Rumination on misogyny.

[malthaussen]

23. Feelings, mythology, are subjective.

I think this is where quite a bit of difficulty arises. One asks for immutable definitions of conditions that are inherently subjective, and by seeking to impose those definitions, unintentionally undermine the validity of the feeling. Say the definition of misogyny is "hatred of women." What constitutes "hatred?" Is there an objective standard? Or is it one of those messy things you know when you see it? It is precisely because misogyny covers a multitude of sins, that a recent poster made a list of misogynistic indicators, and was then accused of creating a means test. See the difficulty there?

"Misogyny means different things to different people." Indeed. But when a person says, "I have been attacked," they are using the word with their own meaning, and if you wish to communicate with that person, you must understand and agree to that meaning. Or seek to impose your own meaning on that person, which would seem to be a denial that he has experienced what the discussion is about. You may ask for clarification if you don't understand, you may ruefully confess that you don't get it, but to say to someone "that is not what you experienced because my definition is different" is, patently, dismissive. And to flip that and say the other is equally dismissive, because he will not agree to your definition, is to forget that he is the one claiming offense, not you.

Now, in terms of the legal process, of questions of right, since these must be codified to be enforced, they must be defined as precisely as possible. Yet even statutory law often falls short of precise definition. I was once ticketed for driving with a bumper sticker that was claimed to violate a statute prohibiting "vulgar or obscene" language. No more precise definition was embodied. As it happens, the ticket was thrown out on a wholly unrelated technicality, but this is one example where even statutory law doesn't help us much in defining what is to be regulated.

As to your last point, it might "stand to reason" if there were an objective definition that completely covered the phenomenon. But there is not. But a person knows when he feels attacked. Certainly, attack may have been the farthest thing from the other's mind, and the controversy might be all a terrible misunderstanding. But there is a world of differnce in responding "I had no intention of attacking," and "you were not attacked." It is the latter response that most reliably tends to drive people up the wall.

-- Mal