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Why is this saying misogynistic? Because it’s a statement about men or because of the implied possibility they could be unhappy in their marriage? Also, why

Why is this saying misogynistic? Because it’s a statement about men or because of the implied possibility they could be unhappy in their marriage? Also, why is it horrible? It appears this world has become manically trigger-happy to label something as -ist or -istic, when it contains even only a hint of something someone could possibly understand the wrong way. It would be curious to examine in a psychological study if this reinforced behavior has developed more due to a subtle social reward system for the “labelers”, or due to a punishment system for the “non-labelers”.

schrodinger 4y ago
There's a slight implication because it only covers men that women are the source of unhappiness (e.g. the nagging wife trope), but I agree it's trivial and likely unintentional. Agree with sibling, just as applicable as "happy married people are happy partners, unhappily married people are great philosophers".
- xwdv 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - daveguy 4y ago
    Not being a dipshit is not the same thing as "bending to people's demands."
    - LAC-Tech 4y ago
      I wish I had the confidence in life to genuinely think anyone who thought or spoke differently to me was just a dipshit.
      - wpietri 4y ago
        That's not what he said, and I doubt it's what he meant. Many people who disagree with me are not dipshits, but the ones who are seem to take positive joy in being disagreeable.
  - elil17 4y ago
    >most people stuck in unhappy marriages are men That is wildly untrue. The research on whether men or women are more satisfied in their marriages shows that they have about the same levels of satisfaction. For example: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12077 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12077 Not really sure why the demographics of philosophers effects the impact of the statement. Most philosophers are white, would it have been more impactful if the statement had brought race into it?
    - xwdv 4y ago
      If you could bring race into it somehow then yes the statement might seem more based in historical precedence, rather than some idealistic fantasy world of hyper diversity, assuming most unhappily married men are also white.
      - elil17 4y ago
        I don't really get why any of that matters though. Can't you just appreciate the sentiment regardless of how it is phrased? Seems like your trying to make it political when it just isn't.
        xwdv 4y ago
        Maybe you should think about who is actually making it political, i.e. the people trying to transform the phrase into something politically correct.
        elil17 4y ago
        Idk man sounds like they’re just taking a phrase and phrasing it slightly differently so that it applies to more people. You’re the one who was offended by that
    - water8 4y ago
      [dead]
    - 4y ago
  - mejutoco 4y ago
    > most people stuck in unhappy marriages are men If we are counting only heterosexual and 2 people marriages, wouldn't the number of people stuck in unhappy marriages be exactly 50% men and 50% women?
    - brippalcharrid 4y ago
      The [perceived] consequences of ending a marriage seem to provide more of a disincentive to men, so they are more likely to persist in a marriage that they feel they would be unable to leave (and then have to support multiple households, etc.). The fact that women (in the USA) are more than twice as likely to initiate a divorce seems to bear this out.
      - antonfire 4y ago
        "Women divorce men more often than the other way around; this seems to bear out that men are more dissatisfied in marriage" seems like a stretch to me. At any rate, it reminds me of the classic physics joke: > An experimental physicist comes running excitedly to a theorist's office, waving a graph taken off his latest experiment. "Hmmm", says the theorist, "that's exactly where you'd expect to see that peak. Here is the reason." A long logical explanation follows. In the middle of it, the experimentalist says "Wait a minute", studies the chart for a second and says "Oops, this is upside down." He fixes it. "Hmmm," says the theorist, "you'd expect to see a dip in exactly that position. Here is the reason..."
        brippalcharrid 4y ago
        That's an interesting thesis, but it wasn't one that I was putting forward; rather I was saying that the reality of divorce for men tends to be such that they are significantly less likely to seek divorce when their marriage is unhappy compared to women at a similar level of unhappiness.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - schrodinger 4y ago
    Language is lovely because you can find so many ways to express creativity! I don't think "Those happily married make great partners, while those unhappily married make great philosophers!" is any less colorful than the original.
    - xwdv 4y ago
      It’s bland, safe, and lifeless. The statement has no bite. The original statement will be read by men and some men will connect to it right away, because rather than envision some abstract person, they are made to immediately picture a man, and in that image they may recognize themselves, like looking at a mirror.
      - ajmurmann 4y ago
        > The original statement will be read by men and some men will connect to it right away, because rather than envision some abstract person, they are made to immediately picture a man, and in that image they may recognize themselves, like looking at a mirror. Sorry, are you saying that the audience of the statement is on purpose only men? If so, how could you possibly support any claim that it's not misogynistic?
        thegrimmest 4y ago
        It's quite possible to target a statement at a male audience without a disclaimer and yet still not be guilty of misogyny.
        ajmurmann 4y ago
        The statement was made in a discussion about working in tech, not at a free masons lodge
        xwdv 4y ago
        Most people here are men. The content will reflect that. Get over it.
  - antonfire 4y ago
    Leaning into society's stereotypes is one way to bend to people's implicit demands to change your writing (and quite possibly thinking). But sure, if the metric you're optimizing is raw views and smiles and laughs, then probably the way to go is leaning into stereotypes. There's a reason those views and smiles and laughs are called "cheap".
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - bobobob420 4y ago
    You went too deep. Never go too deep
  - schrodinger 4y ago
    I'm sorry, it really isn't a big deal and I don't think anyone would be triggered or offended by the quote! And of course historical context matters. The poster was just proffering a friendly reminder that to push society forward it's helpful to consider these things. It's just like changing our default branches from master to main, honestly probably not a huge deal to any rationale person, but the cost is negligible so why not? It's possible to be empathetic and considerate, making minor adjustments (and also not judging those who innocently don't) without being the "woke" police!
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      > he poster was just proffering a friendly reminder that to push society forward it's helpful to consider these things It is totally not. As Ricky Gervais put it beautifully, like it or not, if you categorize the people of the past with the standards of today, you are preparing the people of the (near) future to categorize you about what you say today. Now imagine that people think of Aristotle as a misogynist, like if it is actually important, he died 2,300 years ago after all and nobody studies Aristotle because "and now let's read about that guy who hated women, because it's something important to learn: women are trash", but By the 1930s, a new kind of human zoo appeared in America, nude shows masquerading as education. These included the Zoro Garden Nudist Colony at the Pacific International Exposition in San Diego, California (1935–36) and the Sally Rand Nude Ranch at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco (1939). The former was supposedly a real nudist colony, which used hired performers instead of actual nudists. The latter featured nude women performing in western attire. The Golden Gate fair also featured a "Greenwich Village" show, described in the Official Guide Book as "Model artists' colony and revue theatre." Or this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo#/media/File:African_Girl,_1958_Expo.jpeg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo#/media/File:African_... Sorry if I stand with Aristotle, despite him being a man of his times, and not with 20th century human zoo. edit: to put it simply, should we talk to German people or everytime they try to say something we should shut them up reminding them that they did the holocaust? When I disagree with someone from the US, can I use "you are the only people in history to have dropped two atomic bombs on civilians, you are wrong by design!"? Why Aristotle is problematic, but nobody says "he was a Trump but a lot more intelligent than Trump and actually, now that I think about it, he never said <<grab them by the pussy>>, so Aristotle was less misogynist than Trump"? Aristotle has never been POTUS. I understand pushing society forward, so why blame people who have died thousands of years ago for things they are not responsible of today? Does someone really think that quoting that sentence from Aristotle will plant the seed of misogyny in people's mind? Is this really the kind of trust we have in each other's intelligence? I believe people can read the context loud and clear.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I mean, I’ve never heard of any woman being unhappy because of a nagging husband. The source of unhappiness for women seems to be the reverse. A husband that’s not doing all the things she nags about automatically. I think priorities are just fundamentally different somehow.
  - deroanth 4y ago
    I'm surprised you've never heard of a woman being unhappy because her husband wants her to do/be one thing, and she wants to do/be another. "Nagging" isn't always the stereotypical annoyance.
kraig911 4y ago
To me it's misogynistic because when I heard it first it's implied that my happiness is tied to a woman. Since I'm happily married and very much in love I know that without her I'd probably end up being a philosopher pondering problems without answers to run away from the trauma of losing her. I've been through it before :)
- Idk__Throwaway 4y ago
  And how is implying your happiness is tied to a woman misogynistic?
  - kraig911 4y ago
    For sake of mental gymnastics I'll humor you. It's misogynistic because it's rooted in I presume in my culture that women generally don't sit and ponder problems, or resort to alcohol, drugs and crime as bad as men when things go bad. Women generally move on. So that belies a certain belief that women are the cause of all problems - And that is misogynistic.
    - jasmer 4y ago
      The statement does not imply those assumptions, and even if it did, it would not be misogyny. The fact there is so much discussion about this is the 'issue' here and it's toxic.
  - multiplegeorges 4y ago
    It reduces women to instruments to serve men's happiness.
    - Gud 4y ago
      No it doesn’t.
      - weakfish 4y ago
        Great argument! Let me try. Yes it does. Did it do it right?
conductr 4y ago
There’s a lot of things like this that I blame mostly on the growth of what we’re doing here. We’re communicating in a low fidelity text only fashion and doing it without any knowledge of who each other are and how our word choices will be received. We definitely don’t know who is lurking or reading or may take offense once I hit the reply button on this form. Had that been said in person, even with someone we only recently met, we’d have “known” what it was meant to mean and that it was just a figure of speech to support their main point. Online, people will read every word selected and choose to vilify you for using a pronoun or some other random extreme literal take on your word choices without really considering what your intent or meaning or that you is (often there’s not much, it just happens to be the choice of words they made while typing on a tiny device and trying to be concise). It’s also not considered that online we’re intermixing generationally, culturally, economically, and so many ways. When a 50 year old person says something like the word “retarded” it may feel normal and they are ignorant of the fact that anyone under ~30 knows not to even say that word, it’s the “r” word. Then you have the other “n” word that everyone knows is unspoken except it’s found and heard everywhere because some people can and do say it steadily. As an example, I frequent a local subreddit for my city. Something that regularly comes up is crime and homeless and such. If you have anything to post there. Someone else will invariably reply with yes but redlining, Jim Crowe, disenfranchised citizens, etc. Those are all base general knowledge and historical facts for sure. I think everyone is well aware of them. But, it’s difficult to have any discourse when the audience expects a full historical account of why the situation exists before solutions can be discussed. It’s pretty tiring and I’ve basically stopped chiming in on those kinds of things. TLDR: communication is hard and text only is really hard.
antonfire 4y ago
> It appears this world has become manically trigger-happy to label something as -ist or -istic Also to label something as maniacal, perhaps.
lo_zamoyski 4y ago
It is currently culturally fashionable to construe things in this manner, so unsurprising. It is humorless and lacks common sense. Reasonably intelligent people understand context. They do not flatten all of reality and reduce everything to their favorite pet paradigm, projecting uncharitably all sorts of weird baggage onto the most innocuous of statements. So now you can't make a quip about wives unless you also make a quip about husbands (or else generalize it to "persons") though even these are now too restrictive for some. Heaven help you if you dare observe that there are differences between men and women, complementary differences no less, that lead to humorous tensions between them and peculiarities particular to each that surface within their shared lives. Shall we raise a toast to ourselves, savaged men (and women!)? Humor is dead. And we have killed it.
- emadabdulrahim 4y ago
  Common sense is dead. Certain groups of people lack self and/or social awareness to notice that they've replaced religion with ideology. For example, we criticize religion for shaming many parts of our sexuality "Welcome to church, you're a sexual being and you should be ashamed". Now that's been replaced with "You're a man, you should feel guilty because you're from the oppressor group." etc. Welcome to Western society, you're privileged and you should be guilty and ashamed. How did we get here?
  - cjcenizal 4y ago
    I think recognizing one’s privilege is uncoupled from how you choose to feel about it.
    - Dudeman112 4y ago
      For most people it's not The expression "privilege" itself makes people feel attacked and get defensive. If you say the same exact sentence replacing "privilege" for the definition and it greatly changes how people react to what you say
    - krageon 4y ago
      That's a good point. There's absolutely no reason to feel bad about being privileged. You should be happy! Perhaps spread some of that happiness around, make the world a happier place. Everyone wins.
the-printer 4y ago
There has to be some sort of “Streisand Effect” phenomenon that can be applied to interpersonal communications, where by mentioning a thing in conversation that you hope not to entertain, it gets entertained as a consequence of it being mentioned. > It would be curious to examine in a psychological study if this reinforced behavior has developed more due to a subtle social reward system for the “labelers”, or due to a punishment system for the “non-labelers”. This is intriguing by the way.
lelanthran 4y ago
> Why is this saying misogynistic? It's not; it's the result of a vocal and aggressive mob - people are taking care to not draw the attention of the mob.
Aeolun 4y ago
I think there is a strong punishment system for the non-labelers. People that feel strongly about this stuff are really rabid, and seem to spend all their time calling people out on perceived slights.
gsk22 4y ago
There are plenty of layers at which it's misogynistic, but the most obvious one perhaps is that it wholly centers around the man in the relationship. Why must the wife be the source of the husband's unhappiness ("nagging wife" trope)? Why does he get to be the great philosopher if they're both unhappy? You can say "it's just a saying, it would be equally true with the roles reversed" -- but then, why aren't they? Sure, on the misogyny scale, it's pretty mild, but sayings like this that implicitly reinforce the male-centered world we live in are in some ways the most insidious.
- concordDance 4y ago
  In an unhappy marriage the other person is normally the source of unhappiness. Not always of course (I knew a guy who got divorced because he felt he'd missed out on having more relationships).
  - gsk22 4y ago
    Sure, if you only look at the minutae. At a high level, a relationship is a bond between two people, so it's unfair to lay all the blame solely at the feet of the other person. You've probably done things that make your partner unhappy as well. The mature way to approach the problem is to work together to resolve the issues -- or if that isn't possible, terminate the relationship. You can't just make yourself the victim and say it's all the other's fault.
- deadpannini 4y ago
  The standard you've laid out proposes that any statement about a man's experience in a relationship is by definition misogynistic, because it's centers the man (and, of course, erases women). Do you stand by that? Additionally, consider that you are the one bringing the nagging wife trope into this: it's merely one of many possibile explanations and unhappy marriage.
  - gsk22 4y ago
    The difference is the original statement was not about a specific man's experience; it was a generalization about married men's experiences as a whole. Saying "I was in an unhappy marriage and it made me a great philosopher" would be fine. It's the generalization which is an issue here.
ttyprintk 4y ago
It’s only misogynistic if the husband: 1. Can only be married to a woman, sometimes a pre-arranged woman 2. Has religious or cultural norms keeping it that way 3. Improving the marriage is the woman’s territory This is probably a realistic aphorism for a larger group of people than those who can call it misogynistic.
alexvoda 4y ago
I see there are many people commenting on the ethical value of that saying. To understand it better it is worth noting that it is a bastardization of this misquote commonly attributed to Socrates: “By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” As detailed in this ( https://qr.ae/pvP31C https://qr.ae/pvP31C ) answer on Quora, Socrates never said (or was never recorded to say it, he didn't write down his philosophy) this exact thing. But there is a recorded dialogue that is plausible as the source of the simplified quote. While less clear from what kraig911 said or from the original dialogue, the commonly spread (meme) version of the quote, which I pasted above, makes the misogynism clear. I hope further explaining that is not necessary. It is important to note that Ancient Grece was very gender unequal, so a misogynistic quote in that social context is not something surprising, even for one of the brightest minds. That is just how society was in those times, and those philosophers did not get the benefit of hindsight we have today. Besides, as stated above, Socrates didn't actually say that misquote. He was commenting about the challenges of his relationship with his wife. From that dialogue, it is even implied it was a conscious decision he made. The misquote is especially dreadful because it is a generalization over the entire feminine gender. I am now quite curious when exactly in history did the misquote take its commonly known form. I am quite surprised that of all the people commenting, no one attempted to go to the source of that meme. Instead, everyone just espoused their viewpoint. I wish HN to be a place of knowledge seeking, not a place of culture war. Edit: looking into this a little deeper, Spencer McDaniel, the one who wrote the Quora answer linked above, has an entire blog about ancient times and expands on the issue of misquotes: http://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/07/16/fake-and-misattributed-ancient-quotes/ http://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/07/16/fake-and-misattr...

schrodinger 4y ago

There's a slight implication because it only covers men that women are the source of unhappiness (e.g. the nagging wife trope), but I agree it's trivial and likely unintentional. Agree with sibling, just as applicable as "happy married people are happy partners, unhappily married people are great philosophers".

xwdv 4y ago
[flagged]
- daveguy 4y ago
  Not being a dipshit is not the same thing as "bending to people's demands."
  - LAC-Tech 4y ago
    I wish I had the confidence in life to genuinely think anyone who thought or spoke differently to me was just a dipshit.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      That's not what he said, and I doubt it's what he meant. Many people who disagree with me are not dipshits, but the ones who are seem to take positive joy in being disagreeable.
- elil17 4y ago
  >most people stuck in unhappy marriages are men That is wildly untrue. The research on whether men or women are more satisfied in their marriages shows that they have about the same levels of satisfaction. For example: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12077 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12077 Not really sure why the demographics of philosophers effects the impact of the statement. Most philosophers are white, would it have been more impactful if the statement had brought race into it?
  - xwdv 4y ago
    If you could bring race into it somehow then yes the statement might seem more based in historical precedence, rather than some idealistic fantasy world of hyper diversity, assuming most unhappily married men are also white.
    - elil17 4y ago
      I don't really get why any of that matters though. Can't you just appreciate the sentiment regardless of how it is phrased? Seems like your trying to make it political when it just isn't.
      - xwdv 4y ago
        Maybe you should think about who is actually making it political, i.e. the people trying to transform the phrase into something politically correct.
        elil17 4y ago
        Idk man sounds like they’re just taking a phrase and phrasing it slightly differently so that it applies to more people. You’re the one who was offended by that
  - water8 4y ago
    [dead]
  - 4y ago
- mejutoco 4y ago
  > most people stuck in unhappy marriages are men If we are counting only heterosexual and 2 people marriages, wouldn't the number of people stuck in unhappy marriages be exactly 50% men and 50% women?
  - brippalcharrid 4y ago
    The [perceived] consequences of ending a marriage seem to provide more of a disincentive to men, so they are more likely to persist in a marriage that they feel they would be unable to leave (and then have to support multiple households, etc.). The fact that women (in the USA) are more than twice as likely to initiate a divorce seems to bear this out.
    - antonfire 4y ago
      "Women divorce men more often than the other way around; this seems to bear out that men are more dissatisfied in marriage" seems like a stretch to me. At any rate, it reminds me of the classic physics joke: > An experimental physicist comes running excitedly to a theorist's office, waving a graph taken off his latest experiment. "Hmmm", says the theorist, "that's exactly where you'd expect to see that peak. Here is the reason." A long logical explanation follows. In the middle of it, the experimentalist says "Wait a minute", studies the chart for a second and says "Oops, this is upside down." He fixes it. "Hmmm," says the theorist, "you'd expect to see a dip in exactly that position. Here is the reason..."
      - brippalcharrid 4y ago
        That's an interesting thesis, but it wasn't one that I was putting forward; rather I was saying that the reality of divorce for men tends to be such that they are significantly less likely to seek divorce when their marriage is unhappy compared to women at a similar level of unhappiness.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- schrodinger 4y ago
  Language is lovely because you can find so many ways to express creativity! I don't think "Those happily married make great partners, while those unhappily married make great philosophers!" is any less colorful than the original.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    It’s bland, safe, and lifeless. The statement has no bite. The original statement will be read by men and some men will connect to it right away, because rather than envision some abstract person, they are made to immediately picture a man, and in that image they may recognize themselves, like looking at a mirror.
    - ajmurmann 4y ago
      > The original statement will be read by men and some men will connect to it right away, because rather than envision some abstract person, they are made to immediately picture a man, and in that image they may recognize themselves, like looking at a mirror. Sorry, are you saying that the audience of the statement is on purpose only men? If so, how could you possibly support any claim that it's not misogynistic?
      - thegrimmest 4y ago
        It's quite possible to target a statement at a male audience without a disclaimer and yet still not be guilty of misogyny.
        ajmurmann 4y ago
        The statement was made in a discussion about working in tech, not at a free masons lodge
      - xwdv 4y ago
        Most people here are men. The content will reflect that. Get over it.
- antonfire 4y ago
  Leaning into society's stereotypes is one way to bend to people's implicit demands to change your writing (and quite possibly thinking). But sure, if the metric you're optimizing is raw views and smiles and laughs, then probably the way to go is leaning into stereotypes. There's a reason those views and smiles and laughs are called "cheap".
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
[flagged]
- bobobob420 4y ago
  You went too deep. Never go too deep
- schrodinger 4y ago
  I'm sorry, it really isn't a big deal and I don't think anyone would be triggered or offended by the quote! And of course historical context matters. The poster was just proffering a friendly reminder that to push society forward it's helpful to consider these things. It's just like changing our default branches from master to main, honestly probably not a huge deal to any rationale person, but the cost is negligible so why not? It's possible to be empathetic and considerate, making minor adjustments (and also not judging those who innocently don't) without being the "woke" police!
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    > he poster was just proffering a friendly reminder that to push society forward it's helpful to consider these things It is totally not. As Ricky Gervais put it beautifully, like it or not, if you categorize the people of the past with the standards of today, you are preparing the people of the (near) future to categorize you about what you say today. Now imagine that people think of Aristotle as a misogynist, like if it is actually important, he died 2,300 years ago after all and nobody studies Aristotle because "and now let's read about that guy who hated women, because it's something important to learn: women are trash", but By the 1930s, a new kind of human zoo appeared in America, nude shows masquerading as education. These included the Zoro Garden Nudist Colony at the Pacific International Exposition in San Diego, California (1935–36) and the Sally Rand Nude Ranch at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco (1939). The former was supposedly a real nudist colony, which used hired performers instead of actual nudists. The latter featured nude women performing in western attire. The Golden Gate fair also featured a "Greenwich Village" show, described in the Official Guide Book as "Model artists' colony and revue theatre." Or this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo#/media/File:African_Girl,_1958_Expo.jpeg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo#/media/File:African_... Sorry if I stand with Aristotle, despite him being a man of his times, and not with 20th century human zoo. edit: to put it simply, should we talk to German people or everytime they try to say something we should shut them up reminding them that they did the holocaust? When I disagree with someone from the US, can I use "you are the only people in history to have dropped two atomic bombs on civilians, you are wrong by design!"? Why Aristotle is problematic, but nobody says "he was a Trump but a lot more intelligent than Trump and actually, now that I think about it, he never said <<grab them by the pussy>>, so Aristotle was less misogynist than Trump"? Aristotle has never been POTUS. I understand pushing society forward, so why blame people who have died thousands of years ago for things they are not responsible of today? Does someone really think that quoting that sentence from Aristotle will plant the seed of misogyny in people's mind? Is this really the kind of trust we have in each other's intelligence? I believe people can read the context loud and clear.
Aeolun 4y ago
I mean, I’ve never heard of any woman being unhappy because of a nagging husband. The source of unhappiness for women seems to be the reverse. A husband that’s not doing all the things she nags about automatically. I think priorities are just fundamentally different somehow.
- deroanth 4y ago
  I'm surprised you've never heard of a woman being unhappy because her husband wants her to do/be one thing, and she wants to do/be another. "Nagging" isn't always the stereotypical annoyance.

kraig911 4y ago

To me it's misogynistic because when I heard it first it's implied that my happiness is tied to a woman. Since I'm happily married and very much in love I know that without her I'd probably end up being a philosopher pondering problems without answers to run away from the trauma of losing her. I've been through it before :)

Idk__Throwaway 4y ago
And how is implying your happiness is tied to a woman misogynistic?
- kraig911 4y ago
  For sake of mental gymnastics I'll humor you. It's misogynistic because it's rooted in I presume in my culture that women generally don't sit and ponder problems, or resort to alcohol, drugs and crime as bad as men when things go bad. Women generally move on. So that belies a certain belief that women are the cause of all problems - And that is misogynistic.
  - jasmer 4y ago
    The statement does not imply those assumptions, and even if it did, it would not be misogyny. The fact there is so much discussion about this is the 'issue' here and it's toxic.
- multiplegeorges 4y ago
  It reduces women to instruments to serve men's happiness.
  - Gud 4y ago
    No it doesn’t.
    - weakfish 4y ago
      Great argument! Let me try. Yes it does. Did it do it right?

conductr 4y ago

There’s a lot of things like this that I blame mostly on the growth of what we’re doing here. We’re communicating in a low fidelity text only fashion and doing it without any knowledge of who each other are and how our word choices will be received. We definitely don’t know who is lurking or reading or may take offense once I hit the reply button on this form. Had that been said in person, even with someone we only recently met, we’d have “known” what it was meant to mean and that it was just a figure of speech to support their main point. Online, people will read every word selected and choose to vilify you for using a pronoun or some other random extreme literal take on your word choices without really considering what your intent or meaning or that you is (often there’s not much, it just happens to be the choice of words they made while typing on a tiny device and trying to be concise). It’s also not considered that online we’re intermixing generationally, culturally, economically, and so many ways. When a 50 year old person says something like the word “retarded” it may feel normal and they are ignorant of the fact that anyone under ~30 knows not to even say that word, it’s the “r” word. Then you have the other “n” word that everyone knows is unspoken except it’s found and heard everywhere because some people can and do say it steadily. As an example, I frequent a local subreddit for my city. Something that regularly comes up is crime and homeless and such. If you have anything to post there. Someone else will invariably reply with yes but redlining, Jim Crowe, disenfranchised citizens, etc. Those are all base general knowledge and historical facts for sure. I think everyone is well aware of them. But, it’s difficult to have any discourse when the audience expects a full historical account of why the situation exists before solutions can be discussed. It’s pretty tiring and I’ve basically stopped chiming in on those kinds of things. TLDR: communication is hard and text only is really hard.

antonfire 4y ago

> It appears this world has become manically trigger-happy to label something as -ist or -istic Also to label something as maniacal, perhaps.

lo_zamoyski 4y ago

It is currently culturally fashionable to construe things in this manner, so unsurprising. It is humorless and lacks common sense. Reasonably intelligent people understand context. They do not flatten all of reality and reduce everything to their favorite pet paradigm, projecting uncharitably all sorts of weird baggage onto the most innocuous of statements. So now you can't make a quip about wives unless you also make a quip about husbands (or else generalize it to "persons") though even these are now too restrictive for some. Heaven help you if you dare observe that there are differences between men and women, complementary differences no less, that lead to humorous tensions between them and peculiarities particular to each that surface within their shared lives. Shall we raise a toast to ourselves, savaged men (and women!)? Humor is dead. And we have killed it.

emadabdulrahim 4y ago
Common sense is dead. Certain groups of people lack self and/or social awareness to notice that they've replaced religion with ideology. For example, we criticize religion for shaming many parts of our sexuality "Welcome to church, you're a sexual being and you should be ashamed". Now that's been replaced with "You're a man, you should feel guilty because you're from the oppressor group." etc. Welcome to Western society, you're privileged and you should be guilty and ashamed. How did we get here?
- cjcenizal 4y ago
  I think recognizing one’s privilege is uncoupled from how you choose to feel about it.
  - Dudeman112 4y ago
    For most people it's not The expression "privilege" itself makes people feel attacked and get defensive. If you say the same exact sentence replacing "privilege" for the definition and it greatly changes how people react to what you say
  - krageon 4y ago
    That's a good point. There's absolutely no reason to feel bad about being privileged. You should be happy! Perhaps spread some of that happiness around, make the world a happier place. Everyone wins.

the-printer 4y ago

There has to be some sort of “Streisand Effect” phenomenon that can be applied to interpersonal communications, where by mentioning a thing in conversation that you hope not to entertain, it gets entertained as a consequence of it being mentioned. > It would be curious to examine in a psychological study if this reinforced behavior has developed more due to a subtle social reward system for the “labelers”, or due to a punishment system for the “non-labelers”. This is intriguing by the way.

lelanthran 4y ago

> Why is this saying misogynistic? It's not; it's the result of a vocal and aggressive mob - people are taking care to not draw the attention of the mob.

Aeolun 4y ago

I think there is a strong punishment system for the non-labelers. People that feel strongly about this stuff are really rabid, and seem to spend all their time calling people out on perceived slights.

gsk22 4y ago

There are plenty of layers at which it's misogynistic, but the most obvious one perhaps is that it wholly centers around the man in the relationship. Why must the wife be the source of the husband's unhappiness ("nagging wife" trope)? Why does he get to be the great philosopher if they're both unhappy? You can say "it's just a saying, it would be equally true with the roles reversed" -- but then, why aren't they? Sure, on the misogyny scale, it's pretty mild, but sayings like this that implicitly reinforce the male-centered world we live in are in some ways the most insidious.

concordDance 4y ago
In an unhappy marriage the other person is normally the source of unhappiness. Not always of course (I knew a guy who got divorced because he felt he'd missed out on having more relationships).
- gsk22 4y ago
  Sure, if you only look at the minutae. At a high level, a relationship is a bond between two people, so it's unfair to lay all the blame solely at the feet of the other person. You've probably done things that make your partner unhappy as well. The mature way to approach the problem is to work together to resolve the issues -- or if that isn't possible, terminate the relationship. You can't just make yourself the victim and say it's all the other's fault.
deadpannini 4y ago
The standard you've laid out proposes that any statement about a man's experience in a relationship is by definition misogynistic, because it's centers the man (and, of course, erases women). Do you stand by that? Additionally, consider that you are the one bringing the nagging wife trope into this: it's merely one of many possibile explanations and unhappy marriage.
- gsk22 4y ago
  The difference is the original statement was not about a specific man's experience; it was a generalization about married men's experiences as a whole. Saying "I was in an unhappy marriage and it made me a great philosopher" would be fine. It's the generalization which is an issue here.

ttyprintk 4y ago

It’s only misogynistic if the husband: 1. Can only be married to a woman, sometimes a pre-arranged woman 2. Has religious or cultural norms keeping it that way 3. Improving the marriage is the woman’s territory This is probably a realistic aphorism for a larger group of people than those who can call it misogynistic.

alexvoda 4y ago

I see there are many people commenting on the ethical value of that saying. To understand it better it is worth noting that it is a bastardization of this misquote commonly attributed to Socrates: “By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” As detailed in this ( https://qr.ae/pvP31C https://qr.ae/pvP31C ) answer on Quora, Socrates never said (or was never recorded to say it, he didn't write down his philosophy) this exact thing. But there is a recorded dialogue that is plausible as the source of the simplified quote. While less clear from what kraig911 said or from the original dialogue, the commonly spread (meme) version of the quote, which I pasted above, makes the misogynism clear. I hope further explaining that is not necessary. It is important to note that Ancient Grece was very gender unequal, so a misogynistic quote in that social context is not something surprising, even for one of the brightest minds. That is just how society was in those times, and those philosophers did not get the benefit of hindsight we have today. Besides, as stated above, Socrates didn't actually say that misquote. He was commenting about the challenges of his relationship with his wife. From that dialogue, it is even implied it was a conscious decision he made. The misquote is especially dreadful because it is a generalization over the entire feminine gender. I am now quite curious when exactly in history did the misquote take its commonly known form. I am quite surprised that of all the people commenting, no one attempted to go to the source of that meme. Instead, everyone just espoused their viewpoint. I wish HN to be a place of knowledge seeking, not a place of culture war. Edit: looking into this a little deeper, Spencer McDaniel, the one who wrote the Quora answer linked above, has an entire blog about ancient times and expands on the issue of misquotes: http://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/07/16/fake-and-misattributed-ancient-quotes/ http://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/07/16/fake-and-misattr...