Numbness to GameDay misogyny

Take your PC bullshit and fuck off

Do you think it's M fans making Ann Arbor is a Whore signs?

She allows over a hundred thousand people to penetrate her 6 to 7 times a year and makes a lot of money from it. Let's not even think about how many times she does it for basketball, hockey and the Olympic sports.

meh

Delete?!

It's not an issue until it is

Sticks and stone might break my bones but offending words make me want to hide in a safe zone.

Don't assume Ann Arbor's gender

While I care greatly for women's rights, rape culture, and equal pay, I do believe there is a difference between social banter and straight up discriminatory language. I dunno. Terms like "bitch" lie within somewhat of a gray area that many people find offensive and misogynistic. I get that. However, this is football. This is also a football blog, 98% of which is occupied by men. We hurl insults at one another and sexualize woman. We're men. It's just what men do. You'll see a lot of that on a football blog. I'm a self proclaimed liberal and even I don't delve too deep into words like "pussy" or "bitch". They're not relegated to this one sub-culture. And they're not exactly being used in direct association with the degradation of womenkind. Or maybe they are. The point is, it exists here, just like everywhere else. Keep in mind, most of us are brainless dickheads without our wives and/or girlfriends behind us. Ironically, respect for women is prevalent here, as is banter deemed misogynistic. It is what it is.

I believe the issue here is that some believe that the words "whore" and "bitch" are terms that directly reference someone to being a female, and thus less of a person in some way or another. We could have had this discussion 15-20 years ago about other words. When I was growing up it was common place to call people the F word, gay, etc. Smear the queer was a common game played in my neighborhood. When told that it was wrong, we used to think that "we're not calling them gay like homosexual, but just gay as in stupid." Looking back we can see that is where the connection was built in our mind that somehow gay=stupid/dumb/moronic/etc. Nowadays we know that it is not acceptable to call anyone that. Could perhaps we be experiencing a same shift where people are fed up with certain words being used as commonplace but having underlying connections to females being perceived as lesser? Perhaps we are.

We cannot minimize the feelings of someone who is offended by the acceptance and popularity of these words and their negative underlies. Yet, in the same breath we cannot make blanket statements that everyone who uses these words are inherently "misogynistic/horrible people"

I propese signs that say "Ann Arbor is a city that seeks the attention of anyone, and will do so at any costs"

Or after a 3rd down stop: "You are not very good. You did not have the strength or skill to gain 10 yards in 3 plays."

How's that sound?

What gives you the right to assume that Ann Arbor is female?

Hadn't thought about it that way. Serious question: if the sign had said "Ann Arbor is a dick", would it be misandry (hatred/prejudice against men), and therefore equally odious?

is dildos.

Beat air force.

My first thought is, misogyny is so deeply ingrained in our culture that women have become immune to a lot of it. Every day we deal with it in big and small ways. A sign like that is fairly insignificant in the scheme of things. For me personally, it would be a waste of time to worry about this. We've got bigger misogynists to fry. 

I personally agree that there is a lot of (often subtle, perhaps unknowing) misogyny on this, and probably any, sports board.

That said, most people are well intentioned and don't mean harm. Thus, a tricky situation: telling people who are actually pretty decent that they are misogynists puts them on the defensive and escalates the matter.

So, what to do? I'm not sure. I do wish that people would stop using the feminine (e.g., pussy, bitch, nancy, etc.) as a substitute for a pejorative - that bugs the crap out of me. But even saying that will get some folks riled up. 

 

so damn sensitive about every little thing?

It's like some people need to maintain an outrage boner all the time.  It's annoying and exhausting.

Also, Ann Arbor isn't a whore.  She's more of a tease.

I hope the op is playing.

Thanks again for your patience.

rap music, television shows, comedians, movies, and just about everything else? I'm sure you are just as outraged, right?

This place is going down hill. 

It's good practice generally to pay attention when someone is offended by something said to them, but it's also possible -- in my opinion -- to go too far in that direction.  With "Ann Arbor is a Whore," I see no obvious misogyny.  The "insult" is the use of a term that is always insulting, except when used ironically.  The fact that it's gender-specific obviously relates to "Ann."  Merely using a gender-specific insult in a gender-specific context doesn't equal misogyny, though it may be impolite or stupid.  Personally, I hate these shirts and others with profanity generally because I don't want a Michigan football game to be the reason I have to explain those concepts to my children.

"Pussy" and "bitch" come closer to misogyny.  While "pussy's" male counterpart, "dick," is used just about as often, the context is often different.  With "pussy," the typical use is to equate a man with a woman as though the woman's inherent characterictics are inferior.  That is equivilent to calling someone a "fag," which similarly implies that being gay is undesirable.  I would hope we could all agree that type of use is to be avoided.  On the other hand, "pussy" could be used as simple slang for the vagina, and can be a useful term that way.  (The recent use of "grab a woman by the pussy" is obviously misogynistic, though not because it uses that slang.) "Bitch" might be similarly unacceptable when it suggests that a characteristic such as assertiveness is undesirable when it emanates from a woman.  But that word, and especially "bitchy" have already evolved to describe both genders in many contexts.

Being a "whore," i.e., a prostitute, is always insulting.  By contrast with "pussy" and "bitch" that actually makes it less likely to be misogynistic.  My concern here is that we don't demonize those who might wear such a shirt but who do not intend the phrase to insult women generally (for this phrase, I'm guessing that describes most of the people who wear the shirt), and that we don't become so judgmental that we over-police this issue.  I'm not suggesting that OP and others are guilty of that; it's just something that can happen, and it can turn good people against each other.

I don't get it...a shirt that other fanbases wear makes MGoBlog/Michigan tailgates misogynistic?

While I won't deny the other arguments happening in this thread, I'm not going to bear the cross for a shirt that literally no one in our fanbase wears.

And frankly, I've never thought that shirt was funny...just like the stupid Jim McElwain shark jokes weren't ever funny, just like "Much Fichigan", O$U, or many other dumb things aren't funny because they aren't clever enough to be funny.