… okay, that's an overstatement, but given the ever-increasing National Enquiresque nature of OS I figured without a provocative title no one would even read this post. Still, I’ll be surprised if this post isn't mostly ignored given the politically incorrect opinions that are forthcoming.
But on with the post. Hooray for all the great posts on misogyny! Although I’m happy for those who were able to exorcise demons or get things off their chests, in truth I’m tired of reading of misogyny and believe most of what is called misogyny is in fact misguided whining - more on that later.
First let’s look at misandry because as much as misogyny is talked about, in society in general and here on OS in specific, I find it curious how little attention its counterpart (hatred of men) gets. Actually, I’m not really surprised because as I stated indelicately on Stellaa’s recent post, OS is mostly a site by women and for women (and sure, I also said that half of the men here were castrated suck-ups, which was a bit harsh, but honestly it seems like guys here go to absurd lengths to check their testicles at the door).
Oh yeah...misandry...for starters, let's look at a few examples of how misandrist attitudes *seem* to be subtly woven into our culture and our collective psyche.
First - in the mediaThe Tiger Woods story is a great example of this. Shortly after news broke of Tiger’s accident, the media began reporting that Elin Woods may have whacked Tiger in the face with a golf club (which I doubt she did). What I found most interesting about all of this was the attitude in the media (and among the public) regarding the whacking.
The responses generally fall into two categories:
1. That it was funny. The idea (and image) of a scorned Elin chasing Tiger out of the house with a golf club seemed humorous. The golf club irony no doubt helped.
and ...
2. That he “deserved” it. He was a horndog, cavorted with more than a dozen other women including porn stars, and humiliated her; ergo her actions were justified or at least understandable.
In fact, in the dozens of articles I’ve read about this, I can’t recall EVEN ONE that portrayed Elin negatively or condemned her actions (a few made reference to spousal abuse, but did so in the context of explaining why Tiger didn’t want to talk to the cops).
Now let’s suppose for a minute that Angelina Jolie cheated on Brad Pitt and in response he hit her in the face with a golf club and chased her out of the house as she tried to flee, causing her to crash her car. Do you think the media portrayal would be that it was “funny” or that “she deserved it”? Hardly.
Second – TV and movie depictions of violenceHow many times have you seen a woman slap or hit a man on a TV show or in a movie? How many times have you seen a woman kick a guy in the balls in a movie? If you don’t think these depictions of violence are common you’ve just become numb to it and I dare you to start paying better attention because these depictions are so common that they seem to be the building blocks of relationship movies and sitcoms.
Sure, TV shows and movies also depict violence against women, but let’s observe how the two different acts are put to use by directors and what kind of audience response they’re looking for.
On TV or in a movie, almost any time a man commits a violent act against a woman the point is that he is a criminal or a brute, and the act is portrayed so that our sympathies are with the woman. Fair enough, but conversely, almost any times a woman commits an act of violence against a man it’s either played for laughs or we’re made to feel that the guy deserved it (sound familiar, Tiger).
If a guy says something untoward he gets slapped and he deserved it. If he is misunderstood and gets slapped anyway, it’s funny. If a woman gets mad at a guy and breaks a vase over his head or hits him with a frying pan or inflicts pain on him in any of a thousand creative ways, it’s either funny or he deserved it or both, depending on how the director pulls it off.
Bottom Line: the woman always gets sympathy and the guy always gets laughter or indignation.
Third – prison rape as a jokeDid you hear that O.J. is going to play football in prison? Yeah, he’s starting out as a tight end but is going to switch to wide receiver. Funny, huh? How many joking references have you heard about men being raped in prison? It’s a total cliché.
Not having done time in the big house, I don’t know how prevalent prison rape is and it might be more cultural lore than reality. But again, as a society we either joke about it or else we rationalize it because “they deserve it”. You might argue that in this case, they really do deserve it because hey, they’re criminals. But if that’s the case then we should also laugh or express indignation toward women convicts who are raped by prison guards, but we don't.
Bottom line: If a guy gets raped in prison it’s funny or he deserves it, but if a woman gets raped in prison, judgment falls on the male guard.
So, then ….If misogyny is so bad, why is misandry so ignored?
Why is it horrific when a man throws acid in a woman’s face, but fodder for late night comedians when John Wayne Bobbit’s wife cuts off his pecker?
Why is it that if I call a woman a cunt I’m a misogynist, but if a woman calls me a prick, well then it must be because I’m a prick?
Why can the Dixie Chicks (Goodbye Earl), Miranda Lambert (Gunpowder and Lead), or Martina McBride (Independence Day) write songs about killing men (albeit abusive ones) without anyone raising an eyebrow?
My politically incorrect .02My point in this post has nothing to do with misandry or even double standards. In fact, those examples I just listed are all bullshit and I don’t believe any of them constitue misandry because for all intents and purposes it doesn’t exist.
I, for example, don’t hate men, but I find the image of Elin chasing Tiger with a golf club hilarious (I even played the internet game where you try to steer the Escalade around trees and fire hydrants while Elin chases you with a golf club). I also laugh when the guy in the sitcom gets slapped or when the guy in the movies gets kicked in the cajones (if the actor’s cross-eyed, groin grabbing reaction is properly executed). As for prison rape? I suspect that society ignores it simply because to the best of our abilities we try to pretend that prisoners don’t even exist at all.
And although I have two young daughters who have to live in a world where there is a lot of hatred, I barely believe that misogyny exists either. The vast majority of what gets labeled misogyny is simply garden-variety hatred that happens to be perpetrated against a woman.
If a guy is angry and violent and kicks his dog every night, it’s not misogyny. But if he gets married and starts beating his wife instead, is it suddenly misogyny? I don’t think so. I think he’s just a violent asshole.
Why is it that if a guy gets into a bar fight it’s not misogyny, but if then goes home and also hits his wife, it is? Why isn’t he just regarded as an equal opportunity jerk?
What seems to be completely overlooked when throwing around the word misogyny, is MOTIVE. If I kill a black guy, it’s not necessarily a hate crime. It depends on my MOTIVE. If I kill him to intimidate other blacks, then yes. But if I kill him because I catch him sleeping with my wife, then it’s not.
Similarly, before labeling something misogyny we need to consider motives. Just because a guy yells at you or hits you or doesn’t give you a promotion, or in some other way makes you cry or wounds your inner child, it doesn’t mean he’s a woman-hater. It depends on his motives, and I’m guessing that in the vast majority of cases his anger or violence is NOT motivated by hatred toward women, specifically. Most likely, he’s just a jerk who hates a lot of things and a lot of types of people, including himself (but a discussion of self-loathing as a cause of antisocial behavior is beyond the scope of this post).
Applying the word "misogyny" to so many things is misguided, over simplistic and perhaps even disengenuous. You may as well call taggers, “building-haters” or the person who keyed your car a “car-hater”. In reality, the overuse of the word “misogyny” is a PR move of sorts, because on some level it is used opportunistically to conjure up umbrage (in the service of one's cause) by mischaracterizing, ignoring or oversimplifying the perp’s motives. And it’s done to constantly remind us guys that in nearly every scenario, we are the scum and women are the victims.
The unfortunate downside to all of this is that by making a gender issue out of misbehavior that has its roots elsewhere, we inadvertently cast all women as victims and all men as potential victimizers, fueling an artificial divide. And I for one am a bit tired of hearing half of the world’s population shout “misogyny” every time a member of the other half treats them badly.
I'll shut up now, but I’m reserving an eye-roll for the first poster to call me a misogynist or misogyny denier.
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Not gonna call you names as that is rather counterproductive and does not promote conversation ;0)
This is eery. Did I sleepwalk downstairs to my computer and write this in my sleep?
Great post.
I apologize for not notifying you of my open call.
OS Men Open Call: Post on Misandry
Mary Wollstonecraft is a group blog; I am only the instigator and secretary. Anyone can write as Mary Wollstonecraft. The log in and password is under the bio.
Likewise, what I see in your examples above are sexism, not actual misandry.
I agree there's a double standard, and it needs to be addressed.
I have noticed if people are not sure, they are far more likely to guess boy.
I don't see where I implied that OS is somehow a "lesser" site because it is dominated by women. If you got that impression I'm guessing it's because of the lens through which you viewed the post.
In fact, I can't think of a better blogging site (although back when Table Talk was free I think it was much better than OS is now, primarily because the format of it fostered discussion rather than pontificating).
As for the testosterone stuff, I actually wasn't referring to the arguing that you refer to, but rather to the fact that I get the impression that male posters here go out of their way to 1) not discuss stereotypically "manly" topics and 2) appear sensitive and agreeable to discussions of women's topics.
For example, how often do you see posts here about hunting, fishing, sports, or cars? Rarely. And yet, if the men here represent a cross sample of American society I would expect to see those posts.
Also, I generally believe that women are more nurturing than men. Consequently there are a lot of back rubs and ego strokes and warm and fuzzy complements handed out on OS - even for, dare I say it, some very mediocre writing. And correspondingly I see an absence of critical commentary and willingness on the part of men express opinions that would be unpopular among the womenfolk.
This could be because the men that tend to come here are needy and crave approval from females, and don't want to risk being disliked. Or maybe they want their share of kudos and backrubs and affirmation. Whatever the reason, the comments I see from men on this site don't jive with those I hear from men in the real world, which strikes me as odd.
I think that many people on the political left tend to see things in terms of oppressors and the oppressed. Basically, the oppressors are males, especially straight white males, and the oppressed are everyone else.
Men are defined as the oppressors merely in virtue of their gender, not their actions. As oppressors men are thought to enjoy all sorts of life advantages, whether or not we actually have them as individuals. In fact, it is thought that the tables are so far tilted in our advantage that we might not even know that we have all these advantages.
As I pointed out in a comment on another post, men die earlier than women. We overwhelmingly make up the prison population. We are more likely to be addicted to drugs or alcohol. Today boys in school do worse than girls, and boys are more likely to be disgnosed with learning disabilities. Over half the college students are women, and in many professional schools over half of the students are women. And men do most of the bleeding and dying when a war comes along. Nonetheless men are "privileged."
A man can be considered not an oppresssor if he has some other "positive" trait. If he's black or hispanic, that helps. If he's gay that really helps, especially if he has a dramatic and moving "coming out" story. And if he's transgendered, well, say no more.
That leaves straight white men. The only way a straight white man can redeem himself is to adopt the values and worldview of the "oppressed," which are largely politically liberal and female values. So he needs to support gay marriage. He needs to support affirmative action. He needs to agree that men are the oppressors, and wring his hands and get teary-eyed over the tragic fate of the oppressed, and he needs to say that he must do "everything he can" to help them. He has to hate war but wish for more female and gay soldiers.
When he gets married it really helps if he ends up with one of these ugly hyphenated last names. If he has a son he'll need to rear his son as he were a girl, and hopefully the boy will end up with a worldview that is largely liberal and feminine.
He has to abhor conservative or traditional religion, that is invariably "misogynist," and if he goes to church it should be a church with a female pastor.
In short, the man becomes "feminized." Not that he isn't a man any more, but that he has largely adopted female values and a female worldview. Those of us who do not undergo that transformation are unredeemed, perhaps not rednecks but only a step or two away from rednecks. And we certainly don't fit in very well in a venue such as OS.
Amen! I'm a middle-aged, middle-class, white male and I get totally sick of hearing about all of the advantages I supposedly enjoy and how "my kind" are the world's oppressors - as if I regularly receive invitations from Dick Cheney to join some sinister cabal whose purpose is to keep other people down.
And maybe I'm just a screw-up, but despite reasonable intelligence, a decent education and all of the advantages that I enjoy as a white, male I still am not living in the lap of luxury and I still have to slog to work every day to provide food, shelter and clothing for my family.
I think you missed the point of the post. The point was that, in my humble opinion, most of what is labeled "misogyny" is in fact just hatred that is not specifically targeted at women. Nothing more, nothing less. No sniveling.
And the post was in response to an Open Call by Redstocking Grandma for posts on the topic of misandry. It wasn't like I had a seething rage inside me that had to get out.
I did think the discussion had become too one-sided. That should be obvious in my post in response to the misogyny call with a deliberately provocative title.
Are Feminists Raising Their Sons to Be Misogynists
I just mastered linking in comments and I am a kid with a new toy.
I LOVE men.
It's the assholes, male or female, that I hate equally.
;-)
Quite a few men seem to fear that is so. If they then refrain from posting, their possible misconception is never corrected. When I tried to recruit men for Mary Wollstonecraft interviews and when I posted my misandry open call, quite a few men told me they didn't want to deal with angry feminist response. I think they have a point. Remember the response to Jodi Kasten's post Equal Rights for Men
In the first paragraph I stated right off that the title of the post was just meant to be provocative in order to get people to read it. I didn't intend to address misandry on OS specifically, but rather the topic in general.
And as far as OS being inhospitable to men, I don't think that's the case. I think it's just a site where women tend to have more of a presence than men. And the women aren't overtly inhospitable, but rather the charge I made was that I suspect men purposely curb their manliness a bit in order to be accepted and fit in better, and possibly to gain kudos and approval from the women on the site.
As evidence, in one of my responses I pointed out that the kind of discussion and banter I see from men here on OS doesn't match what I see in the real world. So either OS attracts different types of men, or else the men who come here comport themselves differently here than they do in the real world.
Self-evidently I don't agree with everything in your eloquent comment, but bravo to you for being brave enough to say it. We need to struggle more with the points you make rather than make glib assurances it isn't so. You gave me much to think about.
This raises thought-provoking questions.
I disagree with your opinion of men on OS. I think the men here have balls where it counts.
PS- plenty of feminists think domestic violence or sexual violence against men is not ok. Jezebel was one of the first sites to call SNL out on making domestic violence jokes about Tiger.
http://jezebel.com/5420821/snl-says-domestic-violence-is-hilarious---when-directed-at-men
I am link impaired- sorry.
As long as we’re indirectly talking about media touchstones:
1984’s “The Burning Bed” - the movie (based on a true story) of a battered wife’s incineration of her monstrous husband, subsequent trial and not guilty by reason of insanity verdict… regularly shown on Lifetime and Oxygen alongside crime shows of other women who have subsequently killed their abusive husbands and received guilty verdicts instead. Talk about YMMV
1988’s “The Accused” – the movie (based on a true story) of a Jocelyn Testes-Harder kind of woman who gets gang-raped in a sleazy bar and, after her attackers get off easy, successfully sues the bystanders for cheering instead of rescuing her.
Movies manipulate our thoughts and emotions and both these movies were a “call to action” and demanded that I see the concepts of provocation, personal responsibility, innocence in all its permeations, and complicity in a new light and that I prepare for the government to step in and change the way justice was working.
These were the two fires burning brightly when the OJ acquittal (who I too believe was a coked-up killer with a sense of wealthy male entitlement) threw gunpowder and gasoline to the mix.
And yet in this Sunday’s paper were the crime statistics for 2009 for my state and, in the state’s largest city, the number of murders was the lowest it’s been in 41 years. And that’s not even adjusted for population.
I agree that class is the more likely culprit when one group of people oppress another.
I have a feeling that if a wealthy, white male member of the Cheney cabal, for example, was given a choice to hitch their wagons to me (middle class, white male) or a wealthy, old money woman of any nationality or color - he'd pick her. Money / social class trumps nearly everything else. And understandably so, because money is power in this world and we humans like any other animal seek power - and once we have it we want to keep it and acquire more. But you don't do that by associating with those who will leech money off of you and, by association, lower your perceived status.
For the record, I'm not actually into hunting or fishing or cars (although I like sports). I just used those as examples of things I would expect to see more of on here if the men represeted a normal cross section of American society.
But as you pointed out, the men here (no, not ALL of them) are "different", that is they are characterized by wit, brains and sensitivity. I agree, but I'm suggesting that at least part of that is an act, perpetrated (perhaps even unconsciously) in order to fit in here better.
And although I laughed at the subtle insult to men who hunt and fish and such, I'm not so sure that men who engage in those activities are necessarily less intelligent, but rather I suspect their intelligence is just of a different variety.
It's too long of a subject to go into in this post, but Isaac Asimov once wrote a great essay on intelligence in which his basic point was that the measure of intelligence depends on who is creating the test. Each culture's measure of intelligence will be flawed by their cultural egocentricity. And so some native in New Guinea would no doubt score poorly on our intelligence tests, and we would come off as idiots if we were charged with locating dung beetles or charged with some other task related to survival in his environment.
You're a step ahead of me here. When putting this post together I actually didn't think much on *why* portrayals of violence by women on men are perceived as funny or justified. But it's a great question...
I suspect that the "justified" part of it has to do with the reasoning that ... well, they are the weaker sex and have been physically dominated by men for so long, so if they lash out, well - who can blame them?
As for the funny part, I actually think we humans - absent of political correctness - would find a perverse humor in the suffering of anyone, male or female. But, whereas it is acceptable to laugh at a man suffering, it's not politically correct (due to the ubiquitous cultural references to how oppressed women are and how abusive men are) to find humor (even in sitcom form) that is based on a woman being physically harmed.
Yes, the Jezebel piece makes more or less the same points that I have, and I'm sure there are other articles out there that do the same. But let's face it: the VAST majority of articles don't.
And in fact, as I stated before, I actually find the idea of Elin chasing Tiger with a golf club funny. AND I thought the SNL skit was funny. Perhaps it's a character flaw of mine, but at heart I'm extremely subversive and politically incorrect.
Also, I guess I should state that in my 47 years I've had almost zero exposure to domestic violence. I've never hit or slapped or physically abused a woman and in fact, I've never seen it done or even heard of anyone I know doing it (although I acknowledge that based on statistics, it's probably all around me).
If that is not the epitome of liberal elitism I don't know what is. Yes, I suppose the intellectual superior males of OS post more about whether or not Megan Fox is an idiot, or perhaps they write the umpteenth commentary on Brit Hume's Buddhism comment. Oh, but they would never stoop so low as to comment on something like hunting.
Everything she has was created, hunted, invented by intelligent men. Yet, she has no problem bragging about her trip to the Arctic where she adorned herself with sealskin clothing.
Based on her comment, I suppose she has no interest in the men who supplied her with the sealskin. She'll wear it for vacation photos. But, please do not tell her where it came from. The men who hunted and skinned those seals are much too pedestrian for Lea Lane.
Such ignorance. Especially from a woman who tries to sell herself as worldly.
You're exactly right that most hatred and criticism of individuals often gets lumped into gender assumptions, and that's always gotten my goat. I have no idea why I might be more sensitive to it than other women, other than that I have three sons, but I have simply seen much more of it coming from women, about men, than the reverse. I'm talking about personal experience here, not anything scientific and certainly not the larger, institutional sexism that rules the larger world. I'm talking about neighbor women maligning not their own husbands but men in general, women in my family putting down men with a capital M. They often think they're being funny but the condescension reeks. And sometimes there's genuine contempt. I just don't see it coming from the other side. I'm perhaps not privy to it--again, I'm talking about personal relationships here--but mostly I think the men in question (my family and friends) are spending their conversant energy on content, which is to say sports, politics, movies, whatever. They don't seem to spend as much time talking about relationships, which explains why they're not sitting around trashing women the way the women are sitting around joking about and trashing the men. I can only say that I sometimes prefer the company of men for this reason.
I too often prefer the company of men rather than women, with the exception of my daughters and all their friends.
I agree. From what I've witnessed, women tend to talk about men a lot more than men do about women - contrary to the popular stereotype of men always bragging about their conquests and engaging in locker room talk. Sure it exists, but not as much as we're led to believe.
I also think we humans tend to look for simplistic reasons for things, and don't seem to have the intellectual attention spans to entertain subtleties. Hatred is such a strange and twisted thing - layers and layers embued with cultural, biological, personal AND gender components - plus many more.
In my life I can only say that I've met one person who struck me as an overt misogynist. He was a kid just out of college and I was in my thirties and MAN did he have a chip on his shoulder. But when I got to know him better I could see that his issues with women really weren't so much about women at all. Instead he clearly seemed to have a lot of unresolved issues about his upbringing, his parents' divorce and dad's subsequent remarriage, etc. And it was clear that despite his tough exterior there was a lot of pain and hurt inside him.
In theory, I still regard him perhaps as a misogynist because he did seem to loathe women (while at the same time being attracted to them), but even in his case it seems an oversimplification to apply that term, knowing that there were so many underlying issues.
I don't even think we humans understand our own true motives. We constantly lie to ourselves because we don't have the time or inclination to really get to the bottom of our own issues. Instead we assemble a false, albeit useful surface approximation that allows us to function in society but prevents us from truly knowing ourselves or truly understanding *why* we are the way we are. This is true for me anyway. Perhaps others have themselves all figured out.
I wonder why they even allow male guards in female prisons? It seems to me it would go a long ways toward solving the problem if we just eliminated guys as guards.
And despite the modest outcry regarding the SNL skit, I thought it was funny, if not that well acted. In fact, i suspect that part of our collective problem is that groups who feel put upon tend to take things too seriously - Elin chasing Tiger makes for a funny visual and a situation that we can chuckle at. If he had been seriously injured the humorous potential wouldn't have existed. But he wasn't and so we, collectively, seemed to agree that it was okay to joke about it. I don't have a problem with that.
i think the reason that the double standard exists which puts in place a much more draconian hurdle before we could laugh at a woman in a similar situation is the result of the decades old onslaught of media messages regarding how bad men are and how victimized women are - it's taken the humorous potential out of a lot of things and metaphorically speaking, shoved the stick of political correctness up our collective arse.
And I'm not sure that's "bad" per se. Time will tell. If I'm lucky enough to live another 30 or 40 years I'll be curious to see where equality for women is at at that point, and whether or not as a society we get to a point where we can laugh at women the same way we laugh at men.
Please keep on being politically incorrect. PC is way overrated.
I'm waiting for some of the other men on OS to weigh in on this. Hmmmm.
One of the things I've noticed here is that women are nasty, irrational creatures with very little ability in the art of argumentation. The OS men usually chime in to show support for these women. It is bizarre.
Another thing I've noticed is that most of the men seem to be gay. I have no problem with gay men. But, given that this site is already dominated by an angry feminist mindset, the addition of gay men seems to increase the effect of effeminate anger here.
Most of the posts here on OS are horrible. I mean, they are really, really horrible. Yet, most of these bad posts garner many approval ratings from feminine sycophants and effeminate men. I suspect this is because OS stands for the Oprah Show and that OS is more of a support group than anything else.
Finally, there is the strange tendency for female bloggers to delete comments on their blogs. This is another bizarre behavior. Most of the male bloggers here and on other sites do not systematically delete comments for no rational reason.
My wife has an interesting background. Before she went to college she sold auto parts, a job that she got because she is a hobbyist mechanic. She has a '67 Camaro that she rebuilt from the ground up and that she used to race at a local drag strip. In college she studied a lot of science and eventually went into nursing, a largely female-dominated profession.
At the auto parts store she got a lot of sexist comments all the time. The assumption of many customers was that, as a very attractive woman, she couldn't possibly know what she was talking about. Some men would refuse to deal with her, choosing instead to talk to male employees who actually knew less than my wife did. Unfortunately, these were everyday occurrences.
But then in nursing she often found herself being stabbed in the back by female nurses. She was not only pretty, but smart and had a master's degree, and it seemed that the other nurses often resented that. When she tried to show other nurses better ways of doing things the result was often resentment rather than appreciation. Some nurses talked about her behind her back and sometimes told complete lies about her. It got so bad that she finally left the profession. I remember one time she said to me "nobody hates women more than other women."
Inside all of us, male or female, liberal or conservative, religious or not, is an evil impulse to tear down other people, and thereby to see ourselves as superior, and sometimes, even to gloat over their misfortune.
Whatever happened to the idea that we should just be nice to each other? Whatever happened to the idea that we can disagree without being disagreeable? I don't know. It seems that in so many ways we have become coarser, less kind, less understanding, always looking for a way to "stick it" to someone else. Perhaps it has always been that way, and I just don't remember. But it seems to me that in many ways the quality of our personal interactions has deteriorated. We have become prisoners of our various ideologies, often incapable of compassionate feelings for those with a different perspective.
from My Fair Lady:)
Women are irrational, that's all there is to that!
There heads are full of cotton, hay, and rags!
They're nothing but exasperating, irritating,
vacillating, calculating, agitating,
Maddening and infuriating hags!
[
Yes...
Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so honest, so thoroughly square;
Eternally noble, historic'ly fair;
Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat.
Well, why can't a woman be like that?
Why does ev'ryone do what the others do?
Can't a woman learn to use her head?
Why do they do ev'rything their mothers do?
Why don't they grow up- well, like their father instead?
Mishima, in your excellent comment you wrote:
Inside all of us, male or female, liberal or conservative, religious or not, is an evil impulse to tear down other people, and thereby to see ourselves as superior, and sometimes, even to gloat over their misfortune.
One teaching of my early Catholicism that I have never rejected is the doctrine of original sin. I agree that the quality of our personal interactions has deteriorated greatly in my lifetime.
Hey John Knight? Thanks for illustrating precisely the kind of statement I hate when it comes from women about men. You're just doing it in reverse. You think you're helping yourself or your gender here? Sheesh.
Let the record reflect that when I said I sometimes prefer the company of men (note the "sometimes" too, btw), I'm not talking about men who stereotype women.
On a different point, fins, I've been thinking on whether I know anyone I'd call a "true" misogynist and I almost immediately thought of the man, Anthony Sowell, who killed a dozen or more women in Cleveland over the last few years and buried them in his house and backyard. I don't want to be so crass as to link to my own site, so I won't, but if you're interested, I wrote it about in October and called my post "Invisible Women." Honestly, I can't imagine that this man isn't a misogynist if there is such an animal. He clearly saw women as simply "things" to exploit.
The basic question, it seems to me, should be can any discussion like this solve anything? Is it possible to have such a discussion without fur flying? Oops...nah, gender neutral, I think.
I can see a discussion like this having merit among anthropologists or sociologists or psychologists or some other 'gists, but what qualifies us to address, with any authority, anything other than our opinions and our perceptions?
Seems to me we're wasting a lot of bandwidth strutting and fretting our hour upon the page, to be heard no more after the shitstorm, caused by well-meaning, we hope, bloggers, full of sound and fury,
ultimately getting us nowhere nearer the truth than when we started. (with apologies to Will the Bard)
Never in my Italian/American/Catholic upbringing was there EVER a word raised against ethnic groups, genders, or Homosexuals of either gender. My family, descended from Italian Nobility, unlike many Nobles fought for the rights of Serfs and many of our family came to America as they sensed the rise of a certain kind of selfishness that later became fascism. I was a boy sandwiched between two sisters, and grew up with 30 aunts and 40 female cousins living right in our immediate neighborhood.
My maternal granddad was an FDR Progressive, as am I, as was my mom and dad, and I differ from many of my peers in that I see abortion as an evil perpetuated by Nazi's and their followers like Margaret Sanger and her "Planned Parenthood" which was aimed at Blacks, Catholic's and especially Italian Catholics. It is that sort of thing that is behind the Tripartite/Trilateral/Bilderberg/Fascist idea of eliminating 80%-90% of the world population. "Abortion being legalized long ago if men could give birth," is an abomination of a thought and is a losers/whiners comment.
Viva Americans of either gender and both genders have their limitations as they were meant to. People who hate the other gender, really hate themselves and their own gender, and wish to transfer their twisted disgust to place the onus on someone of the other gender. I see no difference between gender bias/hatred and racism.
Article rated. PS: I have noted no great male race for castration here, perhaps those who have are reading the wrong blogs.
Further, in general I simply don't understand the whole "hate crime" thing. If you beat me unconscious, do I care that you did it because I'm a woman and you hate women as opposed to you beating me unconscious because you're a jerk and think I took "your" parking spot? Why does the motivation for the crime matter? The motive is, as far as I'm concerned, only relevant in assessing whether this person would have, could have and did commit the crime. After that it is irrelevant to me. Why does someone get an increased sentence for injuring, maiming or killing someone because they hated them for certain particular reasons? If a person does the crime for money is that less heinous?
"I think the men on this site are more intelligent than most on the web. That is why you don't read more about hunting, fishing and such. There is more creativity. More IQ. The male undercurrent here is wit, brains, and sensitivity. Macho stuff is secondary.
Lea Lane"
Plenty of creative, witty, sensitive and intelligent men and women hunt, fish, enjoy hunting and fishing and telling tales of the same. And men--macho is underrated. Feel free to open doors, help me with heavy packages, assist me with tire-changing, deck building, fence mending, and other sweaty "manly" tasks of all descriptions. Watch football! Ride a Harley or an Indian Motorcycles or even a Big Bear Chopper. Grill a thick steak on the deck. You have my permission. You have my gratitude. I like men to be men. Men are terrific. As long as all that manly stuff isn't used as an excuse to treat me as less intelligent and less worthy of respect and dignity, I'm cool with it. But I have to say, I have rarely encountered
Good points. You demonstrate that there are still women who want men to be "manly".
Too often gender equality is marketed under the misguided notion that men and women should be the same. Before having kids I thought perhaps there was something to the whole notion that "socialization" accounts for gender behaviors, but after having raised two daughters and interacting with a lot of other parents and kids it's clear to me that there's a biological basis for "girlish" and "boyish" behavior.
So although equality is important, men and women will never be the "same".
So, hunting and sports for the fellas, and spooning fantasies and kathy guisewhite humor( I lurve icecream but not what it does to my massive thighs etc.) for the laydeez has much more to do with being simple minded in general, and not much to do with gender.
This is a topic very near and dear to me and I enjoyed this post.
One of the things I've noticed here is that women are nasty, irrational creatures with very little ability in the art of argumentation. The OS men usually chime in to show support for these women. It is bizarre.
Another thing I've noticed is that most of the men seem to be gay. I have no problem with gay men. But, given that this site is already dominated by an angry feminist mindset, the addition of gay men seems to increase the effect of effeminate anger here.
Most of the posts here on OS are horrible. I mean, they are really, really horrible. Yet, most of these bad posts garner many approval ratings from feminine sycophants and effeminate men. I suspect this is because OS stands for the Oprah Show and that OS is more of a support group than anything else.
Finally, there is the strange tendency for female bloggers to delete comments on their blogs. This is another bizarre behavior. Most of the male bloggers here and on other sites do not systematically delete comments for no rational reason.
Uh, Jon...please, enlighten me, why are you here? I am seriously asking and would appreciate an answer. Thanks.
-R-
ugh,I.see.this.all.over.Open.Salon.and.it.tempts
my.last.meal.to.make.another.appearance.
well-done.
sorry.I'm.late.to.the.party.