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Comment by wake_up_sticky | Hacker News Reader

I take issue with your use of the phrase "smacks of misogynism" for two reasons:

1) it makes you sound extremely pretentious

2) it's a totally inaccurate characterization of the piece

Seriously, I wish people would stop throwing the word "misogyny" around like an article. Misogyny is the categorical hatred of women. Very, very few people/pieces are actually misogynistic. Someone is not a misogynist because you suspect that they dislike women. In particular, this article is in no way misogynistic by any stretch of the imagination. Not even the quote you provided is misogynistic. It's quite cynical and quite a stretch, but it doesn't signify a hatred of women in any way.

This is something that really pisses me off in general. People need to stop abusing the English language to push their ideological agendas. I'm going to start calling people out on it from now on, and I hope that other HN readers are inspired to do likewise.

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I hear your point against over-using the word "Misogynism". However, I just looked it up in the dictionary and it says "hatred, dislike, or mistrust" of women. So I would say that yes, by definition dislike of women is misogynistic.

What I don't get though, is why my "smacks of misogynism" makes me sound extremely pretentious, while your "characterization of the piece" or "ideological agendas" get a pass? Granted, English is a 2nd language for me but am I wrong that those are equally "big" words?

Even if we agree to define "misogyny" a bit more broadly, the piece isn't indicative of misogyny on the part of the author. That's what I take issue with: not that the accusation you make is so terrible, but that it is baseless.

As for "smacks of misogynism" vs. "characterization of the piece" and "ideological agendas", it's not about the vocabulary that's being used. It's that the phrase "smacks of misogynism" is weaselly--what does it mean? If you think that the author is a misogynist, say so. If you think that the piece is misogynistic, say that. It doesn't help that the piece doesn't, in fact, "smack of misogynism".

Methinks you can't find enough fault with the content of my post so you keep picking on the words that I've used. First, they were pretentious, then they were weaselly, and finally you didn't understand the meaning at all. Do you really not know what is meant by "smacks of"? Well, here you go:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/smack

So to be clear, I meant what I meant, that the author's agenda has a touch of dislike of women in it. What's funny, I bet if you saw a quote where someone said, people in African American Studies are just jealous of the white race's success, you would call that person out as being a flat out racist, yet when you see a quote that says, people in Women's Studies are just jealous of the beautiful girls, you pick on me for merely saying that it smacks of misogyny.

(By the way, I wish people didn't put words in my mouth all the time. I never said that the piece on its own smack of misogyny, I said that the author's agenda smacks of misogyny. Although an article that uses 1932 data to back up the portrayal of recent trends really is a bit desperate, wouldn't you agree)?

The author's "agenda" * doesn't * "[have] a touch of dislike of women in it", though. It has a touch of dislike of a particular type of academic feminist, but 99.99% of women are not members of this group. If I said that I disagreed with the tactics of the Black Panthers, would that make me a racist? Of course not.

Your African American Studies analogy is totally disingenuous anyway. You are trying to map the author's insinuation that certain types of academic feminists are jealous of beautiful girls to the insinuation that people in African American studies are jealous of * whites . A much more honest analogy would be that what the author said is like a black person saying that members of a particular extreme fringe of the NAACP are jealous of, say, blacks who have had success in business. Would that be racist? No, not at all! * It might be divisive, cynical, unfair, or any number of other things, but it would patently * not * be racist. The statement says nothing about black people as a group; it accuses a particular * political faction * of having ulterior motives.

And that 1932 study used perfectly valid methodology and studied a huge population. Asserting that it * can't * be relevant simply because it's * old * is just more sophistry.

Oh ok, I see your point. I have never been inside a Women's Studies classroom, are they across-the-board a "black panthers" kind of thing?

I have no idea. I've never been inside one either. But the author was criticizing--well, insulting--a political faction, not expressing a dislike of women.

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