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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   32100 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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Likewise to @Amadan, I don't concretely know what "y'alled" means, but I'm assuming that you mean to express surprise that it's still acceptable to say "hysterical" given its origin.

I'll say, you're not allowed to say "hysterical" in the circles I run in without getting at least a remark about how we shouldn't use gendered and/or historically sexist/misogynistic language.

The thing is, 'hysterical' first and foremost described a gendered pattern of behavior. It's called what it is because women are much more prone to it than men, and always have been. So its 'origin' isn't even the problem, I think. And I think it's funny that people (not necessarily you) would have become so blinded to the realities of psychological and behavioral differences between the sexes that they'd parse 'hysterical' as not having anything to do with women except incidentally in its origin.

It's called what it is because women are much more prone to it than men, and always have been.

Citation? You're making a factual claim that it's significantly more common in one sex here, not about how masculine/feminine the behavior is

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/its-catching/201703/why-are-females-prone-to-mass-hysteria

But honestly I'm at a loss as to how anyone could be so, uh, sheltered from the realities of differences between men and women that they'd ask for a citation. It's like asking whether boys or girls are more likely to throw knives at stuff for fun, and then demanding a citation when someone gives the obvious answer. There's a screamingly-loud pattern here that I'd think one has to be either extremely autistic or intensively propagandized in order to miss.

You're making a factual claim that it's significantly more common in one sex here, not about how masculine/feminine the behavior is

What a baffling statement.

of the 2,000+ cases in my files that date back to 1566

Ahhh, I had thought you meant "women are prone to hysteria", not "hysteria, an extremely rare phenomena that mostly only happens in women."

Honestly, I hadn't realized how incredibly rare it was! That's, what, 4 cases per year? So, what, one in a billion women? I feel okay not knowing the details of such an incredibly rare phenomena - you'd need to be pretty autistic to care about something that obscure :)

I'm certainly aware of the word's origins and why feminists object to it.

Whether or not hysteria is something women are more naturally susceptible to, though, I have seen enough hysterical men not to consider it to be a female-specific thing.

Yes; men can also behave in feminine ways. This doesn't make those behaviors masculine.

No, but it does make them not feminine if both men and women are prone to the behavior.

I don't understand the point you're making. How sexually-dimorphic does a trait or behavior need to be before it's rightly understood as either masculine or feminine?

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