So apparently I’m way off base with this “misogyny” thing. For example, I have been under the impression that I have been finding misogynistic stuff in the Men’s Rights subreddit, like, all the time. With upvotes, and everything. But evidently I’m wrong.
Because now ignatiusloyola, one of the subreddit mods, has done a very scientific study that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that, well, whatever misogyny is there is officially not a big damn deal.
Ig explains his protocol:
I did a quick scan of the first 400 comments on the list (100/page, 4 pages in). I scanned for words like “cunt” and “whore”, and read the context of these. I looked for the words “woman” and “women”, and read the context of these. I looked for “suffrage” and “vote” also.
I found two comments that used the word “cunt”, one of them was used to describe men, the other to describe a specific woman. The only instances of “whore” were “attention whore”.
There were two comments involving the word “woman” that generalized women with negative stereotypes.
“Suffrage” and “vote” instances did not involve any context that suggested that women did not deserve the right to vote.
How a person defines “hatred of women”, either loosely (suggestive from context, rather than explicit) or strictly (explicit statements), it is pretty clear that out of 400 comments, very few are misogynistic.
Does misogyny exist? Yes. But it does not seem to be a significant contribution to r/MensRights. At best, people are seeing a few comments and focusing on their existence while ignoring the rest.
It’s a lot like that time Michael Richards did that standup routine, and everyone focused on that one word he said, totally ignoring all the other words he used that were totally not racist slurs. I mean, yeah, he said that word a bunch of times, but it still made up a very small percentage of all the words he used that evening.
So that’s that, then. Misogyny, officially not a problem!
Or that would have been that, had Ig not actually posted about his experiment to the subreddit he had just proved was, like, totally non-misogynistic:
Because it turned out that a couple of the fellas had an issue with Ig’s methodology. In particular, that stuff about female suffrage. Because, apparently, you can totally be against women having the right to vote and still not be a misogynist. As zyk0s put it (garnering upvotes in the process):
[T]here’s the matter of female suffrage. I really don’t see how suggesting women should not have been granted the right to vote is misogyny. It might be motivated by it, but not necessarily so, and treating it as such is akin to criminalizing holocaust denial: it’s censorship, pure and simple, and if [1] /r/MR wants to keep calling itself an open space where ideas are not silenced, that attitude has to change.
Our friend Demonspawn went even further(and got a few upvotes himself):
Suggesting that the government works better without the women’s vote is not misogyny. It’s an analysis of the facts and the consequences of allowing women’s suffrage.
Suggesting that women retain the right to vote without the corresponding responsibilities that men face is misandry.
So there you have it. The Men’s Rights subreddit doesn’t have a misogyny problem; if anything, it’s a hotbed of misandry.
I wish they’d just own it already.
I wish they’d just say “yes, we’re misogynists, because women really do suck” instead of playing the “we’re not misogynists, but women suck” game forever.
Shit, if everything they believe about women were true, it would be irrational for a person to not be a misogynist!
So… his personal estimation of the context is better than mine because?
We are both men, and I see lots of misogyny there, in the context of the comments, and the tenor of the conversation.
SCIENCE! It doesn’t work like that.
The definition seems to bother them. Misogyny can mean any sort of general aversion towards women.
Yeah, confirms my suspicions. They don’t think the shit they spew is misogynist because they don’t see a problem with misogynist thinking.
@Cliff Pervocracy
Did ya ever think that maybe, just maybe, a majority modern women lack any redeeming qualities. Look in the mirror. You’re life revolves around the tired old trope of woman= good, man = bad.
If you were honest, you’d admit the MSM spends the majority of it’s effort in demonizing men. But to do that, you’d have to admit women spend the majority of their time ridiculing men, while offering nothing but their existance as proof of their perfection.
What do women offer other than empty words professing how good they are?
Ig does some nifty magic to explain away misogyny there, I wonder if he’s available for parties.
Like Cliff said, just own it already. Maybe they’ll feel better once they do–all that pretzel logic can’t be comfortable.
“If you call one woman a wh*re, that’s not misogyny, cuz it’s only one, not all of them!”
“If you call a man a c*nt, that’s not misogyny, cuz he’s a man, duh!!”
“If you say they shouldn’t vote that’s not misogyny, because, duh!!”
Yeah. We totally get it. You don’t think anything short of saying ‘I hate all women’ is misogyny. You think saying ‘I hate all women (except those precious few rare jewels who agree with me)’ means that you are CLEAN of the accusation.
Ugh. I feel unclean.
When you look at this and Tom Martin’s Totally Scientific YouTube Surveys, you have to remember that those people are deluded enough to think that they’re doing *BETTER* research than the average sociology or gender studies academic.
Maybe they’re thinking—and I use that word advisedly—that “it isn’t misogyny if I’m saying something I believe is true.” Kind of like the legal maxim that “truth is a defense to an accusation of libel.” Except, you know, they’re delusional.
Also, not the worst or dumbest thing in that screed, but srsly, just because “c*nt” was used against a man doesn’t automatically make it not misogynist. Pretty much any time you’re using a slang word for a part of the female body in a derogatory fashion, it’s misogynist because it suggests female bodies are bad, dirty, defunct, etc. Particularly the sex organs, which are usually what the derogatory terms refer to anyway.
To be fair, BlackBloc, they have proven with science that peer review is misandry.
/sarcasm
“I’m not a bigot because I don’t *feel* like a bigot!”
@Cliff, if we’re getting wishes, I wish they’d get over their issues and realize that hating women is kind of stupid and pathetic. It’s about as likely as wishing that they’d in fact admit they’re misogynists.
Apparently the reason they’re so insistent about not being misogynists is that they think misogyny is illegal and will be censored.
Which shows a remarkable lack of perception on many different levels.
There’s a difference between “criminalizing holocaust denial” and “identifying holocaust denial as both factually wrong and hateful,” and they don’t seem to get that. (Maybe because they’re too privileged to know what it feels like when something they do is actually criminalized.)
And that’s why they never silence any ideas, no matter how hateful, unless those ideas are “hey, maybe the MRM isn’t right about everything.”
That is somewhat more… direct, mythago.
I changed my wish and now it’s for the end of poverty, violence, and injustice, because shit, as long as we’re wishing.
I know how this game works. First, they say that women are incompetent to fight in the military. Next, they complain that women don’t have to register for Selective Service. Finally, they say that means women are shirking their responsibilities and therefore shouldn’t have equal rights. It’s a rigged game meant to keep women “in their place”.
This has to be one of the funniest things I’ve read so far.
Ig: r/mrers never talk of denying women the vote, so take your damned accusations of misogyny with you!!
r/mrers: Oh yeah, we’ll show you!! Also, take your damned accusations of misogyny with you!!
Ig (if had any sense of self awareness): /facepalm
@Shadow: I imagine Ig standing there, a big, cheesy grin fixed on his face, muttering through his teeth, “Ix-nay, ix-nay!” while the turds he’s trying to polish actively jump out of his hands.
… wow, I’m not good with metaphors.
@Falconer
All I have to say is:
EWWWW dude!! I just pictured that!!!
I prefer the much nicer idea of this reaction 😛
Sorry, Shadow.
Guess I’m crap at thinking twice before posting 🙁
“I wish they’d just own it already.
I wish they’d just say “yes, we’re misogynists, because women really do suck” instead of playing the “we’re not misogynists, but women suck” game forever.
Shit, if everything they believe about women were true, it would be irrational for a person to not be a misogynist!”
They can’t Cliff, they are cowards. They’ve found the perfect way to pretend to be some sort of culture warrior but without having to actually do anything.
*ahahahahahahaha*
I am actually involved in a team research project involving me, two linguists, two sociologists (one a statistician, one an ethnographer), and a psychology, using digital technologies (including a customizable spider-bot we got grant funding to create), where we will be downloading and cleaning data from the internet (into a searchable database, called a corpus), for analysis using both electronic and human application of current methodologies in lingistics, psychology, and sociology, in order to analyze discourse patterns. My part of the project involves, among other things, sociolinguistic analysis of different types of racism (jim crow racism vs. aversive racism), using Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s schema from Racism without Racists. Others will be using other validated methodologies.
I’ve actually been thinking of adding some databases based on the MRA vs. feminist blogs, and the FTB’s debates over sexism and racism in atheism down the line (my general focus is sort of “social justice work on the internet”).
So, yeah, SOCIAL science. Not done by skimming a few posts and word counting based on YOUR (IG) idea of what “misogyny” is.
*snorts some more*
(If any of you would like more info, drop me an email at ithiliana @ hotmail.com and I can link you to my academic blog)
But then they’d have to admit feminists are actually right about something.
Ithiliana: I started reading your comment and thought it was the setup for a “X, X and X walk into a bar” joke. 😛
Also, this: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lix2uhX9wb1qzamioo1_500.jpg
/silly
@Ithiliana: Grant-funded, custom-built spider robots give me all the envies, in social science or otherwise.
@Shade: I’ve never had a caster high-level enough to summon a spider that big.
I’m holding out for being able to summon a celestial tyrannosaurus rex.