misogyny

[Unda]

I was just going to post this in the women's guild but since this relates to men too I thought it'd be better here.

I've been really despairing lately about how I'm practically drowning in misogyny in my life, so even when I see good things that aren't misogynistic I get excited but then remember "oh no, that's how it's SUPPOSED to be. This shouldn't have to be a thing that's different".

When I say that I'm drowning in it I just feel like misogyny invades almost every aspect of my life. Everything from being told lies about female fitness and getting weird looks from other women when I work out properly. I mean walking to work and being bombarded by adverts telling me that I'm only as worthy as I am sexually desirable, adverts that treat women either as non persons e.g. decoration, objects and so on or as silly women obsessed only with vapid things. I mean the fact that national newspapers in my country have porn in them. I mean that when I look at my paycheque I see that I'm paid less than my other half despite being better educated and that this fact probably won't change, even if I wasn't in the industry that I'm in.

Even when I try to do something against it I get disapproval for it, even from people who I would think would be on my side. Women at work forget that I know how to fix computers too despite me always telling them and fixing them, it's like they have amnesia! People who I've told about my fitness goals express distaste at the idea of a strong woman, especially one who is lifting more than her other half; revealing that tends to lead them to imply emasculating things about my fiancé. Even my male friends don't seem to quite get why the fact that misogyinistic action movies irritate me to no end and they don't see a real difference between GOOD action films like the alien films and things like THIS. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596350/

So, my fellow rebels. What, if anything, do you do about misogyny in your life and how does it impact on your life? What things bother you?

[ETFnerd]

there are many things wrong in the world... you can choose to despair about it or do little things every day to make the world better... i try to treat others with respect within my spheres of influence...

also, i don't believe all thing you have written relate directly to misogyny, and it seems to me that your writing reflects a rather extreme feminist view. i would maybe suggest you get out there and talk to people with different points of view without starting from the perspective that all folks you mentioned are coming at you from a position of hatred toward women... some people maybe just need to hear how their actions affect others... clueless =/= hateful...

[bprime]

also, i don't believe all thing you have written relate directly to misogyny, and it seems to me that your writing reflects a rather extreme feminist view. i would maybe suggest you get out there and talk to people with different points of view without starting from the perspective that all folks you mentioned are coming at you from a position of hatred toward women... some people maybe just need to hear how their actions affect others... clueless =/= hateful...

Semantics, but rather important ones in this case. I have to agree with ETF on this one. I don't see any straight up women-hatin' going on in your post, rather just the standard double standard that exists.

People who I've told about my fitness goals express distaste at the idea of a strong woman, especially one who is lifting more than her other half; revealing that tends to lead them to imply emasculating things about my fiancé.

I respect anyone that's strong, regardless of gender. That being said, I could never marry a girl who squats more than me. I'm supposed to be the stronger one here, and that's something that isn't going to change within me.

[Unda]

there are many things wrong in the world... you can choose to despair about it or do little things every day to make the world better... i try to treat others with respect within my spheres of influence...

also, i don't believe all thing you have written relate directly to misogyny, and it seems to me that your writing reflects a rather extreme feminist view. i would maybe suggest you get out there and talk to people with different points of view without starting from the perspective that all folks you mentioned are coming at you from a position of hatred toward women... some people maybe just need to hear how their actions affect others... clueless =/= hateful...

I'm not saying that my friends who don't get the difference between good films and misogynist films are misogynistic themselves, if they were they wouldn't be my friends. I think I made that point badly. Allow me to explain. I was trying more to complain that the institutionalised marginalisation of women and women's stories in hollywood is so widespread that it seems to be unnoticeable unless you're especially aggravated by it like I am.

Whilst I do have friends from across many political schools of thought and we do debate about... well... almost everything (philosophy masters holder here so I do it for a hobby!) I've never really understood the expression "extreme feminist". Because it's not really a political thing like being extremely right wing or extremely left wing is. To give an example, deciding whether or not a government should pay for healthcare is a political thing, deciding whether or not women should be allowed to do what they want with their own body is a feminist thing.

And because text is such an unclear medium I want to tell you that am genuinely interested to hear examples from you of what you see as "extreme feminism" and just "feminism".

And yeah, I do try to do things to counteract things that annoy me. Like leading by example or trying to help people become a little less clueless but it still sometimes overwhelms yanno?

[Yoshi]

First, let me start by saying I totally understand where you're coming from. I'm tired of women being belittled. That said, I think a lot of women have gone to such lengths to ensure equality that they wind up causing reverse discrimination against men. This has taught me to look at things from an outsider-perspective. When I see a controversial situation I tend to step back from the fact that I am a woman and I try to think about what is right given the situation.

It's so difficult to see the difference between "gender roles" and misogyny. I believe that women have different biological abilities when compared to men in general. My high school Bio teacher put it well: "There are tons of women who are physically stronger than men. However, if there was a strength competition between the top male bodybuilder and the top female bodybuilder, the man would win." I don't have a problem with this because it's just a different set of hormones acting out in two equal humans. In the same way [i'm pretty sure] when it comes to something like flexibility, women have men beat in general. But I view these differences as just that - differences. I don't believe either sex should be treated as a lesser being because of them. And I think this is where people get confused.

I work in catering at my college and we have to move A LOT of heavy shit for events. I am constantly told to "leave that for the guys to get." I have been called a "little lady" as someone handed me the lightest platter on the van to carry. For me this is belittling because I have been going out of my way to build my strength. I mean come on, my arms don't fit in some of my sleeves anymore! So I just laugh, then help the guys with their stuff. I try not to make a big deal out of it too often - I just make a point to demonstrate my abilities. Maybe they'll notice, maybe not. I'd love it they would, but until then I'm content knowing how strong I am.

It's definitely difficult when you feel like others won't take you seriously over something as silly as your sex. It's also difficult to watch other women accept objectification [like in your example.] I think all we can do is stand together as strong women, showing that being female is just one part of identity.

Here are some funny/ interesting videos that made me laugh/think. [NOT safe for work.]

Collegehumor -

Jenna Marbles -

Jenna Marbles -

[Unda]

Semantics, but rather important ones in this case. I have to agree with ETF on this one. I don't see any straight up women-hatin' going on in your post, rather just the standard double standard that exists.

True, I am perhaps overusing the word. But I find it hateful that a national newspaper in my country has pictures of topless models just inside the cover with a speech bubble reading the news in a manner that indicates that we're supposed to find this funny. Because certainly a woman with her boobs out could never have an opinion on anything, it's that thigh slapping hillarious dissonance between a naked woman and intelligence! The link is NSFW but apparently safe for national newspapers that children can buy. *sigh* http://www.page3.com/

[ETFnerd]

i think extreme feminism or feminists simply refers to people who wish to dictate how others should act and think. this runs counter to the principles of a free society. it is an intolerant viewpoint which i have seen firsthand in some women's colleges in the east coast of the US (for the most part).

also misogyny implies that all that is wrong in the world comes from a place of hatred. i don't think this is true, and it comes more from ignorance, lack of proper communication, and occasionally, more often than i'd like, yes... hatred.

[Unda]

I was gonna comment about bits of your post that I agree with Yoshi until I realised that it was pretty much all of it.

I loathe inequality of any sort. As an example I dislike how custody battles can work, I don't think that you should have an unfair advatage to win custody of your kid just because you spat em outta your uterus. If you're the better parent/the kid wants to stay with you more then by all means. But there are many men out there who have had their kids taken from them and given to their mothers who are the less fit parent simply because they're men. That's completely wrong.

I also hate when women respond to sexism by being sexist against men. Don't mock men who aren't "manly", that's just as awful as being told by the media all the time that you're no more than a pretty thing to be looked at. Or women who say all guys are assholes, not cool. For me gender is pretty much a non issue, I have male friends and I have female friends, I genuinely don't see a difference and it upsets me that half of us get told all the time that we're not good enough.

[So Late So Soon]

I loled when I saw an ad for that movie.

But I have to say I don't think those things are misogynistic, just wrong. I do agree with you that anyone who cares to look can see that there are quite a lot of things wrong with how woman are treated and objectified in our culture but sadly most people don't seem to care. And even those who do don't seem to do anything about it.

I was listening to an NPR broadcast yesterday and the host was talking about how woman who are single head of households have an exponentially harder time finding and paying for healthcare,mortgages and getting bank loans than single male head of households. I just find things like this abhorrent, but hey that's just my opinion.

[ETFnerd]

... and it upsets me that half of us get told all the time that we're not good enough.

i believe you're good enough. so please stop saying that all of you get told all the time that you're not. i believe that women have the capacity to do anything a man can do and pop out babies... and history is on my side in this respect...

[Unda]

i think extreme feminism or feminists simply refers to people who wish to dictate how others should act and think. this runs counter to the principles of a free society. it is an intolerant viewpoint which i have seen firsthand in some women's colleges in the east coast of the US (for the most part).

also misogyny implies that all that is wrong in the world comes from a place of hatred. i don't think this is true, and it comes more from ignorance, lack of proper communication, and occasionally, more often than i'd like, yes... hatred.

No wonder we're having a semantics debate then, that's not what I see those words meaning at all.

I don't want to dictate how other people think. Which isn't to say that I don't think it'd be nice if everyone suddenly decided that men and women were equal, in the same way that I think it'd be nice if no one was racist any more. So no, people can think what they want and do what they want just as long as it doesn't actively harm me. So, I'm not going to make someone employ a woman against their will, but it doesn't mean that it's not misogynistic to not employ someone because of what's between their legs.

I don't think that forcing anyone to employ women is a solution but the fact that women are paid less than their male counterparts doing equal jobs, that we're promoted less often, suffer far more workplace harassment, are forced out of unemployment due to pregnancy or childrearing, and in general are discriminated against is wrong.

As for misogyny being the root of all evil? It'd be awesome if it were so simple but nothing is. There are a tonne of problems around in the world that have nothing to do with gender. There's bigotry, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia; racism, ageism, disability discrimination etc. Not to mention well, goodness, take a look at any newspaper. I don't think that it all comes from hatred either. I think that for someone like my other half, a straight white man, being in a position of privelidge is easy. It's easy to participate in a system that benefits you, often because you don't even realise that you are. It's so easy for him to just coast through a system that benefits him rather than try to change it, he doesn't need to bother. To his credit he does though, he treats all his colleagues with the respect that they deserve regardless of gender (although he does have a habit of treating lazy people badly, but being the only tech support guy and having to go across the company to find that something wasn't turned on can do that to ya).

Personally I believe that most of the world's ills come from laziness. It's easier to not challenge an unfair system, it's easier to stay quiet when someone's parroting something hateful that they've heard, it's easier to not give money to charity or walk to work or get fit or eat right etc. etc. Ignorance and poor communication are right up there too. But sometimes, and more frequently than I wish was the case too, there's hatred too.

[Unda]

i believe you're good enough. so please stop saying that all of you get told all the time that you're not. i believe that women have the capacity to do anything a man can do and pop out babies... and history is on my side in this respect...

I know that I'm good enough too, that's why it's annoying. ^_-

[Booky]

I deal with everyday misogyny by getting a good dose of feminism online. Some good websites I've found are:

http://malefeminists.com/

http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/

http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/

and the (sadly no longer updated) http://girl-wonder.org/girlsreadcomics/

I'll probably come by and add more as I think of them.

[Eurydice]

Here's what I think: life's not fair. This is not a fun thing to understand, especially if you understand that even if the entire world made every change you wanted it to make tomorrow, life would still be unfair for someone; that someone just would no longer be you.

Misogyny sucks, I completely agree. I also think that, like anything else, if you march out your door every day afire with the will to call it out wherever you see it, you will find it everywhere, in everything, all the time. If you sit back and wait for it to come to you, you'll find it mysteriously gets a lot less common. That doesn't mean you're sticking your head in the sand. It means that if you aren't viewing everything through the misogyny filter, you may find that it's not actually everywhere after all.

I'm a woman in a pretty technical field. Women aren't rare there, in junior or senior positions. When someone in my office needs help with computers, I'm the person they come to. I can recall one time in the last four or five years that a man said something absolutely breathtakingly sexist in my presence (in reality, not on the internet). Does that mean misogyny doesn't exist, or the deck isn't stacked against women? Of course not, but it does mean that I don't really feel like I'm being crushed under the iron boot of sexism every minute of every day.

On the other hand, I have a whole group of friends that I can't talk to about fitness, about my health goals, or about my weight loss goals. They're all women. I can't talk to them because I will be shouted down about how I'm fat-shaming and fat-phobic and I should be fat-positive and Real Women aren't thin. They are also very young feminists, and the degree to which their sense of social justice only serves to silence just about everyone is really stunning.

What do I do about misogyny in my life? I pick my battles and establish priorities. When state government after state government is enacting legislation that literally has no other purpose than to allow men to control every aspect of women's sexuality and reproductive health, I can't bring myself to get too worked up about the relative merits of action movies.

[Unda]

I deal with everyday misogyny by getting a good dose of feminism online. Some good websites I've found are:

http://malefeminists.com/

http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/

http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/

and the (sadly no longer updated) http://girl-wonder.org/girlsreadcomics/

I'll probably come by and add more as I think of them.

That's one of my coping stragegies too. I personally like:

http://eschergirls.tumblr.com/ for lols about women in comics

http://www.feministfrequency.com/ for interesting videos about movies and pop culture

http://bitchmagazine.org/ for news and articles about feminism.

[Unda]

@Eurydice

That is... actually good advice. I should try to pick my battles a little better. In regards to action movies, video games, comics etc. irk me is more because I go to those things to relax and because I enjoy them and when something really sexist leaps out at me with them it feels like I've been going about my business only to get blindsided, which makes me angry.

Maybe if I focused on doing more actual things the little things might not bug me so much. I hope so.

[Booky]

I had to stop looking at eschergirls! It's funny for a while but then just looking at all those pictures started to get physically painful. And I started to just want to see girls who didn't look like they were made of play-doh.

I also like http://dcwomenkickingass.tumblr.com/

[LRB]

Hey Unda, have you checked out "Reel Girl?" http://margotmagowan.wordpress.com/ A great media-literacy type resource for information about movies and helpful ways to discuss the sexism implicit in so much of what we experience. I agree that it's a little hard to get worked up about "Rapunzel" being re-named "Tangled" because the makers thought boys wouldn't go see a movie named for a girl (whereas girls are willing to see a movie named for a boy all the time), but on the other hand, when there's an ongoing complete acceptance of low-level prejudice, the higher-level stuff gets easier to accept.

I assume you've heard of the Bechtel (sp?) test? A movie must have (a) two female characters with names; ( who talk to each other; © about something other than a guy. Remarkably few movies pass this test.

Also, buddy movies -- they need not be male buddies to work, and yet they always are. Why is that?

[Unda]

Hey Unda, have you checked out "Reel Girl?" http://margotmagowan.wordpress.com/ A great media-literacy type resource for information about movies and helpful ways to discuss the sexism implicit in so much of what we experience. I agree that it's a little hard to get worked up about "Rapunzel" being re-named "Tangled" because the makers thought boys wouldn't go see a movie named for a girl (whereas girls are willing to see a movie named for a boy all the time), but on the other hand, when there's an ongoing complete acceptance of low-level prejudice, the higher-level stuff gets easier to accept.

I assume you've heard of the Bechtel (sp?) test? A movie must have (a) two female characters with names; ( who talk to each other; © about something other than a guy. Remarkably few movies pass this test.

Also, buddy movies -- they need not be male buddies to work, and yet they always are. Why is that?

Oh god yes, the bechdel test. I managed to make a point to my future brother in law with it about how few women actually are in movies and interact with each other with it. We sat around the table calling out movies and tried to recall off of the top of our heads whether or not they passed. Unsurprisingly the answer to most was no.

Also, I haven't seen that reel girl link. Going to check it out now!

[shiggles]

I don't think that anything said in the original post would classify as 'extreme feminism'. Not even close.

I think the problem has a lot to do with gender stereotypes and the 'accepted' gender roles that exist within society. But who gets to decide what these roles are? Have a real good think about this one and what are the real priorities for the people involved.

I could never marry a girl who squats more than me. I'm supposed to be the stronger one here, and that's something that isn't going to change within me.

Why?

[unicornassassin]

I've been really despairing lately about how I'm practically drowning in misogyny in my life, ......

When I say that I'm drowning in it I just feel like misogyny invades almost every aspect of my life.

UGH. I feel the same way lately. And it blows trying to talk about it because people just disagree and argue, which makes me feel more alienated and crappy. I protect myself by being incredibly selective about who I talk to about these feelings and issues.

I am with you in spirit

[shiggles]

You should all watch this documentary/film. This is the first video and the user has the rest of the film in there other videos. In my opinion this sort of thing should be essential education material.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMVS5M3SckQ

[unicornassassin]

You should all watch this documentary/film. This is the first video and the user has the rest of the film in there other videos. In my opinion this sort of thing should be essential education material.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMVS5M3SckQ

OH MAN! I saw Killing Us Softly when I was in college, that movie is amazing! I didn't know they'd made more. Effing cool.

Jean Kilbourne and Sut Jhally were my idols when I was in college.

[Book]

I agree that there was nothing extreme in the original post, and arguing about semantics is unnecessary. Call it a lack of equality or lack of respect or misogyny, it doesn't really matter, and I agree that it is still rampant.

My line of attack with this kind of thing is the same line with every issue I see: My children. I believe that most change comes from the change of generations, so I point out things to them regularly. Just this morning, I had a conversation with my daughter about how I have an issue with organized religion because it is so male-dominated and unequal.

[Unda]

Shiggles I'm glad you asked bprime why because I'd been wondering too. There are only two reasons why I can see why someone would say that. To say "I approve/like A but would never support/engage in A"

1) moral objection, so a veggie might similarly say "I like steak but I'd never eat it because it's immoral." Bprime said that he's supposed to be the strong one so I'm gonna guess that he doesn't think being strong is immoral and I doubt (or hope) that he thinks WOMEN being so is.

which brings me to:

2) interest objection: i think of this like "I like (political candidate) but I wouldn't vote for them" The reason you might react like this is because you could like someone as a person but realise that their policies would be bad for you as a person. So I can only think of a few ways that this might relate to women lifting more than men

- "I respect strong women but would't marry one, I should be the strong one here because..."

a) I don't ever want to be that close to someone stronger than me due to a risk of physical harm (I really hope that's not the case!)

because people might mock me for being weaker than my wife (possible, as I said people try to do this to my other half)

c) because a woman being better at something than me hurts my sense of "maleness" (possible but... again, I hope not)

d) because I feel that my wife should conform to traditional gender roles and keep her body as I want it to be.

Actually, none of the above hypotheticals are pleasant and I really hope that they're not the case.

Again I'm aware that this could seem like an attack and I'm really not wanting it to come across that way bprime, it's just your response seemed so odd that it made me keep thinking about why you were "supposed" to be the stronger one and why you would feel that it HAD to be so. I'd really appreciate if you could enlighten me but I do understand that it could be something personal and you might not want to say.