Comment by knowtheory | Hacker News Reader

Comment by knowtheory | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Wow. Misogyny alert on top of inductive reasoning fail.

While i, myself, am married to a wonderful Canadian, i know quite a number of wonderful American girls of a wide variety of dispositions, and even geekiness, whose relationships are not fundamentally based on selfishness.

To be honest, having read through your comments on this thread, i have to question this whole endeavor. If your main concern is having a relationship just to be in a relationship and get your other "needs" out of the way of your productivity, i really pity anyone you date.

My relationship w/ my wife is, at this point, no small part of my identity. It is a source for support & discussion about what i'm doing, even though my wife is in a totally different field from me (i'm a programmer with a degree in linguistics, she's a food and nutrition science student w/ a culinary degree). Likewise, i'm a source for support for her, and the puzzles or trials she's going through.

Neither of us are in this relationship solely for the purpose of self-gratification. We're committed to our relationship because we genuinely like each other on a number of levels, and would like to help the other succeed.

I very much believe that relationships are built on trust & mutual respect. And if you want to attract someone who is your equal, who is interested in your well-being and is interested in being around you and supporting you & your life, you've really gotta be willing to do the same.

Misogyny is a lack of respect for all women. He has an issue with American women. There is a big difference between those two. We need to be careful when we accuse people.

Bullshit.

He's painting all the members of a group with the same brush. The fact that this thread is entirely focused on relationships, the "Woman" component to American Woman, is the focal subject, not the American part.

Also, given that he lives in America, i'm guessing that the majority of his experience (although yes, this is a leap to conclusions) is with American Women, hence, he's still making the same incorrect inductive leap from his sample. America is a big place, and i'm guessing he's not really familiar with American Women in their totality.

Hence, misogyny: he's judging the entire group (negatively), based on his limited experience. Particularly, since this judgement comes w/o any actual analysis of his negative experiences upon which his claims may or may not be founded.

It's still racism if you think something good about an entire group of people based on skin color...

...and it's still sexism if you limit your "judgment" to only the 150 million women around you, rather than in other countries.

My adversity is toward a culture (Sex and the City) that encourages women to be selfish, oversexed, mean-spirited, uncultured, and unladylike, even when such behavior is usually against their own interests. I don't consider it sexism because I don't believe that there's any intrinsic reason to consider one gender "better" than the other.

Unfortunately, though, there's a lot of rot in our popular culture with regard to sexuality and human relationships. I have no idea if the effects on men are as bad as those on women; obviously, I'm inclined to notice the damage it does to women, but it could be equally damaging to men. It's quite possible that 85+% of American men are unfit for long-term romantic partnerships as well.

OK, ok, I know I've been fighting it but I can't hold out any longer...

Thank you so much for telling us who is and isn't fit for marriage!

I know it's so hard for you to pick a marriage partner for yourself, much less for all of the rest of us, so your tireless work is very appreciated.

And if it happens on television it clearly is indicative of real life?

"Friends" also happened on TV, in New York, and i'd say it's got a decidedly different view of the world and relationships (and it was certainly at least as popular as Sex and the City, if not more so).

And the problem is not whether it's intrinsic or learned behavior. You are ascribing things that are questionably true in the extreme to people who you do not know, and can not know the disposition of.

Pop culture certainly has some influence on the real world, but i'm afraid you are either very shallow, or very naive if you're buying your world view from a television show (or in opposition to it).

==============================

Your concession that men could be equally unfit is rather hollow in the context of what you've said, particularly given the things you cite. Sex and the City in particular is a show with an entirely female main cast, and the show is about their lives. :p So i'm not all that mollified to be frank.

> Pop culture certainly has some influence on the real world, but i'm afraid you are either very shallow, or very naive if you're buying your world view from a television show (or in opposition to it).

Pop-culture is basically mainstream culture. I do not even live in the USA - yet you exported your "culture" so effectively. Most places around the world are becoming "little americas" - based on your culture. If you think about it - pop culture has more influence than anything else. Even if a person goes to a church (or other religious institution) he will only spend about an hour a week there. TV? Most people spends 7+ hours a week in front of a TV.

I view the country in which I live as 10 years behind the USA as far as social issues goes. This is mainly because it was a very closed society.

I recommend watching Sex and the City, you would quickly find that it's not responsible for those things. Sorry.

I suggest those voting Amy down check the dictionary:

racism - "the theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race"

"Racism" is a morally neutral term, but modern society has twisted it to have a second definition of "hating or harming people based on their race."

I know a number of wonderful American girls as well. Three-quarters of them, for what it's worth, weren't born here or are second-generation immigrants.

The problem is not that there are no decent American women. Obviously there are. The problem is that there are few of them, which means that the competition's pretty fierce.

I think the problem is that we live in a society that provides financial incentives for women to leave relationships on a whim. This might not influence actual relationships very much, but it creates a negative and adversarial culture.

On a side note, I think the word "misogyny" is massively overused, just as "feminism" is often misapplied.

> I know a number of wonderful American girls as well. Three-quarters of them, for what it's worth, weren't born here or are second-generation immigrants.

You have a point here. What I found (in general) is that if a generation is poor they will generally be hard-working. That generation and their children will generally have good qualities. But if a few generations are fairly well off they will start getting bad qualities – people start to think that they are entitled to everything and do not have to work for it.

In a few years you get the situation that kids drive to school in their cars, watch Paris Hilton programs and start to have sex at 14.

As an example: my father was fairly poor. I doubt that today there are many of couples who will stick together through thick and (mostly) thin like they did.

As for feminism – it is a good idea, but the pendulum swung too far to the one side.

You have a point here. What I found (in general) is that if a generation is poor they will generally be hard-working. That generation and their children will generally have good qualities. But if a few generations are fairly well off they will start getting bad qualities – people start to think that they are entitled to everything and do not have to work for it.

I don't know how strongly it correlates to being wealthy. There are poor people who feel entitled (consider the subprime debacle and the massively inflated house prices in much of the country ca. 2007) and rich people who don't take anything for granted. It has more to do with culture than wealth.

In a few years you get the situation that kids drive to school in their cars, watch Paris Hilton programs and start to have sex at 14.

The car thing is just the status quo in the US; almost everyone has a car, because so many places lack public transportation. I drove to school in a car, but a used one.

As for feminism – it is a good idea, but the pendulum swung too far to the one side.

I think the nasty elements of "feminism" actually have nothing to do with feminism. For example, Sex and the City is not feminist in the least. Women should be allowed to have careers, should make pay equal to that of men, and shouldn't be looked down upon if they decide not to marry. However, glamorizing a rather crass lifestyle that most normal people would find unfulfilling does nothing for the feminist cause.

Another bullshit argument.

Where's your proof? Counter-examples are easy to find (Look at the Whedon family for example), so you better start shifting your explanation.

And how the hell has the pendulum swung too far? I'll quote OSX's dictionary. Feminism is: the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

As far as i'm aware, we still live in an unequal society. Men make more money than women. Women still face discrimination in the work place. Women are not anywhere close to being proportionally represented in government.

So tell me again, where does the pendulum stand?

> Feminism is: the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men

We had more than equal rights for a long time now. Affirmative action helped women for how long?

> As far as i'm aware, we still live in an unequal society. Men make more money than women.

You are confusing equal outcomes with equal opportunities. Let me give you a good example: in engineering there are plenty of bursaries available for women. Support for men in engineering pales into comparison with the support of women in engineering. Yet, a lot more men study engineering than women (and the gender gap is widening).

Can you say that there was not equal opportunity?

> Women are not anywhere close to being proportionally represented in government.

Again – they have equal voting rights. If they feel they have been mistreated they can vote for another party. There are several countries in the world (such as Germany) that have female presidents.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com