Far too often feminists are conflating different levels of sexism and misogyny. I recently argued with one that wanted to use unnuanced thesauruses to claim that there's no difference between sexism and misogyny. That's fine, but you lose Precision of Language.

I propose to this autistocracy of PPD a standard for factorizing Misogyny and Sexism using precedence set in other philosophical discussions. E.g. Atheism vs Agnosticism.

Agnosticism is often taken as "atheism-lite". In the following article, the author describes agnosticism as more contextual and can be used orthogonally to the theism/atheism axis.

‘Agnostic’ is more contextual than is ‘atheist’, as it can be used in a non-theological way, as when a cosmologist might say that she is agnostic about string theory, neither believing nor disbelieving it.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/#3

Thus, factorizing agnosticism right out of the axis. Agnosticism isn't just "weak atheism" (lacking belief in God/gods) but has its own axis related to knowledge. I.e. A very strong agnostic believes with certainty that there's never going full and complete knowledge/understanding or certainty of the supernatural/God. A very weak agnostic just believes that we don't have enough now for himself/herself to believe or disbelieve God/gods.

This factorization allows us to more clearly categorize different atheists and theists. This allows them to group themselves and find like-minded ppl more effectively. Less confusion or at least less time wasted repeating ideas.

We can do the same factorization for Sexism and Misogyny.

Sexism - Belief in the differences of men and women. E.g. "Strong sexists" believe that men and women are different and will always be different. "Weak sexists" believe there are differences now but have no strong convictions on how they could remain different.

Misogyny - Hatred of women. E.g. "Weak misogynist" is just annoyed at women personally. "Strong misogynist" believes that women SHOULD be hated, righteously even.

Some examples of how this would work:

  • John is a weak sexist, non-misogynist. John does not hate women (maybe even prefers their company to the company of males). He thinks women are different from men, but concedes that there's probably some flexibility in how they are different. Maybe with enough social engineering, standards for masculinity and femininity can change. John is probably the majority of males.
  • Elliot is a strong sexist, strong misogynist. He thinks there are irreversible differences between the genders. Interestingly enough, he thinks women should be righteously punished for being born the way they are even when they have no recourse for change.
  • Aaron is a strong sexist, anti-misogynist. Aaron believes women are definitely different from men and always will be. Women should be loved and protected. He's an archetypical chivalrous white knight.
  • Norman is a non-sexist, weak misogynist. He doesn't know or care about sex differences. He just knows he's allergic to girls. Maybe psychological trauma from being infected with cooties from childhood. He breaks out into hives around girls. It's not curable. He hates girls and hates being around them.

This would improve communication.

I suspect one of the reason a small minority of feminists resist differentiating between sexism and misogyny, and often even insist that all forms of sexism (even the laughable white knights are just lumped together with "misogynists") is to deliberately obfuscate the discussion. Possibly to aggrandize their cause.

"Look how prevalent MISOGYNY is!"

...

^(credits to /u/drok007 for discussion on this matter with me on irc)