Some readers scolded me in comments below the previous post for suggesting that sexism is more a problem in this election cycle than misogyny. Frankly, I’m trying to think through these issues — in part because of a book my wife and I are writing on women in the developing world — and so I’d welcome some more discussion on this issue.

Until I reported this column, I simply assumed that the discrimination that women faced around the world was rooted in misogyny; now I wonder if sexism isn’t the better term. Let me explain the evolution of my thought.

Initially, I focused on misogyny because women in so many places are targeted for particularly brutality. For example, in South Asia, acid attacks are common against women, but almost never against men. Likewise, many different cultures report incidents in which women are picked out and stripped naked or otherwise sexually humiliated, in ways that rarely happen to men. And as best the records tell us, women were executed about twice as often for witchcraft as men. Granted, in conflicts men and boys are invariably killed at far higher rates than women and girls, but that’s functional: it facilitates robbery and reduces the men’s ability to bear arms in a rival militia. In contrast, women are often assaulted in ways that seem less functional and just gratuitously barbarous. The rape-caused fistulas in Congo are one example. So all that is why I tended to reach for misogyny as an explanation.

Then in the reporting for this column, I spoke to evolutionary psychologists who emphasized the distinct origins of racism and misogyny/sexism. Racism seems based in a hard-wired tendency of ancient humans to divide into groups to improve odds of survival, and it was an evolutionary advantage to be able to identify strongly with your own tribe and to fear or kill members of other tribes. That may be why even very small children — even infants — draw racial distinctions or other in-group/out-group distinctions.

In contrast, the evolutionary origins of attitudes toward women were based presumably less on hatred and more on desire to control them and impregnate them, so as to pass on one’s genes. Acquiring and enforcing a harem, so as to improve the odds of one’s own genes being passed on, might involve ruthlessness, enslavement and brutal beatings, but there was no evolutionary incentive for gender hatred as there was for hatred of different tribes. And of course much of the anti-women behavior around the world, from genital cutting to bride burnings to sex trafficking, is typically overseen by women themselves, and it’s easier to see their behavior as opportunism or deeply-embedded sexism than as hatred of fellow women. So that’s why I wonder if sexism, in the sense of discriminatory attitudes toward males and females, isn’t a better way of thinking about the issue than misogyny, in the sense of hatred toward women.

Other anthropologists I spoke to also noted that the most discriminatory restrictions against women tend to come not from those who profess to hate women, but from those who profess to honor and protect them. Think of Afghan society, for example. After interviewing many men who beat and lock up women and threaten to kill them if they take a false step, I’d say that their attitudes for females are a mix of bizarre honor and contempt, but not usually hatred.

I can’t say I’m fully convinced of the argument I’m making. There are still the acid attacks and similar behavior, which I find hard to explain short of misogyny. And maybe the distinction between sexism and misogyny is artificial. Wife-beating may be rooted in the male desire to control a mate and ensure that she passes on his genes and no one else’s, and such behavior isn’t driven by hatred of women in the way that lynchings were driven by racism or that attacks on gays were driven by homophobia. But for the woman with multiple broken arms, that may seem a meaningless distinction.

What do you think? I’m thinking aloud here and would welcome your thoughts.