Hello everyone,
Some pondering here.
A few days ago we rented a movie titled "The Contender." It's about the
struggle to obtain confirmation for a woman candidate picked by the
President of the US as the replacement for the elected Vice President who
had died in office.
As you might guess, much of the struggle was gender-bias related.
In the closing minutes of the movie, the President called on the American
people to rise above partisanship, misogyny, and hate. It was such a
moving speech, I copied portions of it in my journal. But I couldn't
spell misogyny. And I wasn't sure what it meant.
To the dictionary I went. Did any of you ever get lost in reading the
dictionary? Well I did -- again.
I found out that the prefix "miso" is a Greek combining form that means
"hatred of."
Misogyny -- hatred of women.
I also found:
Misogamy -- hatred of marriage
Misotheism -- hatred of religion
Misology -- hatred of discussion & reason
Misoneism -- hatred of change & innovation
Hmmmmmmm!!!!!
I was surprised that these tendencies (??) had names. What does this tell
me? I'm still pondering. What does this stir up in you??
Yesterday morning, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported the top paid CEO's
in Northern Ohio. They had 50-75 people listed, making from $300,000 to
$2,500,000 in salary. I looked for names of women -- I found one (1) that
I could recognize. Who knows how many were Hispanic, African American,
etc.
[Host's Note: John, I assume by "recognize" you mean "recognize as a
woman's name. ..Rick]
This "misogyny" word made me look.
Hatred. That's strong. I have a friend (if he's reading he will see
himself) who says "I'm not particularly drawn to such and such." But
hatred......
Hatred of change? Hatred of reason? Hatred of innovation?
Not simply "not drawn to it," but hatred! Wow.
I've seen (I guess you have too) organizations who say they pride
themselves in intuitiveness and teamwork, yet something doesn't ring true.
I wonder if there is an unspoken theme of misoneism and "not being drawn
to touchy feely people" (whatever that would be called)?
Hatred of the relationships engendered in community. Hatred of
innovation. That's way not the same as simply being uncomfortable with it,
isn't it? Do I do anything different if it's not the same?
John
--John Dicus 2761 Stiegler Road Valley City OH 44280 330-723-0111 mailto:jdicus@ourfuture.com
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