If linguistic patterns are any indicator, if you want something to be incredibly popular and eventually spread to every subset in society, gear it towards young women. Despite the fact that young women are trend-setters, however, almost anything that is associated with them is generally considered not as good as the young (or older) male equivalent.
Compiling an exhaustive list of things that people tend to put down because they are too closely associated with femininity and/or feminine youthfulness would be both exhausting and depressing. Taking a moment to ponder if there are any good reasons to put down certain things and not others, and if our reasons are not as based on personal preference as we might want to believe, however, is an approachable goal.
You just might be buying into the hatred of the feminine if you criticize the items to the left much more so than the items on the right, if at all.
| “Girly” Thing | “Manly” Equivalent |
| Facebook / Twitter | Google+ |
| Sleepovers | LAN Parties |
| Duckface | Bicep flex |
| Myspace angles | Cock shots |
| Selfies | Picture with “hot chicks” |
| Gossip magazines | Gaming / Sports magazines |
| Celebrity worship | Sports star / CEO worship |
| Tumblr / Pinterest | |
| Chick flicks | Action movies |
| Pole dancer | Gas station attendant |
| The Royal Wedding | The Super Bowl |
| 50 Shades of Grey | Mainstream Porn |
| Bubblegum Pop | Generic Dude Rock |
| Crying at work | Temper Tantrums at work |
[ Statistics on social media use (more) ]
Have you noticed any other stereotypically-feminine hobbies that are reviled much more than their stereotypically-male equivalent?
Google+ is considered “Manly” now? I must be really behind the curve. As social networks go, it’s always seemed like kind of a loser, especially during the nym wars.
As per the stats I cited, it’s overwhelmingly male-dominated, far more so than other social networking sites are female-dominated.
I’d never thought of the “Myspace angle” thing as particularly feminized…I’d seen criticism of it aimed at men.
But the rest of it, yeah. ESPECIALLY the hate-on for selfies, Tumblr, and the like.
Can you help me understand the difference between “hatred of the feminine” and “misogyny”?
The piece you link to here goes to Natalie Reed who links it to the Good Med Project, but that page has disappeared.
I gather though that “hatred of the feminine” is a type of misogyny. Is that accurate?
You are right. Misogyny is hatred of women. Hating things associated with women would be a subset of that.
Thank you.
I don’t get the pole dancer versus the gas station attendant.
Don’t dudebros like pole dancers?
They like them yet shame them.
K, so where is this overwhelming criticism of “girly” stuff? Could totaly just be my own bias, or the crowd I typically hang with, but I’m not seeing it. Are there like, statistics anywhere to back up the claims that stuff in the left-hand column is criticized more than the right?
I’m not finding any studies directly done on the matter. I do know that femininity is generally associated with weakness, incompetence, silliness, frivolity, and so on. There’s a reason why boys are discouraged from doing “girly” things more than girls are discouraged from doing “boyish” things. Tomboys are much more accepted than sissies; just the connotations of each word tells you that.
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/07/16/power-masculine-weakness-feminine/
http://www.jamesinnes.com/blog/2013/02/page/4/
Also, there’s a known phenomenon where men move away from terms, actions, etc. if they’re associated with women, but not the other way around. I can’t recall what it’s called so I can’t find any pertinent link, but as soon as I figure it out, I will follow up.
Maybe janitor would be more equivalent to poledancer? Then again, where I work janitors are more or less equally split between male/female, even though the job is considered low status, whereas the local gas station attendents seem to be mostly men. Just thinking.
Except no one asks janitors why they’re selling themselves or what have you.
[…] biases and double-standards aside, there is also the issue of people simply not understanding how the world works. If you want […]
[…] While there are women who extravagantly declare their apathy, the starkness of the sort of “WHO CARES” messages issued by mostly men reminds me of the way that many men perform ignorance as a way to express indifference for the benefit of people talking about things associated with women and femininity. […]