Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I don't follow. Is there a particular post in that thread you mean to draw attention to, or is the existence of the thread itself taken to be evidence of misogyny?
The Internet's 'Misogyny Problem' - real or imagined?
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Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
If anecdotes have no place in a quality debate, what then of those who try to debate with neither anecdotes nor evidence?
When one uses anecdotes to try to challenge solid evidence (as opposed to evidence that has already been shown to be most deeply flawed and completely unusable, such as the study in the initial post), it,s one thing to dismiss it. When one brings up anecdote in the complete absence of evidence by both side, it's still all the evidence we have either way at that point.
When one uses anecdotes to try to challenge solid evidence (as opposed to evidence that has already been shown to be most deeply flawed and completely unusable, such as the study in the initial post), it,s one thing to dismiss it. When one brings up anecdote in the complete absence of evidence by both side, it's still all the evidence we have either way at that point.
Anecdotes are perfectly good evidence. I once used an anecdote in an argument, and it later turned out that I was right.
Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
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I'm not sure you can fairly state that I am "wrong" in this matter. It would probably require some sort of independent third-party arbitration.
classical_hero
In whom I trust
Men finding women attractive is misogyny. Interesting take.
I'd say the internet has at least two 'misogyny problems' worthy of the name.
Firstly, there's the army of men (and, quite probably, a few women experiencing a gender-based version of the Bobby Fischer condition) who genuinely hate/fear women, and are determined to attack women at every turn simply for being women.
Secondly, there are the ongoing attempts of a large subset of self-described feminists to categorise all kinds of things - ranging from the crass and ignorant through the entirely harmless to the actively pro-feminist - as vile misogyny, and are as vicious in their attacks on their perceived enemies as are those from the first group.
To my mind, the main thing that makes these two groups so problematic is that each of them disrupts and snarls up every attempt to address the very real issues that lead to misery and suffering for people of every gender. There is no solving of the problems that women face for being women without also solving those that men face for being men, and those that other genders face for fitting neither category. So long as the misogynists and the misogyny-projectors continue to derail discussion of these matters, people of all genders are going to be turned off engaging with them.
Firstly, there's the army of men (and, quite probably, a few women experiencing a gender-based version of the Bobby Fischer condition) who genuinely hate/fear women, and are determined to attack women at every turn simply for being women.
Secondly, there are the ongoing attempts of a large subset of self-described feminists to categorise all kinds of things - ranging from the crass and ignorant through the entirely harmless to the actively pro-feminist - as vile misogyny, and are as vicious in their attacks on their perceived enemies as are those from the first group.
To my mind, the main thing that makes these two groups so problematic is that each of them disrupts and snarls up every attempt to address the very real issues that lead to misery and suffering for people of every gender. There is no solving of the problems that women face for being women without also solving those that men face for being men, and those that other genders face for fitting neither category. So long as the misogynists and the misogyny-projectors continue to derail discussion of these matters, people of all genders are going to be turned off engaging with them.
aelf
Ashen One
And of course, if the misogynists are polite, than earns them points!
It's not that complicated. Your opinion is simply based on an emotional reaction to the hostility you received.
It's not that complicated. Your opinion is simply based on an emotional reaction to the hostility you received.
Politeness has nothing to do with it. What matters here is addressing the issues from some position other than an assumption that 'the other' is an object of contempt.
Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
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You're wrong. You're free to think wrong things too though.
Senethro
Overlord
Its more that you guys are stuck on objectification and titillation than aesthetic appreciation. Also doing your right click --> Save for later in public.
You do have a bad habit of badgering people about ridiculous things they haven't specifically denied.
I'm fairly sure there's also a 'hunk thread'.
Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
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Well you have a bad habit of continually misconstruing/misrepresenting things people say (in my opinion).
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
What's the distinction being made between "objectification" and "aesthetic appreciation"? I don't like to presume, but it has a slight scent of "your porn is porn, but my porn is erotica", if you follow me.
Senethro
Overlord
Nah, its more like unwanted TMI and that dude who puts his whack material on the wall of his cubicle at work.
So long as they're only stroking their chins, it's not a problem?
Seriously, though, objectification can be misogynistic, but only when appreciation of someone's appearance is accompanied by a sense of contempt for their other relevant attributes. We all judge people on appearances, and, while that can pose all kinds of problems (which go far beyond questions of gender and sexuality), I don't see how wanting to look at features you find sexually attractive is anything to be ashamed of in itself, so long as you don't judge people on those terms - or focus on those features - when the context requires other considerations be treated as more important.
If, sitting in our lounge, my wife and I discuss how hot some model (of any gender) looks in a picture, every other consideration but those sexually-significant features is irrelevant, and I don't see that we can be accused of doing anything wrong. If, by contrast, my coworkers and I sit around in the staffroom rating our colleagues by those same features, we are definitely out of order. Even then, though, such objectification need not constitute misogyny, not least because I haven't specified the genders of either the raters or the rated, but also because it need not involve contempt for anything else about them.
Edit:
Those might be evidence of misogyny, but, alternatively, they might be evidence of a difficulty recognising appropriate boundaries, and a lack of sensitivity for other people's feelings. Either way, it's not something that should be allowed to persist; we should be careful, though, not to ignore the fact that a lot of people have problems with boundaries and social sensitivity. Where we want to correct inappropriate behaviour, it's important to understand what's behind it, and throwing the 'misogyny' blanket over all such things does nothing to assist us in that.
Right on. It's not even just misogyny that has groups like this constantly launching vicious attacks on everyone whenever anything gender-related is mentioned on the internet- It's also race, sexuality, gender identity... in a lot of cases, there's even lots of overlap among all of these groups.
Aye. One of the things I appreciate about CFCOT is that, sometimes at least, it is possible to discuss such matters without the extremes of one type or another dominating proceedings and scaring everybody else away. The issues we as an increasingly-interconnected species face with regards to social identifiers - the large-scale ones you mention, as well as a whole load of more particular ones - are highly complex and require considerable sensitivity to all manner of nuances. The desire to reduce things to simple, oppositional relationships is natural enough, but it's also a very large part of the problem.
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
Disagreed; that should be "a lack of interest in their other attributes".
Objectification, at its simplest, is taking a person, ignoring the vast majority of what make them a person, and focusing only to what they contribute "aesthetically" to your life. It's the same as you'd treat a painting, or a work of art. Not as a person, but as an object whose sole purpose is to be looked at (and admired)
In that light, holding someone in contempt, while bad, isn't nearly as bad as not caring one bit about them beyond the physical appearance. If you think someone is a stupid jerk, then at least you have an opinion on them as a person; you care what they're like as a person, beyond their physical appearance. If, on the other hand you couldn't care less about personality and intelligence, because all that you care about is what they look like, then you are reducing them to the rank of an object.
That's objectification, though, not misogyny. My whole point was that, whilst the former can indicate the latter, it doesn't necessarily do so. If you treat women in general as objects, then that's misogyny. If you judge a woman you only know from a picture based only on how she looks in that picture, it says nothing about your attitude to women more generally, and is something all of us do, since we are incapable of avoiding the formation of such judgements and have no other information to go on. Indeed, the 'misogyny' label tends to be applied not when people in pictures are being judged on how they look, but only when sexual attraction (or the lack thereof) plays a major role in forming those judgements (and then only when the individual pictured is female and the viewer is male).
Edit:
To give an illustrative example:
When I listen to Aretha Franklin singing, I judge her on how she sounds. All of the other aspects of her being are irrelevant to me in that moment. If I went on to read her biography, or met her in person (result: Winston acts the blubbering fanboy), I would form a more complex view of her as a person. But I don't need to do that to appreciate the incomparable beauty of her voice. You could quite easily say, then, that I'm objectifying her for how she sounds when she sings. Aside from the fact that sexual attraction plays a far more important role in the appreciation of how someone looks than it does in the appreciation of how they sound (though the latter can certainly make a big contribution to sexual attraction), is there any reason to think that judging one woman on how she looks in a picture is somehow worse than judging another on how she sounds when singing a song, if, in each case, there is nothing else to go on?
