I probably shouldn’t have added that but it seems that the term misogyny has been used too widely to refer to a subset of people when it really needs to refer to a behavior that one may see, because as I said, it may be possible for a person to show misogynistic behavior towards one woman and not another.
If I’ve ignored a post of yours, I do apologize; I assure you it was not deliberate.
I do not agree that there is a radical difference between the OED and other dictionaries, and it strikes me as unlikely in the extreme that (say) Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary is somehow simply old-fasioned (just when are you alleging the word acquired this radical new extended meaning?).
The actual evidence provided by your own cite, which you claim is “not as useful as it should be”, merely confirms that there has in point of fact been no radical change in the meaning - none is recorded when, as you state, it ought to have been had, as you allege, a radical change actually taken place.
I am not arguing that sexism is not a bad thing. My argument is purely linguistic: that the word does not have the “extended” meaning as alleged; that animus against women remains, as always, the core meaning of the word; that one cannot be “misogynistic” without actually hating women; that it is perfectly possible to display a “prejudice” concerning women that is not “misogynistic” (though of course many who display such prejudice are misogynistic).
It seems to me that what you are saying is more about social analysis that language - you are putting forth the proposition that prejudice is very often a way of “undermining women as a whole”, with the intention of entrenching inequalities. That may well be true. I am not arguing with that. It could also be the case that entrenching inequalities is caused by an unreasoning hatred, dislike or distrust of women as a group. Again, no argument from me.
What I’m arguing about is the use of language only. Removing the concept of hatred from the term misogyny makes the word less meaningful as an epithet. The reason the word is used is that it has a sting. Call someone a “misogynist” and it is supposed to hurt - exactly because it means, as most people polled would say, and as the dictionaries all indicate, hatred of women. It is a stronger and harsher term than “sexist”.
Remove the necessity for hatred from the word, and it no longer has that sting.
Of course, what is going on here is what usually happens with anyone wishing to extend the meaning of an epithet - you want the same “sting”, but you want it to apply to a broader range of target. Which is fair enough, but the inevitable downside - should this meaning become commonplace - is the downgrading of the word. So far, the word’s meaning has not been extended generally. I hope that it isn’t, because losing precision of language isn’t a good thing IMO.
I don’t disagree that there are people who may be selectively misogynistic but I’m not sure that selectivity is itself any kind of neutralizer of misogyny.
At the risk of stereotyping, here are some kinds of women who often end up bearing the brunt of the misogynistic attitudes and behaviors:
- older women (past childbearing years)
- professional women (who have authoritative positions and perhaps don’t go out of their way to look or dress in feminine fashion)
- sexualized women (sex symbols, exotic dancers, sex workers, centerfolds or women who seem to resemble any of the latter)
- women deemed unattractive
- masculine women (women who seem to others to resemble men)
Now one can imagine any number of people (of either sex) who are misogynistic toward only one of toward some subset of the aforementioned “types.” But is the person any less a misogynist?
Now you may say: what if a woman doesn’t fall into any of these types and simply makes another person hate her because, say, she is not a very nice person? Is that misogyny? (On the face of things it doesn’t seem so.) Or what if she does fall into one of these types, but it’s her particular personality that makes some individual really dislike or hate her? Is that misogyny?
Well the answer would need to be that it depends, wouldn’t it? So that maybe we shouldn’t leap to describe any single instance of dislike/hatred/distrust of (a) woman as evidence of misogyny.
FWIW, I’m just fine with the “let’s not leap” argument.
But I’m not sure that it’s the leaping that’s at stake in this thread.
Does anyone disagree?
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Does disdain for wimpy, loserly men (think Toby from The Office), or aged frat boys, or other unattractive men mean that you’re a misandrist?
Hey, don’t worry Malthus. I shouldn’t have used the word “ignore.” I was referring to post #8 which was very breezy and was written before the thread became seriously focused on etymology.
Here’s dictionary.com’s definition (taken from Random House to which I loosely referred in post #8:
“hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women.” [italics added]
The word is actually mistrust rather than distrust but my point is unchanged: this is roughly similar to what the OED means by prejudice.
First, I didn’t say difference between dictionaries was “radical” or that Merriam-Webster is old-fashioned. OED gets libraries to cough up bucks for subscriptions by paying for expert research. (Side note: This doesn’t mean that they’re absolutely perfect. OED is especially bad, fwiw, on the eighteenth century because the OED came into being in the nineteenth century and for whatever reason they will often miss important citations dating back to the eighteenth century–which now, thanks to digitalized data bases, are fairly easy to find. They really should have their researchers go back and add in extra eighteenth-century etymologies)
Putting aside “radical change”–which is your wording, not mine–you’re mistaken about what you interpret from the non-usefulness of the etymology in this case. One simply can’t tell what is meant in these citations because they’re pulled out of context: so they may be examples of hatred, or dislike, or prejudice or some combination of the above. One could probably search them quite easily and find out what was the intended meaning. But there’s no need to single out this one set of examples; there are so many others one could draw on to show how the usage of misogyny has developed (expanded might be a good way of putting it) since the late twentieth century.
Here, for example, is an excerpt from wikipedia’s entry for misogyny:
Malthus again:
Understood–I think I know exactly where you’re coming from; and, as I’ve said repeatedly, I share your sense that it’s useful to maintain the subtle distinctions between sexism and misogyny (but also useful not to overstate those distinctions, I’d add).
Yes, but the word does have the extended meaning–and demonstrably so. And that’s where your position begins to look dogmatic to my mind. You can easily say that the usage has become subject to blurriness and diffusion–the point of the OP in fact. So that you yourself would prefer to model a more conventional or traditional usage that emphasizes hatred and animus as central. Instead you are insisting that the traditional meaning you prefer–and for which you make a reasonable case, I would add, if not one with which I entirely concur–is the *only * actual meaning. And there you err…
And yet in my previous post I gave you a number of very good (and very well-known) examples of misogynistic attitudes and behaviors which didn’t stem from hatred of women–which claimed to stem from the desire to protect and honor women. Perhaps you should respond to those examples more directly and explain why they shouldn’t be thought of as misogynistic?
Yes, indeed, which is why writers and commentators on, say, women’s history find it useful to characterize these kinds of deep-seated prejudices which entrench inequality, as misogynistic; likewise they point to these prejudices as part of a wide-ranging and centuries old history of misogyny, broadly understand.
This is, as you say, about language (more specifically etymology) rather than social analysis but then language is itself historical–lives and develops in history. It’s undoubtedly feminism (in its many shapes and forms) that influenced the broadening of the understanding of what misogyny is and what its roots are.
I entirely agree with you that whenever any charged term becomes too broad it risks losing clarity, precision, and poignancy. One has to strike the right balance.
But you can’t simply deny the use of misogyny to describe the kind of prejudicial attitudes I’ve referred to even if you yourself would prefer a different term and prefer the traditional meaning of misogyny.
Asking what behaviors or emotions constitute misandry is an interesting question. In my experience, the term “misandry” is not used often (in fact I think I have only ever encountered it in print, not in speech), although the concept/emotion conveyed by “misandry” is captured to some extent by the term “man-hater,” which is used fairly frequently.
If I may rephrase your question, I would ask whether a woman who despises (“disdain” is too weak, IMO) wimpy, loserly men, but is neutral towards or approving of other men, would be considered a man-hater. I think the answer to this question is no. In my experience, the term “man-hater” is reserved for women who have a generalized hatred of men, presumably stemming from some painful experience of rejection. Hatred of only a specific kind of men (assuming that such “kinds” exist), or only unattractive men, would not be sufficient to label someone a “man-hater.” Do you agree?
Sidney, Why limit discussion of disdain for “wimpy” men to women? Other men (including even other wimpy men) surely constitute the greater part of those who disdain wimpiness among men.
I think what you’re discussing here isn’t clearly “misandry” and certainly isn’t purely to do with women’s feelings about particular kinds of men.
What you’re discussing are the norms of masculinity: which are very harsh and limiting and prejudicial to human variety.
One of the reasons you don’t get much mileage out of a term like “misandry” is that you don’t need to hate men as a group, or to be prejudiced in some explicit way against men as a group, in order to privilege the norm of masculine strength. All you have to do is buy in to the idea that the best men are (say) physically strong, economically successful, politically powerful, competitive, emotionally controlled, etc.
Ah, one might say: isn’t the prejudice against wimpy men prevalent enough to be called “misandrist”–because it undermines men as a group (by making them submit to norms)? But then undermines them as a group in comparison to whom? As a group men are substantially more socially and economically empowered than women and they even tend to be slightly happier according to some recent studies.
So I think what you’re really pointing to is that it often feels really shitty to be forced to live up the norms of masculinity even though men are the socio-economically dominant group.
Which, paradoxically, provides one of the many reasons why some men find some outlet or compensation or defense in misogynistic attitudes and behaviors.
Attractive women (who are not necessary sexualized) also belong on this list. While they aren’t dismissed the same way as older women or unattractive women, they are often pigeon-holed as a Whore or a Madonna.
You don’t know what the person who coined the term intented - stop making stuff up.
Maybe y’all shouldn’t be ascribing positions to me then.
You can assert this all all day, but it’s not going to get any more convincing. You’re still wrong.
But you know what? I don’t care that you’re wrong anymore. I don’t even care enough to even bother arguing it further. This (and the spider business) is just a hijack based on a throwaway comment I made, and since it’s not relevent to this thread and I’ve lost interest in bashing against your brick wall, I’m not going to discuss -phobia words in this thread anymore.
So you may claim “victory” in this if you like.
I object to it on the grounds that it has not evolved to a wider meaning. Not yet. You are jumping the gun.
Sure, some people don’t know what the word means and misuse it. That’s a shame. But word’s don’t lose their meanings the instant some fool misuses them. The misuse has to take over and supplant the prior usage. And seriously, it hasn’t done this with “misogyny” yet. People still know that it’s a different word from predjudice, with a harsher meaning. That’s why they misuse it that way! It’s an insult! Duh!
My cutoff for “ancient”, in the context of this discussion, is “has the change completely taken over yet or not”. And the reason it’s “okay” is because it’s silly to argue a lost battle, but quite sensible to reject the idea that words lack fixed meanings entirely.
Actually as it happens I already answered this:
I was arguing against Miller who was either arguing that -phobia words only refer to extreme cases of the aversion - that or he was trying to strawman me into that position, I’m not really sure which. But either way, I’m done discussing -phobia words in this thread.
I think you may have misunderstood my post. Based on my understanding of the term “misandry,” I would say that the term applies to instances of disdain for all men as a group. As I understand it, a misandrist statement would be something like “men think with their penises first and their brains second.”
Wimpy men were singled out as a group by athelas. Again, based on my understanding of the term “misandrist,” disdain of wimpy men isn’t misandrist because the disdained group is too narrow, and it’s irrelevant whether the disdain is expressed by women, men, wimpy men, or all of the above. Similarly, disdain of rich good looking men (or any other group that embodies the norm of masculine strength) is not misandrist because the disdained group is too narrow.
Edit: My previous post did limit misandric statements to women, but that limitation is not necessary (as you pointed out).
Possibly I did misunderstand you though I think it’s more the case that I didn’t make clear, as I should have done, that I was responding both to you and athelas at once.
You did write, in response to athelas,
To clarify: I know that you thought athelas’s example was too narrow a category for misandry and that you drew your example of the hypothetical woman from athelas as well.
But in reply–as much to athelas as to you (and sorry I didn’t make that clearer)–I wanted to emphasize a number of underlying problems in considering “misandry” including a) the problem of only focusing only on women’s attitudes to men; b) the problem of considering disdain for the wimpy as distinct from all men (a similar but not identical point to yours); as well as, most important of all, c) the problem of looking for misandry by implicit analogy to misogyny which, for a number reasons, won’t hold up.
Don’t worry, I figured that was what happened. But since I was being pedantic anyway I wanted to make sure everyone was clear on exactly what the OED said. 
Yes, I see what you mean. One can be attractive and not fall into the sexualized category. Thanks.