Thoughts on this?
(midwest.social)
LadyButterfly she/her
WomensStuffYou can only lose that which is considered a privilege.
Defemistrated?
Thats what happens when Putin gets rid of an old Mistress
đđđ
Emasculate originally meant to castrate so a feminine equivalent wasnât necessary.
The word weâre looking for, from a linguistic / cultural usage standpoint is infantilized.
The uplifting side of this community is super nice, the âmen suck letâs hate men letâs compare ourselves to menâ part is real Icky.
Is pondering about the word "emasculate" and its etymology and modern usage the same as saying "men suck"?
No. Iâm speaking about the general theme of much of the content posted here.
Itâs very âcompare to the otherâ instead of âlift us upâ
Bit of an odd thing to bring up on this post then.
Can you share the post where we're comparing ourselves to men? I haven't seen such a discussion here.
I have seen some sensitive topics broached like abuse or no fault divorce be discussed, but I just scrolled through the last few weeks and can't find what you're referencing.
Hereâs one:
https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/womensstuff/p/792979/thoughts-on-this
Did you mean to link to this same conversation that you just said wasn't an example?
This leads back to this post.
Edit: Unless you're thinking that talking about masculinity is the same as comparing ourselves to men?
Yes. This post is an example.
My no was to your interpretation of my meaning, you asked me a yes or no question to which I responded ânoâ
Edit: Unless you're thinking that talking about masculinity is the same as comparing ourselves to men?
I donât read this as simply âtalking about masculinityâ, Iâm not interested in changing how you read this because to be frank I donât put much weight into your take or point.
This post isn't about women comparing ourselves to men or saying we hate men. It's a word nerd post more than anything.
You're more than welcome to ignore the posts that are talking about gender ideology and sexism if the points we're making go over your head.
I've been on this community for two years and have yet to see anyone say "men suck." I believe it's against the rules.
There are multiple definitions for emasculate, but they're specifically referring to a loss of masculinity here.
I think the comment was meant to sum up a sentiment, not as a quote.
Yeah, lots of folks incapable of recognizing when the slope has slipped
Still waiting for all this man hate youâve claimed this community is nurturing.
Pretty easy to claim something and then nope out when asked about your claim.
Youâre using multiple accounts to comment on my comments, presumably to try to get around having been blocked.
So far a blahaj and shitjustworks account.
Youâre violating this communities rules. Please back off
R e l a x
I have two accounts because I use a different instance on my pc vs my phone. You can check my mod log, no bans being evaded here.
Weâre in the same exact thread.
You just donât like being called out for casting this entire community as man haters.
Nope, they meant specific posts. This one included. There is no anti-men sentiment here, and if there is I would love to see examples.
This post is an example.
It starts by othering men, then comparing how their identity is an only a social construct and how silly is it that only men have this word.
Like, it directly does this.
Idk how anyone can see these posts and not recognize that?
âOnly a man can âŠâ
This reads like âmen are silly and fragile lol look at themâ instead of something uplifting.
There is a discussion that can be had about this that doesnât necessitate othering anyone.
No it doesn't.
Masculinity is a social construct. And it varies across cultures, time and social groups.
Masculinity is not an identity. Male is an identity. Masculinity is a societal behaviour set.
You omitted the context in the post and projected your own interpretation onto it.
Thatâs not what the image says.
Not all men feel their identity is rooted in being masculine. No one here is calling it silly.
No, you said that. It does not directly say that if you need to take a long walk to get to the point you're making. And repeatedly try to convince peoole that's what it says.
You and one other user (on multiple accounts) are actively arguing my point and youâre right you baited me into arguing with you when I ought not waste my time.
I'd ask you to point out where I baited you if I didn't think it'd be just as nonsensical as your interpretation of this post. Also, you commented first. I replied.
We arenât baiting or tricking you. This is called a conversation.
There are no examples. That user signaled to the men of Lemmy that theyâre standing up against the evil misandrists in here and theyâve got their pats on the back now.
God forbid women and femmes have a space where we can talk about what we want without having to look over our shoulder for men and their opinions on our lives.
It's funny. I hear people say we bash men all the time but no one's given an example yet.
There was an entire thread in AskLemmy dedicated to calling this community misandrists a few weeks ago. Men on Lemmy seem to get very bothered when women gather on our own.
I havenât seen an example either.
I remember. You were there arguing circles around them.
emasculate = less manly
effeminate = more womanly
???
One is a verb, the other an adjective. Apples and oranges.
The analog to emasculate is defeminize.
The pivot point clearly being man.
What's funny is that both could include castration.
Interestingly, both are from the Latin prefix "ex-" plus gender. Apparently "ex-" can mean both "away from" or "thoroughly".
One is the loss of an attribute and the other is gaining an attribute. Not quite the same thing since a loss of masculinity doesn't make one more feminine.
Unless you ask a man
Good thing this is a women's community, right? Hopefully one where we avoid over general and negative statements about men.
I don't think it's a negative statement to say that men's culture views losing masculinity as gaining femininity, just an observation. Certainly, I didn't mean that as an attack on men.
What would be a clearer way for me to express my viewpoint?
That is a negative statement and it is a poor and disengenuous way to frame men. There is no "men's culture" in the same way there is no "women's culture." Homogenizing male views is just as harmful as doing the same thing to women.
Perhaps I live in an area with more segregation of the sexes, but there is absolutely a divide between men and women here. Stepping out on a limb here, but I would say there's also a divide online given the fact that we need our own community where no men are allowed to post or reply. This post itself is an observation on the differences in view of masculinity and femininity between men and women. Quite frankly, compared to calling masculinity arbitrary, I think my point was quite tame.
My original statement is based upon my lived experience. I appreciate your explanation as to why I'm wrong, but as I asked before: what would be a good way to degeneralize?
I don't know how to explain to someone how not to generalize if they know and understand what a generalization is. Knowing the meaning of the thing should be a spring board to help avoid doing the thing. I can't fix a sentence where I don't agree with the premise.
This post is about etymology and the nature of masculinity and feminity as concepts, the subtext being that they are arbitrary.
My point was that they aren't two sides of a sliding scale.
Only if you ignore that the word emasculation originally meant castration, and the modern use is still a metaphor for that. There might not be a female equivalent term because hysterectomy is a more modern procedure and much less common or acceessible.
Good points, and it actually leads us to the words "hysteria" and "hysterical," which were the words recently used to describe a (sexist and incorrect) emotional distress based on the possession of a uterus. Which would... kind of support, by being the inverse of, what OP is saying.
Julia Serano in Sexed Up and I believe before that de Beauvoir in Second Sex both discuss how generally femininity is almost defined as an absence of masculine qualities. In Serano's case, it's even about how we quickly judge a person's gender or sex based on certain characteristics and the way those are unevenly weighted - a beard / facial hair is more weighted as a gendered characteristic, and more likely to make someone see a man than breasts would make someone see a woman.
If I had more time I would pull out the relevant quotes from those works, but I do think if we are comparing the way we discuss emasculating in relation to castration and removal of genitals, I'm really not sure what similar concept or word we would have for when this is done to women, e.g. genital mutilation to remove the clitoris is not generally seen as removing female essence, whereas removing a man's testes or penis is more likely to be interpreted or understood as removing his masculine essence, or at the very least reducing how masculine he is.
Maybe part of this is even more practical: a man's sex hormones are produced by external organs that can be removed and which literally would make him less masculine, whereas a woman's sex hormones are produced by internal organs that are harder to remove. (Not to naturalize the social and political perspective, there are clearly arbitrary cultural values getting exposed here.)
Ooh, I think I might need to read these books ... fantastic comment BTW :-)
Mannish, a harsher version of tomboy. Also, emasculate in a modern sense relates to taking away of power owned by men, by a woman. So it is a term that only has meaning that way when it is assumed that the man will be in charge merely because of socially assigned sexual roles. Same gist as calling a woman mannish or a tomboy, their sexual role, i.e., their social power, is removed when they try to act like something they're not. The advent of women being allowed to own property and handle their own finances removed a large amount of the traditional underpinning, leaving the term "mannish" as a dig towards a lack of desirabilty. Still traditional sex role based. So the female terms that seek to reinforce those sex roles do exist for women.
Oops, my sidebar was collapsed and I didn't notice the community name. Go ahead and ban me.
I hate to say this, but I think the closest equivalent would be "de-flowering." A perceived loss at the value society expects from you.
This is certainly a kissing cousin of the term at least, yes.
Wouldn't the word just be 'defeminize'? It's in the dictionary right their, either divestment or robbing of feminine qualities. Been around as a word since the late 1700s.
EDIT: also as mentioned, emasculate originally meant 'castrate', and we've just used it as a figure of speech so much that it means the same as 'feminize'.
If we want a word for giving someone a penis, I'm sure I we can come up with it easily. we could make it sound old-fashioned like 'enphallize' or something, or we could be modern and worldly and use something like 'futanize'
Just start using the word emasculated to mean the undermining of anyone's identity, and it will lose its gendered connotations. You can't be emasculated if you are secure in your identity. Classically it has been used to re-enforce "masculinity" in those with insecurities by those who are insecure. Maybe this is a reflection of the fact that one of the tenets of masculinity is self assurance and security, which hasn't been as true for femininity. Femininity has different standards which get challenged through other kinds of social re-enforcement.
I like this line of thought. Women can certainly express masculine traits and vice versa. Letâs make it gender neutral.
Ehh i think it already works for women who have claimed or acquired (assumed or no) masculinity? It's a trope in media when women are portrayed in a place of authority. E.g. woman in power is seen or portrayed as not being masculine enough to forego empathy.
There's "defeminize" or the more recent "defeminate."
If we take the other meanings of "emasculate":
In the sense of literal castration, there's "oöphorectomy"; in the sense of complete neutering (removal of penis and testicles) there's "spay."
In the sense of weakening or sapping energy... well, the meaning isn't gendered, but the morphology does follow the "male-as-norm" principle. I couldn't find a feminine gendered variation (at least, not in English), but this also doesn't appear to be the meaning that OP is referring to.
Whoever failed to coin defemistrate should be shot
or throw them out the window
sick
Do you think they're talking about throwing men out the window?
They are not, for the record.
No, it was a tongue in cheek comment that their wordplay was sick.
R e l a x
Felt the need to check in seeing as how youâve conflated talking about masculinity with comparing ourselves to men.
Happy cake day!
Yikes, youâre being a creep.
I mean women can make people, you guys are like little gods. Men have something to prove because we donât have magic like that.
Hey Dale thanks for popping in! We are women only so please don't comment again â„ïž
What would a hateful shit call a woman who can't have kids, or is less "graceful" or "put together" than the "standard woman exemplar"?
I usually just hear that Iâm broken or ânot a real womanâ. Itâs usually just some dude being an asshole, but occasionally I get it from women too.
Iâve gotten the broken comment too
The list of names for women like that goes on and onâŠ.
Not sure if thereâs a word that is equivalent to emasculate though. Defeminization maybe?
I would agree but the linguistically challenged part of me really wants it to be defemination even though that's probably the wrong suffix
It looks more correct!
I always thought, emancipation is the better word
Still, etymological it's about young Roman (men) reaching adulthood
Why don't fucking take over the word?
At least, I think, being emancipated, means to be able to stand for oneself
Not sure what emasculate even means - especially as another user posted it was meant for castration.
But maybe I'm missing the point/topic and I'm not sure, if I'm "allowed" to post in this community anyway, so I gonna shut the fuck up ;â -â )
Defeminization...
Masculinisation is certainly a thing, but it carries a different social role.
