(no subject)
Naamah makes a nice post here about misogyny (warning, it's kinda sweary maybe NWS and your W). Anyway I wanted to pick up on a small part of it.
here's a widespread attitude that stuff on the individual, personal level doesn't count as misogyny -- one guy being an asshole to one woman does not count as misogyny. It absolutely does count. We are talking about a pattern, and a pattern is made up of individual incidents.
That's something I think is very true, but also very hard to *implement* as being part of how-you-live. Because, say, you have a friend and one day that friend says "please help me with my house moving", well, sure, that is a totally reasonable request from one friend to another and you say "sure, I'm capable of that and have free time so I will come and lift things". And that would be fine and normal - you might say "no, sorry, I'm busy/ill/a total wuss" or something and that would be fine and normal too!
So of course you never say "NO WAI, horrid demanding nasty-person that you are!" because that would be unreasonable.
But the next week maybe they say "please help me to mow my lawn" and the next week it's "I need someone to drive me over to the hardware store to pick up this wood" and then "I need someone to come and help with my shelving" and so on and so forth. And each and every one of these examples (and many hundreds of other requests) are things that I put in the "sure, I have the time, effort and tuits for this task" box (well, actually, I'm shit at driving but I do have a licence; I should be your last choice but in an emergency I can do it) and also in the "friends do things for friends" box. None of these many things are *individually* unreasonable.
But at what point do you say "actually, no, I've done lots of things to help you and this is simply asking too much?". That's very hard to define really - and it depends on lots of things (such as how many of *your* DIY projects this friends has assisted with). Do you just say "oh, sorry, I have to go and do made-up-important-thing" or do you tell them "no, my computer game is much more important" or do you shout at them about how mean they are?
And it's the same with lots of sexist crap. Any *individual* incident could simply be part of a normal polite interaction, any *individual* job you didn't get, or promotion you were passed over for and so on could simply be part of the normal give-and-take win-some-lose-some of normal life. You don't want to scream obscenities at every man who holds a door open; you don't want to take every company that doesn't hire you to court - but at some point, some extremely poorly defined point, you realise that it's not just a series of isolated incidents but rather a pattern of people behaving badly towards you.
And then if you go on to complain about *one* incident - because people like to give examples when they talk about things, or at least *I* like to give examples - then people say "oh, well, obviously that could just have been..." and they sound of course very reasonable, because it *could*, and obviously since you have been brought to complete breaking point by the heaps of crap because otherwise you WOULD NOT HAVE BROUGHT IT UP you are probably not in the best position to sound reasonable! And then of course it's all about how "women are so emotional" and "you should think clearly rather than emotionally" which is all just so much shit.
And that leads me to digress slightly. I really fucking hate it when people say "oh, you shouldn't bottle it all up, you should talk about it" especially when these are the EXACT SAME PEOPLE who complain about the "drama" and say "oh, but when you complain about what I do I don't like it" or who say "fuck this shit, I don't want to put up with you daring to expect me to listen to your opinion, if you don't want to just sit there and take everything I throw at you, well then, I'm not going to talk to you any more". It's disgusting. Don't force people to talk about their problems to you unless you are actually prepared to listen, and preferably to attempt to do something actively useful to help.
here's a widespread attitude that stuff on the individual, personal level doesn't count as misogyny -- one guy being an asshole to one woman does not count as misogyny. It absolutely does count. We are talking about a pattern, and a pattern is made up of individual incidents.
That's something I think is very true, but also very hard to *implement* as being part of how-you-live. Because, say, you have a friend and one day that friend says "please help me with my house moving", well, sure, that is a totally reasonable request from one friend to another and you say "sure, I'm capable of that and have free time so I will come and lift things". And that would be fine and normal - you might say "no, sorry, I'm busy/ill/a total wuss" or something and that would be fine and normal too!
So of course you never say "NO WAI, horrid demanding nasty-person that you are!" because that would be unreasonable.
But the next week maybe they say "please help me to mow my lawn" and the next week it's "I need someone to drive me over to the hardware store to pick up this wood" and then "I need someone to come and help with my shelving" and so on and so forth. And each and every one of these examples (and many hundreds of other requests) are things that I put in the "sure, I have the time, effort and tuits for this task" box (well, actually, I'm shit at driving but I do have a licence; I should be your last choice but in an emergency I can do it) and also in the "friends do things for friends" box. None of these many things are *individually* unreasonable.
But at what point do you say "actually, no, I've done lots of things to help you and this is simply asking too much?". That's very hard to define really - and it depends on lots of things (such as how many of *your* DIY projects this friends has assisted with). Do you just say "oh, sorry, I have to go and do made-up-important-thing" or do you tell them "no, my computer game is much more important" or do you shout at them about how mean they are?
And it's the same with lots of sexist crap. Any *individual* incident could simply be part of a normal polite interaction, any *individual* job you didn't get, or promotion you were passed over for and so on could simply be part of the normal give-and-take win-some-lose-some of normal life. You don't want to scream obscenities at every man who holds a door open; you don't want to take every company that doesn't hire you to court - but at some point, some extremely poorly defined point, you realise that it's not just a series of isolated incidents but rather a pattern of people behaving badly towards you.
And then if you go on to complain about *one* incident - because people like to give examples when they talk about things, or at least *I* like to give examples - then people say "oh, well, obviously that could just have been..." and they sound of course very reasonable, because it *could*, and obviously since you have been brought to complete breaking point by the heaps of crap because otherwise you WOULD NOT HAVE BROUGHT IT UP you are probably not in the best position to sound reasonable! And then of course it's all about how "women are so emotional" and "you should think clearly rather than emotionally" which is all just so much shit.
And that leads me to digress slightly. I really fucking hate it when people say "oh, you shouldn't bottle it all up, you should talk about it" especially when these are the EXACT SAME PEOPLE who complain about the "drama" and say "oh, but when you complain about what I do I don't like it" or who say "fuck this shit, I don't want to put up with you daring to expect me to listen to your opinion, if you don't want to just sit there and take everything I throw at you, well then, I'm not going to talk to you any more". It's disgusting. Don't force people to talk about their problems to you unless you are actually prepared to listen, and preferably to attempt to do something actively useful to help.