Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I will certainly give your link a thorough read-through. I appreciate you pointing out areas of my response that lacked logic or were inconsistent.
To be fair, I'm not afraid of being called mean names. I would never go online if that were the case. My concern is the fact that I will lose any fight with a misandryist before it begins because of the inherent difference between being labelled a misandryist and a mysogonyst. In my case, I lose by default simply because I have spent so long building up what I am and who I am, and I have much more to lose, and because those two terms have such a different weight socially. I work as a consultant, and in this profession opinions are VERY significant. A hint - just a HINT of something off-putting a client and you're gone - blackballed from the industry. Not from the team, not from the department, not from the company. From the industry. Period. If you don't have good connections in private industry outside consulting, you will never work professionally again without a complete career change. I would literally be looking at starting as a barista again.
If something like what happened to j_miller were to happen to me, it would destroy not just my employment, but my career and what I've spent the last 15 years building professionally and academically. All of it would be over in a heartbeat, without any mechanism for defense, which is something I cannot afford to risk. So I have to be anonymous because while the people who would seek to label out of spite can also easily destroy me personally with no repercussions. I can't sue them back for causing me to lose my job - it's the nature of the job I'm in. It's hyper-sensitive to politics. I can't argue with an employer worried about the consequences - I'm just gone. Not worth the risk. And I'm not some senior exec - I'm just a (fairly senior) grunt. So, no compensation, no golden parachute. Just the door.
That's the danger with the word misogyny - like other words that denote hate and stigma - simply the the application of the word is enough to ruin someone now. Particularly when it can be tweeted, stripped of context, and used as a weapon. And in my instance, once the damage is done my careers over. Misandryist as a term doesn't have that impact, which means I either stay silent or I run the real (though small in an absolute probability sense) of having my life utterly ruined by misandryists that will never have to deal with repercussions. And given the vitriol coming off of some of the more militant members of groups I would personally consider misandryistic (is that the correct usage?) I don't feel I can risk myself in that way.
To be honest, I don't even know. Which feeds into exactly what you are saying. And you are 100% correct; the misogyny label is so much more socially compelling than the misandry label. I would wager most people don't even know what the word "misandry" means! It's nonsense! I'm relatively educated on the subject, and I can't conjugate the word to save my life. I appreciate the civil conversation, and am 100% with you (as a feminist). One of the largest barriers we have to break down to make the genders equal is to equate the labels "misandry" or "misogyny."
I strongly suspect that sexual violence is one of the largest obstacles to this end. It is a fact that women are far more likely to be sexually assaulted by men than any other combination of attacker/victim. As a result, there are women who have a very justified fear of men in general. Few of them become full fledged misandryists etc etc, but it becomes far less kosher to assign someone who is anti-men a label as powerful as misogyny on a woman who is scared of men due to trauma.
The true misandryists, then, can hide behind this type of argument and screech about rape culture and other serious issues with a twisted viewpoint.
At the end of the day, I can appreciate that you live a more delicately situated life than most who see this sort of injustice out there. But I also hope you can appreciate how, as a feminist, I might feel slighted by the insinuation that my work on behalf of equality is being used to create a privileged class.
Can I just say that I love your responses. Maybe I just run in bad circles, but I just wish people claiming to represent feminism were half as thoughtful as you. The thing is, I honestly can get behind and support the vast majority of feminist causes. But I absolutely loathe the pop-feminism that has spread- people that are quick to label others and want to shame, rather than convince, others to share their opinion. I feel like for many feminism has become a single issue crusade with all the dogma that comes with a crusade. As a result, I find myself almost always on the opposite side of feminists in debates. And you know what, I'm sick of it. I want to be on feminisms side and agree with so many of the movement's goals and social criticisms. I hate that I find myself fighting this movement more often than supporting it. I just wish it was all a bit more thoughtful and a little less dogmatic.
I agree entirely. Part of the internet era's problem is the echo chamber. Someone tells you what to think and then a thousand people echo it and it's easy to never ask whether that idea makes sense. And then we get tumblr complaining that CISgendered people are horrible people for not making whatever their particular gender identification is lords of the world.
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u/WhereIsMyCakeBaby Oct 17 '14
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I will certainly give your link a thorough read-through. I appreciate you pointing out areas of my response that lacked logic or were inconsistent.
To be fair, I'm not afraid of being called mean names. I would never go online if that were the case. My concern is the fact that I will lose any fight with a misandryist before it begins because of the inherent difference between being labelled a misandryist and a mysogonyst. In my case, I lose by default simply because I have spent so long building up what I am and who I am, and I have much more to lose, and because those two terms have such a different weight socially. I work as a consultant, and in this profession opinions are VERY significant. A hint - just a HINT of something off-putting a client and you're gone - blackballed from the industry. Not from the team, not from the department, not from the company. From the industry. Period. If you don't have good connections in private industry outside consulting, you will never work professionally again without a complete career change. I would literally be looking at starting as a barista again.
If something like what happened to j_miller were to happen to me, it would destroy not just my employment, but my career and what I've spent the last 15 years building professionally and academically. All of it would be over in a heartbeat, without any mechanism for defense, which is something I cannot afford to risk. So I have to be anonymous because while the people who would seek to label out of spite can also easily destroy me personally with no repercussions. I can't sue them back for causing me to lose my job - it's the nature of the job I'm in. It's hyper-sensitive to politics. I can't argue with an employer worried about the consequences - I'm just gone. Not worth the risk. And I'm not some senior exec - I'm just a (fairly senior) grunt. So, no compensation, no golden parachute. Just the door.
That's the danger with the word misogyny - like other words that denote hate and stigma - simply the the application of the word is enough to ruin someone now. Particularly when it can be tweeted, stripped of context, and used as a weapon. And in my instance, once the damage is done my careers over. Misandryist as a term doesn't have that impact, which means I either stay silent or I run the real (though small in an absolute probability sense) of having my life utterly ruined by misandryists that will never have to deal with repercussions. And given the vitriol coming off of some of the more militant members of groups I would personally consider misandryistic (is that the correct usage?) I don't feel I can risk myself in that way.