A review of things you need to know before you go home on Tuesday; ASB cuts, Co-op Bank changes, food prices unchanged, Fonterra has China win, population up +1.9%, swaps & NZD little changed, & more

Laminar "Misogyny (/mɪˈsɒdʒɪni/) is the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. Misogyny is manifest in numerous ways, including social exclusion, sex discrimination, hostility, androcentrism, patriarchy, male privilege, belittling of women, violence against women, and sexual objectification" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogyny

How is "guys liking girls who look like this" the opposite equivalent of "girls like bastards"? One is about appearance and one is about behaviour. Or have you just fallen in to the exact trap I have tried to highlight. That women become reduced to the value of their physical appearance, whereas men get to have traits of behaviour valued?

The assumption of the two being equivalents is itself sexist IMO. AndrewJ is not making his jokes about "girls" privately to his friend. He is making is publicly, on a written comments thread. I ONLY made personal comments about my own life after he had already done so to contextualise my comments, because several other men jumped on to defend him.

We all have reasons and motivations for how we react to things, which is why perhaps a comments section isn't the place to make sexist jokes IMO, you don't know the people who will read it, there is no way of understanding the position of the audience.

For me personally, yes I receive comments regularly, however, because of how I understand human social structures, I also understand that men feel it is acceptable to make such comments to me, in a totally unsolicited and creepy, sometimes scary and sometimes abusive way, because of the wider context and cultural where men feel sexually objectifying women is totally acceptable and innocuous (and I consider AndrewJ above as an example of this). The more often something happens and receives a positive response the more pervasive something becomes and the converse is often true. I said I didn't find it funny, I responded by mocking Andrewj with my own humour. He responded by describing personal things about himself and you responded by defending his right to humour and critcising my humour and my right to question him, and then questioning my describing personal things about myself, when I actually only did that to see whether the additional context would make any difference to you and it hasn't. Actually several men jumped in to defend AndrewJ and perhaps that is because this a male dominated site or perhaps you all think AndrewJ is so fragile and vulnerable that he can't take his humour being criticised but assume that I can take all the criticism you can muster? Perhaps you can explain.

I really don't understand why you keep accusing me of being a threat to free speech. At no point have I even remotely attempted to silence AndrewJ or indeed anyone. It's almost like you have an agenda to keep bringing it up. I mean, if the agenda is that there are some people online who do indeed attempt to silence others and some of those people might be referred to as "feminazis" because they will not tolerate anyone to have any view outside their own and indeed shut down any comment any man (or dissenting opinion) says ever on the basis of him being a man, then you aren't helping either. I have rowed with those women on line as vociferously as I row with you now, I have been blocked and banned myself for questioning what I perceive to be bullying and aggressive behaviour towards men. I see the danger in their behaviour for the future and indeed I think we already witnessing some backlash.

The sexual objectification of women affects everyone. The women who are deemed by male gaze to be less attractive are just as diminished and damaged by the sexual objectification, as the woman who are deemed to be attractive. My suggestion for what to do about that is to be more thoughtful about sexual objectification. Men are sexually objectified in modern culture too, and we are now seeing similar mental health and psychological consequences there too. However, the wider societal value of male roles and skills is still unequal. Physical appearance is rarely represented as the most valuable attribute of a man, but it is frequently represented as the most valuable attribute of a woman, which is why is contributes and perpetuates to inequality.