What the Hell are we Fighting?

What the Hell are we Fighting? (8.27.17)

I am so tired of hearing and reading these words this past year – misogynist, misogynistic, misogyny… Please, I feel like I’m reading and listening to a doctoral thesis! If I, an “educated” white female do not know what the hell the term means, how are other “less educated” people going to be able to participate in this conversation? The word “misogyny” seems mysterious and gives me no hint as to what it is trying to describe. “Miso” is a soup and what is a “gyny?” “Misogyny” sounds like a disease. My instinct told me that the word “misogynist” was a fairly new term promoted by various news sources to banter about during the 2016 Presidential election. I’ve looked up the meaning of this word before, but the definition does not stick in my brain. I’ve seen and heard this word thousands of times in the past year and I still don’t get it. Do I have a block to this information? No. I am an open-minded human being, but there is something fundamentally wrong with our current conversations. In order for people to have conversations and be able to discuss our differences of ideas and opinions, we have to know what in the world we are talking about. When I Google searched “when did the word misogynist begin?” I stumbled upon the following link which was enlightening on many levels:

Following is the definition of misogynist according to Google, Yahoo, and Bing search engines. (There’s another important conversation for future reference – who provides this information on the world wide web? Are my research sources balanced, fair, truthful? Is the Oxford Dictionary a fair and balanced resource?)

mi·sog·y·nist

[məˈsäjənəst]

NOUN

misogynists (plural noun)

1. a person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women.

synonyms: woman-hater · antifeminist · (male) chauvinist · sexist · hater · male chauvinist pig

ADJECTIVE

1. relating to or characteristic of a misogynist:

“a misogynist attitude”

Powered by Oxford Dictionaries · © Oxford University Press · Translation by Bing Translator

I’m confident that I’m not the only human being on the planet that does not understand a lot of the words being thrown around today about how we are so different or why we dislike each other so much. We are human beings before we are men or women or whatever new identities that have emerged since the turn of the century. Our goal as human beings is to practice and implement the Golden Rule – treat others like you want to be treated. And for everyone’s sake, use words to include all human beings in the conversation, not just terminology that you would hear in academic settings.

P.S. Speaking of academic settings, following is a link to a fascinating piece of writing that I discovered while researching the word “gynism.” See if it touches your heart or soul on any level. Selah!

Androcentric Web and Gynist Philosophy by Marie Pauline Eboh