K P wrote:
I didn't call anyone a misogynist, another editor called someone's comment "misogynistic." I said that people were ignoring the potential and very real hurtful nature of the word in order to defend someone's supposedly modern use of it--it turned out the user was lying to everyone about his use of it, but that's another store. No, someone else used the term "misogynist."
This is puzzling. I introduced the sentence "Gender relations falls apart when you start imputing misogynistic motives that were never there," but this is my first comment in the thread since then. The noun was first used in the thread at the very beginning by Durova. Which user are you suggesting was lying? Having opinions that differ from yours is not lying. I do resist any attempt to bring about political correctness, and having to cower over the use of a word because someone might find in its mere appearance an excuse for feeling hurt. Words have lives of their own, and they need to be read in a context, and that context is not always a literal one.
You said "There's a "this user is a pimp" user box.I put it on my user page along with a thousand others, and no one gives a shit." Duh! Who is going to plough through a thousand user boxes just to find that one offensive box? I am not a supporter of user boxes, and my first impression of a person with a thousand user boxes would be severe wariness about that person's egotism. A more accurate conclusion about those who don't give a shit, is that they don't give a shit about a lot of details on a user page. If, against all odds, they do find the offensive box, what do you expect them to do about it?
And I didn't call you one by saying you're not offended by that--a legitimate comment because no one is outraged, surprised, or even interested by people proudly proclaiming themselves pimps on Wikipedia. And to me, this is outrageous that nobody even notices it.
If someone calls himself a pimp that's his problem; I'm not about to feed that troll. You may find it outrageous, but it's perfectly predictable. How much effort do you expect people to put into finding them.
And that, that women are degraded on Wikipedia without other editors even noticing it, is not civil in any way.
It's hard to be uncivil about something that one does not notice.
So, whenever I'm invited to a place where women can have civil conversations, without being degraded as part of the background noise, I'll be sure to let you know there's a place for a civil conversation. But when no one cares that folks are proud to declare themselves pimps, that that's not one of the user boxes or user names that is considered offensive on Wikipedia, even when it is linked to an article about pimp in the old fashioned sense of the word, not in the vernacular or modern or changed sense, there is no civility.
We're already having none at all. Civility is a long way off.
That's a completely different problem aout people doing whatever they can to protect their POV. When they choose to act without civility the gender of their opponent doesn't matter to them,
Ec