On the internet, it is common to call a guy a misogynist, but what is the exact meaning of misogynist? Is it 1. A guy who hates women? Or 2. a guy who thinks men are superior. Or 3. A guy who believes in women should follow traditional norms like cooking. 

  • @bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
    18•1 year ago

    I think any of those three could be called misogynist. It’s a pretty flexible term. It just means someone who is prejudiced against women.

  • @surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
    31•1 year ago

    These aren’t different things. If you “hate” women, you think little of them. You think you’re better than them. You think they’re dumb baby machines that belong in the kitchen.

    If you do #2 or #3, you also do #1 even if you don’t think you do.

      • @Nefara@lemmy.world
        3•1 year ago

        All wives in all relationships ever? So does that mean your dad thinks all men live in filth? Do gay men all unanimously hire house cleaners? Are gay women the only people he thinks deserve equitable labor division in the home?

        That’s a funny kind of “respect”. I think most people share a different definition of it.

      • AdaEnglish
        7•1 year ago

        he thinks wife should do all the house work

        my father always respects women

        No he doesn’t…

      • Jojo
        11•1 year ago

        my father respects women he just thinks his wife should do all of the house work. [Paraphrased]

        I would venture to say that if your father thinks his wife should do all the house work because she is a woman, then that is, in fact, misogyny (he is not actually respecting her in this case).

        If he thinks she should do all the housework because they’ve talked and she really is happier in the role of homemaker and has chosen that as her life path while he has chosen to work a job that pays well enough to enable that, well then in that case it isn’t necessarily misogyny. But that is just about the only case in which it isn’t, including if she accepted being the homemaker but didn’t or wouldn’t have chosen it over a career if that seemed more feasible.

          • Jojo
            5•1 year ago

            Can you explain how to expect a wife to do housework is hate for women. I know both are wrong but still those are two different things

            Because the only thing that makes a wife different from a husband is the fact that she’s a woman. There is nothing inherently “womanly” or “wifely” about housework, and expecting her to do it all must involve thinking there is: an unjustified prejudice exclusively reserved for women. I.e. misogyny.

              • Jojo
                4•1 year ago

                I think you are confusing gender roles with misogyny

                When gender roles put an undue and unwanted burden on women, when they become a rule, that is misogyny. If they were putting an extra, unwanted burden on men it would be misandry, but that is a much less used term simply because it’s so much less prevalent.

  • pocopene
    -1•1 year ago

    There’s a sort of misogynistic that thinks women are superior to men (and I assume that’s the reason they “hate” women). Spanish director Luis Garcia Berlanga would an example.

  • @curiousaur@reddthat.com
    38•1 year ago

    If anyone is wondering why this person thinks it common to call a guy a misogynist, look at this guy’s post history.

          • purplexed
            4•1 year ago

            Real talk here bro, stop worrying about making yourself “perfect” for someone, or rather anyone, else. Stop trying to make yourself what you idolize, or what you perceive to be idolized.

            You are you, you are a person. Take care of yourself first. You need to change your mentality and realize that you do have redeeming qualities. You need to focus on those.

            Learn to love yourself first, trust me on this one.

      • @radicalautonomy@lemmy.world
        6•1 year ago

        No woman is going to want to date you, and it’s not because you are short and ugly, it’s because you hate yourself, you paint all women with an impossibly shallow brush, you have a shit personality, and you have an unwillingness to do even a modicum of work to learn, grow, and improve yourself, choosing instead to wallow in self-pity. Quit whining and become a better person.

        There, just saved you $10,000 in therapy bills.

      • @Nefara@lemmy.world
        11•1 year ago

        In your posts you make a lot of sweeping generalizations about all women being this or that without seeming to recognize that half of all the humans on earth are women. It’s not like we’re some subset or subclass or minority. There is basically no statement you could make that could actually apply to ALL women. So perhaps why you are running into people using this term with you is that you are ignoring a women’s personhood.

        If some guy with blond hair was a jerk to you, would you go online and complain about how all blond people are jerks and they don’t like you and you don’t understand why they’re all so hostile? You would probably recognize that that one person was just a jerk. Then if you were a jerk to every blond person you met from then on, based on that experience, they would probably all respond to you poorly back and just feed a loop of nastiness and resentment.

        If you don’t want to be a misogynist, then you must learn and remember that every woman is a person of their own, with their own personalities and histories and just as many idiosyncrasies, faculties, and basic rights as any man.

      • @curiousaur@reddthat.com
        2•1 year ago

        It’s not about how you look. You’re just a bad person with a shit personality. That’s why no one likes you. You need to be a better person and get off the Internet, because it seems like it’s a big part of your problem, or you need to give up.

  • Lowlee Kun
    3•1 year ago

    1 and 2 for sure. 3 if he believes this for all women to be true. Not so much if he only wishes his partner to be traditional. This however needs to be communicated and also wished by the to be house wife. Not so hard really. We are all humans with the same rights, no matter how we look down there or what hormons we got flowing through our veins. Just as we want respect and freedom we need to grant that to those around us. Or face judgement by our peers.

  • @quindraco@lemm.ee
    6•1 year ago

    Let’s break this down.

    1. Not all misogynists are guys.
    2. “Misogyny” is like “homophobia” - the literal definition applies, so it includes people who actively hate women, but it’s much broader in scope than that. 2A. All three of your examples are examples of misogyny.
  • @Nefara@lemmy.world
    15•1 year ago

    I think it can boil down to not recognizing the personhood of women. That the infinite complexity that can come from a rich tapestry woven of culture, personality, ability, interests and experiences can be shoved into a narrow and limited role. A misogynist will only see a sex doll, or a maid, or a baby making machine etc, and then judge a woman’s worth based on how well they fit in that role. If a woman doesn’t perform the roles that person expects or desires then they get angry and hateful that this other human being didn’t meet those unreasonable expectations of them.

    Misogynists might not think they hate women, just that a woman doesn’t “belong” working in a machine shop. They might not consciously think men are superior, but they see certain tasks associated with women (cleaning, care work, teaching) as low value, undesirable or less worthy of respect. They might not actively choose how to divide domestic tasks, but will say that women are “naturally” better at them. And just to be clear, plenty of women are misogynists too.

    Not being a misogynist involves seeing women as equally valid and worthy humans on the same bases you would judge any other person (IE, a man).

  • @nottelling@lemmy.worldEnglish
    52•1 year ago

    Or how about, rather than your narrow, specific 3 definitions, a fourth thing, such as how it’s phrased in the wiki:

    Misogyny is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than men.

    The emphasis there is why you’re being called names on the internet. If you’re advocating systems or societal norms of gender oppression, you’re being misogynist. This remains true even if you’re not doing it intentionally.

    The world we live in is deeply patriarchal, so it can be hard to see these problems, because the views and opinions you’ve got are just “normal”. Something being the norm doesn’t mean it isn’t oppressive, and having an opinion doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider the impacts of that opinion.

    Generally, if someone calls you a misogynist, and you go “bUt I rEsPeCt wOmEn”, you might want to take a little time to figure out where it’s coming from. It can certainly be real without fitting in your 3 tidy little self-serving definitions.

    I’ll also point out that you can replace nearly every instance of misogyny in this thread with racism, and replace women with black, and it would be the same discussion. Or you could swap misogyny/women with misandry/men. Oppression is oppression, no matter who holds the power.

    • @WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      6•1 year ago

      I’m a little confused. I see you accusing OP of saying things against women and then you go on to call him a slur that is specifically offensive to women, but none of those comments in the picture are the ones you’re accusing OP of saying.

      Either I’m missing something, or there is quite the irony here.

      Edit: Just read OP’s comment history, and yeah, seems to be a jerk and a misogynist. I still think your choice to call him a c*nt was a bit ironic in context though.

      • @radicalautonomy@lemmy.world
        5•1 year ago

        The United States is the only country I know of in which that insult is considered misogynistic, and even then only when it is directed toward a woman. OP is not a woman, and, even though I reside in the United States, I do not consider myself an American. Regarding its offensiveness to women, yes, some women do consider it offensive. If any of them are reading this, then they can go ahead and be offended if they wish, that is their right. But the C-word is not misogynistic. Misogyny involves tools of gendered oppression, the way the N-word has long been a tool of racist oppression. The C-word has never had that sort of power.

        If I had called him a “pussy”, then that is something different because it implies cowardice, as though people who own one are cowards. If I had accused him of having a small penis, then that would have been body-shaming and uncool. But cunt? Dick? Asshole? They are just words indicating someone is a jerk, which OP most certainly is.

        I have done a lot…like, a lot of work on the vocabulary I employ. I have nothing but feminist men, women, and enbies in my circle, and we all hold each other accountable for the language we use. We shun ableist terms (“lame”, “crazy”), sex-shaming (“slut”), poverty-shaming (“white-trash”, “ghetto”), and a whole host of other very common terms in modern parlance. And, while a couple women I’ve known have had a distaste for the word “cunt”, they just didn’t like the way it sounded.

        All this being said, thank you for what you do by trying to hold me accountable for the language I use.