What constitutes Misogyny?

[JackRiddler]

.

Because it's in the crime stats. All of it. Always. You don't believe take the police word on faith if they're talking about the drug war, or the lack of racial disparities in the dispensation of their justice, or the need for higher budgets and new surveillance systems given the ever-growing imminent terrorist threat, or the assurance that they never engage in brutality or forced confessions. But if the crime stats for an area over a given time show no rapes, then that must be the case, because these are the numbers, and not only are there no rapes, there must not be any fear thereof, or much misogyny generally. After all, any woman would promptly report such a crime, right?

.

[tru3magic]

VK, you make some very interesting points. I do feel that there are differing attractions that could possibly be genetically inherited....the only concrete example I have to go off of is my nephew, who was raised in a gender neutral household, is often mistaken for a girl, and still seems to exhibit traits which I would consider more common in males. It could be my conditioning as an individual in this society to automatically label an item to a gender when it really has no bearing, but at the very least even in a household like theirs it was present.

One thing I do think is ingrained through societal practices is the notion of a manly male, who feels no emotion/empathy/pain etc. I think you see this notion break down when males are placed in highly emotional situations where the shell cracks...I believe it can be said that males are possibly even more emotional at this point (and more likely to react upon those emotions). I never broke down the nurture/nature debate down this far though, I always kept both male/female sides of the subject as one, it sure is interesting to look at like this though.

About the man period, I will have to pay more attention, I try to be a considerate person but erupt at times, I wonder if there is any correlation.

the basic idea is that part and parcel of what "i am myself" means is precisely this: "i am an other"

Something I think we forget much too often.



*Men/women* we need to put this at the entry to this thread because everyone is doing it:

[Nordic]

I won't be reading that Koss study, they want money to provide it, if you can believe that.

Stephen Morgan wrote:

I find it reassuring that of all the women I know none have been raped or sexually assaulted,

Really? In my world that's highly unusual. I'd say more than half of the women I know well enough to be told such things have been raped or sexually assaulted, some repeatedly.

I mean, it's so common with the women I know I almost take it for granted that by the time a woman is 30, she's probably had at least one assault of some kind, even if it was just a guy who refused to say no and she had to use physical force to get away.

Okay, I was gonna stay out of this thread .....

Well, we can't all live in the ghetto with armed crack dealers pistol whipping their ho's on every corner. The police crime map shows no sex crimes and only a few dozen violent crimes for a population of about 40,000 in the last three months.

That's just so fucking insulting I don't even know where to begin. And I'm not even one of the women I was talking about.

Get our head out of your computer (its right next to your ass apparently) and go out and meet some real people. It doesn't surprise me that women youve met haven't trusted you enough to tell you about their experiences. Surprise surprise.

[OP ED]

closely following local urban statistics for mostly white folk, somewhere around 1/8 of the women OP ED is familiar with IRL have attested to having been raped, in the legal sense of the word. More like 1/6 to 1/4 have experienced some form of assault, which range in severity. [relatively speaking]

OP ED has never met an adult woman who has not experienced some from of sexualized harrassment.

OP ED is not able to remember any particular experiences offhand, but is certain that OP ED has sexually harrassed a number [?#?] of women before.

[and men, fairly often, its called "shop talk"]

.......


OP ED can provide statistics on men's propensity for Rape and other forms of sexual assault if anyone is interested, but they're rather boring in and of themselves and pretty much follow what should be expected based on other reports already described by others.

[ahem, conservatively 3-5% of men are rapists, 10-25% have participated in some form of sexual assault, ranging in severity, relatively, as above, and the vast majority have engaged in harrassing behavior of one form or another, leaving only a few men from guilt in this respect, mostly those who are physically or mentally incapable of verbal or nonverbal communications]

[in the u.s.a. that is ... OP ED collects FBI crime statistics]

[Plutonia]

...
Well, we can't all live in the ghetto with armed crack dealers pistol whipping their ho's on every corner. The police crime map shows no sex crimes and only a few dozen violent crimes for a population of about 40,000 in the last three months.

That's just so fucking insulting I don't even know where to begin. And I'm not even one of the women I was talking about.

Get our head out of your computer (its right next to your ass apparently) and go out and meet some real people. It doesn't surprise me that women youve met haven't trusted you enough to tell you about their experiences. Surprise surprise.

I think that's just Morgan's sense of humour you are reacting to there ^^ Nordic.

Moving on....



I listened to an interview with Maya Angelou yesterday during which she said a couple of notable things relevant to us:

“I try to use my experience as a litmus test just to see; this is how I, as a human being feel and in that case, this is how human beings feel, for the most part. This is what makes me weep. It turns out that I am a six foot tall, eighty three year old black woman. I am also a five foot two Chinese boy. I’m a Jewish man. I’m a Muslim woman. I’m all of that. I am that. I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human being. I will not…

I have something to say. I hope that I will have the patience, and the intelligence to find a way to say it so that I will not ruin the chances of communicating with another person. If I am not careful I can blurt out an idea I have and people will slam their minds shut. Like a door. Or a prison. So I try to take my time and say what I think…. I can help how I say it. I can’t help how it will be received. If you want what you are saying to be heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it! You might save someone’s life. Your own, first.”

So, I’d like to acknowledge wallflower, in the spirit of Mayan wisdom, for his thoughtful, sensitive, bridge-building communication efforts – and because he’s a menstruating woman too.

[Canadian_watcher]

...
Well, we can't all live in the ghetto with armed crack dealers pistol whipping their ho's on every corner. The police crime map shows no sex crimes and only a few dozen violent crimes for a population of about 40,000 in the last three months.

That's just so fucking insulting I don't even know where to begin. And I'm not even one of the women I was talking about.

Get our head out of your computer (its right next to your ass apparently) and go out and meet some real people. It doesn't surprise me that women youve met haven't trusted you enough to tell you about their experiences. Surprise surprise.

I think that's just Morgan's sense of humour you are reacting to there ^^ Nordic.

Moving on....

It was just hilarious. Milk nearly came out of my nose when I read it.

Edit: - I have removed my gut-busting quip. I feel the above comment is all that is necessary to make my point.
-----------
I still want to comment on BPH's post in particular but I am too busy to make it thoughtful right at the moment.

[Plutonia]

I find your Angelou quote inspiring, but I didn't think it would be up your alley, you know, since you and Maya would never go near the same neighbourhoods.

That's not true at all. I'm totally down with Maya's sentiments and have been attempting, in my way, to remind people that men are human beings too- that we are in this mess together. That we are not going to get out of it without each other.

You misjudge me C_W. You, miss, judge me.

But never mind.

[On edit: Oh, I see that you have taken it back. thank-you. I appreciate that.]
______________________

wallflower

I suspect that you didn’t notice this, but you gave us two options re: privilege:

First:

Jill at Feministe has a post up--her 4,234th--that Atrios at Eschaton linked to today. http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/05/02/filling-the-gaps/

It's a long post dealing with many important ideas, but among the ideas presented is the importance for online feminist collaboration requires more than "calling out" culture.

It’s also to say that we need to grow, as a community and as individuals, beyond a feminist analysis that begins and ends with call-outs and Owning Privilege (or telling other people to Own Their Privilege). Privilege analysis is crucial to feminist activism, but it isn’t activism in and of itself. If the analysis is self-flagellation in order to prove that you’re A Good _____ rather than introspection in order to actually be a better ______, it’s not even really helpful. If privilege analysis is a weapon that you wield in order to either establish yourself as superior to those who aren’t as “open” about their privilege, or that you use to beat down the perspectives and comments of a person who you believe is either not oppressed enough to deserve to engage in the conversation or isn’t letting enough blood to prove themselves worthy of engagement, it’s actively harmful.

Second:

At some blogs in order to reduce the amount of repetitious contentiousness there a custom of pointing to a particular post like "Check my what?" On privilege and what we can do about it http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2006-03-08_146 That seems a pretty good custom, but I'm not sure how much it actually cuts down on the contentiousness on blogs. Sometimes nothing works quite so well as repetition.

I have to say, I prefer the first to the second.

….

While that last point is very likely true, I argue that there's considerable guilt by association on campuses. The culture proves to women who have been raped that a large majority of the rest of the men (particularly those with power) are willing and eager voyeurs. Rapist vs rape fan, if you like. Same thing if you ask me.

As I pointed out up thread, a large number of those men were raped as boys. 1 in 6 (at least in California) same stat (generally) as for women. It's in the culture alright:

The Compulsion to Repeat the Trauma
Re-enactment, Revictimization, and Masochism
…

Re-enactment of victimization is a major cause of violence. Criminals have often been physically or sexually abused as children.55,121 In a recent prospective study of 34 sexually abused boys, Burgess et al.20 found a link with drug abuse, juvenile delinquency, and criminal behavior only a few year later. Lewis89,91 has extensively studied the association between childhood abuse and subsequent victimization of others. Recently, she showed that of 14 juveniles condemned to death for murder in the United States in 1987, 12 had been brutally physically abused, and five had been sodomized by relatives.90 In a study of self-mutilating male criminals, Brach-y-Rita7 concluded that "the constellation of withdrawal, depressive reaction, hyperreactivity, stimulus-seeking behavior, impaired pain perception, and violent aggressive behavior directed at self or others may be the consequence of having been reared under conditions of maternal social deprivation. This constellation of symptoms is a common phenomenon among a member of environmentally deprived animals."
http://www.borderlinepersonality.ca/repeattrauma.htm

Abuse them til they are insane, then kill them as monsters.

I believe this sums up a lot of the thoughts in this thread.

I think that’s meant to be a joke- did you mean it as a joke? It’s actually hugely. Women’s Studies curricula train women activists, among other things. I would like to see Men’s Studies developed in the same way. The most interesting classes I took were gender and queer theory. (As an aside, for my final project in queer theory, I took my entire class into the chans (IRC then) for dirty sex chat. Got an A+)

Women’s studies curriculum often encourages students to engage in hands-on activities, including discussion and reflecting on course materials. Some Women’s Studies courses offer a way of teaching which follows the methodology of pedagogy. Pedagogical teaching involves in-depth participation from both instructor and students of the course. Instead of a classroom setting where the instructor solely gives lectures on the course content, students are encouraged to actively participate.
Often in Women’s studies courses, several different assignments and projects make up the course content. Readings from renowned authors and writers in the field are offered as material in the course content. These authors include Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, among many other authors. Creative projects and group activities are often offered in the curriculum and encourage the students to think "outside the box" in looking at issues in the field.
Women’s studies, like gender studies, employs feminist, queer, and critical theory. Within the past several decades, Women’s Studies has taken a post-modern approach to understanding gender and how it intersects with race, class, ethnicity, religion, age, and (dis)ability to produce and maintain power structures within society that ensure social inequality. With this, there has been a focus on language, subjectivity, and social hegemony, and how the lives of subjects, however they identify, are constituted. At the core of these theories is the notion that however one identifies, gender, sex, and sexuality are not intrinsic. In fact, sex, gender, and sexuality are socially constructed.
In order to bring forth a goal of dismantling ideas and forces of oppression globally, Women studies is not limited solely to women issues, but various forms of oppression in which women issues become intricate focal points. The field recognizes that we must be active participants in alleviating all oppressions in order to create a safe space for women and that we have a responsibility to act and advocate on behalf of human rights. This understanding of how oppression influences all aspects of society directs the curriculum towards the recognition and understanding of issues such as racism, classism, homophobia and heteronormative practices, and ableism (Dill & Zambrana, 2009).
Women studies programs are highly involved in social justice and create curriculums that are embedded with theory and also activism outside of the classroom. Some Women Studies programs offer internships that are community-based allowing students the opportunity to gain a better understanding of how oppression directly affects women’s lives. This experience, informed by theory from feminist studies, queer theory, black feminist theory, African studies, and many other theoretical frameworks, allows students the opportunity to critically analyze experience as well as create creative solutions for issues on a local level.
http://www.answers.com/topic/women-s-studies#Curriculum

the way women are treated has a lot to do not with the fact that they are women, but with our scientific rationalist conceptions and definitions of "woman". this is part of the heritage. it colors things -- thinking, social interaction, sciences, culture, institutions.

I totally agree.

We are only minimally rational creatures and are more aptly described as aggregates of inherent and received, psychological and sociological traits.


Edited to fix formatting and what-not. Urgh! format won't fix!

[Plutonia]

A little bit more about how our early experiences shape us, from the above link (well forth reading the whole thing):

SOCIAL ATTACHMENT AND THE TRAUMA RESPONSE
Human beings are strongly dependent on social support for a sense of safety, meaning, power, and control.14,15,93 Even our biologic maturation is strongly influenced by the nature of early attachment bonds.137 Traumatization occurs when both internal and external resources are inadequate to cope with external threat. Physical and emotional maturation, as well as innate variations in physiologic reactivity to perceived danger, play important roles in the capacity to deal with external threat.77 The presence of familiar caregivers also plays an important role in helping children modulate their physiologic arousal.146 In the absence of a caregiver, chidren experience extremes of under-and over arousal that are physiologically aversive and disorganizing.38 The availability of a caregiver who can be blindly trusted when their own resources are inadequate is very important in coping with threats. If the caregiver is rejecting and abusive, children are likely to become hyperaroused. When the persons who are supposed to be the sources of safety and nurturance become simultaneously the sources of danger against which protection is needed, children maneuver to re-establish some sense of safety. Instead of turning on their caregivers and thereby losing hope for protection, they blame themselves. They become fearfully and hungrily attached and anxiously obedient.24 Bowlby16 calls this "a pattern of behavior in which avoidance of them competes with his desire for proximity and care and in which angry behavior is apt to become prominent."

Studies by Bowlby and Ainsworth1 in humans, and by Harlow and his heirs58,114 in other primates, demonstrate the crucial role that a "safe base" plays for normal social and biologic development. As children mature, they continually acquire new cognitive schemata in which to frame current life experiences. These ever-expanding cognitive schemes decrease their reliance on the environment for soothing and increase their own capacity to modulate physiologic arousal in the face of threat. Thus, the cognitive preparedness (development) of an individual interacts with the degree of physiologic disorganization to determine the capacity for mental processing of potentially traumatizing experiences.137,141

[compared2what?]

Hmm.

I'd like to ask all the posters to this thread a question:

What grade were you in when the first same-sex peer in your class was raped, to the best of your knowledge? Not sexually assaulted, but raped.

______________

Going by my understanding of what rape was at the time (violent sexual assault to completion by a stranger), I was a sophomore in high school. The girl was out jogging by her house and was forced into a car by the perp. I had friends who had been forced to have sex by relatives/friends/acquaintance earlier than that, but since we all thought that was normal, I'm not counting it.

Another girl in my class was raped and killed by a stranger senior year, just before graduation. Also, a very close friend of mine was raped, beaten and left for dead in the elevator of the building where she was going to meet some other mutual friends at their apartment before going clubbing when I was 23. They got tired of waiting for her to show up and therefore discovered her by chance on their way out, so she survived.
_______________

What I'm trying to convey is that most girls and women have a very real reason to think of themselves as targets/invitations-to-violence/dispossessable-or-discardable-by-the-world beings from a very young age, irrespective of whether they themselves have been treated like princesses or like trash. It's not just social conditioning. Women are "other," lesser, and in a way foreign members of their own native communities. That's not always a tragedy in each and every case. But it's still a major social injustice.

And you just have to at least make a pro forma objection to those every time one comes to your attention, imo. Because: Slippery slope, first they came for the [WHOMEVERS] and I did not speak, etcetera. It's not just a rape thing, either, btw. Never mind that for now, though.

I'm curious to know the results of the highly unscientific survey question, and hope people will answer it.

[Project Willow]

People will also use any rationalization, ruse, or ploy to avoid listening to difficult news, one of the oldest is shoot the messenger. Women speak out about misogyny with humor, with anger, with sadness, with patience, with empathy, with courage, with grief, with outrage, with cleverness, through words, through music, in art, through dance, in poetry, in performance, in books, in halls, on streets, in homes, in state buildings, on the radio, on television, in the news-media, on the Internet, in every conceivable form, medium, and delivery system known to human kind, bare naked and clothed like an Eskimo, with green eggs and ham on a platter until we're blue in the face.

Just...

[Canadian_watcher]

I find your Angelou quote inspiring, but I didn't think it would be up your alley, you know, since you and Maya would never go near the same neighbourhoods.

That's not true at all. I'm totally down with Maya's sentiments and have been attempting, in my way, to remind people that men are human beings too- that we are in this mess together. That we are not going to get out of it without each other.

You misjudge me C_W. You miss, judge me.

But never mind.

[On edit: Oh, I see that you have taken it back. thank-you. I appreciate that.]

I was being unnecessarily uppity. And I L.O.V.E Maya Angelou. Heart of a Woman saved me once.

[Plutonia]

Hmm.

I'd like to ask all the posters to this thread a question:

What grade were you in when the first same-sex peer in your class was raped, to the best of your knowledge? Not sexually assaulted, but raped.

I was in college but my cousins (boys and girls) were being raped by their alcoholic father and his party friends, (enabled by my aunt) from when they were little- though I didn't know about it til I was in my thirties.

My mother was my sexual abuser. My brother got it worse though. My father was a Residential School survivor, so disempowered he was unable to stand up to our mother and protect us. He died when he was 54. My mother is busy abusing my niece and nephew. Round and round we go.

[compared2what?]

That's not true at all. I'm totally down with Maya's sentiments and have been attempting, in my way, to remind people that men are human beings too- that we are in this mess together. That we are not going to get out of it without each other.

If you go back to the beginning pages of the thread, you'll see that point being made repeatedly by the ladies to no avail whatsoever for....I don't know, maybe twenty or thirty pages? More?

Misogyny is societal, it has no gender. Furthermore, it has adverse consequences for all people, male and female, both directly and indirectly. No rational, non-sociopathic, well-intentioned and honest person who considered the matter for two consecutive seconds could possibly think otherwise.

But it should kind of go without saying that the most adverse direct consequences of society's fear and hatred of women accrue primarily to women. If you don't identify what they are and examine them, you can't even define the problem, let alone solve it.

That's why we're not really talking about what constitutes misogyny anymore. I'm not complaining, btw. Nobody's perfect, and no gender is unilaterally at fault for the conflicts on this thread. By the same token, though, your implication -- ie, that women have been stubbornly insisting that we're not all in this together -- isn't really merited by the record, I don't think.

Sex and sexuality are sensitive subjects. People get huffy about and are easily wounded by them. That's a crying shame, imo. In large part, it's a societal one that's got a lot of overlap with misogyny (also imo, obviously). All god's children got sexuality, it should be the most innocent thing in the world not the least, if you ask me. That's mostly why I'm a Wimminist, as a matter of fact.

Anyway. I agree with you that we're all in this together and should all be sympathetic to one another's issues. You might not have even been finger-pointing, ftm. Could be that I'm just sensitive.

Murky waters.

[compared2what?]

My mother was my sexual abuser. My brother got it worse though. My father was a Residential School survivor, so disempowered he was unable to stand up to our mother and protect us. He died when he was 54. My mother is busy abusing my niece and nephew. Round and round we go.

I'm sorry that you and they have to live with that. Sympathy and hugs.

[Canadian_watcher]

Brainpanhandler - thank you for that story and also for what you did that night. Everyone likes to think they would do what you did, but not everyone would have.. or could have for that matter. So yeah, thank you!

I'm not picking you apart with my comments it's just that there were so many little things in here that kind of move the whole thread along:

... that side has NOT ONCE spoken out against another member of that 'side' no matter what has been said - how offensive or wrong. None of 'that side' has said anything like,

"Hey, I don't agree with <member of same 'side'

Speaking strictly for myself I am reluctant to speak on behalf of women in this thread when I agree with their objections to the men in this thread. I get the uneasy feeling of taking on the role of "protector of women".

I think that's a legitimate argument and I accept it. Speaking just for me, though, I wouldn't take it that way unless it came off that way. For instance if you were to interject on my behalf with something like, "Stop being mean to CW!" But if you find something someone says to be offensive or just plain wrong and said so for your own sake I don't think anyone would feel that you were playing knight in shining armour.

.... Over and over she screamed Help and then burst out her back door, ran across the parking lot and out into the street. Now I was fully awake. I ran in to the kitchen where I could see out into street. ...He stopped dragging the woman (I'm sorry I don't remember her name. She moved shortly after this incident and strangely enough seemed sort of cold to me afterwards. I never got so much as a thank you)

I would suggest that this was due to shame. I have several personal anecdotes that support my position - I couldn't look my friends in the eyes after I was beaten by a romantic partner - the woman across the street never spoke to me again after she approached me for help dealing with her abusive boyfriend. We were both so ashamed.

The officer did not immediately get out. I assume she was assessing the situation before her. There was a shirtless woman sitting on ground, a wild eyed agitated man jumping around, and me, holding a club. Luckily she guessed the situation correctly and figured out who the criminal was.

this is purely and unabashedly conjecture.. but maybe that officer's perceptive abilities were a unique feature that is more pervasive to females and if so it would make a good argument for having officers of both genders present as often as possible. It might also be something that police departments could interview for and test for when hiring. (It's really too bad she was alone.. I personally don't think that that should happen, whether the officer is male or female. )

It was all rather surreal. Suddenly David starts attacking the officer, trying to kick and punch her. I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. Why didn't he just run? I just wanted him to run.

and you were a healthy guy with a weapon who had had time to adjust to the situation. Imagine how it feels for a woman who is taken by surprise while walking home from class. This is why when BuffGuy (from another thread) went on and on about being offended that women seemed wary in his presence I had to make the point that for women, every guy *might* be a rapist and we're already at the disadvantage strength-wise so we have to trust our instincts to at least not be at a disadvantage surprise-wise.

I gave the woman my shirt. The officer asked me to stay with her. Sirens started up from all over town and descended on the scene. To my astonishment the victim started pleading to no one in particular to not hurt him (the perp). "Don't hurt him" she said over and over, while I thought to myself "Kill the motherfucker". David was apparently not ready to give up and officers had to shoot him several times, although not fatally.

Domestic assault is a total mind job. It's trauma conditioning and financial dependence and romantic notions of love all rolled up into a painful little ball. As I said above, I left the guy who beat me right off the hop - but that's not possible for every woman.