Culturess
Fansided

Misogynoir, and Why Naming Things Matters

By Ani Bundel

facebooktwitterreddit

We look at the word “Misogynoir”, which arrived in the mainstream consciousness this week, and why naming things matters.

More from Culturess

As we reported in our ever ongoing list of why we can’t have nice things, Leslie Jones has now had her website hacked and private images of herself posted to the internet. it is just the latest in a series of attacks on the star, who was already chased off Twitter by harassers this summer. All of this is in the continuing fall out from the Ghostbusters movie, which had the temerity to show a world where women are not window dressing, and use an already established property to do so.

Most were horrified at what had happened to Jones, and angry. It’s no secret that women get the short end of the stick when it comes to harassment on the internet, and African American women get it twice as bad. But until yesterday, I had no idea there was an actual word for it. Ironically I learned it existed when a prominent African American woman on Twitter, Imani Gandy, retweeted, of all things, pop star Katy Perry into my timeline.

The tweet read thusly:

I had never seen the word “misogynoir” before that moment. But after poking it with a sharp stick and googling it, I learned that Perry had not made it up. It is in fact, a word.

"Misogynoir is misogyny directed towards Black women where race and gender both play roles in bias. It was coined by queer Black feminist scholar Moya Bailey, who created the term to address misogyny directed toward black women in American visual and popular culture."

Why Naming Things Matters

The ability of humans to speak languages and communicate ideals verbally is one of our greatest triumphs. It is such a major component of what makes us who were are, most religious texts, not just my own, but most modern religions (and many ancient ones of times gone by) begin with God, or Gods, naming things, and thereby creating them. To name something is to define it, to give it shape. More importantly, to name something gives you power over it.

One of the most important things that has happened in our 21st century is the rise of giving names to these things that did not have them before. I still remember where I was the day I first read the word “mansplain“. I had only recently left a career of over a decade where sexism was so embedded in the fabric of everything around me, to mention it would be the same as to state that the air in the shop tasted of metal. Of course it did, it was a warehouse, people welded in it. Therefore the air tasted of metal. Of course you got your ass grabbed when you bent over to push the road case onto the truck. This, like the metal taste, was simply part of the job, and if you didn’t like it, you could be a failure at your chosen career, and leave.

"Mansplaining is a portmanteau of the words man and explaining, defined as “to explain something to someone, typically a man to woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing.” Lily Rothman of The Atlantic defines it as “explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman”, and feminist author and essayist Rebecca Solnit ascribes the phenomenon to a combination of “overconfidence and cluelessness”"

The first time I read the word mansplain, after years and years of living and working in that environment, it was like a thunderclap over my head. THIS. This thing! This thing I experienced and lived through, every day of my life. This thing here, it defined what happened every time my ex-husband had opened his mouth. This thing here. This was a thing, and it was a thing that happened to other women so much that there was a word for it.

Now that I knew the word for it, I could call it out when it happened

There was a word for it. And that word intrinsically defined it as a thing that was not ok. It was validating on a soul deep level. And now that I knew the word for it, I could call it out when it happened to me again.

As a little white girl, “misogynoir” doesn’t quite bring home that same thunderclap. But that doesn’t matter, because it’s not about me. I have never experienced this personally. It’s a thing I’ve seen. In high school, my BFF was an African American girl, a gorgeous beautiful nerdy girl. And even at 16, I understood that for every moment the jock boys negged on me, (there’s another word, negging), somehow it was always twice as bad for her. The microaggressions were actual aggressions. The subtle leers for me were open leers at her. She was being othered in a way I couldn’t comprehend. And she simply had to let it all roll off her, like water off a duck’s back, because that’s what good bougie girls like her were taught to do. I cannot imagine how it would have been if the internet and social media were a thing back in the 90s as they are today.

"Negging is a rhetorical strategy whereby a person makes a deliberate backhanded compliment or otherwise insulting remark to another person in order to undermine his or her confidence in a way that gains approval.The term was coined and prescribed by the seduction community."

But we didn’t have words for these things then. The rise of the internet, social media and the amplification of these behaviors makes it so they can no longer be ignored. It gives those who experience a chance to name it, to define it, and to have power over it. To call it out when it happens, and put a stop to it.

Next: Check out more Social Progress at Culturess

What happened to Leslie Jones was a horrendous crime. And it happens to black women every day. There is a word for it, misogynoir. Anyone who engages in it should be ashamed.

Home/Social Progress