The Michigan Daily: A Bad Bunny masterclass: adding “sazón” to male style

[Myopic Bookworm]

I think you're being disingenuous. It's not active hatred of women: it's actions that systematically deprive women of equal respect or opportunity, whether consciously or through widely shared stereotypes.

No - you are using your own interpretation. Here's what Collins dictionary says:

Collins Dictionary:

in British English

(mɪˈsɒdʒɪnɪ IPA Pronunciation Guide , maɪ- IPA Pronunciation Guide )

NOUN

hatred of women

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dicti ... h/misogyny

Of course, in recent years, the word has been downgraded to some extent by some speakers

Word meaning is created by usage, not by what an online concise dictionary definition says. For what it's worth, the Oxford English Dictionary says: "Hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against women". Current usage tends to use the word for prejudice, not hatred.

[Stu]

Word meaning is created by usage, not by what an online concise dictionary definition says. For what it's worth, the Oxford English Dictionary says: "Hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against women". Current usage tends to use the word for prejudice, not hatred.

Thanks - I have a PhD in semantics, so I know how word meanings are formed and how they can change. Oddly, the Oxford English Dictionary doesn't work like other dictionaries. Unlike Collins, it is not corpus-based, but determines word meanings by a committee of lexicographers. Oddly, I have a copy of the 2007 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and it says, on page 1799, only "hatred of women".

Current usage is a tough one because speakers often either misunderstand what words actually mean. A classic example is the word "enormity" when the speaker is simply referring to size or scale, regardless of evil intention. In the case of "misogyny", this word was rarely used until feminist activists got hold of it and started using it as hyperbole - applying it to any words or actions used by a male of which they disapproved. They have corrupted both the meaning and the intention underlying and now use it to refer to anything they don't like, such as an unwanted compliment or what they see as objectification. If enough of them use it in that way, the word loses its semantic potency and starts to mean something else and, in this case, something far less egregious.

That's why I believe in preserving meanings where possible. Trivia that feminists find objectionable should never be called "misogyny" and we should call them out when they do this.

[moonshadow]

I do have an issue - well, perhaps a fleeting disappointment - with the inference that these men are embracing the feminine. If clothing truly has no gender, then they are not embracing anything, surely?

That's a good point.

On the other hand, if gender is truly a social construct (not to be confused with sex), then it could be argued that clothes may indeed "have gender".

Perhaps the issue these pundits are dancing around is that the very notion of what gender is seems to be in flux.

In many cultures and customs over the years, particular of "mystery religions" and the occult, mundane items are often depicted as having some kind of "mascule/feminine energy", and can be useful in the working of "magick".

Perhaps gender has more to do with the concept of "I think, therfore I am", rather than the anatomy of a living creature, or of an inanimate object like a skirt, or a rock, or a table lamp.

[phathack]

Not in the UK:

Married Women’s Property Act 1882

In some parts of the world, they didn't pass a Married Women’s Property Act until the 1950's.
Those places still had the common law known as Coverture in place where a married woman became the property of her husband.

Where I live in Texas it took over 135 years before women were given full legal rights starting in 1840.
as they changed on law at the time.

[Dust]

On the other hand, if gender is truly a social construct (not to be confused with sex), then it could be argued that clothes may indeed "have gender".

Perhaps the issue these pundits are dancing around is that the very notion of what gender is seems to be in flux.

In many cultures and customs over the years, particular of "mystery religions" and the occult, mundane items are often depicted as having some kind of "mascule/feminine energy", and can be useful in the working of "magick".

Perhaps gender has more to do with the concept of "I think, therfore I am", rather than the anatomy of a living creature, or of an inanimate object like a skirt, or a rock, or a table lamp.

This notion of gendered energy may be linked to linguistic practices where every word has a gender. Is the notion that a ship is feminine (for example) a social construct? Maybe. It both affected and reflected how people thought about ships and influenced their behavior towards them. A man was to take care of his ship like it was his wife.

English has very few truly gendered words, basically just pronouns and the odd descriptor of types of people. Feminism has a history of first pushing to change or eliminate gendered words (like "policeman" becoming "police officer") and then creating absurd new gendered words to attack men ("man-spreading," anyone?). I'd love to know how much this sort of thing happened in romance-language based cultures (Italian, Spanish, etc.), but I would hope that being used to nearly all words being gendered, many seemingly arbitrarily, they would be more resistant to this sort of thing, but I really don't know.

But linguistics aside, we are talking past each other in terms of what gender really is. Most of the conservative objections are using biological sex, while those buying into modern gender theory argue that it has nothing to do with biology at all. What they have left seems rather ill defined to anyone outside that circle (dare I say the "un-initiated"?). The groups aren't having a debate at all, because they have no common starting point they can agree on.

I remember reading Chesterton make the point at the opening of one of his books (Orthodoxy, if I remember right) that you need that common starting point to have a debate. In his case (discussing religion), he said you used to be able to start with the existence of sin as your starting point, but he couldn't even do that anymore, so he started with the existence of insanity (the insane asylum). That was about a hundred years ago...

"I think therefore I am" is a famous line, but it really goes back to philosophers who couldn't accept the existence of reality. They basically had the idea that all our senses could be lying to us, and what we perceive as reality could be an illusion. They backed up to the only base premise they thought they could start from being the existence of their own thoughts. One could say this planted the seeds for the present notion that biology doesn't matter, and only one's feelings are real. But without observable reality to inform us, all we are left with is our own crazy ideas and wherever they lead each of us. Nothing can ever really be debated and agreed on, if "you have your truth, and I have mine." And thus, society is more fractured than ever as these ideas are finally implemented, all these years later.

[Dust]

Now, this isn't a competition, but some of these changes weren't that long ago.

Financial independence? I am not sure what that means as there have been financially independent women for centuries.

Until 1957 married women here were not considered to own anything. Anything they earned was legally the property of the husband. In any case they were automatically dismissed from their job when they married. They could not open bank accounts, buy property, etc without the signature of the husband. So yes, unmarried women could be financially independent. (Legally they were not even permitted to buy from a store without authorisation of the husband, but obviously that bit was not rigorously enforced.) But even Johanna Borski who provided much of the starting capital for the Dutch central bank (1814) was not permitted to be on the board or enter the trading floor.

In most cultures where women are limited in their ability to run their own finances, they are also not expected to look after anything financially. They have no responsibilities in that realm.

In some strict Islamic cultures, if a woman is widowed, her eldest son is expected to provide for her. This has lead to young boys placed in this position essentially prostituting themselves to provide for their mothers and sisters, when those (adult and fully capable) women actually could have been providing for themselves.

In the west, there was a time when a man would even be required to serve the prison time (under those coverture laws) in his wife's stead if she committed a crime. Giving him the authority within his home to control those who's actions he would be held responsible for made sense (at least if you accept that he is responsible for their actions).

The changes in authority and responsibility, however, did not often exactly keep pace with each other, often leaving someone in an unfair and unfortunate predicament. At one time a man could be jailed for not paying taxes on his wife's earnings, while he had no legal ability to take money from her to do so, even if she made significantly more money.

The requirement for a husband's signature on his wife's loans makes perfect sense once you realize he would ultimately be held responsible if she did not repay it.

It was pointed out at one time that a man could be jailed if his wife was arrested for assaulting him. While this likely never happened, it was for a time the law of the land under coverture.

[Myopic Bookworm]

English has very few truly gendered words, basically just pronouns and the odd descriptor of types of people.

It annoys me that pronouns have become such an issue. The Finnish language has ungendered pronouns, and as far as I know their society hasn't fallen apart as a result...

[moonshadow]

remember reading Chesterton make the point at the opening of one of his books (Orthodoxy, if I remember right) that you need that common starting point to have a debate. In his case (discussing religion), he said you used to be able to start with the existence of sin as your starting point, but he couldn't even do that anymore, so he started with the existence of insanity (the insane asylum). That was about a hundred years ago.

A thought provoking post Dust for sure,

I think the major draw with "gender" is the very arbitrary notion of it. We already have a word to differentiate between male and females of our species, and that is "sex", so that leaves us with the question of what "gender" actually is.

The traditional school of thought is that gender is matched to the sex of the creature, but why is it necessary to have two words to describe the same thing? I figure the most logical reason is that females are mostly feminine and males are mostly masculine, at least in the traditional sense, but the issue is that over the last few centuries, the notions of masculinity and femininity seemed to have crisscrossed and mixed across the sixes.

So where does that leave the notions of gender today?

I honestly don't know. I can only speak for myself, and I often vex over my own role on this planet. I am one of the few members here that embrace my inner femininity, and yet I'm not going as far as to call myself a woman and pass as a female. So where does that leave me?

10 years ago I would have had no idea, but today with the creation of new words to describe complex people like myself, there are phrases and definitions.

I will stop here as I have already gotten a little flak over this (where I'm heading) and I honestly grow so weary of arguing with people about what I am in the grand scheme of things... as if people know me better than myself.

But my overall point is, gender is complicated, and I somewhat hold the view that gender is more of a philosophy rather than a straight line matter of factual observation.

[rode_kater]

English has very few truly gendered words, basically just pronouns and the odd descriptor of types of people.

Something I only recently learned something about Dutch is how the gender of a word is actually used. I knew for example that the primary distinction is between gendered and ungendered words. One gets the article "de" (like "the") and one gets the article "het" (like "it"). I thought the actual gender didn't matter, but someone pointed out it does. In sentences like: "Hier is een rok, vind je hem leuk" (Here is a skirt, do you like him). So here the gender is used. But it's not consistent, because different parts of the country might use a different gender for the same word (though skirt is considered masculine everywhere). You just use what you grew up with (and no grammar checker I've used can check this for you).

In English you always use "it" in this context. Except, if someone says: "Here is my boat, what do you think of her" no-one bats an eye. Does this mean we really think boats are female? No, of course not, it's just a language construct. But in English it's mostly confined to boats, and maybe cars (Isn't she a beauty.).

Interestingly, the influx of people learning Dutch as a second language is kind of breaking the patterns, and the estimate is that in 100 years or so "het" as a definite article will be dead and we'll all be using "de" (like "the" in English).

[ScotL]

Believe it or not, English is my native tongue. But I always hated having to learn the gender of a noun when I learned another language. I always figured there’s a lot to just learning the different word, now I have to learn it’s gender to use in sentences appropriately? Especially difficult when doing the genitive case for me. Note: this is just my opinion and only my opinion, please do not take this as a snarky comment against other languages.

I have many friends for whom English isn’t their native tongue and it’s interesting having discussions of the why. For them, they grew up with it so it’s ingrained and easy. But they all said how nice it was to only need the word “the” for the noun’s article in English. But they do also complain that English has too many words. One friend swears that English has the most number of unique words. I’ve never bothered to confirm this cause I never really cared.

I suspect that boats, planes and cars have the pronoun “she” because their owners traditionally were male and the old world was intolerant to homosexuality.

But who knows. Language is fluid so the future will be interesting

[crfriend]

I suspect that boats, planes and cars have the pronoun “she” because their owners traditionally were male and the old world was intolerant to homosexuality.

Sailors are a notoriously superstitious lot, so I rather suspect it has to do with the fact that both wives and ships are, shall we say, "finicky" or "fickle" and if you don't pay proper attention to the finer points then things will go wrong -- and if you're in the middle of the ocean that's a bad thing.

I've had both "boy" cars and "girl cars, with a slight preponderance of the latter names. The one I drive now is "Marcus" because "he" reminds me of the same-named character in the Indiana Jones movies.

[rivegauche]

I find it interesting that those who speak and write English as a second language often have a superior grasp of grammar to native speakers. I have always struggled with the gender of nouns in French, and asked a friend who is a fluent French speaker and also a teacher of English as a Foreign Language how French speakers know the gender of a noun. She replied that it is automatic - you just grow up with it. I found this difficult to relate to and she gave me a comparable example from English. When you get a string of adjectives you just know what order to place them in, so big yellow taxi, never yellow big taxi.

[john62]

The English word ship or boat comes from the Latin, navis, which in Latin is feminine, thus all boats are "she". likewise dog in Latin is canis, and is masculine, therefore we tend to call dogs he and of coarse all cats she. Blame the Romans for this mess we call English.

John

[ScotL]

I suspect that boats, planes and cars have the pronoun “she” because their owners traditionally were male and the old world was intolerant to homosexuality.

Sailors are a notoriously superstitious lot, so I rather suspect it has to do with the fact that both wives and ships are, shall we say, "finicky" or "fickle" and if you don't pay proper attention to the finer points then things will go wrong -- and if you're in the middle of the ocean that's a bad thing.

I've had both "boy" cars and "girl cars, with a slight preponderance of the latter names. The one I drive now is "Marcus" because "he" reminds me of the same-named character in the Indiana Jones movies.

I shouldn’t assume but you ain’t married are you? Hahahaha

[ScotL]

I find it interesting that those who speak and write English as a second language often have a superior grasp of grammar to native speakers. I have always struggled with the gender of nouns in French, and asked a friend who is a fluent French speaker and also a teacher of English as a Foreign Language how French speakers know the gender of a noun. She replied that it is automatic - you just grow up with it. I found this difficult to relate to and she gave me a comparable example from English. When you get a string of adjectives you just know what order to place them in, so big yellow taxi, never yellow big taxi.

That’s a pretty big assumption. I work with many for whom English is a second language and well, that’s a pretty big assumption. Not saying native English speakers are good at grammar but…

The Germans have a very strict order for adjectives in sentences. Same thing. They grew up with it and it’s just natural. I struggle.