On Misogyny

Content advisory. Hostile language below the jump not suitable for minors. Parents - you know what to do! (Extremely mild, mind you.)

So, I know I promised a second tea-related post in the twitter feed, but something more important has come up. Those of you who know me well know that schedule changes tend to irritate me more than just about any other non-insult, so I want us to think for a minute about just how annoyed I've let myself become over this particular thing.

I'm not sure how or when it happened, but somewhere between "girls have cooties" and suddenly boys like girls again as normal, we've gone back to misogyny. Now, the original post for the night was going to dovetail tea and the art of gentleman-ship in the 21st century, so I suppose taking the night to yell at the males of my particular species of the Homo genus sort of fits.

The oft-mentioned Greymane supplied the straw that broke the camel's back tonight with his dissemination of a post on Cookies for Breakfast regarding Daniel Tosh, a comedian whose repitoire leans rather heavily on (among other things) rape jokes. It's not my story to tell, and enough people are ripping Tosh a new one that I don't even have to - click the link if you want to know exactly what happened.




I don't care about Daniel Tosh. His show isn't high on my list of things to potentially watch, never mind things that I currently watch. What I'm getting annoyed about is that this is a trending issue. The number of "I got that bitch an X, bitches love X" memes is too damn high.

(Hopefully, that'll be the end of the wordplay AND foul language).


In all seriousness, though, there's a general, recursive trend toward abandoning a certain amount of respect shown to the opposite sex, and while I'd like to say that road goes both ways, as a general rule, I don't get to throw rocks living in my nice little glass house.

I'm not calling for a return to the 1920s here. I'm talking toward a restoration of respectful language. In much the same way as demonstrating Godwin's Law only proves you to be an ineffectual, intellect-deficient maudlin, failure to demonstrate a proper level of respect on the only meaningful physical distinction between individuals (on a social level) really just demonstrates a lack of a need for mutual respect. Why should she, or I, for that matter, even begin to evaluate your merits if this most basic level of coexistence is too much for you to handle?

This is not the same as saying you are not allowed to tease each other. Such witty (well hopefully witty) repartee is a good skill to have and has been a popular way to get your partner's attention since, at least as long as men have been writing books on courting women (and vis-versa). There's a difference between that and blank-verse insults.

While I had hoped to launch the project in a more complete state, I leave you with Gentleman's Rule #1: The Golden Rule Applies to You Most Especially.