More than one person has coined me as a misogynist on various posts throughout the joeuser community. Ironically, all of these people are women. I am not certain whether or not these people are qualified to characterize me as such, but somehow they have gathered opinions from my various posts that often concern the relationships between men and women in society.
While I can accept their opinions that I may act like a misogynist, I do hold resentment as being labeled as one by a layman.
So, I suppose I would like to briefly describe why I make some, or many of the comments I often post.
I am a firm believer in women’s rights, and gender equality in our world. I also understand intrinsic differences between genders that make defining equality difficult.
Before commenting on a gender related issue, I often purposely look at the arguments from the female perspective as best I can. In fact, I often argue any reasonable gender issue in these terms.
I may not be a woman, but believe it or not, I am a human being. I know how I feel, and even though I cannot say for certain how others feel, I have been in the world long enough to see my fair share of pain and suffering. In this light, I think it’s fair to say that it is possible for me to understand certain issues from the female perspective, and to pose arguments from that body of understanding.
All that being said, this article is about me, not women. I simply want to briefly outline why my comments may seem as, or be interpreted as terse in some of my comments in response to posts made here on joeuser.
As I have previously mentioned, I am a great advocate of women’s rights and world-wide gender equality and I often times argue to these ends.
Considering that I do hold these views, nothing frosts me more, than to see women “bashing” men in general terms. It comes off as crass to me, just as it comes off as crass when men make similar generalizations. Comments in these terms are bound to be offending to either gender.
Females bashing men offend me because I do advocate and argue often for their beliefs, and it simply feels like a kick in the teeth; women lumping me into their generalizations when I’m often on their side.
This is beside the point that I have had certain negative experiences in dealing with women that consequently sneak their way into my reasoning. I may become emotional or seemingly irrational at times, but I am no more a hypocrite than I am a misogynist.
Remember that when we make such comments online, readers sometimes have difficulty understanding where the author is really coming from, as we lack much of the personal feedback we observe in personal communication.
We all need to take special care of how we word gender based comments. A good example of what not to do can be illustrated in an article I posted about a man that had performed sexual relations with his dog. Near the end of the article, I made the comment, “I guess Mrs. McPhail might have been a little jealous of the scene; the dog was taken by animal control.” Clearly this post contains some emotional basis that is unclear to the reader, and bound to come off as offensive.
I hope you can now realize a bit more of where I come from with respect to gender related issues, and why I react as I do in the form of my responses in the form of comments as I do on such issues.
I respect most women, and I do not hate them. I am a human being and will sometimes act emotionally, just like women do. We are not all that different.