Valkyrie-Lemons wrote:Yet again, I did not say this. And FYI, I'm one of those people, I've never even kissed a girl. I'm pretty sure I was insulting (admittedly maybe in a generalised, and harsh way) misogynists who never had sex.
I understand that. The question is, why are you insulting misogynists who have never had sex, rather than just insulting misogynists? Are misogynists who have sex any better because they have sex, and therefore in no need of being insulted? Are misogynists who don't have sex worse because they don't? Are you using the fact they don't have sex as an insult because it's easier than insulting them for what they actually did wrong?
You never outright said that sex is a reward or that people who don't have sex are losers. But the way you decided to insult those people showed some bias and a possible underlying view you may have without even being fully aware of it. Whether they have had sex or not has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Not with their attitude, not with their comments, not with their misogyny. Misogynists who have sex don't stop being misogynistic. Non-misogynists who don't have sex don't randomly start developing misogynistic views the longer they go without.
Imagine instead if you had said, for instance "they must have had terrible grades at school. I bet they're dropouts". Wouldn't that be a weird thing to say? Instead of insulting them for what they actually did wrong, you assume something else about them that has no basis, and decide that you would rather insult them for this something else than the actual problem.
Of course, getting bad grades or dropping out of high school doesn't make anyone a misogynist, nor does it make anyone stupid. Some brilliant people have dropped out of school, and of course some horrible people made it all the way to PhDs and the like. The issues are just different issues, and by saying "I bet they had bad grades", you're not insulting the misogynists, you're insulting people who had bad grades.
Well suggesting they are virgins is also a weird leap to make. The fact that you made that leap seems to imply you do make some of those judgements, even if you don't say it outright or don't even think about them.
Valkyrie-Lemons wrote:Avistew wrote:If these people are assholes, insult them by saying they aren't respectable, not by saying that women who are willing to have sex with them (as your subsequent posts seem to clarify as what you meant) aren't respectable.
Honest question.
If you were at a party and saw (in your terms) a very attractive guy who was clearly being misogynistic, would you want anything to do with them? If your friend, or someone you knew, then started to hang around them, would you say anything to them? If you did and they didn't care about their misogyny, would you just walk away and not think anything differently about them?
I wouldn't lose respect for a friend. I would worry about them. If they were just talking to the guy, then well, politics and all that, it makes sense to want to be friendly with people at a party and they probably won't ever see him again. But most likely, I wouldn't really notice because I don't spend my time monitoring my friends at parties.
Valkyrie-Lemons wrote:Okay, let's put in a different example of this. If I was friends with someone who was clearly misogynistic, and you came up to me and ask me why I hung around with him despite being such a misogynist and my reply was along the lines of "I know he's a misogynist, but we both really like football, so I ignore what he says," what would your attitude be towards me?
I would tell you I don't like your friend and don't want to hang out with him. If you became misogynistic as a result of hanging out with him, I would call you out on that.
Valkyrie-Lemons wrote:And this is what I'm trying to say. The misogynist is always to blame for his views, but aren't the people around him who know of his misogyny, but don't actively challenge him about it, also partly to blame? And if you agree with that, you can't exclude women from the blame.
Was my choice of words poor? Probably.
This is all a big shift from your original post. You say we shouldn't exclude women from the blame, but it's the first I've seen you mention the possibility of also blaming males who associate with such a guy rather than just women.
Not to mention you switched from "being seen wearing less clothes than pretty much complete coverage" as your basis at first (which would mostly include people the guy isn't even interacting with in any way) and now it's about having them as a friend and hanging out with them regularly.
Listen, it's important for people to speak up, yes. But it's nobody's job to challenge misogynists every time they open their mouths and teach them how and why they're wrong. Nor should it be a condition for respecting someone. In many cases, speaking up is putting yourself at risk. It's a good idea not to encourage them, sure. But would I shun friends who are friends with someone with those views? Not necessarily. I had a friend who had pretty terrible views, and I could have cut her out of my life back then (in high school) but I didn't, and I treated her with respect while being clear about my views, and now she's changed her mind. So staying away from people isn't necessarily the way to go either. She might have had those views reinforced if I had made a big deal of not talking to her over it.
But as I said... not our job to teach people. It's on them to be willing to learn. If we can have a large impact, then that's great. But one on one? That's more difficult.
If a woman wants to have a casual relationship with a guy who is a jerk, then so what? She uses him for sex, he uses her for sex, they both get what they want out of it. Unless you're upset because you think the guy doesn't "deserve" the sex (and we're back to "sex isn't something you deserve by being a nice guy") what exactly is upsetting you about it? That she didn't become the guy's teacher, shrink and rehabilitation worker all at once? That she didn't find someone else to have casual sex with, doing background check to make sure the next guy is a good person?
And in the end, you're still avoiding the issue. Sure, associating with jerks might be a bad idea. But it doesn't change the fact that you insulted people wanting to associate with misogynists instead of insulting misogynists. It's difficult to read "The misogynist is always to blame for his views", as you say now, when you blamed the people they associate with instead.
Yes, you can make an argument that they are to blame to some extent as well. But that's incidental and shouldn't be the main focus here.
Oh, and when you say:
Yet again, I did not say that. I'm pretty sure I didn't say in my previous posts that women wearing revealing clothing is bad. I'm pretty sure I implied that the guys who make a big fuss about women wearing slightly more revealing clothing are the ones in the wrong.
I have to disagree. You did say that women wearing revealing clothing aren't respectable. You might not have meant it, but that's what you wrote. You said that the men in questions, those making a big deal out of Kathleen's outfit, had never seen more flesh from a respectable woman. Considering the way Kathleen dresses, I would say I see more flesh from 10-20 women daily at the very least, probably up to ten times that depending on how much time I spend outside. According to this sentence of yours, none of them are respectable. I'm fairly sure misogynists also happen to walk down the street, see ads and movies, and it's quite likely that a fair amount of them consume porn, since most people do, and there probably are females in at least some of that porn.
It's possible you meant something completely different, but the only thing we have to work with is what you type. Later you specified you meant in specific context, which seem to exclude a lot of things, including sex work, and seem to imply more nudity than just "more flesh than she showed in that episode".
Listen, the bottom line is, you said something you probably shouldn't have said, and now you're trying to explain it by clarifying it/changing it to make it make sense. But even if you make it make sense, it will still be about blaming people other than those who are actually in the wrong. So let's just back up and say "yeah, the misogynists are to blame" and not start making assumptions about their sex lives or the respectability of people they may or may not hang out with.
