What constitutes Misogyny?

[hava1]

ok, I was not refering to anyone in particular but to archetypes. If that was not clear, I make it clear now and state that I had no intention to refer to anyone or offend. I will also invoke my disability (ESL), when context is ambiguous, pls give me the benefit of the doubt.

Thanks Barracuda, that kind of sums up what I wanted to say, much shorter and better than my own words.

If it is cool for people here to bring their disputes with me on this thread out of the thread and snipe and mock and instigate trouble, then so be it. If it is cool for people to bring their disputes with me in OTHER threads into this thread and vent their spleens at me using my feminism as a target, then so be it.

Yes, it's okay for people to cross-pollinate threads in this way, as long as they remain on topic, which hava did. hava has her own opinion on the matter at hand, and it is different from yours - I didn't think she was mocking you, but putting forth her feelings on the subject.

You put this mod in a difficult position here, because we are trying to assure the women on the board of some sort of space and validation (however unsuccessfully), and hava's perspective (however unpopular) is also a woman's perspective.

hava, I would ask you to reign in the charged language here - framing feminists as "crazed women" and "sado sistas" doesn't help get your point across, and isn't in the spirit of what we're trying to accomplish with the new guidelines, honestly.

[Stephen Morgan]

I feel I must have crossed a line somewhere, and I don't see where. I don't see it, so I can't correct it. What it feels like to me is that I am being ganged up on. I have taken strong stances on things, fought back, and some people don't like that. They can't get past it. They drag it on and on and into the rest of the board.

That's unacceptable. This thread is the one for the toxic arguments, not all those other threads. If people want to abuse C_w they should keep it in one place. I've had feminists gang up on me of course, but they were always nice enough to do it in one place.

My evidence for the fact that there is a toxic environment here is that other women will purposely NOT be involved in this thread because it frustrates and otherwise hurts them. That it is too difficult for women to take part in a conversation about misogyny speaks directly to the issue at hand and it is not being addressed.

It's not only feminist inclined women who stay away from this thread, you know. When I left and just before I was PMed by a couple of people who didn't want to wade into the quagmire on "my" side. Look about fifty five pages ago and you'll find wallflower's first post in this thread, starting with an obsequious male plea not to be abused for getting involved in this thread. I left too, of course. This place isn't a hostile place for women, as far as I'm concerned, this topic just happens to be hostile to everyone.

I guess we will continue as a species to have 'feminist blogs' that MUST exclude men. We cannot - we CAN NOT - talk about this as a group. Sad. Really, really sad.

You know hava's not a man, right? feminist blogs excluding men won't exclude discord. What you want is feminist blogs excluding any dissent, which is the case with most feminist blogs anyway. Even on Usenet, the home of internet discord, soc.feminism is a moderated group. We anti-feminists had to start up alt.feminism in stead.

[Canadian_watcher]

If people want to abuse C_w they should keep it in one place.

Better yet, no one should abuse anyone. Aside from my snarky micro-dick comment and me asking one poster if he wanted me to change his diaper, I don't believe I've committed any greater sin than simply refusing to acquiesce to another's point of view.

It's not only feminist inclined women who stay away from this thread, you know. When I left and just before I was PMed by a couple of people who didn't want to wade into the quagmire on "my" side.

I was on your side right up until you started with revisionist history. The reason I object to revisionist history is this:

- people new to a subject might stumble across it and read it and think because it seems to be backed up by historians and statistics that it is truth. There's great deal of "evidence" to suggest a great number of historical events did or didn't take place, but not all of it can be trusted. As far as women's history goes I'm not going to sit by and let it be revised by people with axes to grind.

You know hava's not a man, right?

hava's gender is NOT the issue.

[hava1]

Now poor N.Ash has to stand in the corner for speaking too freely near "enemy lines", so I will reserve my unpopular thoughts on whether I quality as "woman" (or better still "feminist") for some people here. Some nations have only one gender "soldier", which is usually male, no matter which genitals one carries. But...i will soon be accused of "resentment", so ...i'll leave it at that.

[Canadian_watcher]

Now poor N.Ash has to stand in the corner for speaking too freely near "enemy lines", so I will reserve my unpopular thoughts on whether I quality as "woman" (or better still "feminist") for some people here. Some nations have only one gender "soldier", which is usually male, no matter which genitals one carries. But...i will soon be accused of "resentment", so ...i'll leave it at that.

you are famous for making inflammatory statements and then saying you're finished talking.

but then you come back.

so I'm going to assume that you are going to come back again and read this and respond.

I do not believe that Norton is standing in a corner.

You want to be the one who finally puts the nail in my coffin after all the work these boys have done?

[Stephen Morgan]

(And, no, I don't think the comments were motivated by honest concern as mothers or environmentalists.)

Why would environmentalists be worried about the deposition of biodegradable fertiliser on soft verges?

That metrosexuality based on hatching new insecurities in men or raising the bar on fashion sense (i.e., spending money and becoming more shallow) is somehow virtuous.

The present approach to opposing sexism does seem to be to spread the worst of each sex to the other.

this is by no means the sole territory of women. Think bar-b-cues, trucks, golf clubs, tires, hockey leagues, gym memberships, hunting, lawn mowers, etc. But I must confess that I cannot stand being near to these types either, and I do find it particularly annoying when women go on and on about hair, nails, clothing, sales ... I think that's just a personal preference though - I'd rather hear about lawn mowers, etc, but it doesn't make it any less disgusting.

IOW, it sounds like it is consumer culture that is the culprit.

Women spend a rather large majority of all money, of all discretionary spending, and are as a result the main targets for advertising. We need to stop women wearing make up, and of course resist the advertisers' imperative to spread this practice to men. Of course women have been painting their faces since the ancient Egyptians first started complaining about it, so I don't hold much hope.

As people have been talking about small penises and circumcision, I'm reminded that lipstick use puts phthalates into the bloodstream, which can cause birth defects, including undersized genitalia, in the unborn. And Oprah put out a face cream which included foreskin fibroblasts, grown from cells taken from the foreskins removed from American youths, which are also used to grow skin for grafting onto burn victims.

one more thing you could consider is this: women in the civil service are new to power. Many abuse it. Women have been conditioned for so long to be powerless and they have been rewarded for so long for playing the boys' game that they don't know how else to behave when given authority. SOME women don't, anyway.

I'm guessing most men going into the civil service didn't grow up ringing a bell so Jeeves could wipe their arse for them. As far as I'm concerned a civil servant is a civil servant and when he becomes a civil servant he becomes a civil servant and takes on the mantle of being a civil servant, with all the standard practices. IF women are becoming, becoming in more senses than one, civil servants, I'd rather we didn't blame men for their unpleasant behaviour, if you don't mind.

I did come across a decent civil servant once, actually. At the job centre, a man with a thick Scottish accent who quite openly said to me, and from what I hear to other people who went in there, that the whole system was a joke, the place was a mess, the people he worked with were the biggest bunch of idiots he'd ever met and that he used to be unemployed, understood what it was like on the other side of the desk and intended to leave for greener pastures as soon as possible. Which he did. Pity, was very popular. On our side of the desk, anyway.

sexist prick dummy small-dicked ignorant asshole... or the opportunities so enthusiastically seized to wail like Charlie Parker when a man says something stupid here...

Norton, the guy was a sexist prick. He was. Haven't you just written three paragraphs explaining a dynamic that you have observed at play? Haven't you named it? the small dick thing was a joke - I don't see you jumping up and down in opposition to Morgan talking about ping-pong balls in vaginas. Is it really just because I used slang and he used the proper word?

Now now, I wasn't trying to be insulting, I was just being flippant as I so often am. No offence intended. I never insinuated that anyone here had an excessively loose vagina, which would be the equivalent of a small penis jibe. Nor would I.

[Project Willow]

I never said I was infallible and could never go wrong. I just don't think my behavior has been misogynistic.
And you still have failed to bring anything credible up to have me believe that. That is why you have to generalize wildly and
bring in straw limbaughs.

That you've instituted this rule, that women should be required to prove to you, how your behavior has affected them, that they have to win a case against you, based on what you arbitrarily consider evidence in your self-constructed play-court, without any regard to your own cultural indoctrination and the conflict of interest of your privileged status, yeah, guess what, that is misogynistic.

I'm just going to repeat myself. Project Willow wrote: I think that your behavior and approach in this thread has been misogynistic.

Oh, and, misogyny is not about you, it's something that happens to women.

Project Willow you continue to show your true colors again and again.

Misogyny is not about my character. Misogyny is not about you, it's something that happens to women.

And uh, its not you having an opinion that bothers me. It's your specific opinion that you are final judge and jury of who and what is misogynistic in this thread. Which to even question is "inherently disrespectful".

Hyperbolic invention, never said it. Project Willow wrote: I think that your behavior and approach in this thread has been misogynistic.

This is hilarious. Insanely so. Are you telling me now that you would typify your communication style in this thread as process orientated and concerned with
listening, mirroring, empathy, and support????

No, please read what I said again, thanks. Misogyny is not about you, it's something that happens to women.

How can you be process orientated when you already know what is the one approved end? And don't accept divergent opinions and immediately label them?
You have not listened, you have not empathized, or supported anyone who has not reconfirmed what you have already believed.
And you have taken many viewpoints that stray the tiniest bit from yours and have supposed and labeled them as misogynistic.

It is easy to empathize with those who you already agree with. It takes courage to empathize with those you don't.

Misogyny is not about you, it's something that happens to women.

Something I tried to do with the Furnace man, and was dinged for. Then I tried with C_W at one point, and was also dinged for.

Misogyny is not about you, it's something that happens to women.

[Project Willow]

Oh and, just saying, if anyone wants to pile on C_W, you gotta pile on me too.

Also, it might be nice to give latitude for short tempers considering:

1. Very little actual discussion of how women experience this male-run world has taken place in this thread entitled "What Constitutes Misogyny."
2. Perhaps a dozen posts (on a supposedly progressive board) out of hundreds have expressed any empathy whatsoever for the status of women and what we endure, in this thread entitled "What Constitutes Misogyny."
3. Most of the exchanges have centered around men defensively denying, shaming, demeaning, and otherwise attacking the input of women, in this thread entitled "What Constitutes Misogyny."

It's a wee bit crazy-making.

[Stephen Morgan]

If people want to abuse C_w they should keep it in one place.

Better yet, no one should abuse anyone. Aside from my snarky micro-dick comment and me asking one poster if he wanted me to change his diaper, I don't believe I've committed any greater sin than simply refusing to acquiesce to another's point of view.

It would be nice if we could all get along, but if there's going to be some sniping and insults then it's best to keep it limited. Not to much, either in intensity or in geographic spread. Intensity is limited, like when Peregrine said she would have banned someone who called you a cunt, and it's only sociable to keep the spread limited to one place. I don't want a rule that we've all got to be nice to each other all the time, after all. Just don't be too nasty, and don't be nasty in too many places at once, that's the motto I like.

It's not only feminist inclined women who stay away from this thread, you know. When I left and just before I was PMed by a couple of people who didn't want to wade into the quagmire on "my" side.

I was on your side right up until you started with revisionist history.

So "until" the start of the argument. This thread, several dozen pages ago, came out of the witches thread where I was arguing a minority position here, that witches were actually witches, and definitely weren't burned by the patriarchy to usher in capitalism. Obviously accepting the reality of a historic witch-cult is revisionist, whether you're me or Margaret Murray. Then again, so is arguing that the witches were burned by proto-capitalism to turn women into an unwaged home-based labour class.

So anyone on my side until I started with revisionist history was no longer onside after the first post I made in that thread, before this thread even started.

The reason I object to revisionist history is this:

- people new to a subject might stumble across it and read it and think because it seems to be backed up by historians and statistics that it is truth. There's great deal of "evidence" to suggest a great number of historical events did or didn't take place, but not all of it can be trusted. As far as women's history goes I'm not going to sit by and let it be revised by people with axes to grind.

I think we've both got axes to grind on that score, and I'm not talking about that issue again. Not that I want to be lumped in with the people who avoid your pointed arguments and get juvenile, but I'd inevitably end up wandering off the reservation, as defined by the new posting guidelines, so I'll stay off it. We'd only end up rehashing the same arguments anyway. Not that I didn't enjoy arguing with you.

You know hava's not a man, right?

hava's gender is NOT the issue.

But you were saying your harassment here, most recently hava, made you think feminist discussion would be better undertaken on feminist blogs which "exclude men". Well, if you're having a problem with hava that won't help. A knee-jerk reaction that your problems can be solved by excluding men, perhaps.

[WakeUpAndLive]

Misogyny is not about you, it's something that happens to women.

But until you point out how we are being misogynistic we will be unable to change our actions, which I believe is his point for asking for examples. You are right in that it does happen to women, but it is (mostly) men who perform the acts, and without awareness there can be no resolution.

[Canadian_watcher]

The present approach to opposing sexism does seem to be to spread the worst of each sex to the other.

here it is again: agreement.
BUT.. I argue that this is a result of the fact that we are labouring for change under a patriarchal structure which benefits from bringing out the the worst in all of us.

Women spend a rather large majority of all money,

being that the top 1% own most of the money, I doubt this is the case. If what you mean is that women tend to lay claim to the majority of the scraps left over for the rest of us, I think that that is propaganda.


of all discretionary spending, and are as a result the main targets for advertising. We need to stop women wearing make up, and of course resist the advertisers' imperative to spread this practice to men. Of course women have been painting their faces since the ancient Egyptians first started complaining about it, so I don't hold much hope.

I'm guessing most men going into the civil service didn't grow up ringing a bell so Jeeves could wipe their arse for them.

I'll give you that

As far as I'm concerned a civil servant is a civil servant and when he becomes a civil servant he becomes a civil servant and takes on the mantle of being a civil servant, with all the standard practices. IF women are becoming, becoming in more senses than one, civil servants, I'd rather we didn't blame men for their unpleasant behaviour, if you don't mind.

I mind, because it's not even 100 years since women were 'given' the vote.. so a lot of the structures in place were put there by dudes. Men are still over-represented in all the halls of power on this planet.

I did come across a decent civil servant once, actually. At the job centre, a man with a thick Scottish accent who quite openly said to me, and from what I hear to other people who went in there, that the whole system was a joke, the place was a mess, the people he worked with were the biggest bunch of idiots he'd ever met and that he used to be unemployed, understood what it was like on the other side of the desk and intended to leave for greener pastures as soon as possible. Which he did. Pity, was very popular. On our side of the desk, anyway.

Minus the accent this could have been me. And because of the culture there they couldn't fire me, not even if I'd reached across the desk of my Director and ripped her eyeballs out, which I would have liked to do. Figuratively speaking, of course.

the small dick thing was a joke - I don't see you jumping up and down in opposition to Morgan talking about ping-pong balls in vaginas. Is it really just because I used slang and he used the proper word?

Now now, I wasn't trying to be insulting, I was just being flippant as I so often am. No offence intended. I never insinuated that anyone here had an excessively loose vagina, which would be the equivalent of a small penis jibe. Nor would I.

I wasn't trying to be insulting, either. I was being flippant. Clearly I've never seen the penis of any poster to this thread, so I didn't expect anyone to be personally insulted. Should someone insinuate that I've got tiny tits, I'd just roll my eyes because I would know it was just childish playing about.

[brekin]

brekin wrote:
I never said I was infallible and could never go wrong. I just don't think my behavior has been misogynistic.
And you still have failed to bring anything credible up to have me believe that. That is why you have to generalize wildly and
bring in straw limbaughs.

Project Willow wrote:

That you've instituted this rule, that women should be required to prove to you, how your behavior has affected them, that they have to win a case against you, based on what you arbitrarily consider evidence in your self-constructed play-court, without any regard to your own cultural indoctrination and the conflict of interest of your privileged status, yeah, guess what, that is misogynistic.

Are you insane? If someone is accusing someone of something, don't they have duty to prove that it is so? And if the accused challenges them when they do, or especially when they don't tried to prove that, somehow makes the supposed accused more guilty? Do you understand how crazy that is?
That "rule" is called fair play, logic, justice...

Project Willow wrote:

I'm just going to repeat myself. Project Willow wrote: I think that your behavior and approach in this thread has been misogynistic.

Yes, and you provide no evidence other then say asking for evidence is misogynistic.

Project Willow wrote:

Oh, and, misogyny is not about you, it's something that happens to women.

Something that happens to women by misogynistic men. You can't have misogyny without men.
If you going around accusing men of it then you better be ready and willing to listen to what they have to
say about it.

brekin wrote:
Project Willow you continue to show your true colors again and again.

Project Willow wrote:
Misogyny is not about my character. Misogyny is not about you, it's something that happens to women.

Accusing people of misogyny wildly seems to be a character trait. Again, misogyny is about men and women.
Accusations of misogyny is also about men and women.

brekin wrote:
And uh, its not you having an opinion that bothers me. It's your specific opinion that you are final judge and jury of who and what is misogynistic in this thread. Which to even question is "inherently disrespectful".

Project Willow wrote:

Hyperbolic invention, never said it. Project Willow wrote: I think that your behavior and approach in this thread has been misogynistic.

Yeah, you did. Twice. Once to me directly and to someone else. I have no need for invention.

1.
Project Willow wrote:

In the context of this thread, Brekin, one essential path to the answer of the OP is learning, or accepting and respecting, what is true for women about how they experience the world, according to their own assessments, not according yours, or any other man's.

The fact that you challenged C_W on her interpretation of her experience with furnace man represents to me an inherently disrespectful response.

2.
Project Willow wrote:

So, let's take the masses out of this for second. Imagine a single woman with her hand up saying: "I've got a problem here! This behavior is hurtful and affecting me negatively!" In a one on one situation, I can see a lot of men reacting in a protective way, listening to the woman and devising strategies to end whatever hurtful thing is going on, especially if he weren't the source of the hurt. When it comes to gender politics, however, for many of these same men, all's fair in war. So what we're hearing in this thread is: "Well, from MY point of view, is that really a problem?" In a one on one this reaction would clearly be seen as dismissive, minimizing, inherently and fundamentally disrespectful. In gender politics however, that hurtful behavior may very well be coming from the men, the very people the women are trying to speak to, in speaking truth to power, so to speak. I'd suggest that on some level the men know that and for whatever reason they can't deal.

So there's the basic situation, where men are reacting in a fundamentally disrespectful way, exemplifying misogynistic behaviors in a thread about misogyny.

brekin wrote:
This is hilarious. Insanely so. Are you telling me now that you would typify your communication style in this thread as process orientated and concerned with
listening, mirroring, empathy, and support????

Project Willow wrote:
No, please read what I said again, thanks. Misogyny is not about you, it's something that happens to women.

See above.

brekin wrote:
How can you be process orientated when you already know what is the one approved end? And don't accept divergent opinions and immediately label them?
You have not listened, you have not empathized, or supported anyone who has not reconfirmed what you have already believed.
And you have taken many viewpoints that stray the tiniest bit from yours and have supposed and labeled them as misogynistic.

It is easy to empathize with those who you already agree with. It takes courage to empathize with those you don't.

Project Willow wrote:
Misogyny is not about you, it's something that happens to women.

See above again.

brekin wrote:

Something I tried to do with the Furnace man, and was dinged for. Then I tried with C_W at one point, and was also dinged for.

Project Willow wrote:
Misogyny is not about you, it's something that happens to women.

See above again.

[barracuda]

Are you insane?

This is unneccessary and unwelcome in this thread, brekin. Don't do it again.

[Canadian_watcher]

But you were saying your harassment here, most recently hava, made you think feminist discussion would be better undertaken on feminist blogs which "exclude men". Well, if you're having a problem with hava that won't help. A knee-jerk reaction that your problems can be solved by excluding men, perhaps.

I'm choosing this bit of your last post because by and large and without rehashing old debates I'm comfortable conceding the other points you made.

I see the fine point you make re hava being female, however the over-arching problem I am having with this thread is one that was fostered by male posters. I tried in vain to get moderators to see the harassment (for lack of a more accurate word) that brekin and Wake Up and Live were perpetuating. They seem to respond only to overt slurs. Hava's post was clearly in violation, so I barked. All in all though, I do believe that it is the ego of males (and no, not males in general.. a couple of male trouble makers) that have been creating a hostile environment lately.

Anti-feminist is anti-feminist, whether it comes from a woman or from a man. I do not discriminate.

[Stephen Morgan]

You put this mod in a difficult position here, because we are trying to assure the women on the board of some sort of space and validation (however unsuccessfully), and hava's perspective (however unpopular) is also a woman's perspective.

hava, I would ask you to reign in the charged language here - framing feminists as "crazed women" and "sado sistas" doesn't help get your point across, and isn't in the spirit of what we're trying to accomplish with the new guidelines, honestly.

I assumed "crazed women" was a compliment. A way of equating crazy with heroic, that the suffragettes must have been crazy to do what they did, but did it anyway and it was good. I don't see it that way, but suffragettes are like Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Princess Diana and so on, I don't like them but criticising them is more trouble than it's worth. And I thought "Sado sistas" was mostly aimed at C_w, could be wrong.