The Internet's 'Misogyny Problem' - real or imagined?

[Winston Hughes]

@Cheezy

It seems to me that there are groups within most (perhaps all, if they last long enough) political movements which develop a tendency to automatically assume bad faith (conscious or otherwise) on the part of anyone who disagrees with them. These groups then go on to suppress dissent by treating certain assumptions and definitions as shibboleths which cannot be questioned without placing oneself in an 'out-group' category, whose opinions are essentially worthless.

With membership of the 'in-group' being unstable, and thus competitive, individuals who derive a sense of value from their membership are led to try and prove their worthiness by adopting a more strident tone towards dissent, and to display greater contempt for 'out-group' opinions. Ultimately, in the most extreme cases, this can drive individuals to start treating those in the 'out-group' category as unworthy of the usual consideration afforded to other members of the human species; that is to say, they dehumanise their opponents. I need not go any further explaining where this can lead, or how damaging to a movement as a whole it can be when the 'in-group' come to dominate the public's perception of that movement.

Now, feminism is huge distance away from having the biggest problem with this kind of dynamic. But it does seem to me that, after a period in which they tended to be much weaker (roughly, the third wave), trends of the above type have begun to rise to the forefront, with what would previously have been considered a hyperbolic use of the word 'misogyny' becoming one of the key shibboleths, and dissenters treated by default with more hostility than was the case before.

Now, the rise of a more organised movement in opposition to feminism per se might well be posited as a major driver of this shift, but, on the other hand, the shift itself might be posited as the major driver in the emergence of that anti-feminist movement. Personally, I don't think it really matters much if one or the other was the initial driver; what matters is that the oppositional relationship is pushing a lot of people on both sides towards the extremes, and making it harder to talk about gender issues without ending up in a flame war.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I owe a few people in here an apology. Valka, Manfried, brennan, and some others I'm sure I missed; you got lumped in with some other people as the thread went paroxysmal, and it was unfair of me to include you in that.

Thank you, Cheezy.

 

[brennan]

I owe a few people in here an apology. Valka, Manfried, brennan, and some others I'm sure I missed; you got lumped in with some other people as the thread went paroxysmal, and it was unfair of me to include you in that.

you, sir, are a proper gentleman. Welcome back.

While individual discrimination may be based upon race, I do not think that is racism. It's discriminatory, yes, and hostile, yes, but the key aspect is that, while unpleasant and certainly potentially dangerous, its existence and manifestation in that social event does not reinforce, nor is it based at all upon, the structural/institutional disenfranchisement of the White race.

In short, this seems to me to be both a bit black and white as a usage for the term and to leave the more individual interactions without an adequate word. I'm running out of time right now, hopefully I can edit later.


Edit: What I mean by 'black and white' is that is seems (I may be wrong here) to view a society as being inherently biased towards one and only one grouping and admit of no differentiation. US society then favours 'white men' - so what about the white women and the black men, they all have precisely the same level of disadvantage? I don't envisage anyone trying to defend such a viewpoint.

Societal racism/sexism and other discriminations accumulate from a multitude of individual viewpoints and interactions.

One of the issues I think we have right now (and see this thread for an example) is that people tend to view the issue through the experiences of one side without references to the experience of the others. Hence we have rather surreal fights between blacks and white women over who has suffered from the most discrimination, or lesbians and transgendered individuals having spats on Twitter.

Relying on myopic viewpoints is a systematic failure to properly address the issue, we need to objectively evaluate the different experiences of all different groups in order to properly assess the situation and agree on solutions. So long as one crowd continues to sneer and throw offensive accusations at another there can be no progress. This sort of behavoiur is exemplified by individuals who respond to criticism of dodgy rape statistics by talking about 'rape apology' and by those who shout 'check your privilege!' at every man who wants to join the conversation - let alone those who want to simply ban men from discussing 'women's issues', like domestic violence - which affects 2 men for every 3 women according to many newer data sets.

He's pretending to "be concerned" about the "validity" of the movement's arguments, and so advocates gutting those arguments in order for them to be more palatable to his own tone-policing sensibilities.

I've not had the time for a really in-depth read, but I don't think that is what is going on here. I think he's talking not about the arguments themselves, but about some of the more in-your-face tactics being used. It is not his fault if bad tactics are distracting. Edit: detracting from the discussion of the actual issues.

Let's look at the notion of 'privilege' as a primary example:

When I read the four 'Examples of what privilege deniers think calls of privilege are' I see strawmen.

Almost every time I see a call of 'check your privilege' it seems to me to indicate the suggestion that 'it would be impossible for you to hold/express your/that opinion if you were a black/women/transgendered individual/insert-category-here'.

That seems to me an obviously fallacious and bogus usage. It's partly an appeal to emotion, partly an appeal to authority and argument from personal experience. It's intended to shut the target up when the person saying it really hasn't got any hard data on which to make a compelling argument. Call me a robot, but I just find it fatuous. It's really little more than censorship, being an attempt to silence ciritique without the onus of any actual argementation - and places where it gets used heavily frequently do seem to turn to outright censorship (the banhammer) in order to silence people.

@Cheezy

It seems to me that there are groups within most (perhaps all, if they last long enough) political movements which develop a tendency to automatically assume bad faith (conscious or otherwise) on the part of anyone who disagrees with them.

The same is true of individual posters. For my money it's part of a general background of intellectual laziness based in good old human tribalism - an eagerness to lump your opponents into a pigeon hole and slap on a single convenient label 'bad dudes' - frequently reliant upon over generalisation and a hair trigger.

 

[Hygro]

I can't remember if I posted this already, but

I've often found that "check your privilege" has been one of the most misused tropes from the social justice movement. Reasonably, it should mean "take a moment to examine what you said in the context of your privilege as it does and does not relate". Instead it's an angry conversation stopper laden with self-congratulation.

It could have been such an effective thing to say, with deep meaning and insight. But no.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I've not had the time for a really in-depth read, but I don't think that is what is going on here. I think he's talking not about the arguments themselves, but about some of the more in-your-face tactics being used. It is not his fault if bad tactics are distracting.

You're exactly right, brennan. The article is not “concern trolling.” The author is flatly calling out “social justice warriors” on one of their rhetorical maneuvers: describing it so as to expose its operations, labeling it, calling them out on it. (It needs a better name, but motte and bailey helps get some important thinking done.)

I can't remember if I posted this already, but

I've often found that "check your privilege" has been one of the most misused tropes from the social justice movement. Reasonably, it should mean "take a moment to examine what you said in the context of your privilege as it does and does not relate". Instead it's an angry conversation stopper laden with self-congratulation.

It could have been such an effective thing to say, with deep meaning and insight. But no.

"Check your privilege" works exactly as it's designed to work, as one of the motte and bailey rhetorical maneuvers so well exposed in the essay to which cardgame directed us. It relies on multiple meanings of "check":

"Hey, mate, before you weigh in on an argument that concerns women, gays or people of color, you should check your privilege."

"Yeah, that's reasonable. [bailey] I'm willing to acknowledge that as a straight, white man I've been relatively advantaged by society."

"I mean check your privilege, the way people check their coats at a restaurant: divest yourself of it as a precondition for entering this conversation." [motte]

"Well, I can hardly do that now, can I?"

"Check, mate."

 

[cardgame]

Make no mistake; someone who tells people to “check their privilege" is not merely trying to make people more “aware" of yadda-yadda-yadda. This is the mantra of an ideology that attempts to separate people into two groups: people who have “privilege", and people who don’t. If you don’t have “privilege", its because you’re being discriminated against and oppressed by those who do.

When you make an argument or express your opinion, and someone tells you to “check your privilege", what they’re really saying is that you should just shut up, because you’re the enemy. You’re the oppressor, and you don’t get to have an opinion. Unless, of course, you completely and unequivocally agree with them, in which case they might decide to be so generous as to grant you the right to an opinion.

At least, that's how it normally plays out.

 

[aelf]

Ah, the smell of strawmen in the morning.

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[warpus]

My God, I haven't been back in this thread in what feels like weeks.. I read the first post and again I am reminded how much I completely and utterly and 100% disagree with Cheezy about racism.

Cheezy, you are redefining what racism means. You're pretty much saying: "From now on racism means institutional racism. All those other forms of racism? Forget about them, they don't exist anymore."

That's such a misguided solution to whatever problem it was meant to solve, I don't really know what to say.

Why not stick to the terms we already have? If you mean institutional racism, SAY institutional racism. If it's pure plain ole racism, a black guy calling a Chinese guy a {insert racism term here} and telling him to get out of his store, because his kind aren't welcome here.. Call it what it is, racism. What's the alternative? What do you call it? You said such racism didn't exist, so.. what DO you call it? Just bigotry? Nothing?

I'm sure it makes you feel better to redefine these terms as such, but it is just a silly thing to do. Not to mention backwards, hateful, and racist. In your quest to fight racism you are actually setting the movement back by taking this stance. You're heading in the completely wrong direction, my man.

I will try to be back in here after work to respond to any replies. I have a bit more time now to dedicate to CFC.

 

[cardgame]

Ah, the smell of strawmen in the morning.

Are you invalidating my life experiences and speaking over me?

How dae y- oh, I'm a white guy, it's all good. My anecdotes don't matter.

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[Cheezy the Wiz]

Cheezy, you are redefining what racism means.

No, I'm just saying that your definition and understanding of racism are wrong.

Just because something happens to be the predominant opinion doesn't mean it's correct. Appeals to the dictionary (famously short on nuance, and not an authority on the definitions of concepts) or to "what everyone 'knows' it means" are in fact appeals to authority and not actual arguments at all.

That brings us back to the core of the opposition in this thread, which is "nu-uh!"

 

[aelf]

Are you invalidating my life experiences and speaking over me?

How dae y- oh, I'm a white guy, it's all good. My anecdotes don't matter.

I have no dog in the fight about anecdotes so try not to get butthurt. Of course experiences matter. But as people never tire of repeating, it's tricky generalising from anecdotes.

It's funny when people cross over the divide and begin saying the same stuff as the people they were just whining about, though.

I'm sure it makes you feel better to redefine these terms as such, but it is just a silly thing to do. Not to mention backwards, hateful, and racist.

Uh... huh?

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[Flying Pig]

No, I'm just saying that your definition and understanding of racism are wrong.

Just because something happens to be the predominant opinion doesn't mean it's correct. Appeals to the dictionary (famously short on nuance, and not an authority on the definitions of concepts) or to "what everyone 'knows' it means" are in fact appeals to authority and not actual arguments at all.

That brings us back to the core of the opposition in this thread, which is "nu-uh!"

Well, then, what is your definition and understanding of racism, and on what grounds do you believe that?

 

[Winston Hughes]

No, I'm just saying that your definition and understanding of racism are wrong.

This is a pretty obvious mistake with regards to the nature of words. You're identifying them as things that can be owned, and thus can only be used 'correctly' if done in accordance with the will of their owners. This is clearly not the case, as, unless you want to invoke God here, there is no ultimate authority from which the right to determine correct use emanates. (And even if you did invoke God, the claim would remain utterly meaningless to those who didn't share your view of the divine.)

What you're really talking about it not what words mean (which is inherently unstable and not subject to any authority), but how they should be used. You're saying that there should be a radical narrowing of the uses of 'racism', for reasons that appear no more sophisticated than that it would be useful, rhetorically, when arguing your perspective on matters of identity. That is to say, your case seems to be based on nothing more than your own convenience.

Going back to my earlier point about the word 'misogyny', note that I didn't say it was being incorrectly. Rather, what I said was that (i) it's being used in a manner that, until recently, it would only have been used in for the purposes of hyperbole, but is now being treated as its 'true' meaning, and (ii) this new meaning acts as a shibboleth or, if you prefer, a kind of password or group identifier. As with your definition of racism, I've seen no argument put forward from any source that justifies the new meaning in terms of its usefulness in aiding discussion. To the contrary, in both cases, the change seems intended to limit discussion by rigging the answer to every question in advance.

 

[luiz]

What you're really talking about it not what words mean (which is inherently unstable and not subject to any authority), but how they should be used. You're saying that there should be a radical narrowing of the uses of 'racism', for reasons that appear no more sophisticated than that it would be useful, rhetorically, when arguing your perspective on matters of identity. That is to say, your case seems to be based on nothing more than your own convenience.

Very much so.

I would really like to see he and the others who agree explain exactly on whose authority they get to define the "correct" meaning of words.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Not to mention backwards, hateful, and racist.

You heard it here first, folks. Fighting racism is racist.

In your quest to fight racism you are actually setting the movement back by taking this stance.

Did you see the above link regarding concern trolling?

By the way, it's not my definition, it's not my policy. It's the people who are being oppressed. They experience it every day, they see it in every place it rears its head, they know all the ins and outs of their oppression because they have analyzed it themselves, and they know what stands in their way of escaping that oppression. I listen to them when they speak, because I believe in their cause and want to help them achieve it. When you want to help someone you regard as an equal, you don't step in and start telling them how to do things best and what their problem is, you stop and listen to what they need from you, and what their problems are.

That's what I do. Now what are you doing? You're tone-policing because things offend you and don't meet your standard of what racism, or sexism, or oppression is, and because how they fight it and analyze is offends your sensibilities.

It's not about you.

Well, then, what is your definition and understanding of racism, and on what grounds do you believe that?

See my posts in this thread.

This is a pretty obvious mistake with regards to the nature of words. You're identifying them as things that can be owned, and thus can only be used 'correctly' if done in accordance with the will of their owners.

Link to video.

Does the above video make any sense to you? Of course not, because words must have definite meanings, otherwise communications of ideas is impossible. Of course the definitions of words can both expand and contract, but only when it is productive for them to do so. My definition is not outdated or archaic, as you're trying to suggest, it's just been ignored and downplayed by people who don't want that part of the definition to exist because it means stepping back and seeing that a bunch of trees equals a forest.

That is to say, your case seems to be based on nothing more than your own convenience.

And yours? Objective truth, of course, with neither political bias nor myopia, independent of all attachments to the consciousness of the human uttering it. After all, everyone knows it.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Does the above video make any sense to you? Of course not, because words must have definite meanings, otherwise communications of ideas is impossible. Of course the definitions of words can both expand and contract, but only when it is productive for them to do so. My definition is not outdated or archaic, as you're trying to suggest, it's just been ignored and downplayed by people who don't want that part of the definition to exist because it means stepping back and seeing that a bunch of trees equals a forest.

There's nothing here that supports your contention that your more narrow definition of racism is correct, whilst the broader ones are wrong.

Your first (bolded) point merely points out the existence of conventions. What it doesn't do is justify the superiority of one convention over another.

Your second point is exactly what I was saying about claiming one true definition on the the grounds that its convenient to you. The only reason you think it 'productive' to disallow nine-tenths of the conventional definition of 'racism' is because it suits your arguments to do so.

Your third point is entirely backwards. You're the one telling other people how not to use the word. All anyone else is doing is arguing that your justification for that demand is negligible.

And yours? Objective truth, of course, with neither political bias nor myopia, independent of all attachments to the consciousness of the human uttering it. After all, everyone knows it.

I'm not the one arguing for the existence of objective truth in language. To the contrary, I'm saying there is no such thing. Truth in language is inherently relative, requiring agreement on the meanings of the words in play. It's meaningless to tell someone his definition is wrong, unless you intend the latter as a short-hand for 'nobody ever uses it to mean that'. Using it as a short-hand for 'I refuse to work with that definition' is misleading and counterproductive; misleading because it sounds like a statement about something external to your own desires, and counterproductive because it actively limits the grounds and scope of discussion.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I feel a bout of deja vu coming on but... how about we try and move this on by accepting that we're not all going to agree on what the word "racism" means. In his defence, Cheezy has given quite a precise definition of the word as he sees it so there can be no ambiguity there. The other "side" has given an equally clear description of the concept they're referring to in the specific examples mentioned, that of grievances between individuals stemming from race, but not part of something instituational. We both know what either side is actually talking about, so why not agree on a label for the latter and get on with talking about the actual concept. If anyone can remember what the original point even was.

There doesn't seem much point arguing semantics for half the thread. Especially when it's over "racism" in a thread about misogyny.

 

[Zelig]

Just because something happens to be the predominant opinion doesn't mean it's correct.

It kind of does, grammar and the meaning of words are correct by usage and common understanding and correctness changes to reflect usage/understanding.

 

[luiz]

There doesn't seem much point arguing semantics for half the thread. Especially when it's over "racism" in a thread about misogyny.

The same problem applies to sexism. The problem is Cheezy et al. are narrowing the definition of racism and sexism just to institutional racism and sexism, which is only part of the phenomena.

 

[Winston Hughes]

There doesn't seem much point arguing semantics for half the thread. Especially when it's over "racism" in a thread about misogyny.

It strikes me that pretty much everyone agrees that there are some things that are clearly misogyny. The more interesting question is how broadly the definition should be drawn, putting semantics at the heart of the matter.

Ironically (I can't resist using that word in this context), those who want the definition of 'racism' drawn more narrow than is conventional, are often the same people who want the definition of 'misogyny' drawn more broadly than is conventional, in each case because it serves their rhetorical purposes to do so. In neither case is it reasonable to call their chosen definitions 'wrong', but in both cases it is reasonable to point out that the deviation from convention tends to exclude people with differing opinions from the debate, by locating the authority over 'correct' definition in a very particular school of thought.

Edit: As per luiz, the term 'racism' above can be replaced with 'sexism', which is even more 'ironic'. Ultimately, this approach to language ends up with 'sexism' and 'misogyny' meaning exactly the same thing, and leaves us with no discrete words to mean 'prejudice or discrimination based on sex or gender' or 'hatred or dislike of women'.