Misogyny and Jealousy - two of the most misused words on the net

[shadowkat]

You know you are getting older and potentially spinterish - when you get social networking invites to join meetupclub's which either are just below your age range or at it. I turn 42 next month and just got a NoDating Cafe meetup group invite for a group that has an age range from 22-42.

Have today off and getting relatively little down per usual. I did clean my apartment - sort of. Vaccummed. Cleaned the shower and the kitchen floor. Am blatantly ignoring the fridge as well as my desk and closet, not to mention the book shelves which, ahem, have books stacked every which way and two layered upon them. I either need to get rid of some of my books or buy more and bigger book shelves. The former would help with the allergies. Have made the decision to borrow books from friends, family, and the library from hereon in - let's see how long this resolution lasts. I also wrote numerous posts on the internet, as you know. Sort of stating the obvious there. And read numerous posts - which you don't know, because I seldom write responses - tend to be long-winded and prone to stick my foot in mouth.

Speaking of foot in mouth commenting...

I have been resisting the urge to post mocking responses to self-righteous rants about how Dollhouse or such and such is sooo misogynist. People, please, look up the word. Here, I'll do it for you. Misogynist means "hatred of women". It does not mean patronizing women or belittling women or treating women as your sex slave or having mommy issues or having an urgent need to protect women, or seeing them as little girls, infantile, and ignorant or even animals. It means "hate". People have been using misogyny as a catch-all phrase for every remotely anti-feminist thing they can think of.

Granted, I'm the last person to bitch about word syntax - since I misuse words half the time. But this one's not hard. And misusing it is making you look like an idiot.

Hint: if a character races to save a woman or a book shows a guy trying to save a girl. It is not misogynistic. If a character opens a door for a woman. He is not misogynistic. If he makes love to her or enjoys having sex with her - he is most likely not misogynistic.

He may well be paternalistic or chauvinistic. But not misogynistic.

Mad Men is not misogynistic. Paternalistic? Sure. But that's the industry it is portraying and the time period. People acted like that back then. Heck they act like that now. I know, I've interacted with that industry.

People do the same silly things with the word jealousy - confusing it with envy.

I always laugh when folks write: I'm so jealous of you, you are going to Europe. (Uhm okay, so you are jealouse because the person has stolen or taken away your trip to go to your Europe?) or I'm so jealous of your house. (Right, so, the house has taken your friend from you? You are competing with the house for your friend's attention? That's what jealousy means - it means that you are jealous of something you love's relationship with something else. Example - I am jealous of my husband's relationship with my cat. The cat likes my husband now more than me.)

Apparently, I can be as nit-picky about certain things as the next person. Good to know. Might make me a bit more tolerant of the nit-picky responses and rants I see online. Also, makes me realize how easy it is to misunderstand one another - when we use the wrong words or syntax in our writing. I feel really sorry for the people online who are using computers or dictionaries to translate posts that are in languages other than their own. We are not making this easy, are we?

Comments

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Big word about the misuse of "misogyny". Its excessive and inappropriate use is not just a matter of imprecise language; it coarsens our conversation about issues that really do need to be given nuanced and thoughtful consideration.

And good to call attention to the distinction between jealousy and envy: I've no doubt failed to make it myself, but our language is prettiest when we do attend to the nuance. Now I can add this one to my arsenal.

And I wish I could recall other places where imprecise use of terms causes real problems. But all I can think of is my annoyance that people don't know when to use "less" as compared to "fewer". Fox canonized the misuse in one of its blurbs "Less commercials!!!" during Dollhouse. But that's not the same sort of problem as losing the nuance of our vocabulary, which is a real shame in a language as vocabulary-rich as English. Ugh. Can't recall one instance of the many times that sort of real blurring of meaning has bothered me.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I think one of the reasons the misuse of misogyny bugs me so much - is it is often used to brow-beat fans of a character or storyline. I've seen a lot of people online use the word as a weapon. A lot of men, interestingly enough, and usually along the lines of - how can women be interested in such a misogynistic character or storyline?

Using the word in that way, undermines its meaning and makes further discussion impossible.

[joe-sweden.livejournal.com]

Reading your point about less and fewer reminded me of something (something I'd been talking about the context of a conversation about less and fewer). There are some instances of purposeful incorrect usage that I can get behind, as part of language change-for-the-better.

So, like in Mean Girls where that girl is "trying to make "fetch" happen", I'm trying to make "they" happen as a singular as well as plural usage as a gender neutral pronoun, in place of he/she or some annoying neologistic alternative.

The French have some words that can be both singular and plural, depending on the context (eg vous - both polite singular and plural version of "you"), so why can't we?

Sometimes, a word that's wrong historically can become correct, if enough people use it on purpose, and in this instance, I think we really need it. I don't think using either he or she as a "neutral" is really going to work. If you use he, that perpetuates badness of the proper-human-people-have-a-penis-unless-proved-otherwise variety. And using "she" is often just confusing, because it makes me assume it's a woman.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Lately what I've seen people do with she/he is just that she/he. Or "hir". One individual online got very upset when I called them her, she/he inisted I use "hir".

In the latin languages, specifically French, if I recall - a lot of the words are either feminine or masculaine. The feminine nouns would have "e" at the end of them. While the masculaine would not. We'd end up with two versions of the same word - one with an "e" for the feminine and one without for the masculain.

Made life very confusing for me when I wrote in English and had to remember not to put "e"'s at the end of certain words. I still do it.

"Suite" as opposed to "suit" is just one example - of how this confused me.

Vous - in French, is either plural or formal. It is what you would call your teacher or a friend of a parent or an authority figure - you would use the pronoun "vous", while "tu" is informal and you use that for friends. French has informal and formal speech - English does too, actually - just read an academic journal. But the pronouns in English aren't always as formal.

Both languages do however specify gender - English is not alone in that. Neither language has found a way to handle someone who may not fit within either category, as far as I can tell. IT seems a bit nasty. S/He a bit hard to do orally. They? Too distant. You may have to make up a word.