This is probably a terrible thing to say out loud on Tumblr but … I don’t much like the current trend where the word “misogyny” has pretty much replaced “sexism against women.”

There is a meaningful difference.

Misogyny means hatred of women. When I was a kid, all the references to misogyny or woman-hating that I ever encountered were about actual hatred, the sort that usually prevents a person from entering into any relationship other than “enemies” with the object of the hatred. When a man in a book was described as hating women, he didn’t have a wife or girlfriend. He avoided women as much as possible. (Sometimes the heroine managed to win him over and teach him to love her– the fantasy of a near-impossible conquest, I guess– but it was understood that if she hadn’t, he would have gone on avoiding all women forever.)

Meanwhile, “sexism” was a word with a wider meaning. It could refer to perpetuating sex discrimination without really thinking about it at all. It could also refer to having biases that were not really hatred – like a man who loves his wife in the same sort of patronizing way he loves his young children, believing that she has different, lesser abilities due to her sex, and thus feeling that it’s best and safest for her if he doesn’t allow her full autonomy.

And this, in practice, may have many of the same effects as hating her. But it is not the same emotion. It’s more similar to the love he has for his children than it is to the hatred he has for an actual enemy.

Yes, that kind of love is extremely harmful to express toward a romantic partner, but no, that doesn’t make it the same thing as hatred.

But in the past decade or so– probably due to our desire to have as strong a term as possible for a bad thing, as satisfying as possible to say when we’re angry– the word for hatred has expanded to eclipse both meanings.

And you might ask why it matters. (As in many cases where people ask why it matters to have different words for different acts that are equally bad– and where even suggesting that one act doesn’t fall under the definition of the other will get you accused of defending that act.)

But it matters because not everyone conflates those two things. And if you call someone misogynistic when they do not actually feel any emotion that they would describe as a hatred for women, then they aren’t going to listen to you.

…But then again… they also won’t do that if you call them sexist.

I guess all those words are ruined by the general assumption that intentions are all that matters; and that people can know your intentions beyond all doubt from your actions; and that describing your behavior with any of those words for types of prejudice is equivalent to calling you an irredeemably evil person.

So maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe nothing matters.