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

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on how you interpret the definition, doesn't it?

I still see it as being worried or resentful of a rival taking something away from you or something you possess or are in competition for.

A trip to europe - is open to both people. Either can take it.
You can be envious of the person taking the trip. But jealous doesn't seem to make much sense? Unless of course you were planning on taking a trip with the friend say to Costa Rica - and the friend dumped you and took a trip to Europe instead.
Then I suppose you could be jealous of the trip to Europe.
The trip to Europe took your friend away from your trip.

At least that is my interpretation of the definitions listed above. "Rival" - is usually someone who is competition with you for something or can take something away - whether they are merely perceived as a rival or actual. Often with "jealousy" - they are perceived as a rival and not actually one.

Envy is when you covet what someone else has. Such as I covet your ability to go to Europe with a friend or I covet that new house or car that you purchased. Envy is often used as another word for covet.

While jealous is often used as another word for - I fear you are taking something I care about away from me. I am jealous of your relationship with my child. My child seems to prefer your company to mine and wants you as his mother.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Envy is not mere covetousness. Covetousness is an inordinate desire for what someone else has, without necessarily any accompanying feeling about the person or about their having the thing. Envy involves that "painful or resentful awareness"; in envy, you don't just want the thing, you feel pain or resentment that the other person has it.

These are all fine differences, and for practical purposes in everyday colloquial English, the words are often interchangeable.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

[As an aside, I agree with your last statement. I think Misogyny doesn't quite fit in the same category as envy and jealousy do. Since it has a much clearer meaning.]

Uh, I beg to differ. I think if you are resentful that someone has something - you do want it yourself. You do covet it.
Why else would you feel envy? I'm not going envy your house, if part of me wouldn't life to have it too.

Granted I may not "desire" it or desperately want to have it.
I may even, if I think about it, realize I don't really want it.

Envy is what happens when you see something that you didn't want or even think about wanting or coveting, until suddenly it's been thrown in your face. Commericials play on this emotion quite a bit. We don't feel jealousy when we watch the beautiful model hop in the beautiful corvet, we feel envy - or rather I do, since I hate to drive and don't really want the corvet - but I do when I watch that commericial. I covet that corvett. I desire it. And I am envious of the model who is driving it.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Sigh, and yes, I know, I used the wrong its again.

[atpo-onm.livejournal.com]

The way I remembered it was that jealousy involved a person, but envy involved a thing.

Thus, you could be jealous of a person who owned a nice house, but you are envious of the house itself.

As you know all too well, the meanings of words migrate and change through long term usage, and it wouldn;t surprise me if in another 50 or 100 years the distinction between terms such as these could be lost and they'll become essentially synonyms.

I was a long term abuser of the its/it's usage. In my defense it still makes little sense to me that an "'s" denotes possession in just about every case except when after the word "it".

Is that the cat's food?

Yes, that's its food.

But the usage that really drives me batty along the lines of "This just can't be right..." is:

The President this Wednesday gave a heated speech to the unruly Republicans. (Supposedly the correct syntax.)

vs.

This Wednesday, the President gave a heated speech...(etc).

The second one sounds right to me. The first one always sounds wrong, as wrong as if I heard someone say:

The President this Wednesday gave a speech heated to the Republicans unruly.

(Although in some other languages, the latter would be syntactically correct.)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I think the reason they (the Henry Higgins of the world) decided to make its (the possessive form) as opposed to "it's"
is to prevent confusion.

Think about it. If I wrote - "Yes, It has a tail and five whiskers. And by the way it's Sunday today, so we will be taking it to the vet." You'd wonder - wait - Sunday is owned by "it". Unless of course you knew that it's - means it is.
And its is the possessive.

Granted that may not be the best example. Also, we should technically speaking be able to figure out from the context of the sentence what it's means. That's how I do it anyway. But not everyone can do that - so it's/its rule is set up to help the poor fools who can't do written contextual analysis. ;-)

Agree on your other points.