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