Emasculate originally meant to castrate so a feminine equivalent wasn’t necessary.
The word we’re looking for, from a linguistic / cultural usage standpoint is infantilized.
The uplifting side of this community is super nice, the “men suck let’s hate men let’s compare ourselves to men” part is real Icky.
Is pondering about the word “emasculate” and its etymology and modern usage the same as saying “men suck”?
No. I’m speaking about the general theme of much of the content posted here.
It’s very “compare to the other” instead of “lift us up”
Bit of an odd thing to bring up on this post then.
Can you share the post where we’re comparing ourselves to men? I haven’t seen such a discussion here.
I have seen some sensitive topics broached like abuse or no fault divorce be discussed, but I just scrolled through the last few weeks and can’t find what you’re referencing.
Did you mean to link to this same conversation that you just said wasn’t an example?
This leads back to this post.
Edit: Unless you’re thinking that talking about masculinity is the same as comparing ourselves to men?
Yes. This post is an example.
My no was to your interpretation of my meaning, you asked me a yes or no question to which I responded “no”
Edit: Unless you’re thinking that talking about masculinity is the same as comparing ourselves to men?
I don’t read this as simply “talking about masculinity”, I’m not interested in changing how you read this because to be frank I don’t put much weight into your take or point.
This post isn’t about women comparing ourselves to men or saying we hate men. It’s a word nerd post more than anything.
You’re more than welcome to ignore the posts that are talking about gender ideology and sexism if the points we’re making go over your head.
deleted by creator
I’ve been on this community for two years and have yet to see anyone say “men suck.” I believe it’s against the rules.
There are multiple definitions for emasculate, but they’re specifically referring to a loss of masculinity here.
emasculate = less manly
effeminate = more womanly
???
The pivot point clearly being man.
What’s funny is that both could include castration.
Interestingly, both are from the Latin prefix “ex-” plus gender. Apparently “ex-” can mean both “away from” or “thoroughly”.
One is the loss of an attribute and the other is gaining an attribute. Not quite the same thing since a loss of masculinity doesn’t make one more feminine.
Unless you ask a man
Good thing this is a women’s community, right? Hopefully one where we avoid over general and negative statements about men.
I don’t think it’s a negative statement to say that men’s culture views losing masculinity as gaining femininity, just an observation. Certainly, I didn’t mean that as an attack on men.
What would be a clearer way for me to express my viewpoint?
That is a negative statement and it is a poor and disengenuous way to frame men. There is no “men’s culture” in the same way there is no “women’s culture.” Homogenizing male views is just as harmful as doing the same thing to women.
Perhaps I live in an area with more segregation of the sexes, but there is absolutely a divide between men and women here. Stepping out on a limb here, but I would say there’s also a divide online given the fact that we need our own community where no men are allowed to post or reply. This post itself is an observation on the differences in view of masculinity and femininity between men and women. Quite frankly, compared to calling masculinity arbitrary, I think my point was quite tame.
My original statement is based upon my lived experience. I appreciate your explanation as to why I’m wrong, but as I asked before: what would be a good way to degeneralize?
I don’t know how to explain to someone how not to generalize if they know and understand what a generalization is. Knowing the meaning of the thing should be a spring board to help avoid doing the thing. I can’t fix a sentence where I don’t agree with the premise.
This post is about etymology and the nature of masculinity and feminity as concepts, the subtext being that they are arbitrary.
My point was that they aren’t two sides of a sliding scale.
One is a verb, the other an adjective. Apples and oranges.
The analog to emasculate is defeminize.
deleted by creator
Julia Serano in Sexed Up and I believe before that de Beauvoir in Second Sex both discuss how generally femininity is almost defined as an absence of masculine qualities. In Serano’s case, it’s even about how we quickly judge a person’s gender or sex based on certain characteristics and the way those are unevenly weighted - a beard / facial hair is more weighted as a gendered characteristic, and more likely to make someone see a man than breasts would make someone see a woman.
If I had more time I would pull out the relevant quotes from those works, but I do think if we are comparing the way we discuss emasculating in relation to castration and removal of genitals, I’m really not sure what similar concept or word we would have for when this is done to women, e.g. genital mutilation to remove the clitoris is not generally seen as removing female essence, whereas removing a man’s testes or penis is more likely to be interpreted or understood as removing his masculine essence, or at the very least reducing how masculine he is.
Maybe part of this is even more practical: a man’s sex hormones are produced by external organs that can be removed and which literally would make him less masculine, whereas a woman’s sex hormones are produced by internal organs that are harder to remove. (Not to naturalize the social and political perspective, there are clearly arbitrary cultural values getting exposed here.)
Ooh, I think I might need to read these books … fantastic comment BTW :-)
Defemistrated?
👏👏👏
Thats what happens when Putin gets rid of an old Mistress
Just start using the word emasculated to mean the undermining of anyone’s identity, and it will lose its gendered connotations. You can’t be emasculated if you are secure in your identity. Classically it has been used to re-enforce “masculinity” in those with insecurities by those who are insecure. Maybe this is a reflection of the fact that one of the tenets of masculinity is self assurance and security, which hasn’t been as true for femininity. Femininity has different standards which get challenged through other kinds of social re-enforcement.
I like this line of thought. Women can certainly express masculine traits and vice versa. Let’s make it gender neutral.
Ehh i think it already works for women who have claimed or acquired (assumed or no) masculinity? It’s a trope in media when women are portrayed in a place of authority. E.g. woman in power is seen or portrayed as not being masculine enough to forego empathy.
I hate to say this, but I think the closest equivalent would be “de-flowering.” A perceived loss at the value society expects from you.
This is certainly a kissing cousin of the term at least, yes.
There’s “defeminize” or the more recent “defeminate.”
If we take the other meanings of “emasculate”:
In the sense of literal castration, there’s “oöphorectomy”; in the sense of complete neutering (removal of penis and testicles) there’s “spay.”
In the sense of weakening or sapping energy… well, the meaning isn’t gendered, but the morphology does follow the “male-as-norm” principle. I couldn’t find a feminine gendered variation (at least, not in English), but this also doesn’t appear to be the meaning that OP is referring to.
Whoever failed to coin defemistrate should be shot
or throw them out the window
sick
Do you think they’re talking about throwing men out the window?
They are not, for the record.
No, it was a tongue in cheek comment that their wordplay was sick.
R e l a x
Felt the need to check in seeing as how you’ve conflated talking about masculinity with comparing ourselves to men.
Happy cake day!
Yikes, you’re being a creep.
What would a hateful shit call a woman who can’t have kids, or is less “graceful” or “put together” than the “standard woman exemplar”?
I usually just hear that I’m broken or “not a real woman”. It’s usually just some dude being an asshole, but occasionally I get it from women too.
I’ve gotten the broken comment too
The list of names for women like that goes on and on….
Not sure if there’s a word that is equivalent to emasculate though. Defeminization maybe?
I would agree but the linguistically challenged part of me really wants it to be defemination even though that’s probably the wrong suffix
It looks more correct!
Mannish, a harsher version of tomboy. Also, emasculate in a modern sense relates to taking away of power owned by men, by a woman. So it is a term that only has meaning that way when it is assumed that the man will be in charge merely because of socially assigned sexual roles. Same gist as calling a woman mannish or a tomboy, their sexual role, i.e., their social power, is removed when they try to act like something they’re not. The advent of women being allowed to own property and handle their own finances removed a large amount of the traditional underpinning, leaving the term “mannish” as a dig towards a lack of desirabilty. Still traditional sex role based. So the female terms that seek to reinforce those sex roles do exist for women.
Oops, my sidebar was collapsed and I didn’t notice the community name. Go ahead and ban me.
Defeminization…
deleted by creator
Hey Dale thanks for popping in! We are women only so please don’t comment again ♥️
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Sick burn
Wouldn’t the word just be ‘defeminize’? It’s in the dictionary right their, either divestment or robbing of feminine qualities. Been around as a word since the late 1700s.
EDIT: also as mentioned, emasculate originally meant ‘castrate’, and we’ve just used it as a figure of speech so much that it means the same as ‘feminize’.
If we want a word for giving someone a penis, I’m sure I we can come up with it easily. we could make it sound old-fashioned like ‘enphallize’ or something, or we could be modern and worldly and use something like ‘futanize’
Masculinisation is certainly a thing, but it carries a different social role.
