Degrees of Misogyny

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Bowser, Nov 13, 2015.

  1. Nullfather Registered Member

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    Try to conceptualize what people say to you, as opposed to what they say, in other words, their motives and meanings. What exactly are people trying to get out of you when they say this to you? Is it important enough to you for you to even care about? Are people saying it to assist with managing negative emotions related to your actions or words? What did you say before you were called a misogynist that could be interpreted as insensitive or cruel in the eyes of someone receiving your message? Think about how you are affected by the word misogyny, and how much value you hold in that word, and think about how much value other individuals hold to what you say. If you are bothered by being called certain things, either devalue ideas and words that you don't like by becoming apathetic to the issue presented to you, build a case for your ideology and what you believe in and why others should think or feel the way you do, or be empathetic and try to understand how other people perceive things and genuinely listen to what they have to say. --- This last part of the post may break policy, I just made this account because I forgot the password to my old one due to long term inactivity, but do threads still currently exist regarding the subjectivity of morality, for example: the lawfulness of the death penalty, evaluating hypothetical scenarios, etc? Am I in the wrong topic section? I really miss them, and the reason I came back. Thanks!
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    No, he doesn't. He has a strong attraction. Hence the problem.
    Can't help you there. We have a civilization, made up of sexual human beings. It ain't rocket science.
    Sure, except of course I don't. No such problem. Nothing remotely like that posted by me.
     
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  5. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    But this is, sorry, a small psychotic subgroup of them - having a strong attraction to those one hates is psychotic. This is not the normal reaction. I hate Schlager music and some variants of German folk music, but feel exactly no attraction and do not try to go to such concerts. And I expect that this is the normal, rational reaction if one hates something - to minimize the contact with what one hates.

    PS: I have tried but given up to make sense of your "many fewer men walking around in the public streets of the US, sitting in corporate offices" dreams.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Why are you still confusing misogyny with hatred, in this thread? Refer to the OP, for the thread topic here.
    It is completely normal for most men in the US - including the misogynistic ones, often a large fraction of men - to be attracted to women and attempt to maintain contact with them. Very often misogynistic men are even married to women.

    Are things different where you come from?
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2016
  8. Waiter_2001 Registered Senior Member

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    Welcome back Nullfather. *hugs*
     
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  9. Waiter_2001 Registered Senior Member

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    Someone is more likely to reject someone who has the power to hurt them than someone who cannot hurt them. This is as respect. One is more likely to respect someone who is respectABLE.
     
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    It is what the sources I prefer tell me about the meaning of this word. Say http://www.dict.cc/englisch-deutsch/misogyny.html I prefer not to follow redefinitions of words for what looks like ideological reasons. And I do not consider the participants of this forum as some authority worth to be taken into account, sorry.
    This sounds like a quite inclusive definition of "misogyny". None of the German translations of "misogyny" above would be applied to a large fraction of men. It is because a large majority of men are attracted to women that "misogyny" is considered a minority problem. And this minority usually reacts by avoiding or minimizing contact with women, because this is the rational way. A psychotic minority among the misogynists, which combines this hatred with attraction, plausibly exists, but, as a minority among a minority, it plays no role in real life.

    What could be the reason to present men who are attracted to women, and want contact with them, as "misogynists"? This may be, of course, attractive to some parts of feminism, which are interested in presenting men as enemies of women. That those men obviously do not behave as one would expect for enemies of women is not a problem of them, one can "explain" this away by presenting them as psychotic and irrational, which would be in the interest of them too. That nice and polite guy is not at all nice and polite, but a hidden psychotic enemy, never trust him.

    Of course, men differ from women, often misunderstand each other, have even inherently different interests (elementary sociobiology: women want a lifelong partner, who supports only herself and her children, men want sex with many women). This makes it quite natural that there are some aspects of life where many men feel more comfortable to be with other men, and many women prefer the company of other women. To classify all those who show some such behavior as misgynists or misoandists makes no sense, if one does not want to discredit them all.
     
  11. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Need I say that the feeling is probably mutual in many many cases with many forum members towards you also..
     
  12. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    No need, and no problem, I present here my position, and defend it with arguments and quotes. I do not argue that my sources are an authority. If you consider other sources as more reliable, fine.
     
  13. Waiter_2001 Registered Senior Member

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    I am a man and do not wish to be with many women! I have a life-partner.

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  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The definition being used here is from the standard dictionaries of the English language, normal usage. It was posted in the OP and (despite my quarrels with nuance in it) is the one being used in all of my posts as well as many others here. If you wish to reply to my posts with any relevance toward the arguments being made in them, that is the meaning you would have to handle in your reply. All my arguments use the term with that meaning. No replies that pretend I used any other meaning are validly addressed to my arguments.

    If you wish to use words with meanings adopted by yourself from unknown sources and not as used by life long speakers of English such as myself, why pretend to be replying to me? You are arguing semantics with well-educated native speakers - go to the linguist subforum, where such arguments belong.
    It's standard. And it's the established base of the arguments here, from the OP on.
    Can't help you there, I speak very little German.

    I suspect you are finding propaganda in them, and correcting for it as is your custom. I also suspect you are failing to perceive aspects of the nature of the men around you, that run contrary to your common sense.

    Why do I think that? Because of this, among the otherwise puzzling naiveties on display:
    1) That's you, taking a discussion of degrees of misogyny and attempting to change it to one of name-calling people like yourself. Are you aware of this habit? It's obvious psychiatric role?

    2)Because they regard women with a significant degree of disdain, ingrained prejudice, essential contempt - even, in a surprising number of them, approaching hatred. That's the term, in English, for that pattern or nature of regard.

    The sexism based in this is of course visible in their behavior, to understate the case. It is codified in their laws and publicly defended in their customs and recordable on video cameras while one is walking down the street on a normal weekday afternoon. But it is apparently difficult or disturbing to recognize - pointing this out in the face of "common sense" has been the centuries long and very difficult informational task of the people you are dismissing as "feminists" with an "interest" in disparaging "all men".

    You have now asked the same odd question from both directions: you have asked why a person afflicted with misogyny would be attracted to women, and you have asked why a person attracted to women would be recognized as afflicted with misogyny. But both these questions are apparently rhetorical from you - you ask as if there were no answers, implying the common reality does not exist (or only as an uncommon psychopathy).

    Elementary biology indicates that women want to bear children by two or three genetically disparate men, that men want to maintain close contact with any children they engender for at least eight years, and that both sexes want to engender children via partners 18 - 25 years old. How the "socio" handles that is of course among the aspects of the current topic.
     
  15. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    That's nice.
     
  16. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    And I do not want to argue about definitions. If you have not understood why, read my posts. I think the much more interesting thing is why people start to argue about such definitions. I have checked with dict.cc that my understanding of the meaning of the "misogynist" is not completely off, but in agreement with all four suggested translations provided, (two of them back-translated "enemy of women/broad, the third "hater of women", and the last one simply "Misogyn") so that I do not make a gross error because I'm not a native, but (because of this) not interested in discussing the meaning myself.
    Why should I care what you like? You have started to answer my post #166 in #167. If you don't like to continue the discussion you have started, stop answering.
    It is, in general, a bad idea to speculate about failures in the private life of other people, and an indication of low culture.
    The idea to apply a negative-laden word to others based only on the fact that the whole discussion is about this word is even worse. And to suggest even some psychiatric problems is ...
    But it seems that here one has to expect such things. Modern American culture ....
    I would doubt about the second point. There are many societies where only women care about small children, and others where it is the brother of the woman and not her sexual partner who participates in child care. And one criterion for a biological cause is that were are no societies, or only a few exceptional, where the behavior in question is not observed.

    And this is biologically quite plausible - the man cannot be certain if a child is his own. Support for children makes sense. But this is more because it helps the whole tribe, and they are all in some degree related. The connection to suspected own children is weaker in comparison to women, who know very well which children are their own. Correspondingly, in fairy tales you can be sure that if there is a stepmother, this is very bad for the stepchild. Instead, having a stepfather seems not that fatal.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Then don't. Go with the one being used in all these arguments you are replying to, posted in the OP of the thread, standard in the dictionaries.
    You need to attend to what I posted, not what I like. If you don't want to bother yourself with what I posted, why are you replying to my posts?
    Your posting here is not your private life. You brought the subject up - how you don't see any common misogyny in your society, which you presented as some kind of evidence of something, while confessing yourself unable to understand how a significant fraction of men could be at once misogynistic and attracted to women. There are only a couple of possibilities there, and we've been down the "common sense" road with you several times - it's a natural fit. According to your common sense, as posted here, misogynistic men are not attracted to women. But that is by common observation most splendidly and dramatically false. So you are apparently missing major aspects of the world of men and women by which you are surrounded. Either that or running some kind of odd deception here.
    To maximize his genetic contribution to the future, a male human must see to it that his offspring are protected and well cared for and acculturated into their community, until they are at least eight years old. That's the biology of the situation. Whether that involves "child care" as such or not would be of course the socio part.
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2016
  18. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    I don't. I argue about more interesting metaquestions. Why is it important to argue about the meaning of "misogynist"?
    That's what I'm doing.

    Wild speculations about the men around me and my failures to perceive aspects of their nature are.
    I look at this from the meta point of view. Misogynistic is, I think even you do not doubt, something negative. If you see a majority of men, even of those who are attracted to women, in a negative way, ok, they have to live with this. But you obviously want to have a word for some large amount of men, men attracted to women, which evaluates them in a negative way, because of their relation to women. Now, there are several possibilities: This is your private meaning of "misogyny", which you only try to present as the widely accepted one. Then, you would be a particular example of what I think is dangerous: An attempt to extend the meaning of "misogynist" to cover all men, with the aim to be able to accuse all men. Or you are correct, and your meaning of "misogynist" is already mainstream. So, in the American society already exists a term which negatively values men for negative relations to women, even if they are attracted to women and want to have good relations to them. That would mean that what is only a danger related with your behavior is already actual reality. Men can be accused of being misogynists even if they love women and try all they can do to have good relations with them.

    It is a triviality that the victims of the next totalitarism will be nor Hitler's Jews, nor Stalin's "enemy of the people", but some different group. Whatever group, the important point is that one cannot get rid of the label by own "appropriate", submissive behavior. Misogynists in your definition are nice candidates. Misogynists in my definition not: They are not enough, but a distinguishable small minority, and, moreover, a harmless one because they simply don't want contact with women.
    The situation is quite different. You feel uncomfortable with certain general aspects of the relations between men and women. No doubt, there will be negative aspects of these relations in every human society. In a civilized society, one would name these aspects and discuss them - are they really negative, what are the reasons, what can be done about this problem if it is one, can we get rid of it, can we minimize the harm created by them and so on.

    One solution would be to give those who show this problematic behavior a negative name. It is the starting point for the authoritarian solution. One side is blamed (here men), the blame is a personal one, of the evil nature of certain individuals (instead of, say, a widely shared prejudice about the abilities of women, or their typical behavior), with the predictably next step of imprisoning these evil guys. I reject this idea for solving such problems.
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Now what? It's not my definition, or a word I invented - it's in the dictionary, it's in the OP, it's a concept used for analysis.
    It's called reality, and people have names for various aspects of it. This is normal, and useful. Get a decent English dictionary, use it. Or just read the OP of the thread, join the discussion of the thread topic.
    Solution? Look: Not the people, the pattern. We're naming a pattern. It's a common starting point for any coherent discussion of pretty much anything, as visible in the OP of this thread.
    They're widely shared, in the US. So your "predictable next step" would be of jailing a significant fraction of the male population of the US, for holding women in disdain and contempt and so forth. Seriously - that's a reasonable possibility where you come from, apparently.

    You are afraid to name things like misogyny, because it's a character flaw and you think people will start calling the police on other people's character flaws if you name them.

    Your planet is nuts.
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2016
  20. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Fine. But why you name such a general "pattern" using a negative value-laden term for a character flaw of some men?

    The danger of totalitarism is not that all they will be imprisoned, but that anybody can be imprisoned at any time. This is nothing which depends on a particular nation or region. The US is not at all free from this danger. And it is already the state which has imprisoned the largest part of its citizens, over the whole world. And, in fact, I see America as the state where the danger of totalitarism is the greatest. (If we ignore North Korea where we already have it.)
    I see already an increasing tendency of such persecutions, first hate crime, then hate speech. "Nuts" is indeed a nice description for all this.
     
  21. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    I would also note he's essentially complaining that accurate etymology is some manner of political conspiracy: "One solution would be to give those who show this problematic behavior a negative name. It is the starting point for the authoritarian solution."

    Misogyny is the word; I can't wait for the explanation of the massive shadow conspiracy against men taking place in the 1600s.
     
  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Ok, let's explain again: There is no problem at all with what I think is the original meaning - the misogynist as part of a small minority of men who hates women. With this meaning I do not connect any problem. There is such a minority, it makes sense to give such people a name, because this makes it easier to minimize contacts with women.

    The meaning iceaura gives to this word makes much less sense. One may not like some general patterns, but such patterns are part of culture, or caused by prejudices. Fight the prejudices, try to change the culture - no problem. But there is no reason to introduce a bad word which is directed against essentially all men, simply because they believe in some prejudices or follow their culture.

    Totalitarian societies do not come into existence out of conspiracies. The Nazis have won democratic elections, the Soviets have won a civil war because of support by large parts of the people. They have tried to make the best - the Nazis for German people, the communists for the people of the whole world. It was nor conspiracy, nor bad intentions which has caused the evil.

    I think, therefore, that it is important to identify things which can lead a society into such a totalitarian evil. The important role of speech, of language, for totalitarism was one of the main insights of Orwell. And, based on his insights, it is helpful to prevent such dangerous Newspeak. And I think that an important part of Newspeak is not only Orwell's main point that a lot of words will be forbidden, so that one cannot even express some alternative ideas. I think one needs as well some special word, which a normal society does not need. Like Volksfeind, враг народа, enemy of the people. These special words need two contradicting properties: 1.) they should be applicable to everybody, 2.) they should be very bad. This creates the basic uncertainty, which makes the individual in that society a helpless victim: There is the permanent danger to be named in this way: Because it is very bad, the consequences will be fatal, and because it can be applied to everybody, one cannot defend oneself.

    Misogynist - enemy of the women - clearly fulfills (2). In iceaura's meaning, it fulfills (1) too, at least for all men. So, it is a word which could be used.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    I didn't name it. I didn't invent this word, or the character flaw it names. I don't see how one can discuss degrees of misogyny without using terms laden with negative value.
    A fair correction - I missed that basic point. But it's not threat in the US - no one is in danger of being imprisoned for misogyny in the US, or any other such character flaw.
    That's not the meaning in the dictionary, or in any of my posts, or in common English discussion.
    It's not mine - it's from a standard dictionary, posted in the OP, and the common vernacular of my entire life. My own more careful definition would be somewhat different, but I accepted the OP as standard English, which it is. If you can't make sense out of it, you have something to learn about the English language, is all.
    So you think a word that labels the holding of women in contempt or prejudicial disdain applies to all men.
    Sure they do. That's the most common way. Hitler's rise to power was practically a type specimen, as were many of the South American fascist takeovers. Conspiracy is almost a defining feature of fascist government - government by conspiracy among violent authoritarian corporate capitalist entities is a fair working definition of fascism.
    Newspeak, although famous, was a minor aspect of Orwell's analysis of language, and forbidding words was not the tactic most warned against by him. Your attempted coercive redefinition of "misogyny" so that the rest of us cannot discuss degrees of misogyny in this thread, and so that you can deny its prevalence and influence and role in Western society, would be an example of something Orwell spent more effort and time warning against. (Note that no one here is trying to forbid any words).
    You feel threatened by the standard meaning of the term "misogyny", that's obvious. But that's a personal problem. It obviously would not apply to "all men", at a personal level, in any but the most oppressive and chauvinistic of societies.
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2016

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