4B or not 4B

by liberal japonicus

As tempting as it is to dwell on whatever outrage the Orange Turd has committed, I thought this Grauniad article, about the Korean 4b movement, might be interesting to discuss.

The 4B name stems from four Korean words beginning with “bi” (meaning “no”): bihon (no marriage), bichulsan (no childbirth), biyeonae (no dating), and bisekseu (no sex). As with past “separatist” feminist movements, 4B represents a rejection of heterosexual relationships as a means of resisting patriarchal structures.

As the article notes, it is being picked up in the US after Trump's election and Nick Fuentes' making 'your body, my choice' a thing among MAGA. I read somewhere that Fuentes' defense was that he said this kind of stupid shit all the time, it wasn't until Biden lost that people noticed. Not the brightest bulb in the marquee it seems, and he was doxxed and, if rumors are true, is now staying with his mom.

Anyway, a bit of a dive into 4B. While most people here might be thinking of Lysistrata, that is a comedy, and 4B is dead serious. Here is a background research article on the 4B, written before the election, so hopefully offering a clearer view, because when an idea gets picked up in another culture, it can be changed in ways that make it unrecognizable.

It's interesting to think about the 4B movement in a pan-asian context. I feel like the US reporting is just in light of the election, similar to people saying they are going to emigrate, but in Japan, there has been little uptake on 4B. Admittedly, while the election also went badly for the ruling party here in Japan, it was a conservative LDP government that got its ass whupped. They lost their outright majority, but more related to the topic, the Korean elections have shown, similar to the US, a big gender gap, with the President elected in 2022, conservative Yoon Suk Yeol, getting 59% of the vote of the under 30 males while only 34% of young women under 30. I can't find similar data for the recent Japanese election, but this kind of gender gap wasn't reported anywere I could see.

On one hand, it's not surprising, the viciousness and velocity of misogyny in South Korea is really a level beyond. On the other hand, it's hard to understand why 4B hasn't made at least some inroads (at least that I'm aware of) into Japanese society. One possible reason for the rise of the 4B movement is a confluence of events, court cases and trends which haven't occurred in Japan. While the election and element of societal rebuke of choosing Trump over Harris provides a catalyst in the US, there hasn't been anything like that in Japan. For South Korea, a 2016 murder of a woman in a Seoul train station by a stalker because women in general 'ignored him' became a touchpoint, leading to the Gangnam station Post-it Note protest and there hasn't been a similar incident here in Japan. In addition, Korea suffers from spy cam issues (known as molka) and has become a center for deep-fake porn. This Guardian article describes some details. Japan also has issues with hidden cameras (tōsatsuki), but it doesn't seem to be anything like what is happening in South Korea.

The research article makes a brief mention, but the other articles don't (or I missed it), of the parallel Tal-Corset movement in South Korea, with Korean women rebelling against beauty standards. Again, while beauty standards can be problematic here in Japan, it seemed much more oppressive than in Japan. Plastic surgery is much more common in South Korea, with 1/4 of women under 30 getting it, while only 2% of the men do and that has to feed into what underlies 4B.

South Korea is also one of the few developed countries where pornography is illegal and subject to internet censorship. However, it can't be regulated on social media sites, so I imagine there is an incentive for sharing pornography that has been generated is increased because of the skew in availability. On the other hand, Japan has an astonishing large and varied pornography industry that not only embraces technology, which I imagine makes generating porn less attractive, but is rooted in historical and cultural ideas.

Trying to understand why Japan doesn't seem to have the same issues with deep-fake porn or spy cams, I think there may also be some cultural things that are not directly related to the treatment of women, but I think contribute. South Korean tech is not cutting edge, but they have more public tech availability (wi-fi almost everyone, internet banking to an extent hard to imagine here in Japan, linked information) and more people mucking about with stuff. South Korean internet connectivity is at 97% (US is 94% while Japan is only 84%), along with an online gaming culture that is both greater in public competitiveness through esports, but also in that people don't play at home, but in so called PC bangs.

There are also cyber defamation laws that are often used not to grant relief to victims, but as a way of silencing criticism. Truth is not a defense, so if I wrote that I got shitty service at a restaurant, the restaurant owner could ask the police to pursue a criminal case against me because I defamed him, regardless of the truth. This isn't a hypothetical either. From this article

In a case before Korea’s Supreme Court where a worker truthfully accused his employer of garnishing his wages, the worker failed to satisfy the elements of the public interest defense as he intended to pressure his employer to pay him properly and not to inform the public of his employer’s misdeeds.

These things seem to stack up to make things a lot more fraught in South Korea, which makes a 4B movement more understandable and why it might arise in South Korea but not in find purchase in Japan.

One can't have pan-asianism without mentioning China, but I don't have an good understanding of how societal issues play out in China. Apparently, the 4B movement has been taken up and renamed 6B4T, which is discussed in this article. It is fascinating for me that translation of terms has led to a divided view of exactly what the 4B movement represents, which underlines my thought about how, when movements go across cultural boundaries, often are changed in various ways. There doesn't seem to be anything similar in Taiwan, which seems much more accepting of LGBTQ (It was the first in the Asia-Pacific to legalize same-sex marriage)

According to some, the phrase 비돕비 (bidopbi) should be translated as “do not help married women,” while the opposing party argues that the translation should be rendered as “the unmarried help the unmarried.” The translation controversy points to the dissonance between different feminist paradigms within the online pan-feminist community in China.

It's been over 10 years since I've been back in the States, so I'm having trouble imagining a 4B movement actually catching on in the same way in the US as it seems to have in South Korea. I also realize the our demographics here aren't really going to get at where this is coming up. But I'd be interested in what everyone sees where they are.

Comments

[JanieM]

Thanks for the fascinating comparisons of South Korea and Japan, lj. I've been thinking about this for a while, mostly as the fantasy that it is in any practical sense. My immediate thought is that South Korea and Japan are almost unimaginably (to me) homogeneous countries/cultures. The US, by contrast, is staggeringly varied and, as we have just seen, deeply dissonant and divided. That’s not the only reason that I don’t see such a movement gaining much traction here (or any effective traction), but it’s a big one.

Related opinion piece from the Guardian.

*****

Your mention of plastic surgery rates in South Korea maybe helps explain my reaction to the TV series Extraordinary Attorney Woo, about a young attorney with Asperger’s syndrome. It came to me very highly recommended, and I enjoyed the first few episodes. But after a while the plot started to seem boringly predictable, and I got tired of looking at all the perfectly groomed beautiful people in the show. So I never finished it.

I remember reading something decades ago, when BBC shows started to become available in the US, about how American film required beautiful people, but British film didn’t – people could look just ordinary. (Skipping over a lot of nuance here, obviously.) Apparently there’s nothing new under the sun, and the pendulum always swings.

ETA: Link corrected.

[hairshirthedonist]

Related opinion piece from the Guardian.

That was a depressing read. That "man" is a cancer.

[GftNC]

That was a depressing read. That "man" is a cancer.

I couldn't read it. Like so much else. Particularly after seeing yesterday that a very widespread comment by boys and men on social media is now "Your body, my choice."

[nous]

Long and possibly entirely superfluous thought RE: the Guardian piece. Don't know if it will further the conversation here at all, but it's where my thoughts are at the moment...

All the recent focus on the manosphere and how we are losing our boys to misogynist influencers has had me doing a reappraisal of the ur-texts for the mythopoetic men's movement, and especially good old Iron John by Robert Bly. I think a lot of our current public tumult around gender comes out of the second wave of feminism and the way that it was reinterpreted in the first wave of mythopoetic men's works.

Basically, second wave feminism was strongly binary in its formulation of sex/gender and tried to subvert the traditional gender norms by reclaiming and re-mythologizing the biological female - taking the "natural" so-called deficiencies of the female within the narrative logic of patriarchy and recasting those traits as sources of their own power, inaccessible by men.

As this work started to play out on a societal level (to the extent it ever did), it started to exert a sort of counter-pressure upon men's self-conception. Hélène Cixous encapsulates this neatly in a footnote to her much-cited essay "The Laugh of the Medusa":

I write woman: woman must write woman. And man, man. So only an oblique consideration will be found here of man; it's up to him to say where his masculinity and femininity are at: this will concern us once men have opened their eyes and seen themselves clearly.1

1. Men still have everything to say about their sexuality, and everything to write. For what they have said so far, for the most part, stems from the opposition activity/passivity,
from the power relation between a fantasized obligatory virility meant to invade, to colonize, and the consequential phantasm of woman as a "dark continent" to penetrate and to "pacify." [...]

Basically - men are in trouble when their only definition of themselves is a negative one - saying all the ways in which they are not women - passive, receptive, and material. (And yes, those concepts of femininity are bunk, but that bunk is still pervasive and influential.)

I think a lot of the current manosphere panic comes out of this realization that if women get to define themselves outside of the bounds of patriarchy, then men lose their own self-identity because it it based entirely in the mythopoetics of patriarchy. So both parties (in the West, anyway) go running off to dream up powerful Jungian archetypes that let us re-mythologize these identities and preserve the parts of our self-conception that we find empowering by connecting them up to a stable biological characteristic.

And now all that hard work to shore up those categories and identities is being put under pressure by the third wave/intersectional people who have rejected the binary entirely in favor of a much more fluid, non-essentialized taxonomy of sex and gender identity that provokes deep anxiety amongst those who had done so much work trying to essentialize their own self-identities around a naturalized sex and/or gender binary.

In the Asian context, all these conversations get mediated and narrativized not through Western myth and Jungian archetypes, but through Confucianism (and probably more comparable to Roman patriarchy, what with the ancestor veneration and strict legal patriarchy that they share in common, than to modern Western social identities). And the Confucian patriarchy is further challenged by the sex-selection practices in China and Korea that have created an imbalance between the number of men and women of marriageable age, putting young men and women under even more social pressure.

Then add another helping of pressure from growth models of economics and the freakouts about the lack of new workers being born.

Suddenly women have a great deal of value in a system that systematically devalues them on a cultural level. And that contradiction threatens to rupture the cultural epistemology of their societies.

Anyway, that's my way of trying to adumbrate the grounds and put the different cultural drivers on the board. Don't know if it will be helpful or productive, but it kept me occupied during the stretches of office hours where I was between students.

[liberal japonicus]

definitely not superfluous nous, thanks and thanks for the link Janie.

One thing that I note is that what Westerners often bring into asian contexts is an underlying notion that everything has to improve and get better. It's the basis of growth models of economy but I think it goes much deeper than that. If someone goes against the idea of everything has to improve, the inevitable rejoinder is 'you don't want to improve things?' Even almost all brands of western conservatism, with the nostalgia for the past, are arguing not against progress, just claiming that certain particulars were lost. This then opened up some space for debate and discussion, but the general idea of improvement is taken as a given. That's why this election seems to liberals like a palpable rejection of that notion. The only people who are citing MLK's arc of the universe quote are those doing it ironically.

About sex selection, here's an article about sex selection ratios in South Korea and Vietnam
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44202631
It points out that South Korea has attempted to address patrilineality foundations in society and posits that this is why SK is doing better than Vietnam. But one can see that attempts to address patrilineality may incur backlashes, which might account for the 4B movement being much more a thing in SK.

Janie's point about diversity is another interesting one, and I would have argued before this election that diversity is a dampening factor against these severe reactions, but that certainly didn't do the necessary tamping down in the US. The rush to blame harris' defeat on Dems embracing 'hard-left' ideas (which I think tells more about the character of the pundits than about what actually happened) suggests that diversity is a value honored more in the breech.

Lastly, nous' mention of Iron John is interesting for me. Nous is probably aware that Terry Dobson, an aikido practitioner, is supposed to have been the model for Bly. As an aikido practitioner, reading about Terry Dobson, often in hagiographic terms, was an invitation to dive into that world and I can still recognize the attraction. But shortly after Dobson's death, an article by Veronique Vienne, a former romantic partner of Dobson appeared in Mother Jones
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1993/03/motherjones-ma93-iron-john-lovers-tale/

that put a lot of things into perspective.

Apologies, as always, for the rambling.

[wj]

Just brainstorming here, but

When I/we were growing up, society was sexist in many ways. But the kind of bitter, toxic misogyny that we see so much of today, while hardly absent, was definitely socially disapproved of. If you were a young man with those kinds of views regarding women, you might find a few others who agreed with you. Maybe. But you, and they, knew better than to go public.**

As with various other subjects, the rise of the Internet generally, and social media in particular, has allowed those with similar (in this case toxic) views find each other. And then emboldened them to flaunt their opinions. When we were young, there were young men who couldn't get a date. (Never mind sex.). But nothing like an incel subculture could develop.

Something like 4B, at least in the US, seems like a predictable reaction. Incels, since their celibacy is involuntary, see changing that by whatever means necessary (including violence) as an acceptable alternative to changing their behavior to be less objectionable to the women around them. And far easier. Not surprisingly, those on the receiving end are banding together to push back.

I think it's inevitable that out and proud misogyny will once again be marginalized. Something like 4B may be part of what makes that happen. But, in the end, it's going to take men who aren't scum standing up and making the point that misogyny is simply not acceptable. 4B may constitute women wielding a 2x4 up side the head as the attention step. But they aren't going to do the whole job for us.

** Inevitably, I'm talking primarily about white, mostly middle class, American culture. That being what I, as a teenager and 20-something, was immersed in.

[wj]

See, I can ramble every bit as much as lj. And less coherently as well.

[Hartmut]

Could parallels be drawn to the switch from the generic misogyny of the Middle Ages* that still allowed women a significant deal of autonomy (e.g. to run businesses as persons of/in their own right) to the new and at times murderous misogyny of the late Middle Ages culminating in the with craze beginning in the Renaissance that also went along with a systematic taking away of the above mentioned autonomy until women were reduced to mere objects of the law? Was it the monastic volcel movement that increasingly radicalized and spread its hatred via the new printing press providing a 'scientific' and legal theoretical fundament for it? That included texts that outright denied that women were human at all. Those were originally derided as insane and fought but paved the way for a weaker but still horrific new consent that women were behind most if not all evil in the world and had to be tightly controlled.

*e.g. St.Thomas Aquinas who defined women as what we would now call a genetic defect that prevented them from becoming what nature actually intended (=men) [women as 'mas occasionatus'].

[bobbyp]

** Inevitably, I'm talking primarily about white, mostly middle class, American culture. That being what I, as a teenager and 20-something, was immersed in.

Come on, now wj. We are both of the same age. Back in the day, misogyny was like a social miasma. There was no need for it to be "toxic". It was everywhere.

https://historycollection.com/40-basic-rights-women-did-not-have-until-the-1970s/

And like racism, it's still out there. It's all well and good that such issues have now risen to the level of respectable debate in some (if not many) quarters, but I find it at heart to be rather dispiriting to have to stoop to the level of debating the actual "humanity" of some members of our species with other members of said species. We still have a long way to go.

[wj]

St.Thomas Aquinas who defined women as what we would now call a genetic defect that prevented them from becoming what nature actually intended (=men)

Ironically, the difference between men and women, on a genetic level, is that men have one "defective" (i.e. Y) gene. Rather than two X genes. Hmmmm....

[wj]

Come on, now wj. We are both of the same age. Back in the day, misogyny was like a social miasma.

I would argue that the social framework was actually sexist. Which is far less toxic than misogyny. Probably far less difficult (not easy, just less difficult) to redress.

[JanieM]

I would argue that the social framework was actually sexist. Which is far less toxic than misogyny. Probably far less difficult (not easy, just less difficult) to redress.

Off the top of my head, I would say that misogyny and sexism are just two manifestations of the same attitude/practice. If women know their place and don't try to step out of their assigned lane, overt misogyny is not needed. But the fact that they have an assigned lane, and had no say in those arragnements (fuck Thomas Aquinas, btw) is the result of a misogyny so deep and hidden in the scheme of things that people don't see it as such.

This is related to what's going on in our culture right now. People think things were less divided in the good old days. Well, ask any Black American about that. As any gay American. As long as people stayed in their assigned places as underlings, sure, things could stay calm. Now that all of us personae non gratae (Latin? Hartmut?) have had enough of it, the bland outward face of racism, sexism, etc., comes out into the open.

[JanieM]

Sorry, that ended kind of confusingly -- I am in the company little people today so am a bit distracted.

Hopefully the core point was clear.

[JanieM]

But seriously, wj: "less toxic"? As long as you accept your second-class citizenship (at best) without complaining......

[JanieM]

And even so there was plenty of violence against women (and Black people, and gay people), abusive controlling relationships..... on and on I could go.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

CLEARLY those "XY chromosome" men are really half-women; cucks, if you will.

True, fully 100% manly men should have "YY chromosomes".

I, for one, fully support gene therapy for any MAGAts that want to change from XY to YY.

[CharlesWT]

While still having difficulties with kids and social media, this may be the next challenge. Will kids pay more attention to their real imaginary friends than the real world?

"Just watched my 5-year-old son chat with ChatGPT advanced voice mode for over 45 minutes.

It started with a question about how cars were made."
Andrew Wilkinson

[wj]

But seriously, wj: "less toxic"? As long as you accept your second-class citizenship (at best) without complaining......

I was thinking more of the attitude of men. They may have felt women generally were inferior. But they didn't hate on them the way we see today. And men who did overtly hate on women were socially disapproved.

Was it desirable? Absolutely not. Was it less bad, especially with the out and proud misogynists now getting into positions of influence over the whole country? Frankly, I'd like to force the misogynists back into the closet. And I use that phrase deliberately. Keep to progress which has been made in the rights and acceptance of women (and minorities generally), just reverse that one change in the social landscape.

[wj]

I, for one, fully support gene therapy for any MAGAts that want to change from XY to YY.

Dare one hope that this would have a negative impact on their ability to reproduce?

[JanieM]

They may have felt women generally were inferior. But they didn't hate on them the way we see today.

And I'm saying that keeping women in inferior positions socially, educationally, in the home, out of the home -- was a way of hating on them. It didn't have to be said, it was inherent in the arrangement; in fact, it couldn't be said, because that would break the illusion that it wasn't there.

If it was done genially and politely, that was only because the women were complying, collectively and individually. Let the women rebel, and the true dynamic is revealed. (#notallmen, I know that).

[JanieM]

I have said often, to people who long for "the good old days" when everyone got along without all this overt hatred and division, that as a woman and a gay person, I wouldn't go back to "the good old days" for anything you could give me. (Maybe world peace and an end to the threat of climate change? LOL.)

I would much rather have my rightful place as a fully equal citizen and human being, with some assholes screeching about it, than the place my mother and her mother etc. had. Exactly what the screeching assholes want is to go back to how it was before. Only it will probably be worse, as the rubber band snaps back.

[wj]

I would much rather have my rightful place as a fully equal citizen and human being, with some assholes screeching about it, than the place my mother and her mother etc. had.

And what I'm saying is that we don't want to go back. Except for having the loud misogynists STFU. Yes, it would be better if they had a change of attitude. But I think that's a heavier lift.

[wj]

Ditto the other haters, of course. Whether racists, or haters on gays, or whatever.

That, to my mind, is one of the worst features of Trump from the very beginning of his initial candidacy: he made the haters feel like it was not just OK but encouraged to voice their bigotries.

[wj]

Maybe a better way to explain where I'm coming from is this. If it's socially disapproved of to voice bigotries, fewer new bigots will be created. "You've got to be carefully taught."

[Hartmut]

I think misogyny is a subgroup of sexism. Sexism can be value neutral ('there is a difference between the sexes but they are complementary'), unfair ('one sex is less capable and thus excluded from certain privileges') and malevolent ('one sex is a source of evil and we would be better off without it. We should treat it accordingly.') Misogyny is the last case.
Of course there are usually overlaps, and resistance can lead to radicalisation. And there are misogynists that come up with the unfair stuff in order to get at women, i.e., it is an expression of their hatred to try to devalue them (while possibly suffering from an inferiority complex at the same time).
Modern anti-black racism was primarily the result of needing a justification for enslaving them (something the Romans had no need for since for them slavery had no racial connotation per se). It was ex post facto. Actual hatred had to be actively bred after the system got abolished and blacks threatened to prove them wrong.
Isolated active misogyny on the other hand seems to be a pre-existing condition for some humans even if no 'objective reason' can be detected.
One dictionary I read defined misogyny as a selective form of general misanthropy which for unknown reasons exists in many cultures (while misandry was far rarer and in present times often artificial, i.e. created/pushed as a deliberate mirror image to misogyny).
I am a bit sceptical about the latter part because it might be reporting bias. Men were free for most of history to broadcast their contempt and hatred of women while women lacked that opportunity to express their negative viewes of men. To be flippant: The Maenads had no access to a printing press.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

I would *think* that the tech-bros would be okay with the part of the population that have their own personal 3D-printer, but it seems not.

(BTW, IIRC "YY chromosome" is invariably horribly fatal. But maybe I'm misremembering a long-ago comment on the subject)

[russell]

he made the haters feel like it was not just OK but encouraged to voice their bigotries.

I may have mentioned this before, but one of my nieces has a kid who is trans. Born biologically female, he has insisted since about age 4 that he's a boy. Nobody knows why, he has a twin sister who is totally cool with being a girl. And nobody needs to know "why", there doesn't need to be a reason. It's just who he is, and who he has always been since he has been a little kid.

In the last couple of weeks, he's been called out at school as an "it", and been referred to with a variety of other derogitory slurs - mostly homophobic, which seems... not on point, but many people are stupid.

His dad is Lao, so he (and his twin sister) have also been the subject of a variety of anti-Asian slurs and abuse.

The kids who are doing this weren't born with this animus, they get this from their own families.

The thing I personally have hated the most about the advent of Trump and Trumpism is the sanction it has given to public displays of bigotry. It's no longer unacceptable to be a fucking bigot, in fact objecting to bigotry will open you to calls of "canceling people for their opinions".

See also my lame-ass Congressman, Seth Moulton.

The fact that this kind of bullshit cancels the targets of their bigotry for basically existing doesn't seem to occur to these people.

[nous]

Another way to think of things is to use a functional continuum that I got from the rhetorical theories of Barry Brummett. Briefly, Brummett defines rhetoric as "the social function that influences and manages meaning" and conceptualizes that function operating across three levels of public consciousnenss:

Exigent <--> Quotidian <--> Implicative

...where the exigent level is for matters of active debate, implicative is for matters that are unproblematic and taken for granted, and the middle is the level at which we argue over "common sense" approaches to accepted, but problematic issues.

Misogyny is usually exigent in contemporary discourse (though it was baked in at a deeper level in medieval church thinking). Sexism is usually quotidian or implicative, but can rise to exigency in crises (like the post-Dobbs hellscape).

The terminology here is not important, but I think the basic concepts are useful for negotiating the complexity of our negotiation of public meaning.

Out of sight and out of mind really just means excluded from public attention and not subject to active public negotiation.

[russell]

Misogyny and sexism are both (it seems to me) rooted in the idea that women are inferior to men. Whether sexism is just kind of "in the air" while misogyny is more overt seems (again, to me) of lesser import than the fact that they share that same negative basis and motivation.

So maybe there's a distinction to be drawn there, but it seems (yet again, to me) like splitting hairs to try to draw it.

[JanieM]

The fact that this kind of bullshit cancels the targets of their bigotry for basically existing doesn't seem to occur to these people.

Exactly right. There is no parallel between the two sides of this equation, and even if the bigots weren't too mind-bogglinglyl stupid to understand that logic, they wouldn't care. (Don't care, for those who do understand it.) Freedom for me and not for thee is their rock bottom article of faith. (My history on this blog got an early start with an argument about this principle in relation to same-sex marriage.)

[liberal japonicus]

And even so there was plenty of violence against women (and Black people, and gay people), abusive controlling relationships..... on and on I could go.

I think that the mechanism of control is important to consider. As a parallel, consider the violence against African-Americans during the Reconstruction. The level of violence was not constant, but that level of violence, expressed over a shorter period of time, created examples that could be pointed to in order to keep everyone in line.

It's notable that Emmett Till was in born and raised in Chicago, and was unaware of the unwritten codes of behavior, and when he was lynched in Mississippi, he fell afoul of codes that he was unaware of.

I don't need to point out that racists can spin this as victim blaming, which is exactly how it has worked with in cases of violence against women.

So if confronted with the impulse to claim that things weren't so bad for women back in the day, because men were willing to enforce norms against misogyny (think of the West and how an insult against a woman could have the cowboy in the white hat sweep in or how child molesters in prison have to be separated from the general population), you have to step back and consider why and how that violence was tamped down.

[GftNC]

Misogyny and sexism are both (it seems to me) rooted in the idea that women are inferior to men. Whether sexism is just kind of "in the air" while misogyny is more overt seems (again, to me) of lesser import than the fact that they share that same negative basis and motivation.

I completely agree. And russell, it's horrible that your great-nephew is having to suffer this kind of thing. If you don't mind me asking, are your great-niece and great-nephew identical twins or fraternal (only possible to ask since both born female)?

[wj]

Misogyny and sexism are both (it seems to me) rooted in the idea that women are inferior to men. Whether sexism is just kind of "in the air" while misogyny is more overt seems (again, to me) of lesser import than the fact that they share that same negative basis and motivation.

I agree that they have the same, or at least very similar, roots. But it seems to me at does matter that misogyny is likely to result in physical violence whenever the misogynist perceives that he can get away with it. Whereas sexism generally is not.

It occurs to me that there may be a terminology issue at play here. Feel free to inform me that I fundamentally misunderstand the meanings of the terms. Provided you are willing to share what you think the correct definitions are.

[The Sanity Inspector]

Is it still true that young Koreans were already refraining from marrying and starting families, because everything is too expensive?

[Pro Bono]

Ironically, the difference between men and women, on a genetic level, is that men have one "defective" (i.e. Y) gene.

My late wife, professionally well-qualified, explained to me that I'm "chromosomally defective". It seemed churlish to dispute it.

[Pro Bono]

Ironically, the difference between men and women, on a genetic level, is that men have one "defective" (i.e. Y) gene.

My late wife, professionally well-qualified, explained to me that I'm "chromosomally defective". It seemed churlish to dispute it.

[russell]

he fell afoul of codes that he was unaware of.

The code that Till allegedly transgressed - flirting with a white woman - turned out to be a lie. The woman in question has since stated that she basically made it up.

Till's crime was being black.

If you don't mind me asking, are your great-niece and great-nephew identical twins or fraternal

I do not mind - they are identical.

But it seems to me at does matter that misogyny is likely to result in physical violence whenever the misogynist perceives that he can get away with it. Whereas sexism generally is not.

Our difference of opinion here may be semantic. I'd say that miogyny is not necessarily violent, while sexism can be (e.g., is it ok for a man to beat his wife).

To the degree that there is a difference, i guess it's more a matter of the degree of animus. If I had to offer definitions, I'd say miogyny is about not liking women - actual personal hostility - where sexism is more a matter of seeing men and women having inherently different places in a social hierarchy.

But in practice, they seem to go together.

[liberal japonicus]

This politico piece about 4B came out after I finished this, so it has a few extra points

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/16/4b-movement-america-political-protest-00189314

[JanieM]

wj -- I'm thinking about your request for our definitions, but I don't want to try to lay out a thought train without going back and rereading what we've all written. And I'm going to be occupied with other things for the next few days, so who knows if I'll get around to it in a timely fashion.

But I think basing your thought train on a distinction in word meanings is partly what I've been (unconsciously) reacting to. It's the phenomena that matter, and pinning them to certain words doesn't change them. I would just point out for now that "sexism" as a fundamental principle of a society is enforced by the tacit and sometimes explicit threat of violence, whether the violence is overt and spoken about or not. (Ditto racism, homophobia, etc.)

More eventually, I hope.

[wj]

I would just point out for now that "sexism" as a fundamental principle of a society is enforced by the tacit and sometimes explicit threat of violence, whether the violence is overt and spoken about or not. (Ditto racism, homophobia, etc.)

And I would say, on the contrary, that sexism is enforced (when socialization has failed) by social and economic sanctions. But not by violence, explicit or implicit.

[bobbyp]

But not by violence, explicit or implicit.

The incidence of rape and/or other forms of physical assault on women would seem to argue against that claim.

https://nownyc.org/issues/get-the-facts-take-rape-seriously/#:~:text=Every%2098%20seconds%2C%20someone%20in,female%3B%209%25%20are%20male.

[wj]

The incidence of rape and/or other forms of physical assault on women would seem to argue against that claim.

But that is misogyny, not sexism.

[nous]

And I would say, on the contrary, that sexism is enforced (when socialization has failed) by social and economic sanctions. But not by violence, explicit or implicit.

What bobbyp said. And also, I would not make the hard distinction that you are making here between social and economic enforcement and physical threats. They are all violence in that they are bringing to bear a damaging force against an individual or community in order to assert power and constrain or control in some way.

As for differentiating sexism from misogyny, I've been thinking of a case that illustrates the divide for me: when Augustin writes about the weakness and inferiority of women, he's engaging in sexism; when he blames women for his own sins and redirects his own culpability onto them, that's misogyny.

[CharlesWT]

I see sexism as being a part of society and culture. And misogyny as being an individual character flaw that can gain cover from society and culture.

"Society can and does execute its own mandates" and can practice a social tyranny that's more formidable than political oppression. —John Stuart Mill

[nous]

Does that mean that a culture or society cannot be misogynistic? That doesn't seem to capture the difference for me.

[Hartmut]

The difference between sexism and misogyny is the difference between goat and scapegoat.

[JanieM]

bobbyp: The incidence of rape and/or other forms of physical assault on women would seem to argue against that claim.

wj: But that is misogyny, not sexism.

And that fine distinctions matters....why?

Slavery is fine as long as the slave is socialized to come willingly?

Also what nous said about damaging forces.

Also, if a society turns a blind eye to, just for example, marital rape or partner abuse, it matters whether we call it sexism or misogyny?

How many angels can dance.....

[JanieM]

On further reflection....that's enough from (and for) me.

[GftNC]

But in practice, they seem to go together.

Yes, or sexism comes first, and misogyny follows and is enabled by it, pretty much as night follows day.

Thank you, russell, that is really fascinating.

[JanieM]

Another pair of identical twins. I read Nicole's book when it came out.

[JanieM]

I should say, the book that was written about her and her family.

[GftNC]

Again, fascinating!

[liberal japonicus]

It is argued (correctly I think) that there is no such thing as a totally identical synonym. The fact that there is another word tells us that there is something else, be it a connotation or being used in a different domain.

With the case of sexism and misogyny, we have to consider that the words are representing a rather distasteful notion that is buried in the language and society: that sexism is somehow acceptable, while misogyny is somehow worse. There is no synonym to racism that is somehow worse than racism, so it makes me wonder whether the reason we get so exercised about drawing a line between the two is that we want to shrug our shoulders at the former and wag our fingers at the latter.

The wikipedia page gives some interesting thoughts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogyny

my take is that the _word_ arises in English in the Enlightenment because it becomes clear that acknowledging women as individuals with a right to liberty gets a pushback, so the label emerges. But like Oliver Sacks observed about some syndrome (maybe it was Tourette's), something can exist for as early as we have records, but without someone naming it and identifying it, it remains invisible.

[wj]

I would not make the hard distinction that you are making here between social and economic enforcement and physical threats. They are all violence in that they are bringing to bear a damaging force against an individual or community in order to assert power and constrain or control in some way.

If you think that physical violence is not distinct from social and economic sanctions, we are not living in the same universe. Not that social and economic sanctions are without serious impacts. But I have trouble with the idea that anyone who has been on the receiving end of physical violence would consider them anything like equivalent.

[wj]

With the case of sexism and misogyny, we have to consider that the words are representing a rather distasteful notion that is buried in the language and society: that sexism is somehow acceptable, while misogyny is somehow worse.

If I somehow gave the impression that I think sexism is "somehow acceptable", that was definitely not my intention. I think it is unacceptable. But I definitely do think that misogyny is worse, and inflicts more damage to the individual on the receiving end.

[russell]

There is no synonym to racism that is somehow worse than racism

I'm not sure that physical violence is a necessary aspect of misogyny, nor am I sure that it's *not* an aspect of sexism. So, in that regard, I don't distinguish between the two in quite that same way as wj.

That said, to follow on wj's definitions, the equivalent in terms of race might be "racism" and "lynching".

I have trouble with the idea that anyone who has been on the receiving end of physical violence would consider them anything like equivalent.

I don't necessarily disagree with this as stated.

That said, if someone is physically violent toward you, you can leave. You can walk away. Easier said than done, in many cases. But it's possible.

Harder, and often impossible, to walk away from a systemic bias.

Nobody should have to live with either. As, I am sure, so say we all.

[JanieM]

How/why "identical" twins aren't always or really quite identical.

[wj]

I've been struggling to find a way to explain where I'm coming from on this.

Perhaps it comes down to this: as I see it, misogyny is inherently malicious. The misogynist hates women and girls. Consciously and explicitly.

On the other hand, while sexism can be conscious, it doesn't have to be. As noted, many societies are sexist in one or several ways. Someone raised in one of those cultures may hold sexist views merely from having never been exposed to any other worldviews.

At the conference I attended last week, there was a session on various kinds on unacceptable behavior.** (We draw people from every corner of the earth, so a bit of training on cross-cultural interactions is helpful to keeping the work going forward smoothly.) There was rather a point made of "unconscious bias." Sexism can, it seems to me, manifest in that way.

** We did brief skits on sexual harassment, age discrimination, and sexism. I got cast as the heavy in all three. (I prefer to believe that it wasn't intended as type casting.) One of the audience told me later that I was so convincing that she wanted to smack me. I suppose that, if I was less massively introverted, I could take up acting as my next career.

[CharlesWT]

It suppose that, if I was less massively introverted, I could take up acting as my next career.

Actors who are introverts are pretty common.

[wj]

Sure.

But not to the point of struggling to get words out, at all, when up in front of an audience.
Which, for a movie, includes the crew as well as the cast.) I've learned how to do, of necessity. But it's definitely not my idea of a good time.

[liberal japonicus]

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that the semantics I was discussing should be taken as indicative of individual conscious attitudes. Rather, the distinction is societal and speakers are often not aware of it.

To recast Russell's formulation as an SAT question, sexism is to misogyny as racism is to _____. Lynching is one possibility, until you realize that no one is going to jail for being misogynistic.

wj's thought that misogyny is 'inherently malicious' is an interesting take, but you are left with the problem of figuring that out. Are there no married misogynists? I think about OAC's speech about Ted Yoho's attack on her and the general trend of invoking one's wife and daughters to claim one is free of sexism, which presumably would include misogyny.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/23/aoc-speech-video-ted-yoho

Again, I think that the line between sexism and misogyny is not some sort of inherent distinction, but an attempt to create a bright line where there is none.

[Hartmut]

As I said, it's a subgroup. You can't be misogynist without being sexist but imo one can be the latter without being the former.
A man can treat his dog well (in his opinion at least) but does not consider it his equal. Is that misokynism or just kynism?
I think the men that argue that they respect their female relatives and thus can't be sexist are like the man with the dog. Same with slaves. Even the best master is still a racist, if the slavery is race based, even if he treats them as part of the family. In Rome 'familia' officially included the slaves and in some circumstances the livestock too [if it was kept close] while blood relatives living elsewhere were not part of it.
Btw, Roman and Greek law considered mothers as not blood related to their own children and - depending on the type of Roman marriage - not even as part of the 'familia' (if their father did not transfer ownership to the husband).

Now, is "put another log on the fire" misogynist, sexist or just narcissist?

[wj]

Are there no married misogynists?

I'd say anyone engaged in spouse abuse would qualify.

One could raise the question of why a misogynist would marry in the first place. Possible answers (just off the top of my head) would include

• strong societal expectations, in some cultures, that men get married.
• a desire for an heir overwhelming the misogyny temporarily.
• misogyny developing after marriage.

That latter possibility would depend on how misogyny develops. Anyone aware of any studies on that?

[Snarki, child of Loki]

If you're BOTH misogynist AND misanthropic, then maybe not sexist?

[wj]

"I love humanity, it's people I can't stand."
-- Linus (via Charles Schultz)

[hairshirthedonist]

If you discriminate against males, that is sexism, right? It's far less common phenomenon than discrimination against women and girls. The best example would probably be in child-custody cases, and even that is less severe than it was decades ago. But, either way, it's not misogyny.

I would argue that not allowing people of the same sex to marry is sexism that cuts both ways.

None of this really gets to the point of wj's distinction. Maybe that's my point.

[hairshirthedonist]

If you discriminate against males, that is sexism, right? It's far less common phenomenon than discrimination against women and girls. The best example would probably be in child-custody cases, and even that is less severe than it was decades ago. But, either way, it's not misogyny.

I would argue that not allowing people of the same sex to marry is sexism that cuts both ways.

None of this really gets to the point of wj's distinction. Maybe that's my point.

[JanieM]

I said I was done, but apparently not.

hsh: I would argue that not allowing people of the same sex to marry is sexism that cuts both ways.

I think a big and unacknowledged reason for hatred of gay people and, as a subset, opposition to same-sex marriage is that gay people violate one of the most important, tacit, and ruthlessly enforced gender norms of all, which is who you're supposed to fall in love with.

*****

wj: One could raise the question of why a misogynist would marry in the first place.

Not to put too fine a point on it: SEX. Which is IMHO a much more powerful and universal motivator than the other things you listed.

What else is "Your body, my choice" about?

But actually, it's also about having someone for petty tyrants to abuse and dominate.

There are plenty of people who want someone in that role in their lives. Women as property. Women with a duty to provide, or at least submit to, sex from and with their husbands.

Keep your friends close and your enemies victims closer.

[hairshirthedonist]

Women as property. Women with a duty to provide, or at least submit to, sex from and with their husbands.

This was the main purpose of marriage in the bad, old days, right?

[nous]

I think a big and unacknowledged reason for hatred of gay people and, as a subset, opposition to same-sex marriage is that gay people violate one of the most important, tacit, and ruthlessly enforced gender norms of all, which is who you're supposed to fall in love with.

Yes. And to push back against some of the hairsplitting over intentions and feelings, and the focus on interiority, it's not even really a matter of who you are supposed to fall in love with, it's a matter of with whom you are allowed to express love *in public.*

I understand why wj might want to insist on physical violence as a marker, and I do think that there is absolutely an element of embodied power, (even if only threats and spectacular, targeted examples) at work in the enforcement of these taboos. I don't think we would be as deep in the backlash here if we were still in the "don't ask, don't tell" era. The problems are all concerned with what is allowed in public.

Last thought on the continuum of violence - yes, there is the corporal element, and the power of the threat to reduce the weaker party to its powerless, embodied, animal self, but I still believe that the closet has killed more people than has acts of physical violence, and that private violence would not be nearly as prevalent if it were not enabled by the social structures that seek to erase and control those who resist the dominant group(s).

Internalized misogyny is absolutely a thing, and it does not require the threat of physical violence for it to take hold.

How many Korean celebrities have taken their own lives, not because of the threat of violence or incarceration (a species of deferred physical violence), but because of public stigma and internalized shame?

All of which is why I think that intent, while important in our judicial systems, really matters less to these issues than does the aggregate effect of all these systems of control that lead the affected individual to despair of ever having agency over their own public persona.

Chivalry intends to protect women, but it is just a more gentle system of patriarchal oppression.

[JanieM]

it's a matter of with whom you are allowed to express love *in public.*

Yes. And that's one of the two (?) major things we're in a war over right now: who gets to enjoy the public square and who doesn't. russell said something above about the mismatch between what "canceling" means -- no one is allowed to call out the hateful and often murderous bigotry of the bigots (that would be canceling them), but they're allowed to cancel the very existence of the people they refuse to share the public square with.

The other big heading is wealth imbalance, who gets skimmed for everything but (so far, at least directly) the air we breathe, and who does the skimming. Not a topic for today.

[JanieM]

Summary of practically everything: whose world is it, anyhow?

[bobbyp]

The other big heading is wealth imbalance, who gets skimmed for everything but (so far, at least directly) the air we breathe, and who does the skimming...

To quote the f*cking Trump, "TRUE!"

MAGA will not come for our cossetted billionaire class.

[nous]

Just realized, by the way, that I was hearing "4b" in my head as the Swedish "förbi" =
English "past" as in "to go past."

It appears we are not past all of this yet. It is still very much with us.

[JanieM]

Wealth to scale, always worth a reminder. And it's so out of date it uses Bezos and not Musk as the individual exemplar.

If one thing would make me happy in the Clickbait reign, it would be seeing Musk booted out of the kool kids klub. Surely they can't both stay in the same orbit for long....

(Wishful thinking?)

[wj]

If one thing would make me happy in the Clickbait reign, it would be seeing Musk booted out of the kool kids klub. Surely they can't both stay in the same orbit for long....

Certainly Trump cannot abide someone close by** and visibly superior. So, Musk may be temporarily useful. Partly as a source of money. Partly as a proxy (until Trump figures out he ain't) for the New York society he has always longed to join.

But, probably sooner rather than later, Trump will decide he is being upstaged, and deal with the threat. At minimum, Musk gets exiled. More likely, Trump contrives some way to take Musk down a peg, just to show who's important. Which, since both worship money, seems likely to involve money being relocated.

** A superior at a distance seems to be tolerable. Perhaps even desirable, if said superior will grant him some measure of the approval that his father never gave him. C.f. Putin.

[GftNC]

wj: One could raise the question of why a misogynist would marry in the first place.

Honestly, wj, I was about to go crazy with this, until I read further and saw that Janie had said it all @10.46.

Then, on Trump and Musk, I think Trump is very impressed by what he perceives as genius, not to mention very extreme wealth. Also, I don't think he gives a damn about policy, he's very happy to leave all that stuff to people with the ideas and the convictions (Musk, Project 2025), while he focuses on vengeance and self-enrichment (plus enrichment of other billionaires).

Janie, and anyone else, I thought the hatred of gay people was more to do with the taboo against gay sex (especially the male variety - possibly religion based), rather than the one against who you fall in love with. This seems more likely to me, and also to fit in with what some honest people have admitted while trying to overcome their prejudices. On the other hand, I suppose you could say it's to do with insecurity, i.e. the feeling that gay people constitute some sort of statement that heterosexuality is inadequate, or inferior. I have to say, none of it makes much sense to me, except maybe for the religious explanation.

[nous]

Janie, and anyone else, I thought the hatred of gay people was more to do with the taboo against gay sex (especially the male variety - possibly religion based), rather than the one against who you fall in love with. This seems more likely to me, and also to fit in with what some honest people have admitted while trying to overcome their prejudices.

I don't think that what people are trying to overcome there is disgust. I think it more likely that what disturbs them is that they can simultaneously feel disgust and sexual arousal over the idea of gay sex. I say this because "anal" consistently comes in as one of the top five most popular searches on porn sites, and it doesn't seem that the method arouses the same level of disgust and disapproval when spoken of in a heterosexual context.

And most of the times I've witnessed strong negative reactions to displays of homosexual attraction in public, it's been to same-sex couples kissing or holding hands.

So, nope, not entirely buying the usual explanations. There seems to me to be a lot left unsaid or unreflected upon - I suspect more from personal shame than from revulsion.

[liberal japonicus]

Nous' point kind of underlines the 'every accusation is a confession' vibe that you often get with a lot of MAGA types.

frex Mark Robinson
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/20/mark-robinson-north-carolina-governor-race

Most of the top level articles don't really go into the details. Don't know if Robinson feels shame, which accounted for his stridency on various issues, or if he had no shame and felt like he was getting one over on everyone.

[JanieM]

And most of the times I've witnessed strong negative reactions to displays of homosexual attraction in public, it's been to same-sex couples kissing or holding hands.

I don't want to get very far into this debate, because as I wrote originally, a lot of what I think are people's real reasons for disapproving or hating or whatever it all is are at least unspoken and, I think, often unconscious.

But that formulation of nous's reminds me of something a guy said at my own dinner table once, during the campaign around the first of Maine's many statewide referenda on "gay rights" or same-sex marriage -- at a time when I myself was not "out" to very many people, including this guy. (How quaint that sounds now. Better get it out and shine it up again, I suspect.)

Married couple over for dinner, let's call them Carol and Bob. Bob says, "Carol and I don't mind gay people, we just don't want to see them holding hands in the park."

Layer upon layer, including the fact that Bob spoke for both of them, with Carol nodding along agreeably.

A data point, that's all, but one of many from a lifetime of butting up against gender expectations, not just relationship-related, and an adult life as a gay person.

Speaking of which: whatever people's "reasons" are, I'm sure they also vary by culture, generation, religious affiliation, etc. And then there's the business of most people's complicitness in enforcing gender norms....

[JanieM]

Clarifications from not-a-morning-person:

The reason I don't want to get into a debate is that it's just a bunch of opinions. I don't see anyone getting reliable data on unconscious attitudes and motivations, by definition. And even if the attitudes are sometimes sort of conscious, people aren't going to report them honestly. "I'm not a racist." (I may think Robin DeAngelo's methods are probably doing more harm than good, but she's not wrong that there's a problem.)

Also -- the "better get it out and shine it up again" referred to the closet.

[JanieM]

And -- Bob and Carol of course reserved their own right to hold hands in the park....have pictures of their families on their desks at work....etc.

"I own the public square and intend to dictate what you can and can't do in it. Freedom for me and not for thee. It's my world, you're in it at my sufferance."

[hairshirthedonist]

And -- Bob and Carol of course reserved their own right to hold hands in the park....have pictures of their families on their desks at work....etc.

This reminds me of an exchange I had several years ago at a training session on non-discrimination at work. (I may have mentioned it here before.)

Through a series of questions, the discussion of not discriminating against LGBTQ+ coworkers got into what sort of conversation was acceptable in the workplace. Somehow, gay people shouldn't be discussing their sexlives in ways that would include mentioning things like going to the movies with their partners because that would be too much information. It would be an explicit discussion of their sexuality.

I asked why it was considered unremarkable for me to mention that I went to the movies with my wife and was met initially with dumbfounded stammering that turned into a mind-blown revelation before my eyes. (This was not a professional trainer from outside the organization but someone from our own HR staff who I think was pushed off script and into free-form extrapolation.)

At least the asymmetry became apparent to the person after I pointed it out, but I still found it odd that it never occurred to her beforehand.

There are certainly things about my heterosexual activities that I shouldn't be discussing at work (like, duh!). The rules just shouldn't be any stricter for gay people. If they were, that would be discrimination.

[JanieM]

It would be an explicit discussion of their sexuality.

It would, to reframe it per nous's point, be an example of gay people getting to be in the world just like non-gay people. It would be an explicit mention of their existence. Shoving it in people's faces, as someone else said to me once.

[hairshirthedonist]

Shoving it in people's faces, as someone else said to me once.

I can't think of the guy's name who trolls tRump supporters on The Daily Show, but there was an episode where he was asking them about pride flags and hats, baiting them into complaining about how gay people were shoving their views in people's faces with such displays at pride rallies.

Meanwhile, the rallying tRump supporters all had their tRump flags and MAGA hats - with no apparent sense of irony.

[JanieM]

hsh -- you did a good thing here. And it sounds like maybe the HR person was open to it, which not everyone is, of course.

But the story is a good illustration of just how unconscious and unexamined the attitudes are. Why of COURSE a gay person shouldn't talk about going to the movies with a partner. Why of COURSE a husband should tell his wife how to vote, or that he doesn't want her working outside the house. That's just the way things ARE. In fact, so much so that people don't even notice them.

[JanieM]

(cross-posted; comments don't seem to be loading very well)

[GftNC]

nous, I certainly consider the rejection of one's own barely conscious urges to be one of the many motivating factors. On your point about heterosexual comfort with anal (and by the way I wonder whether this is greater among men than women), it seems to me to be pretty recent (i.e. the last 20-30 years), and almost entirely a product of the porn industry. I think there is definitely a phenomenon of consumers needing more and more extreme stimulation the more they watch porn, and porn is now ubiquitous. I think back to an article by Martin Amis decades ago in which he recounted a conversation he had with a porn producer, in which the latter said about changing tastes "pussy is bullshit" (words once read never to be forgotten).

Janie is right: no doubt people's attitudes to it vary by culture, generation, religious affiliation, etc. And she's also right that we are not exchanging data, but opinions. Luckily, for me, I like hearing all ObWi people's opinions, and I would not rule out the possibility of some of us changing some of our opinions because of what we hear. It has been known to happen!

[Hartmut]

I wonder how much of anal is really the result of "The Loophole".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ZF_R_j0OY
(My personal guess is that it is just a rounding error in size)

Iirc anal rape was once a legal punishment too.

[Michael Cain]

And most of the times I've witnessed strong negative reactions to displays of homosexual attraction in public, it's been to same-sex couples kissing or holding hands.

Anecdotal...

After I dropped cable service, I added Sling TV to stream enough live TV to get me through the football seasons. A national feed from a network has commercial slots reserved for two entities: the network and the local carrier. The local carrier slots go to Sling. Sling has the technology to do targeted advertising in those slots. The commercials they serve up to me are so different than what the cable company provided. Small car dealerships from across the nearby Wyoming border. Community colleges. Public service announcements from the small local power authority. Lots and lots of drug ads, many for specific chronic conditions.

Plenty of ads for HIV drugs. Almost every one of them has some shot of same-sex couples clearly in a romantic relationship. A few are all shots of such couples. Ditto for mixed race couples.

[wj]

. It would be an explicit mention of their existence. Shoving it in people's faces, as someone else said to me once.

Somehow seems more like them shoving their faces in.

[nous]

RE: the loophole. No. That might fuel sexual habits among young women, but I don't believe that has any role in what men seek out for porn. My thoughts on that line were mostly around the idea that the reaction to gay male porn has to do with physical disgust at the perceived ickiness of unhygienic sex, and how the lack of a complementary revulsion on the heterosexual side shows that it's not a simple matter of what gets put where. Its thoroughly leavened with patriarchy and misogyny.

It was pretty common amongst the people of pre-Christian europe for there to be no stigma against male/male sexual relations, only against a male "playing the part" of a female - a prohibition against being penetrated. Females were stigmatized and punished for being too assertive in their sexual desires. There are, I suspect, some primate dominance things going on in the chemical mix that most people react to, but do not examine too closely.*

I also suspect that how individuals process those reactions differ greatly depending on whether they are processing them in private, or are called upon to declare their attitude towards them in a social situation where in-group status is at stake.

I think GftNC is correct that a part of what gets searched for in porn has to do with desensitization and the need for ever stronger stimuli to get a comparable charge, but I also think that there is a degree of honesty in what gets sought out - especially in incognito mode - that many would not dare to own up to in public.

Circling back to the primate thing, we must also beware of the degree to which we overwrite our own socio-cultural narratives onto the behavior of other creatures. The anthropological literature of dominance is currently in flux for this very reason.

I'm reminded of something I once heard Judith (Jack) Halberstam say. Conservative Christian communities embraced March of the Penguins as a homily about heterosexual nuclear families, love, and sacrifice, but that narrative is entirely an artifact of the film's editing and narration. We viewers cannot tell the individual penguins apart, or distinguish their sex from their physical appearance. Strip away the editing and the narrative and we could be watching a same sex bonded penguin couple with an adopted egg, or a community of indistinguishable penguins all cooperating to tend to the egg.

Stuff to think about.

[Hartmut]

Homosexuality seems to be quite common among birds. Penguins are probably the best known examples.
In a funny story a zoo run by (ultra)orthodox Jews in Israel that contained only animals mentioned in the Bible got embarassed by a pair of gay vultures some years ago leaving the owners unsure about what to do.

[GftNC]

Oh, I forgot to mention (on the loophole topic) that in one of her books years ago Germaine Greer mentioned that anal intercourse was quite common among unmarried rural Italian youth because of the fear of pregnancy.

the lack of a complementary revulsion on the heterosexual side shows that it's not a simple matter of what gets put where. Its thoroughly leavened with patriarchy and misogyny.

There may be a lack of complementary revulsion (these days particularly) but, to confirm the misogyny angle, anecdotal accounts confirm that heterosexually it is often viewed as a way to degrade the woman.

[liberal japonicus]

A similar phenomenon to Italian youth has been observed in Southern Baptist youth. When Bill Clinton's affair was in the news, there was a lot of articles pointing out that often times, in that subculture oral and anal behavior was engaged in to avoid losing one's virginity.

There are some studies out there, but I share this one
Promising to wait: virginity pledges and adolescent sexual behavior
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1949026/
Only because if I had been one of the authors, I would have titled changed Promising to Wait to Wait for it...

It was pretty common amongst the people of pre-Christian europe for there to be no stigma against male/male sexual relations, only against a male "playing the part" of a female - a prohibition against being penetrated. Females were stigmatized and punished for being too assertive in their sexual desires. There are, I suspect, some primate dominance things going on in the chemical mix that most people react to, but do not examine too closely.*

Thinking about primate dominance, Japanese shunga, the genre of wakashudo, which is homosexual depictions, is quite varied and numerous, but all of them depict sexual roles are determined by their ages, seniority and social status. No problem with homosexuality, the problem is in not maintaining the relative social status of participants.

About "Pussy is Bullshit", that was something Martin Amis wrote in a column in the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/mar/17/society.martinamis

I went looking for it because what struck me the most was this description

Later that afternoon I journeyed from San Fernando to Pasadena. I was expected at a conference on "The Novel In Britain, 1950-2000" at the Huntingdon Library. After some prompting, I told a gathering of delegates about my recent experiences. "Pussies are bullshit" became the (unofficial) conference slogan.

If pussy is bullshit then bullshit is pussy. On the second night I played a regrettably sophomoric parlour game on this theme with Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and Mr and Mrs Christopher Hitchens. What's New Bullshitcat. Bullshit in Boots. The Owl and the Bullshitcat ("Oh lovely Bullshit! O Bullshit, my love,/What a beautiful Bullshit you are.") Bullshit-whipped. Bullshit-wagon. Bullshit's in a well. Someone mentioned the character from Goldfinger: Bullshit Galore, Salman Rushdie paused; his eyes widened and he said, suddenly, "Octobullshit."

My memory didn't keep the fact that he said 'regrettably sophomoric', but I was struck by the image of these writers who often make pronouncements on how things should be and why everyone has everything wrong behaving like 9 year olds telling fart jokes. I also wondered how many female delegates were at the conference.

[wj]

Thinking about primate dominance, Japanese shunga, the genre of wakashudo, which is homosexual depictions, is quite varied and numerous, but all of them depict sexual roles are determined by their ages, seniority and social status. No problem with homosexuality, the problem is in not maintaining the relative social status of participants.

I recall reading that, in prisons, homosexual (necessarily) rape is rife, and is entirely about demonstrating dominance.

[Hartmut]

Kipling used the term 'monastic microbes' in one story.

https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/tale/the-united-idolaters.htm

context: it's one of those stories set at the school Kipling went to. In this one there is a (temporary) new teacher that is paranoid about things turning boys gay*. No one uses any explicit term of course. On the one hand it is obvious that everyone considers homosexuality as at best 'icky' but the guy with his paranoia is seen as a danger to the school community. The headmaster at one point states that something like that does not develop this way but that there has to be a 'tradition' at the institution. One could also read it in a way that it is paranoid fools like the guy mentioned that actually cause it to happen.

---
I vaguely remember a study from some years ago that came to the conclusion that zoophilia was far more common than previously assumed in the rural US before the 20th century.

*including underage smoking.

[Hartmut]

lj's link was to the second part of the Amis article.
Here's the first part where the BS discussion itself is described:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/mar/17/society.martinamis1

[GftNC]

Thank you lj and Hartmut for searching that out, it reminds me what a loss Amis is to non-fiction, as opposed IMO to fiction (with the exception of Money and to some extent London Fields).

Of course, I don't agree with him about everything (the list of qualities he thinks required/displayed by porn actresses, for example), or sometimes most things (politics, or Islam for example), but still.

As for the sophomoric games, there is a far better example in Hitchens’s memoir, but I don’t have time to find it. A first search brought up this:

https://slate.com/culture/2012/08/robert-ludlum-titles-great-fake-ones-from-slate-readers-and-salman-rushdie.html

which from what I remember is not exactly right – I think they all contributed not just Rushdie. Myself, I don’t see it as sophomoric (although I see why lj thought so with the pussy/bullshit example), to me it shows that they were a bunch of well-read, very witty and slightly drunk pals, showing off to (and, in their case, majorly competing with) each other.

And now for something entirely unconnected but just landed in my inbox, purely for fun (we must take it where we can get it), is a non Star Wars fan (Capaldi as the immortal Malcolm Tucker) using it as a metaphor to one of his underlings, a fan (ignore the subtitles, many are wrong because of his Scottish accent, giving "bent" for "bin" for example).

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DATRDsxuZSq/?igsh=eGVldGVseXluazhw

[GftNC]

Sorry, lj didn't think it was sophomoric, he thought it was like 9 year olds telling fart jokes! But my point stands.