Human beings and human givers
November 8, 2021 3:40 PM Subscribe

But in a society where no one hates or is hostile towards women save the most pathological of criminals, how do we explain, well, everything? Why does the wage gap persist? Why are leadership positions still predominantly filled with men? Why is feminized labor systematically undervalued, why is the division of domestic labor still profoundly unequal, why is women’s physical pain discounted and ignored, why have we allowed women’s labor to take the place of a legitimate social safety net? And why are all of these realities worse for Black and brown women? Why is everything so enraging and why does substantive change feel so impossible?
posted by Lycaste (105 comments total) 59 users marked this as a favorite

You can explain all of this by understanding that women just still are not considered full human beings by everyone yet. We've been clawing our way up there but it's still not complete. The evidence for this is everywhere. This is why you have the "now that I have a daughter I understand.." stuff - the thing that they now understand is that women literally are human beings, and the only reason they understand it now is they saw one being birthed.
posted by bleep at 3:52 PM on November 8, 2021 [49 favorites]

The "shit like this" T-shirt is awful, but somehow also great because whatever robot made the Etsy (I presume) listing styled it as being for a woman to wear.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:56 PM on November 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

I seriously wonder if there's something genetic about why men feel this way about women so consistently for millennia. I know, not all men, but this never ends. I mean, it kind of improves, but the core treatment never seems to go away.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:10 PM on November 8, 2021 [10 favorites]

In the middle of reading the essay, I did still want to post: Do we really think that most men don't hate women? I think most men hate women, certainly as a class and often as individuals. I think virtually all men have contempt for women. These aren't the only feelings men have about women, of course, and hatred can sit right alongside love, friendship, lust and proprietary feeling, but you have only to hear men being frank amongst themselves for hatred to be extremely clear. Women are positioned as all-powerful, demanding, unfair, enforcers of manners and withholders of sex, ruiners of good times, etc - people who owe men, big time, but somehow can't be compelled to pay.

If men didn't hate women, there wouldn't be so many murder-suicides.
posted by Frowner at 4:24 PM on November 8, 2021 [95 favorites]

But in a society where no one hates or is hostile towards women save the most pathological of criminals,

assumes facts not in evidence, sad to say. But this article is worth the review as stars in a larger constellation. I did like the focus on the push for parental leave, and the reaction that that enflames in misogynists.

Compensation for child care is the beginning of a long conversation, I think. Let's fight for it.
posted by eustatic at 4:43 PM on November 8, 2021 [9 favorites]

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries … and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.”

– Niccolo Machiavelli
posted by armoir from antproof case at 4:47 PM on November 8, 2021 [40 favorites]

From Ursula Vernon, a couple of years ago: I would like to apologize, yet again, to the shade of Sheri S. Tepper for ever having thought her villains were heavy-handed caricature.
posted by Lexica at 4:59 PM on November 8, 2021 [17 favorites]

Black lives matter has been interesting, can we have a larger and more efficient #metoo.
posted by firstdaffodils at 5:14 PM on November 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

My god, Sheri Tepper died? How did I miss that! So passes one of the best speculative fiction writers ever! And, yes, as a teenager I thought her villains were over the top, but as I've aged I've realized they were only caricatures due to class, race, and gender.
posted by Blackanvil at 5:15 PM on November 8, 2021 [5 favorites]

Deleted one and a response. If you flag something offensive for deletion, please give the mods more than 15 seconds to look at it before quoting the offensive thing. And firstdaffodils, I don't know if you're talking out of your ass or being deliberately TERFy, but if it's the former, cut it out; if it's the later, that is unacceptable on MetaFilter and grounds for a ban.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 5:31 PM on November 8, 2021 [18 favorites]

I don't think my society generally hates women to start with; I think it depends on women for unpaid labor first, and hates women when they suggest they might not be able or willing to provide it. Double for class and race, but it operates even within nuclear families, so it doesn't require it.
posted by clew at 5:57 PM on November 8, 2021 [13 favorites]

I think virtually all men have contempt for women.

Anytime someone uses the word “all” to specify some category of people and then condemns that class, it sets off warning bells. The word “virtually” is just a hedge to not imply 100% but still 100% is implied. Being a member of that class “men” I don’t appreciate being accused of feeling contempt for women. I don’t. But growing up in our culture and seeing how a huge number of males both talk about and deal with women, gay people, trans people, people of color, etc., I can understand how that opinion can arise. And it is a cultural thing. Male thoughts on women are reinforced via media, politics, etc. When straight men gather together, their conversation reflects and reinforces these attitudes. So how do we fix this? I don’t think that women for example should be responsible for educating men and changing these attitudes. The victim shouldn’t be expected to reform the victimizer. So what does it take to get men to recognize their own faults? I don’t know. If toxic masculinity becomes self-toxic to men themselves, then maybe some faint light my go on and maybe they might see what they are doing to others and themselves. But I have my doubts…
posted by njohnson23 at 6:13 PM on November 8, 2021 [8 favorites]

Why does the wage gap persist?

Because in this economy, you're not paid what you're worth. You're paid what you can negotiate. And it doesn't take rank misogyny to create a gap in negotiating leverage that's certain to show up statistically loud and clear. There are so many factors that contribute to the leverage gap and thus the wage gap.
posted by ocschwar at 6:14 PM on November 8, 2021 [5 favorites]

And it is a cultural thing.

Which is a reason I might not be so quick to exclude myself from the behavior ascribed to the class. You're socially conditioned to it.
posted by sock poppet at 6:15 PM on November 8, 2021 [22 favorites]

And it doesn't take rank misogyny to create a gap in negotiating leverage that's certain to show up statistically loud and clear. There are so many factors that contribute to the leverage gap and thus the wage gap.

Many factors. Including, in large part, misogyny.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:18 PM on November 8, 2021 [26 favorites]

Misogyny absolutely plays a part in what results you get from negotiating and there are well-documented studies about it.
posted by emjaybee at 6:22 PM on November 8, 2021 [27 favorites]

Can we not with the whole “women just don’t know how to negotiate as skillfully as men” chestnut?

When women negotiate “like a man” we are called rude. When men negotiate poorly, they are often rewarded anyway.
posted by armeowda at 6:23 PM on November 8, 2021 [61 favorites]

Can we not with the whole “women just don’t know how to negotiate as skillfully as men” chestnut?

That is super not the argument being made; people are arguing that misogyny would preclude any negotiation by a woman being as effective, regardless of strategy or skill.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:31 PM on November 8, 2021 [10 favorites]

And it doesn't take rank misogyny to create a gap in negotiating leverage that's certain to show up statistically loud and clear. There are so many factors that contribute to the leverage gap and thus the wage gap.

Can you list some of these factors that contribute to women lacking negotiating power that aren't created by misogyny?
posted by zymil at 6:39 PM on November 8, 2021 [24 favorites]

Being a member of that class “men” I don’t appreciate being accused of feeling contempt for women. I don’t. But growing up in our culture and seeing how a huge number of males both talk about and deal with women, gay people, trans people, people of color, etc., I can understand how that opinion can arise. And it is a cultural thing.

Culturally created and enforced contempt is still contempt.

So what does it take to get men to recognize their own faults?

Spending less time being defensive and making excuses would be an awesome first step. Be the change you want to see in the world.
posted by Mavri at 6:44 PM on November 8, 2021 [56 favorites]

That is super not the argument being made;

…Huh?

Best to clarify which comment I was responding to, I guess?
posted by armeowda at 6:49 PM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Hatred can sit right alongside love, friendship, lust and proprietary feeling, but you have only to hear men being frank amongst themselves for hatred to be extremely clear.

You only have to see women married to feminist, progressive men doing an inequitable amount of the housekeeping and childcare for something to become extremely clear. Hatred might be too strong. But how do you watch someone you respect and love carry this burden and not call it contempt, at the very least.
posted by Mavri at 6:51 PM on November 8, 2021 [54 favorites]

you have only to hear men being frank amongst themselves for hatred to be extremely clear

Maybe I just don't know enough men besides myself (I mean, I am an introvert with few friends) but this doesn't fit my experience. Which is not to say I think it doesn't happen, but if its really that common I guess I'm super happy the other men I know are not like that and I guess I'm lucky.
posted by thefoxgod at 6:55 PM on November 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

Yeah this article kind of "lost" me in the very first few sentences. I see no evidence at all that men don't hate women. Whether or not they can help it, whether or not it's a conscious choice, whether or not it's even their individual fault is besides the point. Men do hate women. From the get go this article is letting the biggest source of misogyny in the culture off the hook by claiming it doesn't exist.

thefoxgod, it's likely you are simply not capable of recognizing contempt towards women when you encounter it because it's so normalized. It's not possible that you alone among all the people in the world have never come across misogyny in your social circles... like, do all of the men you know wear skirts and dresses all the time? Why not?
posted by MiraK at 6:56 PM on November 8, 2021 [15 favorites]

Can we not with the whole “women just don’t know how to negotiate as skillfully as men” chestnut?

That is not what I said. You cannot negotiate skillfully with leverage that you don't actually have.
posted by ocschwar at 7:14 PM on November 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

You only have to see women married to feminist, progressive men doing an inequitable amount of the housekeeping and childcare for something to become extremely clear. Hatred might be too strong. But how do you watch someone you respect and love carry this burden and not call it contempt, at the very least.

This right here. I lived with a roommate for several years who was this man. He was a workaholic and spent very little time at our house, hardly ever involved himself in the cleaning around the house and would constantly piss money away on things he wouldn't actually finish, like a strawberry garden. He always used his work as an excuse for why he couldn't be bothered to do housework. (Which always sounded like a classic 1950's working husband to me, expecting the wife to handle everything because he was too busy at work.) He also promoted himself as a feminist and showed up to every women's march. I told him once that if I moved out and a girlfriend moved in, he wouldn't change overnight, and she would likely see it in terms of division of gendered domestic labor, and he just flat out responded "this isn't about gendered labor" so flatly and painfully. Like, just didn't even give a shit to think for a second about what was painfully obviously true, and especially galling to reject the idea that a future live-in girlfriend wouldn't have an issue with it.

This guy would later dump his long-term girlfriend because she already had children and he wanted children of his own. Because having compassion for a human that wasn't squirted out of your own shitty fucking loins is out of the question I guess. Disgusting, her only value to him revealed to be a receptacle for his fucking shitty seed. So glad to have left that guy in my past.

I'm a man, and it is learned, it's insidious, and my god, it's so, so hard to unlearn all this nightmare nonsense. As was pointed out relatively recently in another thread, it's far too easy for malicious actors to continuously re-appropriate traditional perceptions of masculinity, and "refreshing" them for the modern era through things like memes. The reason it works is because we (men) are all so primed to accept those traditional perceptions of masculinity through culture and propaganda.
posted by deadaluspark at 7:15 PM on November 8, 2021 [36 favorites]

Can you list some of these factors that contribute to women lacking negotiating power that aren't created by misogyny?

A greater need for family leave, for obvious reasons. Just one example.
posted by ocschwar at 7:19 PM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

thefoxgod, it's likely you are simply not capable of recognizing contempt towards women when you encounter it because it's so normalized.

I mean, I see it in public and so on for sure. I was referring specifically to "you have only to hear men being frank amongst themselves for hatred to be extremely clear". The men I know well enough to be "frank amongst ourselves" do not have any hatred for women that I can detect. I've certainly seen plenty of public or visible hatred of women by men, that was obviously not my point.

[And I'm not sure the direct relevance, but over 50% of the men in question including myself have worn skirts...]
posted by thefoxgod at 7:20 PM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

A greater need for family leave that is given begrudgingly or not at all is the result of misogyny.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:21 PM on November 8, 2021 [28 favorites]

One thing this thread definitely does not need is "Not ALL men!" If it's not you, it's not you, and you don't need to defend yourself; it's definitely a situation where "the gentleman doth protest too much" and it tends to create the perception of your behavior that you claim to be attempting to combat.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:21 PM on November 8, 2021 [68 favorites]

Can you list some of these factors that contribute to women lacking negotiating power that aren't created by misogyny?

A greater need for family leave, for obvious reasons. Just one example.

How the heck is this not created by misogyny? This is the definition of misogyny.
posted by Mavri at 7:23 PM on November 8, 2021 [29 favorites]

I've been trying to formulate a response for a while now, but literally every time I almost have a cohesive thought, a new "not all men" comment pops in and derails my entire brain. Do you think any of us who spend our *lives* surrounded by the half of humanity who (consciously or otherwise) thinks we're kind of not quite fully human give one sliver of a fuck if not all men? It's okay for a single goddamn thing to not be about or for you. Try listening.
posted by augustimagination at 7:23 PM on November 8, 2021 [49 favorites]

I mean, I see it in public and so on for sure. I was referring specifically to "you have only to hear men being frank amongst themselves for hatred to be extremely clear". The men I know well enough to be "frank amongst ourselves" do not have any hatred for women that I can detect. I've certainly seen plenty of public or visible hatred of women by men, that was obviously not my point.

This comment was so not all men that it managed to make me recall a really bad joke I saw today:

Q: How do mansplainers get their water?
A: From a well actually.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:25 PM on November 8, 2021 [37 favorites]

A woman not getting a raise because she had a baby is also because of misogyny. Negotiating power, my ass.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:25 PM on November 8, 2021 [21 favorites]

How the heck is this not created by misogyny? This is the definition of misogyny.

The length of family leave a new father needs is not set by the all-too-plausible risk of him suffering physical harm if he returns to work too early. The same is not true of the new mother. Ergo, women have a greater need for family leave for reasons besides rank misogyny.

And when it's time to negotiate your salary, every need you have lowers your bargaining position, in ways that are sure to show up statistically over a large cohort.

Ergo, misogyny is obviously significant, but a wage gap is bound to show up even without it.
posted by ocschwar at 7:29 PM on November 8, 2021

We don't hate chickens. We breed, raise, and slaughter them by the billions every year. Sometimes they are kept in horrible conditions, sometimes only slightly horrible conditions. We hatch billions of chicks, keep the females, and toss the male chicks into grinders alive. We pump them full of antibiotics because we need to keep them alive in their crowded, filthy enclosures long enough for us to hang them on a conveyor line, slice open their necks, dump their (sometimes still living) bodies into boiling water to defeather them, butcher them, and package them up for transport.

But we don't hate them. That's just what those animals are for.

This is why people have so much trouble applying the word misogyny to ourselves and our society.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:46 PM on November 8, 2021 [104 favorites]

The length of family leave a new father needs is not set by the all-too-plausible risk of him suffering physical harm if he returns to work too early. The same is not true of the new mother. Ergo, women have a greater need for family leave for reasons besides rank misogyny.

Defining family leave by the potential physical harm to the person who gives birth is misogynist. It ties family leave to birthing, instead of parenting. If men were expected to parent equitably, all parents would get six months, a year, a meaningful amount of leave.
posted by Mavri at 7:48 PM on November 8, 2021 [42 favorites]

"Maybe, just fucking maybe, I can look at my own personal history and see a vivid possibility of having learned misogyny in my life, and be able to accept that and be calm about that. Maybe that would be nice for once. It doesn't absolve me of it, it doesn't make me any better, but it means I'm at least trying to hear what these women are saying, and trying to have an ounce of self reflection about it."

Honestly, I think people interested in some social reform, particularly women, are often only looking for this, so thank you. (It isn't just a start, it's probably 'the start')

And if someone would like to change, "not all men," to, "the gentleman doth protest too much," I'm all for it. Ha!

I'm not even hyper social justice'y, I can accept a lot of flexibility and humor, and I'm not interested in being the fun police, but it was only so long ago women weren't allowed bank accts, etc.
posted by firstdaffodils at 7:52 PM on November 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

(man writing)

Why, why are men in this thread doing the same old things. It's not about you. It's not about you! It's about all of the things. It's bigger than you and your feelings!

Here's a thought experiment. Take pregnancy and parental leave, this is a great example of highly gendered/misogynist excuses. The most patronizing misogynist things to say would be, "This woman should not have to work because it stresses her body and threatens her health and the baby's health, and also the baby needs to be breastfed and nursed afterward so let's not have her in the workforce then either, and of course someone needs to attend to the child later and that will occupy her later in her career," etc etc etc. The result is that the woman is treated as all these things at once- a delicate flower liable to injury, the more parental person in a couple by definition, a future career liability due to her family distractions. Somehow the mental/emotional abilities to manage parenthood don't translate into the workforce, no matter what the workforce is. Surely you can see some of the absurdities.

What would the reverse or converse arguments be? Off the top of my head: "The expecting mother must participate in work because she needs the exercise for her health and the baby's health! We must center mothers and children in our daily lives- the kids learn best by osmosis and are taught life skills by the metaphorical village, and if they're stuck at home they will be isolated during crucial formative years! Mothers make excellent employees, workers, managers, you name it- They are multitasking, they have huge incentive to behave ethically in decision making both for their own family's future and also for providing good examples for the kids from the very start of life, it's never too early to instill the virtues of hard work."

You can come up with other reverse arguments for virtually anything. Physical labor: "Men are too egotistical and take too many physical risks to fit in with the bros, they are very prone to dangerous horseplay and injuring themselves. Women have a lower center of gravity which aids in working at heights, they are smaller and can fit into smaller spaces, they have better manual dexterity, and they have much higher pain tolerance."

Fellow men, please understand what I'm saying: The "rational" arguments for what men and women should do or behave come after, are built upon, the irrational sexist foundations. The sexism is underneath them and this is why some arguments feel like they "make sense," and some don't feel that way. When you think that you've got a handle on why things are the way they are, and why they make sense- such as ocschwar blithely writing "A greater need for family leave, for obvious reasons."- please, please check your priors. (Not to call you out ocschwar- if it wasn't you, it would have been someone else saying the same goddamn thing, because it makes sense. It's literally not about you.)

What this piece is about is that these bullshit reasons underlie all of these myriad examples. The author chose these examples because they make sense. Why do they make sense? How come these weird cultural artifacts are like this? What are the underlying assumptions and what bullshit are they composed of? It's not about you.
posted by panhopticon at 7:52 PM on November 8, 2021 [52 favorites]

(person writing)

This would explain why so many women experience burnout:

"The result is that the woman is treated as all these things at once- a delicate flower liable to injury, the more parental person in a couple by definition, a future career liability due to her family distractions. Somehow the mental/emotional abilities to manage parenthood don't translate into the workforce, no matter what the workforce is. Surely you can see some of the absurdities."

Let's assign all roles at once, and try not to be disappointed when all marks aren't hit.
posted by firstdaffodils at 7:57 PM on November 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

and this - this is why i understand that systemic racism exists -
and can understand my part in it.
it's not difficult to extrapolate, to see that both misogyny and racism are pervasive in our culture, unless you are conditioned from birth that it's "just the way things are."

also, if you think toxic masculinity doesn't hurt men, you need to look deeper.
posted by lapolla at 8:19 PM on November 8, 2021 [15 favorites]

or, as augustimagination so succinctly put it: Try listening.
posted by lapolla at 8:25 PM on November 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

. Do you think any of us who spend our *lives* surrounded by the half of humanity who (consciously or otherwise) thinks we're kind of not quite fully human give one sliver of a fuck if not all men

I am AFAB. I present publicly as a woman. I am NOT surrounded by half of humanity who thinks I am not quite fully human. It turns out that if you, you know, talk to men, most of them think women are people. I live with a man and he thinks I'm a person, which is more than some people in this thread seem to think he is. I work with me who listen attentively when I talk and treat me like a valued colleague.

There are biases - conscious and unconscious - that all of us hold about women and about men. These are culturally created and are different in different cultures. These biases do affect how we all react to things like voices (deep = authority), and assumptions we make -- and when men and women are studied, they are just as likely to hold sexist biases against women as men are. No one is going to seriously argue that all women think women are less than human, are they?

Women hold up half the sky - and half of the patriarchy. A lot of gender policing is done by women, and women are just as likely to say that women shouldn't lead. Women are also engaged in the policing of how men act as well, and set sexist expectations for them (like only wanting to date "successful men" and then being surprised when he doesn't put their career first).

We need to talk about how our actual biases work to learn how to dismantle them, rather than just blaming one segment of the population in a rather dehumanizing way. Otherwise, we'll get nowhere, because we aren't dealing with the actual issue.
posted by jb at 9:00 PM on November 8, 2021 [17 favorites]

In my experience, women are the ones who are most likely to insist that mothers are the primary parent, that mothers should trump fathers when it comes to decisions about children -- I've seen it on this very site!

But after engaging in that gatekeeping, they act surprised that their male partners don't take initiative when it comes to the kids.
posted by jb at 9:05 PM on November 8, 2021

No one is going to seriously argue that all women think women are less than human, are they?

In my experience, women are very likely to be willing to say that women are lesser humans, and humans will treat the lesser as less-than when dividing scarce resources. And power is always scarce.
posted by clew at 9:11 PM on November 8, 2021 [7 favorites]

On the topic of "our actual biases" maybe we can step away from assuming that anyone who pushes back against "not all men" could possibly have men in our lives we love and care about?
posted by augustimagination at 9:12 PM on November 8, 2021 [14 favorites]

Or that we're not acutely aware of the ability of women to be misogynistic ourselves? Or of the intersections between AGAB, gender, and misogyny? I'm a queer woman whose lifelong career is math, believe me, I don't need internalized misogyny explained to me. I should have just more accurately said "the whole of humanity" thinks we're slightly less than people.
posted by augustimagination at 9:15 PM on November 8, 2021 [23 favorites]

also, if you think toxic masculinity doesn't hurt men, you need to look deeper.

Exhibit A: An ex-guildmate of mine once, when he was drunk, threatened to beat the shit out of me if he ever met me. The reason? He found out that my wife is the primary breadwinner of our family.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:15 PM on November 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

A good example of how steeped we are in misogyny as a society: this entire thread keeps recentering on men’s experience of it and women’s culpability for it.
posted by armeowda at 9:58 PM on November 8, 2021 [92 favorites]

Misogyny is real. It exists. I am feeling the need to watch it stand there, bare, without makeup, unrelativized, on its own, without any nuance, the way it appears in my life when no one "sees it" and no one acknowledges that it's there and I'm left all alone with it.
posted by ipsative at 11:52 PM on November 8, 2021 [5 favorites]

Thanks for the article. It's both humorous and insightful. We've discussed work by Anne Helen Petersen before, and this is another good piece. I had no prior opinion about Chris Pratt but now I can't get his stare out of my mind. Also fuck you Joe Rogan.
posted by Alex404 at 12:59 AM on November 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm male. Yes, it's all men.

I got my feminist wake-up-call in my early 20s and have spent more than a decade now trying to do better, failing, and trying to do better again. I work hard on doing my share of the emotional and physical labour at home (and check in with my partner to ensure I'm not deluding myself about how much work I'm doing), but unequal housework is just a symptom of the deeper lying misogyny infection. It took me a while to realise it, but part of my brain will always trust male authority a little more, second guess women a little more, treat male problems as more worthy, etc. My job is to be vigilant, try and catch those thoughts when they happen and deliberately counter them - the new female boss doesn't 'project confidence' in the same way as the old male one, but coupling the male expression of confidence to leadership skill is itself rooted in misogyny and therefore I should work extra hard to respect her and be open to her way of leading, for example.

I don't think men who grew up in this world can avoid at least a degree of misogyny 'infection', and I don't think many (if any) can remove it entirely. Yes, there is at least a small part in every man that considers women to be less important than men. The good men do their best to be aware of this and make sure it doesn't affect their actions. If you're male and your reaction to statements like this is defensiveness, I'd gently suggest that that's your own misogynist infection reacting to treatment.
posted by twirlypen at 1:30 AM on November 9, 2021 [27 favorites]

The EU has issued a new directive, ensuring at least 10 days of paid paternity leave for all new fathers. It isn't much, but I think it will change things a lot. Within my circle of friends, quite a few fathers took parental leave, it became possible at about the time when we had our kids, and our kids have grown up to see each others as humans who share responsibilities. Even those whose parents stuck to more traditional gender roles, since they have all grown up seeing that different families make different choices. It makes me feel proud when I see them live as loving equals. Most of my students, who are about the same age (in their 20s), are the same. I recall how elder female professors were treated when I was a student, and I feel great joy every time I am met with respect and trust by the kids in class, regardless of gender, and when I see them interacting professionally and kindly.
But at the same time it is as if there is a parallel universe, sharing the same space and time, where misogyny is the norm. Sometimes one clashes into those other people. It is very confusing and sometimes scary or enraging or even dangerous. And when the misogynists are women, it is very sad, too.

For most people my age, this is something you need to be conscious of, and discuss openly. When someone refuses to do that, it is usually a sign that they are misogynist. But there are also people who call themselves feminist but consistently act as misogynists.
posted by mumimor at 1:31 AM on November 9, 2021 [6 favorites]

HUGE RANT:
Misogyny exists. After 15 years in a male-dominated profession, I can assure you that the majority of the men I have worked with absolutely hate women. I have been told I am hated because I’m a woman, despite the fact that one of my best guy friends/colleagues and I have very similar personalities; that I’m ineligible for a particular job because that specific “organization is not set up to hire a woman at this time,” and that “no one would listen to a midget girl”; am frequently told “oh, you’ll get the job because you’re female”; was run out of a position with an organization through sexual assault, harassment, and continually being told “you took that position from a man,” “you’ll never promote,” and “you’re a stupid cunt.” They call women sluts, crazy bitches, lazy, whores…at various times in my career I have been called all of those things and also a dyke, which, ok? But I’m a whore who sleeps with too many men? Hey guys, make up your mind! How can they put you down? How can they grind you into nothing? That’s their goal, to force you out; to make you quit so that they can have their white boys’ club back. This conversation isn’t purely about racism, but I can GUARANTEE that it is also present and prevalent. The men who harassed and assaulted me continued to get promoted; my career was derailed and part of that was my fault as that stress had exacerbated a drinking problem I wasn’t attending to as much as I should have been. But hey, I was told that I left that organization because I “was unhappy being a small fish in a big pond.” No you stupid fuck, I was pissed that the leadership didn’t take my situation seriously and put my health at risk. Luckily, the guy who assaulted me was finally forced out earlier this year, 10 years after he hurt me. I know he hurt and stalked at least 3 other women; only one has come forward, but her career is over. I have to live with the fact that these women might have been hurt because I put my career before the right thing to do. Now I refuse to bend my personal ethics and morals, and that has put me in an entry-level position where I’m making $14,000 less than I was 7 months ago and I lost my rank. I am completely underutilized and I have no ability to move up in my current org because I do not have my paramedic…but the org won’t pay for me to go get it. I’m 38 years old, divorced, run a household, and recently spent 3 years earning my MPA; I don’t have the time or income at freakin $14 an hour to go through another year of schooling plus clinicals. (This information was not disclosed to me in the hiring process; neither was the complete lack of adequate compensation).

Story time: about a year and a half ago I applied for a position. I was qualified/overqualified for the position. Had all of the certifications required AND then some, experience with all aspects of the job, working on my MPA from a state school, felt good about potentially getting an interview. Time passes, nothing. I attempt to contact admin/HR; phone calls/emails ignored. Finally get an email - my dear John letter. Turns out the two guys they offered the position to have less admin experience, less command experience, fewer certifications, less education, and less training than I have. In fact, I trained one of them when he was a probie. Guess what? This particular organization has graciously allowed me to apply for an entry-level position with them; 15 years into my profession. I’m in an entry-level position right now and I HATE it. My supervisors are clueless and not one of them has the resume and transcripts I have. I have to like, teach them shit about things they should already know.

Before I left my last position, I was one out of TWO female fire officers in a county of about 500 uniformed firefighters. I was the only one in operations; the other woman is admin (but good at it, and will eventually have an executive position, and she absolutely deserves it). In fact, we were the only two paid female officers in a multi-county area. How does that work?

Anyway, all of this to say, I’ve spent years in therapy, I just spent hundreds of dollars working with a career coach trying to understand what I’m doing incorrectly, I’ve spent years working on classes and certifications and degrees…the only thing I’ve been told as to why I can’t succeed is that perhaps “organizations don’t want someone like [me] representing them.” My therapist is like “it’s systemic sexism; this isn’t completely your fault, even if some of your actions at varying points could have been different.” It’s hard to accept that. And the kicker is, that it is So Much Worse than it was when I entered the profession. It’s similar to the discussion in the rude people thread. The fire service is like wE dOn’T kNoW hOw To AtTrAcT minorities and women; IT’S A CULTURE PROBLEM YOU IDIOTS. You make women take FMLA to have a kid instead of putting them in an admin role for 10 months and then they lose that time in grade towards promotion. You don’t think about women trying to find childcare while they’re gone for a 24 hour shift. You think daddy’s gonna stay home? Not with the wages we earn; they can’t afford to have one parent out of work.

I’m so tired. I tell my therapist I worry about my misandrist tendencies sometimes; he says that my feelings are understandable based on my experiences with men throughout my life, both professionally and personally. I don’t want to be a part of the problem. But I’m just exhausted. And I say all of this as a middle class, educated, white female. I cannot conceive the stressors that must be involved if I was in any other demographic.

TL;DR: systemic sexism and misogyny are exhausting.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 1:51 AM on November 9, 2021 [61 favorites]

Excuse me but why are people in this thread insisting on noting that women can enact misogyny too. Why? The original article notes many of the ways this happens (and pointedly fails to note the many ways misogyny is perpetrated by men). There's plenty of blame going around for misogyny perpetrated by women e.g. the article literally blames white women & terfs etc. for the misogyny of men. Nobody is arguing that women's misogyny doesn't exist (but the article does state point blank that the misogyny of men doesn't exist).

So while there's a very good reason to talk about the misogyny of men in this thread, I don't see a reason to insist here that "women are misogynistic too!" What's going on here??

Is it because you can't stand it when someone talks about the misogyny of men? You are just that uncomfortable when the misogyny of men is mentioned that you must shut it down??

If the discussion here of women's misogyny was indeed a discussion about women's misogyny rather than just a "women perpetuate misogyny TOO!" (i.e. only a reaction to the discussion about men) it would have more depth and nuance and sensitivity than the shit that's being said on this thread. Women's misogyny is a thing that deserves to be discussed on its own merits, if you're so inclined... Stop using it as a shield to defend men and shut down conversations about men's misogyny.
posted by MiraK at 2:02 AM on November 9, 2021 [29 favorites]

I don't know about others, but I mentioned women's misogyny because I am currently involved with a group of women where a couple of them have completely internalized the misogyny, and I worry for them because it harms them and I wonder about how I can introduce an other way of understanding the world which will be safer for them.

Personally, I am an angry feminist, and proud of it, but the journey here has been long and convoluted. I grew up in a very patriarchal family, and although they gave up on me early on, the mismatch between the values my family lived by and what I felt and did was confusing and frustrating. Sometimes I tried to perform gender more like the others, and failed. Sometimes I tried other roles, but they remained exterior, unreal. I didn't feel like I was in me till after menopause. So I am interested in women's misogyny because it is part of my own story.
I am also angry about men's misogyny and angry about the men I encounter who are misogynist. But luckily there are not many of them in the environment I am in today, and I feel that I have lately become much better at setting strong boundaries when they turn up.
posted by mumimor at 2:29 AM on November 9, 2021 [8 favorites]

Yeah I should have been more specific about the particular type of comment that I'm objecting to, it's the ones saying, "You can't single out men, women do it too/women do it worse." That kind of comment is about defending men not about women's misogyny on its own terms.
posted by MiraK at 2:46 AM on November 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

I note that the big question asked in the article is " Why is everything so enraging and why does substantive change feel so impossible?"

I feel like my just silently pointing at this thread and how it's going would be a good answer to that question.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:02 AM on November 9, 2021 [47 favorites]

When I was promoted I discovered I was making $7k/year less than a male coworker who was promoted at exactly the same time to exactly the same position.* I was the top performer on my team, there was no reason for this. I brought this to my boss, around with the HR policy that expressly stated that salary was to be based on equity and performance and not length of time you'd been there or starting salary. It took five months of pushing to get more money and in the end he only gave me half the difference. Since then the winds have been noticably colder. When another male coworker at a lower level told me HIS salary I found out if I'd accepted the original raise I'd be making LESS than him.

Now, I'm sterile and do not ever plan on having children. Family leave is not and will never be a need for me. If I disclosed my sterilization and the medical paperwork to my boss do you honestly believe I'd have gotten the money I earned? I mean, by that rationale I should be in a better position than ANY person who planned on having kids!

*By the way--I will forever be grateful to that guy for sharing his salary with me. THAT is one way men can help close the wage gap, and even if it didn't fully work in my individual case it still got me a bit more, showed me for real the kind of person my boss is, and made me feel I wasn't crazy.
posted by Anonymous at 4:06 AM on November 9, 2021

Also, I guarantee that my boss believes he doesn't hate women. But misogyny does not exist because of incels gathering in dark corners cackling about the ways they can fuck up those bitches. Misogyny exists because of the accumulation of misogynistic choices and rationales made by people who consider themselves to be perfectly reasonable and logical and even loving towards women and feel those choices and rationales are perfectly justifiable and totally not misogynistic.
posted by Anonymous at 4:15 AM on November 9, 2021

Yeah, this thread need some big *In America asterisks to some of these comments. I never comment in these threads, because your experience is so different to mine that I don't see how my perspective could add anything, but sometimes I see comments about how it's impossible to meet a man who actually treats you as an equal, or all men see woman as lesser, and.... Maybe I'm living in a bubble but that has not been my experience as a woman. Generalised sexism, everywhere, sure, but not the impossibility of decent men.

The "yes, virtually ALL men" comments in these threads actually do feel untrue and unhelpful to me, personally, as a woman, but it doesn't feel ok to say that here.

I don't know where I'm going with this but I've been swallowing it for a long time.
posted by stillnocturnal at 5:06 AM on November 9, 2021 [17 favorites]

I might as well tell the story about the closest I've come to hating men in general. I try to avoid demographic hatred.

However, The Seeds of Life by Edward Dolnick, a 600 year history of trying to figure out how human reproduction works (be patient, it was hard, considered that it started with no microscopes and no knowledge of the existence of cells), says early on that a major idea, worldwide and multi-cultural, was that the man made the important contribution and the woman was just a receptacle.

This is well beyond irritating. What's weirder is that when people got interested in what was really going on, they ignored, as they'd been ignoring all along, that people show traits from both their mothers and their fathers. Instead, they split into eggs-are-the-main-thing vs. sperm-is-the-main-thing, until the actual process-- with contributions from both mother and father-- was understood.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:15 AM on November 9, 2021 [6 favorites]

We don't hate chickens.

This was an important comment for understanding how this thread is going, for being both entirely true within itself (and could even have been tied in extremely well to the article posted… unless this lead-in sentence was a subtle attempt to do just that, and the intended tone is not coming across as clearly over the internet?), and entirely missing the point of the article posted, which was (in part) an exploration of what we mean by “misogyny”.
posted by eviemath at 5:27 AM on November 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

> Instead, they split into eggs-are-the-main-thing vs. sperm-is-the-main-thing

Which itself betrays devastating misogyny, in that it deliberately focuses on the tiny moment where men's contribution to the procreative process might possibly be considered equal to women's, and dismisses the processes of pregnancy and childbirth and breastfeeding as if it's immaterial to the question of how human reproduction works.

It's kind of like saying the process of humans getting food begins and ends with the eating of the meal - never mind the farmers, the butchers, the truck drivers, the grocers, the shoppers, or the chefs.
posted by MiraK at 5:30 AM on November 9, 2021 [6 favorites]

This is why CRT is important.

Not everyone who propagates and reinforces the racist structures and cultural tropes of our society is doing it out of personal racial animus, or even recognizes those underpinnings. Yet its effect is absolutely racist, and clearly felt by those subjected to it.

Swap racism for misogyny and I think you can make the same statement.

In particular, try replacing “all men” with “all white people” in this derailed thread, and tell me it’s not exactly the same conversation.
posted by bjrubble at 5:55 AM on November 9, 2021 [9 favorites]

I mean, a big benefit of misogyny is "getting essential things done without having to pay for it" - the cognitive dissonance of misogyny ("things women care about are bullshit") means that one does not need to feel bad or guilty about not cooking or cleaning or about treating cooks and cleaners badly, etc, and yet the cooking and cleaning will get done. Taking care of the kids may be effete time-wasting mommy bullshit, which is why you don't have to do it unless it seems fun to you, but you know in your heart that as a broad generality mothers are going to go right on doing all the mommy bullshit because it has to be done. It's similar to the whole "well admin work is trivial and could be done by trained animals, that's why it's so generous that we pay $12 an hour for a public-facing job in a pandemic, but on the other hand I don't know how to change the toner in the printer and the last time I ran a spending report was 1997, my job today is two zoom meeting which I will take at home from a comfortable chair".

Misogyny is useful, both materially and emotionally. It comes into being with the idea of "woman", just as racism comes into being with the creation of modern racial categories. If you're going to do something horrible to someone, you have to believe that they deserve it, or that it doesn't actually hurt them or that they are just a sort of human-looking mushroom or whatever. If you want to do something horrible to someone because it's convenient, you will come up with racism and misogyny, etc, because otherwise you feel bad. You want to take people from their families and force them to work for you until they die - well, you have to believe that their screams and cries and grief aren't real, because otherwise you would not be able to do it.

Which, again, is why I think that hatred and contempt are always present. Upthread Mavri points out that in many gender-split households, the man/men are completely content to sit around while the women work and that it's hard to explain this without contempt. Women must not mind the second shift, must find it interesting to mop the floor, etc, must simply not really care about intellectual stuff, pursuing a serious hobby, etc. How can you look at someone and think, even semi-consciously, "I would prefer to read this here history book, while she prefers to mop the floor and scrub the sink" without having contempt? The best you get is separate spheres - men like brainy things and competition, women like scrubbing floors and cooking, of course we must recognize that scrubbing the floor is a noble art, kind of like banking but of course unpaid.

Or, alternatively, we get to hire underpaid women, often women of color, to scrub the floors, etc, so that both the well-off man and well-off woman can participate in banking. But still, the same contempt and an extra layer - banking is best, of course, which is why the special household woman should be allowed to do it. But the poor woman, well, it's cool that she works sixty hours a week and she has little time for her kids, because after all she's just doing woman stuff cubed - she probably has no finer feelings, wouldn't really enjoy banking, her kids will be just fine unlike the household kids who have finer sensibilities, etc.

I'll tell you, until very recently my liberal university provided two weeks of paid parental leave to the union employees...and six weeks to the civil service workers and professional/administrative jobs. And you can see right there how it works - the proles, mostly women, are just basically animals, they can work right away, they don't really "love" their children with the fine-tuned feelings of the bourgeoisie, they just sort of drop their babies from their wombs and return to labor. The union fought back on that one and we won, but it was the rule for decades before that happened. My point being that class, race and misogyny all work together to guarantee that the people on top can feel good about their exploitation.

We're in contract negotiations now, and the white collar contract negotiators have done a lot of talk about how oh of course they won't be going back to the office any time soon, they're afraid of covid. We have to go back, but then we're just a species of lower animal, barely able to type and grunt into the phones, so if we die, who cares?

We don't hate chickens? Of what does hate consist, then?
posted by Frowner at 6:01 AM on November 9, 2021 [72 favorites]

> I seriously wonder if there's something genetic about why men feel this way about women

Could we not do the bio-essentialism thing?
posted by june_dodecahedron at 6:32 AM on November 9, 2021 [14 favorites]

Yeah, this thread need some big *In America asterisks to some of these comments

Yes, and for several reasons. One is the way politics in the US are so much about identity, more than economic policies. How you perform race and gender is part of your political identity in a different way than in Europe, at least. I remember reading about this in one of Hillary Clintons autobiographies.
Another reason is the violence in American society -- which leads to completely rational fear, and that again leads to parents educating their children to conform, lest they put themselves in danger.
posted by mumimor at 7:14 AM on November 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

sometimes I see comments about how it's impossible to meet a man who actually treats you as an equal, or all men see woman as lesser, and.... Maybe I'm living in a bubble but that has not been my experience as a woman. Generalised sexism, everywhere, sure, but not the impossibility of decent men.

What bjrubble above says about Critical Race Theory is the key here. The idea behind Critical Race Theory is that you don't necessarily need to have people be sitting there thinking "the white race is best wooooohoooooo" all the time - in fact, many people actively don't think that. But they are living in a society which ITSELF is racist, and the problem is that the individuals mostly don't see that.

This is the same thing. It's not that you can't find individual men who treat you personally in your one-on-one exchanges as an equal. It's that society has stacked that deck against women, and vanishingly few men realize that - even the ones who treat you as an equal.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:18 AM on November 9, 2021 [32 favorites]

If anyone hasn't read the linked article yet, I would recommend it. It is nuanced and interesting, including the long series of examples she gives.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:18 AM on November 9, 2021 [8 favorites]

I've been working on learning this song this week and last:

...
Oh, but now the times are harder and me Jimmy's got the sack;
I went down to Vicker's, they were glad to have me back
But I'm a third-class citizen, my wages tell me that
But I'm a first-class engineer!

The boss he says "We pay you as a lady
You only got the job because I can't afford a man
With you I keep the profits high as may be
You're just a cheaper pair of hands."

You got one fault, you're a woman;
You're not worth the equal pay
A bitch or a tart, you're nothing but heart.
Shallow and vain, you've got no brain
...
-Peggy Seeger

posted by MtDewd at 7:28 AM on November 9, 2021 [8 favorites]

Not to be all ‘not all men’ about it, but surely not all human societies in all of history have been misogynist to the extent and in the particular ways we see today? I think it’s worth trying to disentangle the systemic issues from the question of whether individual people do or do not hate women.
posted by thedamnbees at 7:31 AM on November 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

If anyone hasn't read the linked article yet, I would recommend it. It is nuanced and interesting, including the long series of examples she gives.

I actually read it again this morning, after reading the comments, because there was something that annoyed me about it, and I think it is the "In America"-aspect. Not that American cultural critics should not discuss American life, of course not. And in general I really like Anne Helen Petersen. But in this case, I kept on thinking about how different things would look if there was a minimum wage people could actually live on, parental leave, a fair balance of work and life, access to good, professional childcare, safe housing, healthcare and many, many other things that the rest of the west take for granted and can have without society going bankrupt.
Yes, there is misogyny all over the world, and it is like miasma, a toxic fog that permeates everything. But many of her examples are examples of a sick exploitative economy where the misogyny is a coping strategy, both for men and for women.

In my first week at university, one of the Marxist teachers gave a lecture about a problem: there is a single mum riding a bike in the rain. It's dark. Her child is sleeping in the child-seat on the back of the bike, but she needs to go to the store for milk, and bring the child with her. This is horrible. What do we do? Design a new bike? Make cars cheap enough for her to buy one? Cover the street with a glass roof?
The answer was: build a fair society where single mothers don't have to ride on their bike in the rain at night because they can earn a living wage and afford a safe home near their workplace.
posted by mumimor at 7:53 AM on November 9, 2021 [10 favorites]

I meant my "we don't hate chickens" comment to tie in to what the article was saying about misogyny: our conscious feelings to them are mostly non-existent, despite the fact that we butcher them by the billions. You might think we were apathetic, then, but we are not. Vegetarians and vegans merely existing is enough to prompt a backlash of annoyance, bad-faith "well you murder plants" arguments, pointing out how many jobs meat-eating provides, etc. Just as there are many people who aren't pro-fascist as much as they are anti-anti-fascist, we actively support the systems that enable and preserve misogyny while using our personal feelings to tell ourselves we don't.

To be clear, it's pretty common to just hate women though. The box that women must stay in is so small and its invisible borders shift all the time, and correction is dealt out swiftly by eager watchers who don't care if a misstep was accidental or not.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:53 AM on November 9, 2021 [21 favorites]

To put it bluntly: we actually do hate chickens. When someone says "I like chicken" they mean they like eating chicken.

When someone says "I like women", they often mean they like using women.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:58 AM on November 9, 2021 [31 favorites]

Yeah, people here really need to remember the entire world isn't America.

A good chunk of the world treats women far worse than even the Americans do.

But sure, let's make sure that this discussion on misogyny is only focused on how it happens in American capitalism, and couldn't possibly consider looking at countries where misogyny is legally fucking protected.

We do need to consider capitalism's place in how things shake out in America, but we don't have to look far to see that misogyny rears its ugly head when it comes to lack of education paired with lack of access to resources.

Some Europeans coming in here acting like "only in America" would do well to remember the First World isn't the only world that fucking exists.
posted by deadaluspark at 7:59 AM on November 9, 2021 [9 favorites]

But many of her examples are examples of a sick exploitative economy where the misogyny is a coping strategy, both for men and for women.

As an anarchist, I disagree. We're all, always constantly at risk of the establishment of violent hierarchies and the intensification of existing ones; at the same time, there is always the possibility of removing or minimizing hierarchies. Hierarchies exist to justify and stabilize violence and exploitation. It's not that misogyny is a coping strategy for inequality; it's that misogyny is one of the hierarchies that is used to create and entrench inequality. Any society at any point could in theory create or intensify misogyny, not because misogyny is inherent or magical but because we know from human history that violent hierarchies are a constant threat. It's fortunate that parts of Europe are less misogynist than the US, but Europe is more equal (where that's true) because misogynist hierarchies have been dismantled or weakened, not because equality prevents misogyny.
posted by Frowner at 8:00 AM on November 9, 2021 [13 favorites]

Some Europeans coming in here acting like "only in America" would do well to remember the First World isn't the only world that fucking exists.

I'm sure most Americans are just fine with the fact that their country is more like Afghanistan than like Spain, when it comes to misogyny. /sarcasm
posted by mumimor at 8:02 AM on November 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

After taking a deep breath, I have to add that it isn't just sarcasm. The progressive cities in the US are often far more progressive than any European country, and less racist and sexist. I love America for that, among many other things. But the Taliban and Hezbollah and other Islamist movements are succesfull for the same reasons as the Evangelical churches in the US. They provide services that should be but are not provided by the corrupt politicians in their regions.
posted by mumimor at 8:15 AM on November 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

On a personal level for North American mostly middle-ish class workers, here's a thought exercise.

Picture this in your mind: "My colleague had to leave early Thursday for an important networking event, which could have a significant financial impact."

Questions:

- who is your colleague? What does that person look like? If you thought of someone over you in the organization what gender do they present?

- what's an important networking event?

- what financial impact are we talking about?

So here's the event I'm talking about: An HR coordinator, 5 years experience who is responsible for the ground-level statistical analysis of her organization's benefits plan, is leaving work early to attend her child's school's PTA meeting.

1. If your colleague does not include women to the side of or below you on the ladder, why not?

2. "Important" - the PTA meeting will not just determine how pooled community resources will be used to build equity locally (bringing in speakers to assemblies, etc.) but at that meeting, our coordinator will get the critical information that the grade 3 room eleven teacher, while lovely, is terrible at teaching math. More on this importance later.

3. "Networking" - it's funny how golf games and business associations and Rotary clubs are for serious people, but playdates, baby groups, and soccer mom clubs are not.

4. Without that information, our coordinator would have let her child go into room eleven rather than requesting a better "personality match" for her math-phobic child. She has just saved her own family the following:
- $2,700 post-tax dollars a year in math tutoring
- a year of the costs of family therapy after arguing over math homework causes a breakdown
- $11,000/year in tuition, as her daughter will now be going into a STEM field where she will be able to access a scholarship she wasn't able to on a humanities stream

5. Ah, you say, I thought you meant an important financial impact at work! Well my friends, when she gets back to her desk she will do the analysis that maternity benefits are worth covering, thinking of both herself and the other moms in the PTA which include some high-level women sharing that they are thinking of quitting to have another baby, and as a result, the director who actually figures out how to make money jumping into a new at-home market during a pandemic -- female -- sticks around the company rather than quitting her job to take care of her newborn.

If you argued with any of this - "colleague" (MY colleague isn't an HR drone!); "important" (PTA isn't important!) "networking" (women don't network, they cluster!) "financial" (personal finance and the avoidance of costs due to informed and hardworking caregiving is huge) or "financial" (creating workplaces supportive of women) then it's worth a thought.

By the way, "colleague" -- at the start of my career, I thought sexism was dead because I was surrounded by talented, educated, hard working female peers. After 20 years, I saw mediocre men getting promoted over them and the women dropping out. Boardrooms, C-suites, funders, etc. -- all still men. Women - gone.

You do get to a point (I did!) where you realize the men think they are succeeding because they are the best - but they are succeeding because they are systemically eliminating half their competition. And then you decide not to play the game.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:19 AM on November 9, 2021 [37 favorites]

As someone who occasionally eats chicken, I don’t think I hate chicken so much as I am indifferent to their suffering. Of course, that distinction is utterly meaningless to the chickens themselves. To me, that analogy perfectly captures the point that you can have a system that ‘hates’ chickens that is run by people who don’t hate chickens, just as systemic racism does not require individual racists to function.
posted by thedamnbees at 8:23 AM on November 9, 2021 [21 favorites]

The content and tone of the comment thread here versus the comments on the original article are exactly why I am considering subscribing with $ to Anne Helen Petersen’s Substack/Discord. At this point in my life I want supportive, burn it all down commentary/commiseration/planning, not “is this really an issue / I don’t like her framing” complaints.

Yesterday I attended a “women in STEM” virtual lunch and learn at work in which the invited (female) speaker told us to turn our cameras on and “dress for success” to increase our visibility in the remote workplace, and that she wears heels every day at her home computer. My brain exploded, I told her exactly what I thought of this advice, and she said that she was just a “pragmatic realist” who wants to help women succeed. This is today’s misogyny.

I am enraged and want substantive change, and I’m not going to find it via Metafilter (or my “women in STEM” work group). I’m ready to find a new community.
posted by Maarika at 9:39 AM on November 9, 2021 [45 favorites]

Oh wow I see that my polite request/stated wish that this thread please not relativize misogyny or embellish it or make its definition more palatable to its perpetrators was not taken as gospel.

People enforce systems of oppression. I get why people think they do that, and all the possible explanations. No amount of rationalizations, dissociation, claims of better intentions, etc, diminishes the magnitude of the damage people inflict upon each other when they do.

I cited her in a thread a year or two ago, but Susan Neiman talks about genocide (specifically the Holocaust) in terms of its specificity and it's universality. I paraphrase: Perpetrators do good to reflect upon the specificity of the crime, the personal involvement and the reasons why we in particular became the perpetrators, to fully accept the magnitude of our actions, with a view towards ensuring we never do it again. Victims do good to consider the crime's universalness, to avoid identifying fully with a victim role, be able to process the trauma, and learn that anyone--yes, even they--can become an oppressor.

I think this applies here too. Don't detach from your personal responsibility perpetuating the system. Don't disengage and deflect and rationalize. Just sit with it for a while, stare at its ugly face and admit to yourself just how often and how comfortably you let it sway you time and time again
posted by ipsative at 10:31 AM on November 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

About "not hating the chicken", you don't hate the chicken as long as the chicken keeps quietly to your plate, tasting delicious. You just hate the inconvenient chicken.
posted by ipsative at 10:36 AM on November 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

Could we like. Not compare women to chickens. Could we not do that.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 10:39 AM on November 9, 2021 [21 favorites]

Fair enough. Dropping the chicken analogy. The point I was trying to make is that, hypothetically speaking, if there were no misogynists on the planet earth, it would still be possible to have systemic misogyny, just like eliminating individual racists does not automatically eliminate systemic racism. And that, in part, is why everything so is enraging and substantive change feels so impossible.

As the article says: Misogyny ... is best understood as the whole, pulsing cloud of things that upholds patriarchal order. as opposed to how it is traditionally understood, simply the hatred of women. The point isn't that all participants in the patriarchal order are therefore misogynists, but that it is impossible to grasp the full range of sexism and misogyny in society if we only look at individual intentions and actions.
posted by thedamnbees at 11:34 AM on November 9, 2021 [7 favorites]

The point I was trying to make is that, hypothetically speaking, if there were no misogynists on the planet earth, it would still be possible to have systemic misogyny...

The people who reinforce systemic misogyny are misogynists, and I don't give a flip what they tell themselves so they can sleep at night.
posted by AlSweigart at 11:07 PM on November 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

A misogynist system doesn't require everyone to sit around rubbing their hands over how much they individually hate women, but it's hard to see how it could persist without most people absorbing feelings of hatred and contempt for women. That's what makes these systems stabilizing and self-reinforcing - we see people being treated differently and badly from childhood and we assume that there's something inferior about them. We read stories in which they are at best absent and at worst evil/stupid/inferior/lying/etc for no particular reason.

If we had a system that was largely misogyny without misogynists, why: so many doctors who can face women weeping from pain and simply not care enough to order tests, try treatments, etc; women become invisible if they're young but not fuckable or over about forty; women over about forty get treated as stupid and politically retrograde automatically by anyone younger in left wing spaces rather than assumed to have experience; etc etc etc.

You don't look at a person weeping with pain and begging for medical assistance and coldly assure her that her endometriosis is all in her head unless you have contempt for women.

Further: I will never think that pointing out the ways that racism and misogyny chime, or pointing out that violent hierarchies serve similar functions is "relativizing" misogyny. Misogyny does not stand alone as the worst and primal oppression.

And further: Here is what I mean about hatred and contempt. About ten years ago I was passing through DC. I had an hour and decided to go for a walk. It was Sunday morning. Ahead of me on the sidewalk I could see someone sitting - a pavement artist, I assumed, or someone begging. They were sitting near a hostel with many people going in and out. As I got closer, I could see that the person was an older Black woman in a nice dress and hat, clearly on her way to church, and I thought, "something isn't right here, but why aren't any of those people helping"? When I got to her, I asked her if she needed help, and she said that she had a bad leg and it went out, and I offered to help her up. She was a small woman, but I'm pretty short and her leg was bad, so we were struggling a bit until three Black woman about my age came up behind us and joined in. We all got her on her feet, I walked along with her a bit and the women said they'd see her to her destination since I had to get my flight.

This is a weird story to tell because it makes me seem like the special snowflake who helped the lady. But really, the point of the story is that all of the people going in and out of the hostel assumed that it was totally normal for a Black woman - dressed for church, no less, on a Sunday morning - to fall over and sit on the sidewalk and not get up. (Some of them must have seen her fall.) They saw a Black woman sitting on the ground and assumed that she was mentally ill or drunk or homeless and that (therefore) her natural place was sitting on the ground - it was totally okay, so okay that they didn't even need to tell the front desk staff at the hostel. And they did this even though she had her hair done and was wearing a nice dress and a little hat. That's racism, that's misogyny - it's not racist without racists and misogyny without misogynists, it's just racism without literally being in the KKK.
posted by Frowner at 4:36 AM on November 10, 2021 [21 favorites]

More importantly, maybe some more of us guys could look deep down inside and be real honest with ourselves for a minute before jumping to "not all men" because thinking about it, yeah, I probably do have contempt for women, even if I don't want to have it and want to be a better person than that.

I am a 45yo man. I am a misogynist, and contribute to misogyny. I'm trying not to be, but I'd be lying if I said I was doing a good job at it. I don't know that contempt of women is the right word for it; there are a number of people (almost all men) I feel active contempt for, and it's not the same feeling. Definitely not hatred; though I've seen more than enough evidence (once I eventually opened my eyes and looked, and listened) that there are many, many men who do feel active hatred, or contempt, or both for women generally. Maybe I do too, and I just don't realise it.

Even when you know what misogyny is, and you're looking out for it, It's still so damn easy to fall back on default social conditioning. All my life, from my parents, to my peers, to TV, to books, to jobs, to every environment I can think of; men are supposed to earn and support the family. Men should aggressively protect their family and possessions, with violence if necessary. As a brit; no feelings or emotions are allowed other than anger when wronged. Women are the home builders, carers, expected to look after the children. Even when they're doing a full time job.

We call it my 'man googles' when it comes to housework. My wife sees things that need doing, and feels shame if she doesn't work on them, because she feels she will be judged for having an untidy home. Mess actively upsets her. Me? it's 'not my job' to keep the house clean, so my brain doesn't even flag there as being anything needing doing; even when I note it's messy, I have to consciously make that link to 'so do something about it, idiot'. And I absolutely could, should do much better than I do.

DIY? That's on my built-in list of 'man responsible things', so I will automatically start looking for the screwdriver when I e.g. spot a loose screw. And that means I have to try and *not* take over when she is doing DIY, because at some level, my brain thinks 'that's my job, I must be better at it', when that is definitely not true. It's such a weird difference in what I 'see'.

I don't feel contempt for my wife, that's she's worth less than me, no scorn, disgust or irritation; but it is so, so easy to slip back into that habit of not noticing and letting her do the bulk of the household chores by default. Disregard maybe, or neglect; of her feelings and time. Misogyny, absolutely.

I don't have to think about what it's like to have to fend off unwanted advances, or what might happen when I walk home in the dark, or which direction the man on the other side of the street is going. I don't have to generally concern myself with what people think of my physical attractiveness, my clothes, or what they're going to say to me about those things, and how it might escalate if I don't give them what they want. I don't expect people to touch me up in public. I expect when I make my point in a meeting, I will be listened to, not talked over. The list goes on and on of all the things I don't have to deal with because I'm a) a man, and b) white.

We live in a sea of a misogyny, it permeates absolutely fucking everything. I was aware of it before I had daughters, and trying to be better than I am, but it's just so blatant how early the conditioning starts. The toys. The colours. The clothing. My god, the kids TV. And more insidiously; who cleans up. Who does the cooking. Who reads the bedtime stories (me, yay). Who does the laundry. I don't know a single family where the man contributes anywhere near as much as the woman does to shared work. When men do in media, it's because they don't have a job, and so dedicate themselves to be the 'homemaker' instead - and it's still usually seen as something funny, unusual, kinda 'unmanly'. The idea that a straight man might have a full time job, AND also be the primary carer for the family, and cleaner, and cook instead of the female partner, and, and and... it's so vanishingly rare, I can't even remember ever even hearing about it.

Housework, caring is 'women's work'. Of course it isn't, but that unpaid, unrecognised labour, sometimes feels like the entire bedrock of capitalism; imagine women were paid for all the unpaid hours they do, all the emotional support work, all the time lost dealing with men who feel entitled to, well, everything.

So yeah - to any man thinking 'not *all* men' - yes, basically all men. We all do it. Possibly without meaning to, or even recognising that we're doing it, or even just by letting it happen; but the world is deeply, deeply misogynist in well, every single way, and us, men, have to, *have to* do better.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 6:13 AM on November 10, 2021 [12 favorites]

If only there were some way to maintain a stable population size without forcing women to bear more children than they want to bear.
posted by armeowda at 7:17 AM on November 10, 2021 [3 favorites]

So yeah - to any man thinking 'not *all* men' - yes, basically all men. We all do it. Possibly without meaning to, or even recognising that we're doing it, or even just by letting it happen; but the world is deeply, deeply misogynist in well, every single way, and us, men, have to, *have to* do better.

That's while I feel the EU parental leave directive can be such a game changer. Both for the men on leave, who have to learn to deal in a professional manner with household duties, and for men who are not on leave, but who see their respected peers do laundry, cook, shop etc. That was how it worked in my friend group. All of the men, not only those who took leave, began to respect and feel responsible for household duties at a whole new level. And as I mentioned, all of the children grew up to seeing men and women as true equals.
posted by mumimor at 7:19 AM on November 10, 2021 [5 favorites]

A few comments deleted. Let's avoid taking a hard swerve into North vs South Korea and what sound a lot like nationalism/compulsory birth/anti-immigrant talking points. This article is about a specific set of things and some specific manifestations of misogyny, and that swerve comes across as at-best-derailing from the author's actual points.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:32 AM on November 10, 2021 [4 favorites]

AlSweigart, thanks for the clarifications! I had misinterpreted your comment upthread a ways.
posted by eviemath at 9:57 AM on November 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

"....I grew up in the 80's, one of the most wildly misogynistic decades I can think of"
THANK YOU, deadaluspark. I had great hope growing up in the 70s. Graduated law school in 1984, and boy, was I bewildered. It took me a decade to look back and realize that I wasn't imagining it. I thought I just wasn't working hard enough.

Things are better for me now, since I have age and treachery on my side (fuck you, weasel junior associates), but I'm approaching retirement too quickly.
posted by Sweet Dee Kat at 11:07 AM on November 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

The people who reinforce systemic misogyny are misogynists

I think the problem with this is that there are women who reinforce systemic misogyny, and it seems very problematic and incorrect to call women misogynists, no?
posted by thedamnbees at 5:14 PM on November 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think the problem with this is that there are women who reinforce systemic misogyny, and it seems very problematic and incorrect to call women misogynists, no?

Women can be misogynists. I don't know why they couldn't be.

This is a really weird way to deflect blame off of people who reinforce misogyny.
posted by Anonymous at 5:32 PM on November 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

"I think the problem with this is that there are women who reinforce systemic misogyny, and it seems very problematic and incorrect to call women misogynists, no?"

Absolutely no. If you've read or watched "The Handmaid's Tale," a whooooooole bunch of that story is about how women are enlisted as enforcers of a violently misogynistic system. When the world is a patriarchy, women who acquiesce to the patriarchy and help enforce its precepts are rewarded by the patriarchy. I'm Gen X and grew up with the stereotype of the "cool girl," who "isn't like other girls" and who disdains female symbols, attitudes, and friendships in order to "be one of the guys" and be rewarded by the men who define who is cool and valuable and worthwhile. I cannot tell you the pressure we faced in high school to identify as a "cool girl" and to help the boys put other girls down and keep them in their place. It extended to what you ate in public, how you shopped, what you wore, how you talked about other girls. If one of the guys got snubbed by a girl who didn't want to date him, and said, "She's a bitch" and you dared to say, "I mean, she's actually really nice --" you would be banished to the cornfield and you too would become a bitch, and subject to the mockery, bullying, and rumormongering that the bitches all suffered (principally that you gave blow jobs indiscriminately, and also had STDs), which amounted to being socially exiled for the entire rest of high school. The social pressure that those cool boys could exert would mean that the girls they targeted as bitches would be ostracized by all their female friends as well, rather than risk becoming the victims of the male bullies. Girls literally transferred schools when they became the targets of the cool boys, typically for turning them down for dates or sex. But the enforcers of that regime were other girls, and it was always other girls who were called up before the dean of discipline for bullying. The boys made it very clear to the girls what would happen if they DIDN'T bully the female target of the boys' displeasure, and most of them -- us -- did it, rather than end up on the receiving end of the bullying too.

I freaking love salads, and have since I was a little kid. I never once ate a salad in public in high school, even when I really wanted to, because it would have labeled me as "the kind of girl who worries about what she eats," and therefore made me a target of bullying. And do you know who did most of that policing? Other girls. The boys didn't have to. They'd already made their views clear. I heard enough boys talk about how I was a "good" shopper (I'd go into the mall, grab a pair of jeans in my size, and go right back out) and other girls were "bad" shoppers (who tried lots of things on and spent a lot of time trying to look hot) that I knew I was supposed to make fun of girls who spent time in the dressing room. It was absolutely clear to me that if I wanted to maintain my very tenuous place in the high school hierarchy, I had to mock other girls and ensure they stayed below me. And if I refused to participate in the system, I would instead be sent to the bottom of the social order and targeted by all the boys and girls both. At least if I participated, I had some male defenders, who would ensure I was never thrown completely outside the system and forced to transfer.

So yeah, man, I was a misogynist. There's still a lot of misogyny I internalize (it's been a RIDE having a daughter who is All About Princesses, when was never ever my thing, even before the misogyny landed). The best thing that ever happened to me was accidentally joining an intentional women's community in college, where men's opinions were intentionally and explicitly excluded, and it was so incredibly freeing not to have men's opinions of women's deciding the women's relationships for us. It let me be a whole person for the first time since I was, gosh, 8 or so.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:04 PM on November 11, 2021 [15 favorites]

I’m not trying to deflect blame. I just think there might be people who enact or reinforce misogyny who are not motivated by a categorical hatred of women. As the article says, But it is we, as white women, who tend to enable [misogyny], in ways that may be more or less connected with the aim of self-preservation. It seems wrong to me to label all women who enable or participate in misogyny misogynists, particularly when they are only motivated by self-preservation. But I dunno, I’m interested in what other people here think about that.
posted by thedamnbees at 6:07 PM on November 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Thanks for that response Eyebrows. I definitely get that internalized misogyny is a very real thing, but I'm uncomfortable calling school-aged girls misogynists. Like, what chance did you have as a kid to overcome the pressures of a toxic, misogynistic society that you had no part in creating? It's a common feature of oppressive systems to recruit victims of that system to be enforcers, and I'm wary of collapsing the distinction between victim-perpetrators, and just plain perpetrators.
posted by thedamnbees at 8:14 PM on November 11, 2021

Unconscious misogyny is still misogyny. We don’t have to be deliberate about it and can still act in misogynistic ways. To the contrary, when swimming in patriarchy, we have to be deliberate about *countering* misogyny, also in our own acts and beliefs.
posted by meijusa at 5:50 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]

I definitely get that internalized misogyny is a very real thing, but I'm uncomfortable calling school-aged girls misogynists

Maybe not the school-aged girls (but actually sometimes them), but those girls grow up with those attitudes baked in. Like, I was a 90s teenage girl and so got the messages that women could do whatever they want (but the stuff men like is still better and more important.) And it is really, really easy to fall back on that messaging, without even realising that you are doing it.
posted by scorbet at 6:02 AM on November 12, 2021 [5 favorites]

Unconscious misogyny is still misogyny. We don’t have to be deliberate about it and can still act in misogynistic ways.

Agreed. How would this apply to something like the women’s suffrage movement though? Many of the women in that movement framed their arguments for women’s suffrage with patriarchal gender stereotypes. I think that’s an example of unconscious misogyny, but I would stop short of calling those women misogynists.
posted by thedamnbees at 6:26 AM on November 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

Many of the women in that movement framed their arguments for women’s suffrage with patriarchal gender stereotypes.

This may have been for tactical reasons, but I’m sure even suffragists were not free from all misogynistic beliefs. I’m a feminist and a woman, and I still catch myself mentally assigning more responsibility to women regarding home/parenting/social stuff or giving men more benefit of the doubt for work-related competence or feeling a bit weird when my son wants to wear a dress. Much less over time, but it’s still a mixed bag. We contain multitudes and mixed emotions and old and new and absorbed and thought-through beliefs.
posted by meijusa at 8:17 AM on November 12, 2021 [4 favorites]

It's almost as if misogyny is a characteristic that people can exhibit, rather than an identity that people are either 100% or 0% aligned with.
posted by eviemath at 1:01 PM on November 12, 2021 [14 favorites]

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