Misogyny often isn't about women

[Anonymous]

What, you're telling us as women not to take mysoginy so darn personally?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How nice of a woman to decide for boys what is and is not "acceptable masculinity" .

Can we get a male author to tell girls how to be feminine next?

What are your particular complaints? Because I'm a man and don't see any particular behaviors criticized by the author that I'd regard as desirable or even acceptable in a man.

[Anonymous]

They get that language from porn and movies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What, you're telling us as women not to take mysoginy so darn personally?

I'm not telling you how to feel about it. But, if you want to understand what's really going on, this article illustrates that often women are not the focus of misogynistic behavior. In fact, that bad behavior may come easier to men when they're not thinking too much about the women they're harming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So ... a reporter interviews 100 "men"... boys... and most in the article is describing experiences of boys who attend all boy private schools and she finds out the culture at their school socializes them to treat girls like shit.

In other news, the sky is blue and the grass is green.

It doesn't matter where they go to school. The boys in our co ed middle schools and high schools are just as bad and have more access to girls and the "conquest" is a daily thing, but they often aren't getting the counter message from adults at school about how to behave that boys in all boys schools do get.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What, you're telling us as women not to take mysoginy so darn personally?

I'm not telling you how to feel about it. But, if you want to understand what's really going on, this article illustrates that often women are not the focus of misogynistic behavior. In fact, that bad behavior may come easier to men when they're not thinking too much about the women they're harming.

I think we all realize there are many layers and factors to misogyny. I think we all realize that Marlboro Man culture contributed to it, yes.

[Anonymous]

There was a passage in the article talking about how gross out humor among boys -- poop jokes and such -- can evolve into saying crude things about women. That felt very familiar to me. I'm almost 50 years old now, so maybe things have changed. But when I was a teenager, maybe into my early twenties, I'd say the crudest stuff about women and others just to get a laugh from my friends. I absolutely didn't mean any of it -- it was just word games that got a laugh.

But now I can see how those jokes just feed into something worse. If nothing else, it would reinforce the worldview of those guys around me who truly believed that women were lesser than men.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:using power, aggression and a violent narrative against and about women is mysogony OP. They don't talk about kicking their puppies around to prove themselves to other men. 99% of the time its only in demeaning WOMEN that men feel like they prove anything.

Well, right - so maybe "isn't about women" wasn't the correct phrasing -- but women are like collateral damage in this equation. It's not that the men mistreating women necessarily have any specific feelings about the women themselves. The young men are doing it to prove themselves to other men.

So misogyny isn't rooted in hatred of women but in the failure to realize that women, both individually and collectively, deserve respect and the right to be treated other than as a means to an end? That doesn't make me feel a whole lot better.

[Anonymous]

I think we all also realize that there are many factors that contribute to racism.

Now walk into a room and tell a group of ethnic minorities that racism "isn't about them."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How nice of a woman to decide for boys what is and is not "acceptable masculinity" .

Can we get a male author to tell girls how to be feminine next?

Men have been doing this for centuries and continue to do so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How nice of a woman to decide for boys what is and is not "acceptable masculinity" .

Can we get a male author to tell girls how to be feminine next?

Men have been doing this for centuries and continue to do so.

?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How nice of a woman to decide for boys what is and is not "acceptable masculinity" .

Can we get a male author to tell girls how to be feminine next?

What are your particular complaints? Because I'm a man and don't see any particular behaviors criticized by the author that I'd regard as desirable or even acceptable in a man.

Thank you to the pp for getting it.

There is some thought that if you say something often enough, you'll start to believe it (reinforcing neural pathways etc.) and so there is a danger that could manifest itself subtly in how you think/act towards women. Also what if your wives/daughters/nieces overhear you saying things like this? Is it acceptable to you?

OP, it's an interesting topic since it implies that this type of masculinity can not only manifest in misogynistic behavior but also other types of negative behavior. Meaning that it's potentially a broader concern than just misogynistic behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:using power, aggression and a violent narrative against and about women is mysogony OP. They don't talk about kicking their puppies around to prove themselves to other men. 99% of the time its only in demeaning WOMEN that men feel like they prove anything.

Well, right - so maybe "isn't about women" wasn't the correct phrasing -- but women are like collateral damage in this equation. It's not that the men mistreating women necessarily have any specific feelings about the women themselves. The young men are doing it to prove themselves to other men.

So misogyny isn't rooted in hatred of women but in the failure to realize that women, both individually and collectively, deserve respect and the right to be treated other than as a means to an end? That doesn't make me feel a whole lot better.

This is absolutely true.
My husband grew up in this kind of culture, and this attitude toward women still comes out every now and again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How nice of a woman to decide for boys what is and is not "acceptable masculinity" .

Can we get a male author to tell girls how to be feminine next?

Men have been doing this for centuries and continue to do so.

?

Whoops, that was supposed to be

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was a passage in the article talking about how gross out humor among boys -- poop jokes and such -- can evolve into saying crude things about women. That felt very familiar to me. I'm almost 50 years old now, so maybe things have changed. But when I was a teenager, maybe into my early twenties, I'd say the crudest stuff about women and others just to get a laugh from my friends. I absolutely didn't mean any of it -- it was just word games that got a laugh.

But now I can see how those jokes just feed into something worse. If nothing else, it would reinforce the worldview of those guys around me who truly believed that women were lesser than men.

I'm 40 and had the same experience. It was just talk, no one actually took a girl to bed and did the angry dragon or whatever nonsense we joked about.

But I found the most disapointing part of the article to be the absolute lack of desirable male traits such as protection, leadership and honor. Those were things we all strongly believed in.

our society would be well-served by acknowledging the natural differences, on average, between boys and girls and harness boys natural competitiveness into something good rather than squash it and allow the worst instincts to take over