reasons behind it without starting with examples and extracting the underlying reasons why the examples exist.

If I had to answer "what are the reasons for misogyny" in 200 words or less I'd say:

Misogyny exists because patriarchy will do anything it can to maintain its dominance.
-On the global scale it exists because to stop it from existing would upset the status quo that works so well for the Powers that Be.
-On a community scale it exists because the messages from the global scale strongly encourage it to via the laws they formulate, the way the media portrays women, job ghettos and assignment of gender roles.
-On a personal level it exists in almost all of us to one degree or another (like radiation from exposure) until we examine ourselves and our culture and decide how to proceed. Upon examination, some people reject misogynistic practices or assignments while others internalize them, deny them, or actively use them to try and gain entrance into the patriarchy in the hopes that they will avoid pain.

At least that's my take on it.

I'm not sure, but one reading of your post in re my post might be that you imagine that I'm either refusing to examine how my life intersects with others or that I'm advocating such a refusal; or perhaps even both.

On the contrary I think that you are examining this very thing. I apologize for my clumsiness in leaving that open to be interpreted that way. I'm glad you asked me, because I was speaking philosophically and not directing it at anyone in particular.

Catcalls are evidence of misogyny. Is that right?...

The point I am trying to make is that it doesn't seem to me that an answer to the question "What constitutes Misogyny?" can be arrived at by adding together data about ill treatment of women by men. I'm understanding the question as more like: What are the reasons for misogyny? rather than Can we make a list of examples of misogyny?

I agree with you on this, but I'm finding it difficult to approach the reasons behind it without starting with examples and extracting the underlying reasons why the examples exist.

If I had to answer "what are the reasons for misogyny" in 200 words or less I'd say:

Misogyny exists because patriarchy will do anything it can to maintain its dominance.
-On the global scale it exists because to stop it from existing would upset the status quo that works so well for the Powers that Be.
-On a community scale it exists because the messages from the global scale strongly encourage it to via the laws they formulate, the way the media portrays women, job ghettos and assignment of gender roles.
-On a personal level it exists in almost all of us to one degree or another until we examine ourselves and our culture and decide how to proceed. Upon examination, some people reject misogynistic practices or assignments while others internalize them, deny them, or actively use them to try and gain entrance into the patriarchy in the hopes that they will avoid pain.

At least that's my take on it.

Kate's pointing to the distinction between "power-over" and power from within or "empowerment" is really great. I'm not clear how "power-over" provokes misogyny,

I think her point is dead on, and I believe that power-over provokes misogyny because it is one of many methods of maintaining power-over as I tried to describe above. At home let's say, there might be a husband who has a terrible job where his boss treats him using a power-over approach and that husband might in turn come home and treat his wife that way. His wife might then treat the children that way. We recognize where our power lies within the hierarchy, and we are loathe to change it, even if it would mean that we actually gained power in the process, because we so fear losing that little bit which we already have.

23's post was excellent in reply to this, too. Well said.

I didn't look at the book yet.. but I will.
thanks for the discussion thus far!

[charlie meadows]

As brevity is the soul of wit:

If Shakespeare had intended those words to be received as wise rather than tragicomedic, they would not have been spoken by Polonius. One who hath not wit enough to wotteth that must wotteth naught of wit what can in no wise but briefly be said, though eer shall he wotteth it not. Quoth I.

I'm sorry.

Like hell.

Excellent. Much information put into nine words, carefully crafted.

Sorry. But not contrite. I have been so gentle. And I promise I won't enter your box again, under any circumstances.

Would anyone be interested in talking about what constitutes misogyny as it's represented by Jonathan Demme in Silence of the Lambs? Or some other suitable movie/text/whatever that we're all generally familiar with?

Taking a little breather on neutral ground might prove to have its uses, is what I'm thinking.

Silence of the Lambs?

On neutral ground?

I vote for The Shining.

[Canadian_watcher]

I vote for Thelma and Louise.

[Jeff]

I find this

I have been so gentle. And I promise I won't enter your box again, under any circumstances.

extremely offensive and sexually abusive language. It has no place on the board, and is additionally a provocation in this thread. I'm suspending your account for a week.

[Cedars of Overburden]

Thank you, Jeff!

At Hava, I was married for nine years and a day (yes, I left him the day after our aniversary) to the kind of left-wing bully asshat PC jerk described in the quote you put up Friday or Saturday.

As for PC being a thing of the past and not really a problem: A year or so ago, a white male "feminist" was urging everyone on a local listserv to drop the word "husbandry" on grounds that it was horribly sexist. In all future usages, he commanded, we were to say "househusband" instead. This guy had just come up with this and felt comfortable issuing usage commands to the group. I'd just been meditating on how a comeback of the word "husbandry" could be a great morale booster for men, especially unemployed men searching for a way to contribute, and in the process could help them understand women's problems in a nonthreatening way. To be fair to Mr. Know-It-All, I didn't respond to his email. I ought to have, but part of my overburden of misogyny is that speaking up is extremely hard for me. If I speak, I'm a bitch, if I hold my tongue, I'm a pushover. But being reasonable (something I value very, very highly and highly recommend to all humans and hell, let's throw in the humanoids too) is always going to involve holding my tongue (or my typing fingers) until I can listen long enough to figure out what I really think is really going on.

Jack is right, however, about "PC" kind of being owned by Fox News and employed as a weapon against us. I'm now debating with myself as to whether I should refer to this phenom as "cases of the snide snarkies" or "social worker syndrome." The latter is unfair to social workers. No. That's out. "Bullying Usage Usurpers"? Grand Word Dictators? All sides can play the game. Renaming French fries "freedom fries" was right wing PC.

This thread has been making me think about my Dad a lot. I've named a syndrome after him -- Nice Guy Misogyny. Daddy really IS a nice guy. Kindly, polite, wouldn't hurt a fly, etc. etc. and the only time he listens to women and actually hears what they're saying is if the weather is sunny, she points that out, AND he happens to agree. I'm been realizing how very much not-listened to I've felt my entire life. Someone enraged me a few months ago by saying how much I reminded them of my Dad. I was shaking with rage about that. I later asked my Mom what she thought and she said, "you're pretty much exactly like your father except you listen to me."

[Plutonia]

Thank you, Jeff!

At Hava, I was married for nine years and a day (yes, I left him the day after our aniversary) to the kind of left-wing bully asshat PC jerk described in the quote you put up Friday or Saturday.

As for PC being a thing of the past and not really a problem: A year or so ago, a white male "feminist" was urging everyone on a local listserv to drop the word "husbandry" on grounds that it was horribly sexist. In all future usages, he commanded, we were to say "househusband" instead. This guy had just come up with this and felt comfortable issuing usage commands to the group. I'd just been meditating on how a comeback of the word "husbandry" could be a great morale booster for men, especially unemployed men searching for a way to contribute, and in the process could help them understand women's problems in a nonthreatening way. To be fair to Mr. Know-It-All, I didn't respond to his email. I ought to have, but part of my overburden of misogyny is that speaking up is extremely hard for me. If I speak, I'm a bitch, if I hold my tongue, I'm a pushover. But being reasonable (something I value very, very highly and highly recommend to all humans and hell, let's throw in the humanoids too) is always going to involve holding my tongue (or my typing fingers) until I can listen long enough to figure out what I really think is really going on.

Jack is right, however, about "PC" kind of being owned by Fox News and employed as a weapon against us. I'm now debating with myself as to whether I should refer to this phenom as "cases of the snide snarkies" or "social worker syndrome." The latter is unfair to social workers. No. That's out. "Bullying Usage Usurpers"? Grand Word Dictators? All sides can play the game. Renaming French fries "freedom fries" was right wing PC.

This thread has been making me think about my Dad a lot. I've named a syndrome after him -- Nice Guy Misogyny. Daddy really IS a nice guy. Kindly, polite, wouldn't hurt a fly, etc. etc. and the only time he listens to women and actually hears what they're saying is if the weather is sunny, she points that out, AND he happens to agree. I'm been realizing how very much not-listened to I've felt my entire life. Someone enraged me a few months ago by saying how much I reminded them of my Dad. I was shaking with rage about that. I later asked my Mom what she thought and she said, "you're pretty much exactly like your father except you listen to me."

C of O, the dynamic you have described here - feeling not heard and being perceived as hard of listening - is illustrative of one of a common, universal even, subtle communication that often goes unrecognized. It happens below the threshold of our awareness, so it's not really accurate to say that we "do" it. Nevertheless, I think it may be useful to point it out in context of misogyny. It's that we tend to transmit a feeling we are having to others so that they end up feeling that way too. It's a way of communicating when other methods of communicating aren't working. Also, we may not recognize what it is we are feeling until we see it expressed outside of ourselves, by someone else, so it may function to aid self-awareness.

Does that make sense?

In context of misogyny then, if people are acting unconsciously to make women feel powerless, or inferior, it would be because of their own disowned feelings of powerlessness and inferiority. Kate has made the same point above, but it may be helpful to acknowledge that what one is unconscious of, really is un-conscious and that the ego resists awareness of that material.

The process of Individuation, as described by Jung, is really just a process of integrating the contents of the unconscious but it could also be described as maturation:

Jung referred to this initial step as "the First Act of Courage". And the first thing that is necessary in coming to terms with one's own shadow is simply to acknowledge that it exists. It sounds obvious, but there are those for whom the thought of actually having a darker side to their nature is extremely uncomfortable. Yet this is one of the primary reasons for undertaking the 'Shadow work' in the first place, since that which we have yet disavow in ourselves will be projected outwards.

One of the clues to projection of shadow content is the degree of negative emotion aroused in us by something in the outside world - often other people. It can be something they do, or even just the way they look. Projection is accompanied by emotion. Jung distinguished between 'feeling' (a function which evaluates) and 'emotion' (a physiological affect). If there is no projection of something which is at the root personal, it is possible to evaluate something (or someone) external as being 'bad', without being greatly upset, experiencing, at most, a sense of regret or pity. If the emotion is stronger than that, then we may want to ask ourselves what of ourselves we see in what is making us feel that way. That said, it is important to note that not all projection is negative, that at some level it may all be projection given our subjective perspectives, and that there is a place in the world for righteous anger which motivates social action for change.

http://pandc.ca/?cat=car_jung&page=majo ... ividuation

[23]

In context of misogyny then, if people are acting unconsciously to make women feel powerless, or inferior, it would be because of their own disowned feelings of powerlessness and inferiority. Kate has made the same point above, but it may be helpful to acknowledge that what one is unconscious of, really is un-conscious and that the ego resists awareness of that material.

Agreed. I pretty much reiterated that in an earlier post.

This, however, also prompts me to ask... does this dynamic work both ways as well?

I am referring to the sub/unconcious self-perception of a victim.

Where other people's (in)actions often get interpreted as harmful ones, to justify that sub/unconcious self-perception. Along with a perceiving of harmful intent, where there may be none.

Powerless-ness manifests in various forms. Powering over, or "I hurt because I feel hurt", is one. Victimization, or "I see you as my hurter because I my hurt is caused by someone/something outside of me", is another.

[Kate]

I ended up having to go to the doctor this a.m., and only got 2-1/2 hours of sleep, so needless to say my most pressing agenda item is to get a nap and take care of myself a bit.

HOWEVER! It's frustrating, because there are so many good posts to respond to, including thanking Jeff for intervening to save this thread from being effectively poisoned.

Quick responses:

c2w --

Your initial perception was certainly of something other than what I had in mind when I used that phrase. Would you mind explaining where you perceived it?

The phrase "neutral ground," is one which calls to my mind certain associations, for example, like the supposed stance of Switzerland during WWII. Or a "demilitarized zone" or any carved out piece of territory where combatants can put down their arms and discuss a peace proposal, or terms of armistice. And perhaps the additional sense of something which is neither one "side" nor "another side," regardless of whether the "sides" in question were/are extreme or not.

So thanks for explaining that in your post "neutral ground" meant this:

I really just meant that it might be easier to consider and understand what constitutes misogyny as it occurs on the ground in the life of a woman...

...if we were all looking at the same organized representation of it and were all on equal footing...

I appreciate the clarification; maybe I could have figured it out if I hadn't been so sleep-deprived and feeling unwell. By your meaning of it, I think that very well COULD be useful.

Also, thanks for your consideration in the graphic lay-out of your post. When you said there was nothing gruesome, I felt at ease to slowly scroll down and take in your thoughts about the film.

On the other hand, when I think of your great wording here:

The entire movie is an extended contemplation on what it means to be a woman in a world that never stops telling women what it means to be them, apart from whatever time it may take either to punish them for being it or to punish them for not being it, as the occasion demands.

I believe that Canadian Watcher's suggestion of Thelma and Louise also fits that bill perfectly as described. Thanks, C_W!!!

Thelma and Louise is shot through with violence against women, of the literal physical type, but also emotional/verbal/psychological/cultural forms of violence, and the entire context of the narrative is the FEAR of (recurring) violence -- i.e., the "back story" of what had occurred in Texas. And for me the movie has the added value that the specific instances of physical violence are not filmed "graphically" with visual gore or detailed (and for me greatly triggering) verbal descriptions of gore.

So my vote would be for Thelma and Louise....with the additional idea that should it be important for anyone to convey ideas, concepts, etc. by means of using examples from any films (or news stories, for that matter) which explicitly employ details of gruesome violence (visually or verbally), as long as a poster gives a heads-up to what's coming I'd just scroll past it, and do my best to participate "around" that sort of thing. I've noticed that posters on this board are virtually always considerate in that regard, for which I'm truly grateful.

I want so much to respond to 23, Cedars of Overburden (hooo boy, do I so get "Nice Guy Misogyny", and look forward to comparing notes with you, if that's OK with you, either in the thread or by PM), Saurian Tail (I want to check out Derrick Jensen, that's the second mention of that author -- both by you, Saurian? sorry I can't remember), wallflower, Plutonia, and the other ideas (than the film suggestion) presented by our "original poster," Canadian Watcher, whose graciousness under pressure has impressed me throughout.

I'm probably forgetting somebody(s) now, so please put that down to my not being able to see straight at the moment. Maybe circumstances will prevent me from responding to each person the way I would like to (time constraints and such), but I'm thankful for all the good things to chew on every commenter has provided.

G'nite for now!

[23]

Pleasant androgynous dreams, Kate.

A potential antidote (androgyny) to the complementary aberrations of androcentrism and gynocentrism.

[Canadian_watcher]

In context of misogyny then, if people are acting unconsciously to make women feel powerless, or inferior, it would be because of their own disowned feelings of powerlessness and inferiority. Kate has made the same point above, but it may be helpful to acknowledge that what one is unconscious of, really is un-conscious and that the ego resists awareness of that material.

Agreed. I pretty much reiterated that in an earlier post.

This, however, also prompts me to ask... does this dynamic work both ways as well?

I am referring to the sub/unconcious self-perception of a victim.

Where other people's (in)actions often get interpreted as harmful ones, to justify that sub/unconcious self-perception. Along with a perceiving of harmful intent, where there may be none.

Powerless-ness manifests in various forms. Powering over, or "I hurt because I feel hurt", is one. Victimization, or "I see you as my hurter because I my hurt is caused by someone/something outside of me", is another.

Interesting thoughts from both Plutonia and you, 23.

First I want to take a little bit of exception with the notion that all power-over results from an inner feeling of powerlessness. I'm not at the top of the food chain *none of us here are, I imagine, so I can't really speak definitively. However it seems to me that the controlling class might not exactly be 'projecting' anything except that which they've learned and believe which is: "I am the all-powerful." IOW, I don't believe that they have feelings of powerlessness and therefore I don't think they can be lumped in to the rest.

Having said that, I do agree with the notion that power-over = fear of one's own powerlessness when applied to the majority of members of a community.

The rest of it - whether the shoe can be on the other foot - well.. that's a tough one. "Once bitten twice shy" is not the same thing, IMO, as projecting. The internalization of messages, though, might add another dimension to the debate. Can one absorb the culture and believe themselves to be a victim of it without understanding why? Yes, I think so.

[23]

A child is not born with the belief, conscious or otherwise, that she or he can be the cause of someone else's dis-comfort or dis-ease. Or that someone else ought to be the source of their pleasure and dis-pleasure.

Parents can, and often do, do an admirabe job of instilling those beliefs in a child's sub/unconscious.

[Canadian_watcher]

A child is not born with the belief, conscious or otherwise, that she or he can be the cause of someone else's dis-comfort or dis-ease. Or that someone else ought to be the source of their pleasure and dis-pleasure.

Parents can, and often do, do an admirabe job of instilling those beliefs in a child's sub/unconscious.

I don't know that any of that is true and I don't think anyone can know it. In fact, it seems that newborns fully and only believe that someone else can be the source of their pleasure or displeasure -- self-reliance - even self-awareness - comes much later.

But I don't see how this is a refutation of anything I've written. Was it one? If so I don't get it.