Durova wrote:
How weird...I write a lighthearted piece about the
self-defeating aspects of
misogyny and the thread quickly turns bitter.
You evidently touched a nerve in at least one person. My own reaction
to your original post was that I wasn't sure what you were talking
about, so I just deleted it. After that the thread took on a life of
its own, and got into some issues that really do need a little more
serious attention
People do bring their assumptions to Wikipedia. I
haven't kept a tally of
the number of editors who've mistaken me for a man, but I've always made it
rather obvious that I've got a matching set of X chromosomes. My username
has a Slavic feminine ending and my user page explains that the handle is
homage to the first female officer of the Russian army. Still, the mistake
happens pretty regularly. Most of the time the person who makes it offers a
good natured apology. I don't take offense at that.
Gender is not always apparent in text, and having editors submit to DNA
testing to insure correct gender assignment would be a little more
extreme than what I would want to support. Slavic masculine genitive
endings also end in "-a", and I would not have guessed that Russian
military history was involved. I confess that I don't generally look up
a user's personal page without a good reason, and until now I have had
do reason to look at yours.
Perhaps, it is wrong to assume male as a default value. Until this
thread I had no reason to believe that K P was female, and I wasn't too
concerned. Most often the gender of the third person pronouns that we
use depends on the topic rather than the participants. We refer to each
other in the first and second persons which are themselves gender neutral.
Years ago, I got good enough at a sport that I was
working out someone
nearby said, "Look at him." My first reaction was disbelief - I was wearing
spandex shorts at the time and I sure as heck don't have manly looking
hips - so the next day at work I asked my boss "Was this what I think it
is?"
"Oh yes, used to be much worse," she laughed. "Happened to me all the
time
when I used to play tennis, even though I was wearing a skirt. They're just
not thinking."
Sure enough, the better I got the more people thought I was male. That had
side benefits sometimes. My happiest moment as an athlete was the look in
the eyes of a five-year-old girl when she realized a *woman* had executed
the stunt she really liked to watch. And eventually, in a totally different
context, it led to a hilarious encounter with a couple of Hell's Angels
who thought I was a guy.
You make it sound like posting a picture of yourself would not have
helped. :-)
Parse "prejudice" and you pretty much get
"pre-judgement" - all of those
instances were prejudice, but "misogyny" isn't necessarily synonymous.
Misogyny is what nearly prompted me, back when I owned that Harley, to
commission a custom t-shirt that would have read, "But I'm straight."
To be sure, "pre-judgement sound a little more benign than
"prejudice".
I agree though that "misogyny" implies some kind of more specific
intent. Default pre-judgements and steeotypes are inevitable, and can
easily be corrected once the fascts are known. Prejudices take us
beyond those judgements that are essential to functionality; it would be
prejudicial to assume that all Americans are in love with George W. Bush.
Now that I know your gender I will adjust my pronouns as required.
Ec