Does anyone else here reckon that a lot of misogyny comes from a lack of positive experiences...

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

6. As to the first part, I couldn't say what percentage of the mysogyny

that's out there might stem from such, but I'd have to ask what constitutes a 'negative experience'? Is it simply being denied something the guy wants? And are we to get Freudian, and say that because parenting has been so often left to women, that since Mom generally gets stuck being the one who tells Junior 'No!', she's set up as primal 'negative experience'? And, heck, what if Junior is spoiled rotten and never hears 'No!' from Mom? In which case his sense of entitlement gets to get hammered by the first girl he assumes will just fall in his lap?

Aren't our 'negative experiences' in life often simply a reflection of our own input into the experience? If you go into an experience with a sense that you 'deserve' a specific outcome, then at least some of the time, you're going to walk out with a 'negative experience'. I think if you go in with no expectations, and don't assume you are owed any particular outcome, you'll walk out again with far fewer chances of having had a 'negative experience', even if the outcome wasn't that for which you had hoped.

As to the second part, I think that depends upon the people with whom you hang out, and the extent to which you socialize. I don't spend a lot of time just 'hanging out' with other guys, so there's no reinforcement of the 'men first' attitude, no matter what my experiences are. So most of my socialization skills were formed in school. And that's where I'd start working to change the cultural reinforcement, de-emphasizing competition and self-centered behaviours, and emphasizing cooperation and seeing everyone as being an equal human being, regardless of gender, skin tone, intellect, accent, or any other particular characteristic.