As I have written many times before, I believe people who are concerned about women’s human rights and wellbeing and about men’s human rights and wellbeing should be natural allies. That’s pretty much the core of my philosophy on gender issues. I’ve made clear my disdain for men’s activists who lay blame for most of men’s problems at the door of feminism. I also despair of the logic which says any and all feminist activism is, by definition, misandrist.
So all things considered, I should have been applauding Lindy West’s blog on Jezebel last week, where she basically made those precise same points. Truth is, I hated it. Partly that was down to the tone, which I found painfully patronising. In lecturing men on the male experience and the extent and nature of men’s problems, she provided a rare example of what we might call “womansplaining.” (Incidentally, a word to male readers – if you want to know why many women get so annoyed by us guys explaining to them what feminism is and should be, read the article, flip the genders and empathise.)
I’d add that in her “Part 4: A list of Men’s Rights issues that feminism is already working on”, she paints a rosy portrait of feminism which ducks most of the more credible complaints. To take just one example, she says: “Feminists do not want women to escape prosecution on legitimate domestic violence charge” which, firstly, is not entirely true – there are a few feminists who argue that women accused of domestic abuse are almost invariably acting in self-defence. More significantly, it dodges the point that very many feminists have actively and furiously resisted attempts to highlight male victimisation and argue and lobby strongly against gender-neutral approaches to the problem.
In amongst all that, one of her arguments in particular raised an issue that I’ve wanted to address for a while, and that is the meme “misandry isn’t a thing” (or in Lindy’s version, “misandry isn’t real.”) This is a common refrain within modern feminism, often used as a throwaway dismissal of a (perceived) male troll or heckler. Here it is explained and used as a central basis to the argument, which gives us something to get our teeth into.
Dictionaries define misandry as hatred of men. A more detailed working definition might be something like ‘an extreme or irrational hatred, fear, demonization or contempt for men.’ Lindy West readily admits that there are some radical feminists or wounded women who really do hate men, and that our culture produces many derogatory and unfair portrayals of men, but insists that “misandry is not a genuine, systemic, oppressive force on par with misogyny.”
What feminists mean when they say ‘misandry isn’t a thing’ is that because our society systematically privileges men and disempowers women, misogyny serves a different cultural purpose, has different and more damaging impacts and grows from different roots to misandry. To a certain extent I agree with that, but saying misandry is not the mirror image of misogyny does not mean that misandry does not exist at all. I believe that arguing that misandry isn’t real is damaging to men, damaging to women and damaging to the struggle for social justice.
I would distinguish three common varieties of misandry which are most definitely real. The first is a personal prejudice, which may often arise from damaging or hurtful experiences at the hands of men, creating a negative stereotype heuristic. This may not be admirable, but it is often understandable. The second is an ideological misandry arising from certain strains of radical feminism, roughly caricatured as the ‘all men are rapists’ tendency. I think such ideas are wrong and harmful, but I’m also far from convinced that these people are anywhere close to being numerous or powerful enough to cause any real damage, except perhaps to feminism itself.
The third variety of misandry is the one that seriously concerns me, and it is worth looking in detail at what it is and what it does. Cultural misandry is a significant force in policing and constraining the roles of men, and indeed women in society. Our capitalist hegemonic culture (or patriarchy, if you prefer) considers it acceptable to routinely mock and denigrate men’s domestic and child-caring abilities because this acts strongly to discourage deviations from the gender status quo, from which vested interests profit. Our culture systematically devalues male deaths (in news reports specifying numbers of deaths of women and children, for instance) because economic interests require a degree of male disposability in the workplace and military interests may require the mass dispatch of young men to die on battlefields at a moment’s notice. When society mocks and reviles male victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse, the subtext is that that it is women’s place to be victimized and oppressed, not men’s.
When feminists say that misandry isn’t a thing, what I hear is that these issues are so minor, so marginal that they are insignificant. It is not just that they are unworthy of attention, they are not even worthy of a word to describe them. If Lindy West really wants more men to be allies to the feminist movement and wants us to believe that feminism really is on our side, then I struggle to see how this type of rhetoric is in any way helpful.
I’m not for a moment suggesting that feminism should suddenly drop its struggles for women’s equality, autonomy, safety and welfare in favour of challenging male-only military conscription or setting up hostels for male abuse victims, I don’t think that is or should be feminism’s job. Nor do I think that all allegations of misandry should be considered reasonable or accurate. But I would suggest that if we want to end what Lindy calls the “endless, fruitless turd-pong” between men’s activists and feminists online, some rhetorical habits might need to change on both sides.
” Our capitalist hegemonic culture (or patriarchy, if you prefer) considers it acceptable to routinely mock and denigrate men’s domestic and child-caring abilities because this acts strongly to discourage deviations from the gender status quo, from which vested interests profit. Our culture systematically devalues male deaths (in news reports specifying numbers of deaths of women and children, for instance) because economic interests require a degree of male disposability in the workplace and military interests may require the mass dispatch of young men to die on battlefields at a moment’s notice. When society mocks and reviles male victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse, the subtext is that that it is women’s place to be victimized and oppressed, not men’s.”
This.
I don’t think any argument will ever get anywhere when the definition of “misandry” to some men and all mra’s is: hatred of men by women, when It’s men that hate other men and are responsible for everything that frustrates them.
Hi gichidan
Agree with the first part, not so much the second. Saying it is “men” who hate other men, I think, implies a degree of (gendered) individual agency. Men (mostly) don’t hate other men as an end in itself so much as collaborate in a system that requires a degree of contempt for men’s wellbeing. I tend to believe that men (even in the ruling economic & political elite) are servants of the system, rather than the masters. it is economic dynamics that require men to behave as they sometimes do towards other men.
Thanks, comments here are making my head hurt, so i’ll have to give another simplistic reply.
“Individual agency” is a very important part of “collaborating” in any level of power structure, and could easily be translated as “hate”. So, to me, the definition of misandry has to be “male hatred of men”. Until it’s used as such, or another term replaces it, I’ll have sympathy when people say “misandry isn’t a thing” because, as far as I know(someone please point me towards examples), men don’t accuse other men of being “misandrists”, or do they?
” men don’t accuse other men of being “misandrists”, or do they?”
They do.
Misandry is defined as the hatred of men, period, by who? I don’t care by who. The fact that someone is hated is enough to care.
I can’t reply to comment 2:15, so doing it here.
It’s a bit silly to just say “they do”, your word against mine. Could you please show me at least one example of this, because i’ve only ever seen it used as an accusation against a feminist.
Actually, I think I may have seen it being used in an argument about men being portrayed as incompetent at housework and childcare. Are they calling female characters misandrists or the (statistically higher)probably male creators of these characters, misandrists?
Well, first of all you asked for examples of misandry from men. Here’s two:
Michael Kimmel
Hugo Schwyzer
But now you’ve shifted the goalposts, asking for examples not from feminists, which is a completely different matter. This is much less easy, because it’s hard to know someone’s affiliation vis-a-vis feminism. It’s also worth bearing in mind that gender attitudes are rarely made explicit except within the arena of feminism, so it’s hardly a shock we’ll tend to concentrate on what feminists say.
But certainly, you get a lot of ‘man up’ stuff from men, which in my opinion automatically qualifies as misandry (and probably misogyny to boot – see Ally’s article in response to Barbara Ellen for more on why some of us find it to be such a disgusting phrase). Here is one such example from a Tory MP. Eric Pickles, and Tim Yeo also used the phrase, I believe. I don’t know if they’re feminists, but I doubt it.
Btw gichidan, I can’t reply directly to your comment, so I reply to mine and it goes below yours.
Any argument against trans people (though always trans women) using the correct bathroom for their identified sex has opposition, in the form of saying that trans women will rape women, because penis (apparently an argument) and “really a man”. Then they try to mount some absurd case about pedophiles-in-waiting who just wait for the opportunity to cross-dress to enter women’s bathroom with impunity (as if raping, anywhere, was legal, regardless of who you are or are dressed as).
The argument essentially boils down to:
1) Men are violent, evil creatures who will rape given the slightest chance to do so…but only women (or no one would be safe in the men’s room ever – or no one cares)…except in prison (where they apparently merit rape by their very presence, helps rehabilitation or something).
2) Penises are necessary to rape. And only penetrative rape (where the victim is penetrated only) is rape. Both faulty premises. So the trans women defending themselves from the calumny of being presumed aggressors are not doing it on a good front if they use the “no penis or unworking penis” as reasons for them being safe (and I know, I’m one). Trans women are safe because being trans doesn’t make you a rapist. Being male either, or female.
3) Cis women never rape other cis women (or anyone for that matter; men women or children). Maybe true in an ideal world, where rape doesn’t exist at all, but not in our world.
Those arguments come from TERFs (trans-excluding radical feminists) and conservatives often of the religious variety – both who think men are perverts and that trans women are men – thus even more perverted.
They all eventually get out the “but think of the children!” citing little girls who will be raped by perverted men in fishnet. It presumes the natural state of maleness is evil and sociopathic. That sounds misandry to nth level to me.
And both the TERFs and conservatives can be men or women. TERF men tend to be more self-flagellating (since radfem theory blames maleness for all ills, someone who becomes a champion of this cause needs to have a good dose of male hatred, perhaps self-hatred. Or to justify past bad actions by attributing it to the evil maleness instead of a personal action (like Hugo, even though he’s not a radfem or TERF)). Fundie men tend to be more white knigths. The point in common with all those men and women – they all put women first, cis women anyways.
I don’t know if you’ve ever actually looked around some mra spaces, but I did when I was told of these terrible beasties. And I didn’t find anyone saying that it was the hatred of men by women. Instead, I saw a lot of people responding to the assumption by feminists that such was the definition (possibly because to many current and more historical forms of feminism, misogyny was hatred of women by men).
“womansplaining”
This. This has always bothered me about the opposite word’s use in feminist circles, it’s a tacit refusal to admit that both sexes regularly speak on behalf of other people using their rubbish mental model of them as a basis (see the Guardian and conservatives).
I also agree about male disposability, men are the disposable sex and I don’t think a lot of women really realise to what extent society is built on the assumption that men can be used as required.
However, the place where I disagree is with the harmfulness of misandry in the hands of certain feminists (type 2 above). I think that feminism is quite honestly a hateful and destructive doctrine (that people adhere to to varying extents, most commonly in name only) that isn’t given the serious consideration it deserves because for some reason people don’t take what these women are saying seriously. Too often these statements are excused as frustration or venting when they’re just not, they’re not angry outbursts if they’re written down in advance or said on the record.
The problem is, Lindy and others define misogyny as “the hatred of women by men”, and misandry as “the hatred of men by women” while the definitions don’t require the discriminating person to be of any sex, or to have ‘institutional power’. Only the feminism version does.
It’s not in that article, but you can find it on Finally Feminism 101: sexism against men cannot exist, because women as a class lack institutional power – presuming that gender relations and oppressions work in a class A vs class B way, with one having the upperhand, like the bourgeoisie or Marx. It’s also how privilege is defined: male privilege exists because men rule, and female privilege doesn’t exist because it’s only crumbs the system is throwing at them (ie women get collateral benefits, men get “as designed” advantages). I wholly disagree with this.
Yep, that’s about the size of it, Schala.
Feminism tends to neglect one of the primary causes of men’s violence, the fear of disposability and humiliation. http://cmc.sagepub.com/content/5/3/285.abstract
http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/1787/
Hi Steve, great to see you here.
Looks a really interesting link. Don’t suppose you could be persuaded to email me the full paper?
Greetings Ally, nice to talk to you again.
You can download it from the Northumbria link (let me know if it’s not working).
btw left Northumbria am here now if you ever need to get in touch http://www.tees.ac.uk/sections/research/social_futures/staff_profile_details.cfm?staffprofileid=U0025857
brilliant, thanks mate. Shall save it for when I feel maximum grey matter at my disposal
Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. (Paraphrase of Margaret Atwood’s accurate observation.)
Glib nonsense from Atwood. Men have died in their millions in wars the vast majority of them wanted nothing to do with.
And neither fear has much foundation, though both serve thieir purpose.
Fear isn’t important, fear isn’t the same as danger and largely isn’t linked. People are afraid of things that will likely never happen and routinely ignore real dangers.
Also I don’t actually think the majority of women are afraid of men like that, at least not based on their behavior towards men, which runs the full range from love to fear to contempt calling at courteous cohabitation and the studied indifference people affect when crammed together with loads of people they don’t know.
Radical feminism shares their ideological bed with conservatism of the most fundamentalist variety (the religious right in the US) when it comes to views about men and women, and trans women. They only differ about gay and bisexual people. Conservatism doesn’t think trans men exist, radical feminism thinks they do but consider them deluded fools who are examples of “butch flight” and gender traitors, not really men.
Both radical feminism and conservatism think men are beastly, evil, rapists-in-waiting, simple-minded, egotistical, power-hungry and too stupid to wield it wisely (men start all wars, women would be better at managing companies).
Both radical feminism and conservatism think women are innocent, pure, cannot-be-evil super-moral people, who are preyed on willfully by the evil men for their meekness/helplessness. Radical feminism will add that men willfully train women to be that way (more caring, nurturing, meek) in order to take advantage of them.
Both radical feminism and conservatism think trans women are “really men” wanting to prey sexually on women in bathrooms (or in queer space/lesbian space), thus that they are evil (because men are evil). Based on an essentialist definition of womanhood based entirely on genital configuration at birth. They think there is something ‘special’ about it, that trans women obviously don’t have, an essence of womanness.
Where they differ is that conservatism considers womanhood to be a gift, special, precious, beautiful, while radical feminism considers womanhood to be a curse, something to endure, to survive (they do hang on to the concept of womanhood for all dear life, betraying that they ALSO think womanhood is something positive for them).
Well, misandry exists… and usually those women hate men, whose lives are made miserable by their partners. Those who live under the constant pressure of male dominance will be inclined to generalize and hate the whole male gender!
Not the “right” reaction, or course, but a a sadly common emotion nevertheless.
Even if we accepted this as true (which i don’t think it is) it’s telling that you’re looking to excuse women for behavior men would simply be denounced for. No matter what had happened to a guy to make him hate women or any other group the only term that would be used to describe him would be “prick”.
Thanks for this comment. I’m actually sympathetic to this response, and it completely aligns with my own experience. I think that, in general, it’s a good idea to be aware that there might be something going on behind the scenes, as it were, and to exercise restraint. Hating people is quite a hard thing to sustain for any period of time, and usually behind the hate will be quite a vulnerable and fragile person who just needs someone to take his/her pain seriously.
A couple of provisos though (which you may well agree with):
1. You still have to challenge people when they come out with ghastly views. I saw a commenter called Janiera1 on the Guardian today express the following sentiment:
This rather patently misandric and scientifically-illiterate comment went unchallenged and unmoderated. I think it unlikely, however, that a comment talking about women as “hysterical hostages to their hormones” would go unchallenged and unmoderated. Now, one might (and probably should) think – OK, this is an article involving rape, best tread carefully – but still, that sentiment was pretty vile and should have been challenged.
2. The same considerations apply to misogynists. Sometimes you’ve got to think – hmm, something else might be going on here. Again, don’t let it go unchallenged, but just bear in mind that they’re probably not an evil person but a very damaged one.
“Those who live under the constant pressure of male dominance will be inclined to generalize and hate the whole male gender!”
I think oyu have identified the source of most misogyny in society. Those who grow up and are formed under the constant presure of female dominance, as is true of far more little boys than is true for women made miserable by [male] partners, will be inclinmed to hate and suspect the entire gender.
Also:
“Well, misandry exists… and usually those women hate men, whose lives are made miserable by their partners.”
So no lesbians are misandrist? Pull the other one.
‘hate ….. any other group’
Erm, Tories? D:
WordPress password fail ate up my first draft of this comment. Hope it doesn’t eventually appear twice.
I’m not convinced cultural misandry *is* a thing from your examples in the third to last paragraph, because they refer to situations where men are elevated to ‘powerful’ positions. That’s not an entrenched cultural oppression of men, it’s a consequence of a culture that elevates them. You get this:
“When society mocks and reviles male victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse, the subtext is that that it is women’s place to be victimized and oppressed, not men’s”
What you quote there doesn’t happen because men are culturally degraded, it happens because men are culturally elevated above concepts like victimhood. Men are discriminated against when they (or ‘we’ I guess) try to deviate from the ‘culturally powerful’ path because that culture wants them (us) to be ‘better’ in the grand patriarchal scheme of things.
In child care, patriarchy doesn’t treat men like they’re not worthy to do it, it treats them like it’s beneath them. In war statistics and disposable soldiers, women and children are ‘weak’ enough to be tallied as victims, while men are the noble ‘self sacrificing warrior’ class.
This doesn’t look to me like misandry, it looks like reverence.
As far as I can see, this is why people do the ‘misandry isn’t real’ thing. It’s not because society doesn’t mistreat men, it’s because that mistreatment stems from the notion that men are inherently powerful, whereas the mistreatment women receive stems from the notion that they are inherently weak. Hence why believing in ‘misandry’ on this level obfuscates the real problem: patriarchy is a global systematic male power fantasy. It doesn’t hate men that deviate from it’s model, it *loves them* so dysfunctionally that it’s willing to beat them senseless in an attempt to make them see how amazing and powerful they could be.
Just, y’know, imho.
“In child care, patriarchy doesn’t treat men like they’re not worthy to do it, it treats them like it’s beneath them. ”
Well the something other than parairchy is at play in this area then, becuase this is not the kind of barrier that men in childcare report, or even men who are trying to raiase thier own children report.
When a woman reports amna to the police when he is at a park tending hi own choidren, how is that an exercise of patriarchy? Or when a school refuses to list a father as a parental contact, what kind of patriarchy is that, that doesn’t recognize fatherhood?
Aren’t you stretching the word so far that it becomes meaningless?
It’s not even slightly stretching it. Patriarchy is a social construct that perpetuates and depends upon gender roles, like the familiar ‘mother = caregiver while man = breadwinner’ dynamic and contrasting cultures of masculinity (eg strong, violent) and femininity (eg weak, victims).
The historical and ongoing bias in the court system (to take just one example) when it comes to custody battles is sadly also an obvious manifestation of this; the western cultural stereotype of necessarily peaceful stay-at-home nurturing women vs potentially violent away-at-work imposing men infects these kinds of decisions like they do every other.
This is bullshit and needs to change, obviously. The cultural structures that teach people that men and women are differently capable with regards to parenting (and everything else) are *learned* and as such can be unlearned.
That’s all entailed in the smashing of patriarchy of course.
You seem to have misunderstood me also: I’m not saying this culture treats child care like it’s beneath *individual men* but rather men as a social group. Indeed the barriers individual men face are so often tied up in that social group’s (earlier mentioned) gender roles that they’re commendably trying to break free of.
What women do isn’t treated as if it’s “beneath men”.
Manual labor is treated as if it’s beneath women, though. So examine what happens then?
A woman is confronted with a heavy-lifting task. What does she do?
1) Do it herself (what most men would do, or try at least if they physically can’t)
2) Ask a man to do it
If a man goes into a nursing shift (as a nurse) he’ll be asked to do all the heavy lifting, while the women are able to do it, they’d rather have him do it, because he’s a beast of burden or something. If the female nurses can avoid it, they apparently will consider it beneath them to do that heavy lifting.
@schala it’s late so I’ll keep this brief: the anecdotal examples you describe are consequences of entrenched gender roles. Let’s smash gender roles for the good of all humans etc.
“@schala it’s late so I’ll keep this brief: the anecdotal examples you describe are consequences of entrenched gender roles. Let’s smash gender roles for the good of all humans etc”
I agree, too bad feminism only wants to smash women’s gender roles. As long as men’s isn’t also smashed, the system will stay there, and equality never achieved.
Hi Thomas, thanks for the comment.
I think there is an awful lot of truth in the idea that gender stereotypes hinge on men being inherently powerful and women being inherently weak. I don’t think it is the whole story, but it is an important part of it.
But that doesn’t change that the consequences of that male power paradigm in culture can be immensely damaging to men, and we (especially men ourselves) need to be able to talk about how they are immensely damaging to men, and we need language to be able to do that.
I’d be happy enough if people were to talk about “patriarchal misandry” or some such term, that might be a pretty accurate description of what we’re talking about here.
Cool, I’m in absolute agreement with regards to this scenario (and the fact it’s more complex, but hey comments heart brevity imo), but I’ll continue to caution against use of the word misandry due to the false equivalence it can so easily create, since it’s popularly understood to be ‘the man hating version of misogyny’. (I’m certainly open to the kind of qualifying chat you mention though)
We get the power dynamic present in misogyny, and should avoid creating the impression that we’re discussing the man hating version of that specific dynamic (ie inverted). We should absolutely be discussing the material damage patriarchy also does to men, but I think a very important part of that discussion (which could influence it’s direction in a positive way) is acknowledging why that damage occurs.
It’s also pretty late so hey look I wrote a comment that didn’t ramble on.
For some reasons feminists seem really fond of “false equivalences”:
MGM is a false equivalence of FGM.
Female privilege is a false equivalence of male privilege.
Rape by envelopment is a false equivalence to rape.
Misandry is a false equivalence to misogyny.
This is a superb comment. I have seen men who stay at home while a career woman works called ‘pussy-whipped’, ‘mangina’ etc. I have seen boys/men who shirk away from fights/violence called ‘pussy’. I have seen gay men described as ‘taking it like a bitch’. When a man engages in less than ‘masculine’ behaviour, in all its burly glory, the insults are invariably centred around the insinuation that the man is as pathetic as a women These particular insults are not arbitrary, and they were not thought up by women.
These taunts all share one thing – they target toxic femininity. Hypoagency, victimhood, dependency, even when it masquerades as entitlement – these are toxic feminity. Women ought to be taunted as weaklings too when they display these behaviors.
They aren’t though. That’s the real misogyny.
Gingko – you think that avoiding physical violence and staying at home to care for children is toxic and weak? I feel sorry for you.
“It’s not even slightly stretching it. ”
I was just pointing out the absurdity of calling a social system patriarchal when it is so destructive of fatherhood.
“In war statistics and disposable soldiers, women and children are ‘weak’ enough to be tallied as victims, while men are the noble ‘self sacrificing warrior’ class.
This doesn’t look to me like misandry, it looks like reverence.”
You seem to think there’s some difference.
Women’s approval is so important! – more important than men’s actual lives. If that isn’t misandry nothing is. Your comment is misandrist. That’s soem pretty gross sexism, actually.
“In child care, patriarchy doesn’t treat men like they’re not worthy to do it, it treats them like it’s beneath them. ”
Is that what it looks like is going on here”
http://imgur.com/HIoVAkr
This is plain old mommy-blocking and it’s just sophistry to spin it as “patriarchy”, which term, hoowever you try to spin it, labels the sytem as male and therefore blames men for it. What it is is traditionalism.
I prefer the term “femsplaning” myself, trips off the tongue more easily and is clear enough, and I’ve been femsplained so many times I have little patience for it anymore.
I have agreed with you for decades that men’s and women’s advocates should be natural allies, but bitter experience has shown it seems to be nearly impossible. Although that may be changing. The increasing shrillness of the likes of Jezebel (this isn’t the first time they’ve gone after men’s advocates blaming us for being the problem rather than the solution) is that they’re increasingly being backed into a corner and forced to admit that there are men’s issues and that “patriarchy hurts men too” is not a sufficient answer. I view it as progress anyway.
Lind West and her list basically call most prominent feminist groups non-feminist.
..”people who are concerned about women’s human rights and wellbeing and about men’s human rights and wellbeing should be natural allies”
The problem is, we have needs for different rights. The way society is structured right now we have a male-designed playing field for men to play on – oh, and ok, some women are allowed on it, too. Up to a point.
Giving women equal rights to play on the boys’ pitch is a good (though small and incredibly grudgingly given – and the fact that I have to use the word “given” speaks volumes) – first step for those women this naturally suits (and there are plenty), but it does nothing to address the crushing and fundamental inequities that hit women (whether they are happy on that playing field or not), when it comes to the fact that women can get pregnant and men can’t: and that as a corollary of this, women are more likely to be lumbered with the upbringing of a child, both in terms of financial cost and time cost, both of which hit career expertise, expectations of future earnings, expectations of employability (there are still PLENTY of employers who will quietly shelve your CV under “recycling” if you mention young children); and therefore also impact issues as basic as pension expectations. These issues serve to tie women to men financially, and the government is still happily whittling away at the few mechanisms which gave women a little financial autonomy – one example is the removal of child credit from a household where one worker earns £60K. There are lots of other examples (the Fawcett Society’s website details them, many of which are not directly financial, but the erosion of employment protections and rights which were of particular help to women, and which are being done away with in the name of “fairness”).
Addressing inadequate male human rights doesn’t do anything to ensure women’s reproductive rights (access to abortion: access to this being decided by women, rather than the men in grey suits who sit and debate the acceptable upper time limit for abortions at the moment). At the moment a woman who wants an abortion has the parameters of that defined for her by men, and needs the signatures of two doctors before she will be allowed to have it. There is no freedom in this picture.
I’m not going to bang on with a big list here, but the issues feminism seeks to address aren’t just about basic human rights. They’re about the set of rights necessary for women which haven’t even begun to be addressed in the UK. Those necessities without which “equality” is entirely defined as “playing a man’s game on a man’s playing field”. This isn’t an issue where the fundamental problem is that men don’t have enough rights. They already have the rights: they just aren’t prepared to take career breaks, lose money, drop their pensions, or lose status by doing “a woman’s work”. They are still more likely to be the high earner so it doesn’t make financial sense for them to take child-rearing time off in most couples – and this is because of an inequality aimed at women (the wage gap, and various issues to do with ow we value child care in the UK). My statement about men not helping is, of course, a generalisation which I am sure we can all think of exceptions to. But they are exceptions. Men aren’t prepared to stop raping one in 5 women and sexually assaulting one in 3. Men aren’t prepared to stop rape jokes being a mainstream thing, or objectification being mainstream. (UK) men aren’t prepared to put gender quotas on their board selection process, despite this being shown to benefit businesses in the Scandiwegian countries where it has been done. They hate women so much that they’re prepared to harm their business in order to keep us out. This is the mountain of hate women face.
What’s worst about it is that if you ask a man who embraces this sort of behaviour whether he hates women, he will honestly answer you “No, of course I don’t!” He doesn’t even know he does. It is the water we swim in: one’s own bigotries are the hardest to spot and most people aren’t even looking.
..”many feminists have actively and furiously resisted attempts to highlight male victimisation and argue and lobby strongly against gender-neutral approaches to the problem.”
Yes, and quite right too. A man who beats up a woman is in a position of power already, just by being a man. She is in a position of vulnerability to that power abuse already, just by being a woman. DV by anyone against anyone is equally awful, but if you try to equate male DV against women with women’s DV against men, you are not comparing like for like. In terms of correctly identifying *what the crime is* we cannot compare the vulnerability of a financially dependent pregnant woman in a society whose very structures deny her money and independence, with the vulnerability of a man. The vulnerabilities are different. The crimes are therefore qualitatively different, even where the degree of violence may be identical. This is the point feminism makes, this is why they resist de-gendering what is gendered abuse.
..”Our capitalist hegemonic culture (or patriarchy, if you prefer) considers it acceptable to routinely mock and denigrate men’s domestic and child-caring abilities because this acts strongly to discourage deviations from the gender status quo”
Yes, it does. But they also do it because it means the man is acting like a woman. And women are hated and it’s ok to revile them and what they do.
Similarly:
..”When society mocks and reviles male victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse, the subtext is that that it is women’s place to be victimized and oppressed, not men’s.”
… so again, this is society hating the man because he is *like a woman*. And women are there to be victimised and oppressed. This is my biggest beef with this post in a long list of beefs: that you incorrectly interpret this as misandry. In fact it is misogyny, being aimed at men.
Hi chiller, there’s a lot here I agree with and some I don’t.
As an broad response, I don’t attempt to argue that men have it worse than women in any society. I don’t believe men are oppressed by women or that they are more oppressed than women. As a general political position, I don’t really agree with an analysis of society that boils down to men oppressing women. At root I think the vast majority of the population is oppressed by the economic system in different ways, and part of that is forcing men and women into patriarchal roles and lifestyles. Men, by and large, don’t choose their roles and gendered behaviours any more than women do, they just fall into the habits they are socialised into, just as women do. Most of the time that is to men’s advantage, but not always, as in the examples I gave.
Your last line is intriguing. “this is misogyny aimed at men.”
Yes, often it is, not always IMO, but I hear what you say. But to take one example, there’s a famous clip you’ve probably seen of Sharon Osbourne on a US chat show, talking about a woman dismembering her husbands penis and destroying it, while she and the audience absolutely HOOT with laughter, like it is the funniest story ever. That’s the kind of thing I meant when I talk about mocking male victims.
Do you think it is an adequate response to look at that and attribute it to misogyny? I don’t, I think it would be quite absurd, though I’d argue that systemic misogyny and cultural misandry are very closely related, I think they are (or can be) distinct but related phenomena.
To be honest I would have no problem with feminists picking up on misandry and offering their own explanations and interpretations for it, saying yes, there is such a thing as misandry and this is why it happens. I may agree with their analyses or not. But I think to attempt to deny the existence of the issues by refusing to name them is a bit dishonest. it doesn’t make them go away, and I think that is the intention.
You mean designed by a man, or by men, or for men? Because it might be designed by (the men and women of the) 1%, but it sure isn’t there to benefit men. It’s there to benefit the 1%.
Isn’t this a false-equivalence?
And men also don’t have reproductive rights. They have the right to become infertile (possibly permanently so), or to abstain from sex period, or to only participate in non-vaginal sex. Short of that, they become financially responsible for 18 years of child support. No paper abortion (renouncing their right and obligations prior to being declared parent) is possible, while the mother can adopt away a newborn, abort and use other contraceptives.
Personally I’m permanently infertile, and not using the right equipment (non-orgasmic penis which doesn’t penetrate – hard to get a child from it), so having a child against my will is extremely unlikely, but I’m not the majority.
If lots of women selected based on “wanting to be a house-husband” as a dating criteria for LTRs, I’m sure it would become a common enough quality found in men. For now men are selected for money and status, as mates. At least it makes them more attractive to a huge amount of women – the incentive to work more is right there. Add to that that being a provider is in the male gender role, and you got something nearly unavoidable.
The men who do the work (as in, being stay-at-home-fathers) are suspected of pedophilia, considered lazy (because they don’t bring home a paycheck) and incompetent (because penis). Not exactly patriarchy.
Men are raped by women, Women are also not prepared to stop it. Heck, I bet most women think it doesn’t happen or that it’s outright impossible. And the rate is very high. Almost as high as female rape. And most perpetrators of male rape are female, contrary to feminist theory (that says only males rape).
He could be, if there was a notion of “never hit a man”, a Violence Against Men Act, and police arresting the woman and asking questions later.
In the current system, no way.
Good luck wanting equality while also wanting to preserve unequal laws. Every time you want double standards, you shoot yourself in the foot.
Wrong, motherhood is glorified. Feminity is considered pretty good, as well.
When men “do woman’s work” as you say, they are not pulling their weight, so says the system. They can’t opt to do A or B, they have to do A, and doing B means not-doing-A. They are punished for not-doing-A. Basically they’re considered lazy and dependent, something that society thinks men should never be (because dependent can depend on the state, which means taxes, and no one wants to pay for a lazy guy).
Wrong to 11. Women are considered more valuable, precious, worth protecting, like aristocrats. You protect aristocrats. You make more stringent laws against criminals trying to harm them, harsher punitions (and indeed, men who kill women are more punished then men who kill men, while women who kill women are also more punished than women who kill men – the premium on race means longer sentence if you kill white people, less otherwise, we see the value here).
Being considered expendable and unworthy of concern doesn’t mean “being treated like a woman”, but it sure means no one will care if you die in a ditch or in a war.
Oh god, where do I start? At the beginning, of course.
..”You mean designed by a man, or by men, or for men?”
Designed by men, for men. Society has been patriarchal for all of written history. You are talking about a different kind of oppression (to which we are all subject), but let’s not lose focus here, what we’re talking about is feminism vs patriarchy. I don’t know any woman who has been raped by the 1%. I know an awful lot who have been raped by the 99%.
..”Isn’t this a false-equivalence?”
Can you show your workings-out?
..”men also don’t have reproductive rights. They have the right to become infertile (possibly permanently so), or to abstain from sex period, or to only participate in non-vaginal sex.”
There are these marvellous things called CONDOMS. Perhaps you have heard of them. And yes, other than condoms, men have to make reproductive choices the same way women do. Making those choices IS A RIGHT. Nobody interferes with a man’s choice to withhold his sperm from a woman. The world over, women’s right to withhold their eggs from men is entirely absent.
..”If lots of women selected based on “wanting to be a house-husband” as a dating criteria for LTRs, I’m sure it would become a common enough quality found in men. For now men are selected for money and status, as mates.”
Yes, because society favours men with higher pay and far better promotional and employment prospects. Change that and women will be free to choose men based on different criteria. But you can’t dump that decision making process on women. Those rules flow from the patriarchy and it is the actions of men which need to undo them, for both the benefit of men and women. That happens when male board members start making the fair appointment of women mandatory at all levels. Again,you can’t tell women to address this problem: it lies in the hands of men.
..”The men who do the work (as in, being stay-at-home-fathers) are suspected of pedophilia, considered lazy (because they don’t bring home a paycheck) and incompetent (because penis). Not exactly patriarchy.”
You are very wrong about this. That is precisely patriarchy, and what you have described is the awful damage patriarchy does to good men.
..”Men are raped by women, Women are also not prepared to stop it. Heck, I bet most women think it doesn’t happen or that it’s outright impossible. And the rate is very high. Almost as high as female rape.”
Cite sources. I have all the stats on sex crimes in the UK, and I can tell you that the sexual assault of men and boys by women is very much a minority. I absolutely do NOT deny that it happens, and neither do lots of feminists.
Rape or sexual assault is always a traumatic experience, but again, we need to remain aware of the fact that men don’t run the risk of pregnancy when they are raped. That doesn’t make it any less awful, but it does make it a qualitatively different crime, with potentially more trauma for a female victim after the fact.
..”if there was a notion of “never hit a man”, a Violence Against Men Act,”
It is called THE WHOLE OF THE LAW.
It is illegal to hit a man. Already. It always was. The Violence Against Women thing is addressing a very specific power dynamic between men and women. And it does need to be specifically addressed.
..”Good luck wanting equality while also wanting to preserve unequal laws.”
Please demonstrate where I said I wanted unequal laws. I said the crimes are qualitatively different.
..”motherhood is glorified”
Really? When was the last time you heard a teenage single mother glorified? They’re normally referred to as “chavs” or “benefit scum”. Middle class nuclear family motherhood is glorified – the kind where the woman is doing what patriarchy would have her do. the kind where the mother and the child are well off. But motherhood per se is unsupported, unpaid, unvalued, and costs women a huge amount of money in terms of wages and pensions precisely because it is not socially supported at all. If this is glorification I’d like to see denigration.
..”When men “do woman’s work” as you say, they are not pulling their weight, so says the system.”
Yes, and the system saying that is patriarchy. As I said earlier, it is a system which crushes men, too.
..”Women are considered more valuable, precious, worth protecting”
Worth protecting from what? From men. If society were equal, women would not need men to protect them from other men. This is basic logic. Your argument is also massively flawed, as the number of women dying from domestic violence each week shows; the number of women being beaten by their partners (1 in 3) the number of women being raped (1 in 5) and sexually assaulted (almost all of us, fairly regularly). If this is your idea of treating us like “aristocrats”, then I’m going to point the finger and call you French.
You say men are considered expendable and unworthy of concern, but you seem to have missed the fact that women can now (and are expected to) fight on the front line in the US army, and have had that kind of equality in other countries (Israel, Russa, to name but two) for decades. It is a question of time before this becomes the case in the UK.
Additionally, everyone talking about men being expendable because they fight in wars seems to be glossing over the fact that in terms of war deaths, the highest count is (always) civilians – and of them there are as many women as men. So this idea that men are expendable because they go to war, while women sit safely at home, breaks down when you look at how many women – unarmed and completely unempowered to save themselves because they’re supposed to be “aristocrats” who are “protected” by men – are dying or enduring the awfulness of what’s happening in the Congo and Syria, in wars men start, fund and propagate around the world for fun and profit. Who’s cannon fodder really? The man who volunteered to fight, or the woman whose society specifically forbids her from it and leaves her entirely vulnerable?
I’ll simply reply to say that a true patriarchy would protect the man in every single way, favor the man in every single way, including when being a victim. Heck, to have the best, women would need to outright be slaves to him, with no right, recourse or laws against mistreating women.
Think Middle-East, but worse for women and better for men.
And most civilians killed when done discriminately (ie not a bomb) is mostly men, too. Women are very often evacuated. The UN and other orgs participate to this, evacuate the women, let the men die. It’s called gendercide.
In every iteration in fiction of a matriarchy, women not only rule, but men have way way fewer rights than women ever have had. It still favors women in protection, it doesn’t have special protection for men because they’re the underclass, it justified their non-protection by them being the underclass (ie like someone could justify not protecting slaves because they are slaves).
The Middle-East still considers men more disposable, and circumcision is also practiced on them without them having a say in it. It’s about the strongest patriarchy in the world though.
Japan is a much milder version which seems to be stuck in what the 50-60s US stereotype was. But with more overworked men and women having pre-marriage careers.
The US and Canada and most US countries? Far far from that. Almost equal, but in different ways, with men unrepresented in victimhood (the recognition thereof) and women unrepresented in power and in dangerous stuff.
I meant most Europe countries. Basically, first world countries.
The UK have a very outdated and gendered definition of rape which for almost all purposes excludes a female perpetrator.
Would you agree with a more gender neutral definition of rape: oral, anal or vaginal intercourse where the victim didn’t consent?
That would include a woman forcing a non-consenting man to put his penis in her vagina. It would include a woman putting the penis of a non-consenting man into her mouth.
Center of Disease Control (a governmental agency) in the US published in late 2011 a report based on a nationwide survey done in 2010 called National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey – the NISVS 2010 Report for short: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf
79.2% of men who reported “being made to penetrate someone else” (definitions on page 17) reported a single female perpetrator.
98.1% of female rape victims reported a male perpetrator.(page 24)
Lifetime figures state that 18.3% of women have been victims of rape or attempted rape while 4.6% of men have been victims of being made to penetrate someone else or an attempt thereof. (tables 2.1 and 2.2 page 18-19)
So far you seem to be right. But look at the “last 12 months” prevalency figures:
In the last 12 months 1.1% of women reported being victims of rape or an attempt thereof.
In the last 12 months 1.1% of men reported being victims of being made to penetrate someone else or an attempt thereof. (tables 2.1 and 2.2 page 18-19)
That last finding does not fit into the feminist worldview at all and I haven’t been able to see any mention of the “last 12 months” prevalency numbers for men on any feminists blog or mainstream media articles which wrote about the NISVS 2010 Report. I did notice several who either inadvertedly or by purpose only looked at the number for male rape as defined by CDC (which only include where the man has been penetrated and didn’t include being made to penetrate someone else – or rape by envelopment as some call it).
In all cases the majority of rapists of men are women, and if we look at the last 12 months figures and if we assume that the 79.2% number is valid for the 1.1% (last 12 months) as well as the total (lifetime) 4.8% then we end up with approximately 60% male perpetrators and 40% female perpetrators of the rapes committed in 2009 (as the survey was conducted in 2010 and we are looking at incidents in the last 12 months prior to that).
Mary P Koss who is a well known resarcher on rape sat on the advisory board in the nineties – at the same time she wrote an article about methodologies on how to measure rape prevalency. In that article she stated that it was inappropriate to call it rape when a man have unwanted intercourse with a woman and that care must be take to exclude those incidents from rape prevalency numbers. Here is what the NISVS 2010 Report wrote about “being made to penetrate someone else” (p 84):
Which is perfectly in line with Mary P Koss’ recommendations in: http://jiv.sagepub.com/content/8/2/198.abstract
Chiller:
I’ve pulled this paragraph out of your comment because I think it most clearly demonstrates the gynocentric, nay gynoexclusive, sense of entitlement that pervades your contributions.
For one thing, addressing inadequate male human rights doesn’t have to benefit women to be a good thing.
But more importantly, you can’t give yourself an abortion. You need trained medical personnel and safe, sanitary facilities. Any time you want someone else to provide something for you, whether that’s a medical procedure or a Mars bar, you need to meet their terms. And as we live in a civilised society with the rule of law, sometimes those terms are subject to laws. In the case of potentially dangerous and morally complicated medical procedures such as abortion, quite rightly.
All laws restrict people’s freedom of action to some degree. Elsewhere in your comment you support the use of laws governing the relationship of employers to employees – and go further, demanding quotas for corporate boards, claiming the lack of such laws amount to hatred of women! Does restricting the freedom of employers to choose their own employees not mean “there is no freedom in this picture”, or does that not matter? Or does it depend on whose freedom is being restricted?
You’re basically demanding that the world reorganise itself to your benefit, by whichever means are most convenient to you. The Big State one minute, anarchy the next. Other people are just a means to that end and do not need to be factored in – it’s not as if they have a point of view or anything, is it?
“Giving women equal rights to play on the boys’ pitch is a good (though small and incredibly grudgingly given – and the fact that I have to use the word “given” speaks volumes)”
It does speak volumes – about your sense of entitlement. why on earth should girls have free access to a boys’ space as a matter of right?
Are you unaware of all the women’s spaces that are closed to men, or how boys are excluded form girls’ spaces?
“What feminists mean when they say ‘misandry isn’t a thing’ is that because our society systematically privileges men and disempowers women, misogyny serves a different cultural purpose, has different and more damaging impacts and grows from different roots to misandry. ”
This is what they say, but the facts don’t bear this out, so there has to be some other reason. The facts are that men have shorter lifespans and have worse health outcomes than women, have worse educational outcomes, recieve heavier penalties than women do for the same crimes and are prosecuted more often regardless of actual incidence – and that evenso there really have been proposals to reduce even the penalties women do suffer – and are discriminated against in family life in the courts in ways that women are not in the corporate world. If this is privielge, women are welcome to it, but we don’t see very many of them clamoring for it.
In fact there is another reason for insisting that women are the victim class, however much the facts contradict this percepetion. Female hypoagency is a bedrock feature of patriarchy. It informs the traditional female role from the grorund up, and when anyone advocates for women based on them as some kind of essential victim class, they are reinforcing the patriarchy. And in fact if you look at feminist advocacy and theory for the last few decades, this is exactly what you see. So when:
“men’s activists who lay blame for most of men’s problems at the door of feminism.”
They are blaming it for reinforcing patriarchy. A men’s movement that undoes hypoagency strikes at the heart of the patriarchy. A men’s movement that annihilates men’s obligations to women to protect and provide for them strikes at hypoagency. It should therefore be recognized as pro-feminist.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/an-open-letter-to-feminists/
It will destroy the traditional feminine role, and this will be very painful for many, many women.
I think what your post is hinting at, Gingko, is the way in which society is more likely to cosset and protect women (which it does in some respects, though not all) but I’d argue that this cossetting and protection comes at a price of liberty, equality and emancipation.
At the extreme, a society where women are not allowed out without a chaperon, where women are not allowed to work, drive, drink or do anything risky (bar give birth) is one in which women will have longer, safer lives.
However that doesn’t mean it is not a patriarchy, quite the reverse. It is a society that infantilises and oppresses women I think this is the point that the Warren Farrell school of the MRM misses big time. .It’s also true that pet cats will have longer, safer lives than feral cats. I think feminism is largely about changing the system in which women are kept (to whatever small or large extent) like domesticated pets.
“I think feminism is largely about changing the system in which women are kept (to whatever small or large extent) like domesticated pets.”
Yes but once you do let the cat out and it is exposed to the hazards you acknowledge as already being present, the feminist response is to assume that they are due to discrimination and demand a gender focused fix. The presumption of female disadvantage being foundational to the feminist paradigm makes this pretty much inevitable.
So now you’ve got an outdoor cat you constantly have to chase around to keep it out of harms way. This is hardly empowerment, it is patriarchy repackaged, which is the point I think Gingko was making. Ultimately this results in feminism being used a the justification for upholding pre-existing gendered values, so while they are not responsible for the creation of ideas like violence against women being uniquely terrible, they not undeservedly become the face of that value’s persistence.
In conclusion let the cat out by all means, but if you introduce new precautions every time it picks up a grass seed and gets a cyst, you’ll wind up with the cat back inside in no time.
.
@ Jared,
I think that the whole ‘chasing cats/women around, keeping them out of harm’s way’ thing is something feminists and women do not want.
Which is why we often suggest things like putting some of the onus on men to help prevent things like rape and domestic violence. But then, of course, we are told that we are saying that all men are rapists and MISANDRY.
Bad kitty.
Oh, and you are referring to ‘letting’ the cat out, which gives you away. You are talking about whether or not you will permit women to run around as they wish, and saying that if we do – what? We should accept the consequences?
Except rape and domestic violence are not uniquely gendered, unlike what feminist theory says. You have to quash violence and help all victims. Telling half the people to “stop it already” will
1) not affect those who don’t care (the sociopaths, a minority)
2) ignore half the perpetrators who are not targeted (and thus get a free pass to continue abuse)
3) tar manhood as the problem causing violence.not helplessness and lack of empathy (victims who feel no empathy exists towards them will be hard pressed to show any towards their victims in the future – why would they?)
“Oh, and you are referring to ‘letting’ the cat out, which gives you away.”
I am extending Ally’s metaphore. If you have a problem with the “women as pets” way of explaining women’s oppression take it up with him. Or is cheap sophistry only for comments you disagree with?
It is not a matter of “if we do what”, but “as we have started doing, what is happening now.” Ending women’s cossetting/oppression is an ongoing process as I am sure you will agree. The problem of feminists and feminism working to extend that cossetting into the “wild” is an issue which needs addressing and rebuffing, not something which stands as an argument against “letting the cat out” at all.
As for the rest, your point would be valid IF it wasn’t for everything Schala said and IF rape and DV were feminists sole or majority focuses.
“something feminists and women do not want.”
It is something they say they don’t want, but when feminists percieve a negative occurance which a) men face and b) is a natural factor of being “out” as discrimination and/or misogyny and demand protection for women, this is exactly what they are asking for. If you listen to female non-feminist critics like Girl writes what, Quiet riot girl, Furry girl, Typhonblue or Maria Maltseva you will find that this features prominantly among their issues. So yes, I completley agree tha this is something many women do not want. Feminists should stop doing it 🙂
“I think what your post is hinting at, Gingko, is the way in which society is more likely to cosset and protect women (which it does in some respects, though not all) but I’d argue that this cossetting and protection comes at a price of liberty, equality and emancipation.’
Absolutely. This is the contract called serfdom, basically. The way out of it is to start doing all that for yourself. that is however not the path that Anglophone feminism took – the path it took was privileged women getting their privileged men to grant them rights – not to win these rights in bloody struggle as the men had won them – and very often at the expense of less privileged men. This was the case in the US where white women effectively got the vote before black men, and were often quite complicit in the suppression of black men.
Typhonblue calls this exchange of freedom for protection and the benefits that accrue from it “poisoned fruits” so in fact the Warren Farrel school does get this point.
“I think feminism is largely about changing the system in which women are kept (to whatever small or large extent) like domesticated pets.”
Not really because it has railed against holding women responsible for their own safety and protection. This whole “Only men can stop rape” campaign is all about making men responsible for women’s safety. That is not really any meaningful change to the system we call patriarchy, is it?
In fact it is the WF school that gets what you are saying about the poisoned benefits to women in the patriarchy. here is Gordon Wadsworth:
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/an-open-letter-to-feminists/
He says basically that feminism was about freeing women form their obligations to men – so far so good – but did nothing to free men form their obligations to women, which leaves women still in a dependent relationship to male power – protection, provision and all the disposability that requires. And the MHRM ‘s purpose is to free men form our obligations to women. the men and women can finally enter relationships, of all kinds by the way, on a basis of real equality. The women in the MHRM make this point quite vehemently, as it happens.
Deezers,
“You are talking about whether or not you will permit women to run around as they wish, and saying that if we do – what? We should accept the consequences?”
What consequences are your speaking of? The consequences of being free?
What consequences are those? Being responsible for your own safety, without being able to sic men on a threat? Being responsible for feeding yourself, without being able to call on the state to force a man to support you for the rest of your life pursuant to a sexual relationship (and not calling it prostitution)?
Infamia! Oppressione!
Ally, here’s a good take on that woman as housecat meme.
She cuts right to the bone, and then grinds the knife a little.
Gingko, I think that Typhon Blue video is pretty confused.
The comments she reads from the letter don’t sound like the words of any feminist I’ve ever known. It sounds like some kind of conservative traditionalist. (I note that she doesn’t actually specify the woman was a feminist.) I also can’t think of any feminist I know who would endorse what was said in that letter.
TB seems to be making the obvious mistake of saying “some women think men should provide for them, therefore any other woman complaining about being patronized is being hypocritical.”
Reality is that not all women have the same opinions, shocker.
It also boils down to “if you want to know why men call you whores, it is because some women behave like whores” which (even if we accept the latter, offensive assertion) is a non-sequitor.
The logic there is IDENTICAL to radfems saying to men “here’s an example of a man, he’s a rapist, you’re a man therefore you can’t complain if I call you a rapist.”
Oh whilst we’re on misandry, and just to lighten the mood a little (and not to suggest that there isn’t serious stuff going on here), I thought I’d share this little curio I stumbled across t’other day:
My explanation for the disparity: it’s the toilet seat issue. Undoubtedly. I’m planning to conduct a major international research project on this very issue, funded by none other than Anita Sarkeesian, to test my hypothesis. If you can’t get a Nobel prize, go for the Ignobel Prize, that’s what I say. In the middle of having sex. Apparently, that’s annoying as well.
I don’t know about that; a toilet seat left down is pretty selfish and irritating….. Why can’t women just go out and crap behind a tree? It was good enough for their grandmothers…. : 🙂 ….in the middle of having sex.
I like your funding plan!
Thanks. I’m excited. Anita has been so supportive. She’s amazing. Alongside the money she sent me, telling me “She didn’t need it, and would probably only spend it on going travelling”, she sent me some large hoop earrings in the post and an ebook called “How to interpret anything to conform to your pre-existing narrative” by Hugo Schwyzer. At least I think that’s the title. It’s hard to say. The front is just a massive photo of Hugo Schwyzer looking sexxxay as he does bicep curls.
Ally thanks for getting the ball rolling on this – I was tempted but didn’t have the focus.
Your essay enables me to point to further elements of misandry – either as a 4th type, or perhaps more accurately the deeper underpinnings of your 3rd type, ‘cultural misandry’. Your description of it is really just 3 examples of where it emerges: mocking and denigrating men’s childcare abilities, men’s disposability for work and war, and mocking and reviling male victims of domestic violence.
What underpins all these examples is an attitude towards men implicit in one of the foundational ideas of the modern West: that Man and Nature are separate and that Man has been given “dominion” over Nature. While, as @thomas_clark_wilson points out, this results in privileges and reverence for actual men in society, a moment’s though should show that this idea implies an extremely attenuated view of male humanness.
Basically all the attributes of men which are supposedly non-“masculine” – our capacities for pleasure, the existence of our bodies as living breathing entities, the emotions which move us, our relationality and needs to be a member of the group – are attributed to Nature i.e the realm over which we should properly exercise control. Feminists point out how all these attributes are classically attributed to women who are also aligned with Nature and are thereby likewise devalued. A great deal of the work in men’s groups revolves around uncovering how an individual man hold this ‘control’ attitude, and rehabilitating those attributes into his daily life.
But these recent beneficial interventions are pushing against the attitude that Man is not Nature, i.e. that a man is not an actual living breathing human animal but rather is some flat one-dimensional caricature of humanness that is male. This attitude is held in place by a deep fear of men’s “naturalness” which very commonly is expressed as hatred. This hatred is visible in homophobia and misogyny, and in misandry – though each has a slightly different form, and has a long history tied up with the Christian church going back centuries.
Inasmuch as “hatred” is in play in this whole arrangement (and I prefer to highlight what it really is, which is fear), men hate ourselves and each other as much as women hate us (and themselves). I agree with you that it is an important way in which we police ourselves and each other
I don’t suggest this is anyone’s fault. Nor do I think it is driven by gender or sexuality issues specifically – though of course it profoundly shapes both. Rather, I think it’s more helpful to say that we live in a culture which attempts to split humans from the rest of the world, and there are many awful impacts of this, of which misandry is only one.
Also, in terms of dealing with the misandry isn’t a thing thing, I think it’s worthwhile to point out this deeper mechanism because (a) all us Westerners carry it to a greater or lesser extent – men and women, gay and straight. And (b) if you keep the discussion simply at the level of examples of the phenomenon then tit-for-tat arguments can be endless. Getting to the foundational mechanisms is helpful both analytically and for strategic action.
I may not have expressed all this very well, but I am certain that that Man/Nature dichotomy holds the seeds of the attitudes which enable ‘cultural misandry’.
wow, that was really interesting David, thanks. Will need some time to digest!
Thx. After writing all that, I realised there’s a rather clearer way to say how the Man/Nature thing works (rather than just give examples, as I noted you did with yours!!) – but will leave it for another time…
if I were a man I would not trust what anyone who wrote for the Misandry-fuelled Guardian on gender issues had to say about me, or hatred towards me.
She hasn’t written for the Garun in almost two years. Even if she had, so what? You’ve got 5 articles for AVFM. Should we dismiss you on that basis? I wouldn’t, even though that website still makes me very queasy (primarily because of Elam’s position on jury nullification in rape trials. and the Register Her site).
I meant ally writes for the Graun.
and if my writing and where I publish it makes people ‘queasy’ all the better!
Elam’s position is that rape has become so politicised that it’s effectively impossible to get a fair trial. I wouldn’t go that far, but it is true that the issue of rape is being used by some people as a wedge to break the principle of innocent until proven guilty. This is less an issue of misandry than those elements in the ruling class who see civil liberties as an unnecessary inconvenience trying to exploit an emotive issue to set a precedent. If those people are ever successful, I’d think Elam had a point. More important and more urgent to ensure they are not successful.
Awesome post @ 9:20, Ginkgo. It’s refreshing to hear someone who is on the liberal left acknowledge that some MRA’s do have legitimate concerns, and that certain reservations they have about feminism may be borne out of reason and not just out of prejudice or malevolence.
The question as to whether feminism opposes ‘patriarchy’ – or has, in fact, co-opted it for its own gains – would appear fairly central to the whole debate.
What’s surely telling in this respect is the UK’s most powerful feminist pressure group’s attitude towards parents sharing maternity leave:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielknowles/100168421/the-fawcett-society-is-supposed-to-stand-for-equality-so-why-is-it-opposed-to-couples-sharing-maternity-leave/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielknowles/100168604/the-fawcett-society-responds/
You have to ask, is that really such a progressive stance from people who are meant to believe in more opportunities for all?
Glad you liked it, Nivea. As far as being left liberal, I can tend Maoist on some issues – not so liberal after all. For instance I think a stint of re-education on a 400 cal/day baseline would do wonders for a lot of the discutants on gender issues. It wouldn’t hurt libertarians either.It would certainly teach people the value of the people they are used to dismissing as useless.
“The question as to whether feminism opposes ‘patriarchy’ – or has, in fact, co-opted it for its own gains – would appear fairly central to the whole debate.”
It is the central divide in feminism, between what Sommers calls the gender feminists and the equality feminists. It is the divide between the women, some of them identifying as feminists, who post Oh-my-God, now-I-get-it comments on Men’s Rights Reddit.
This is the key indicator – rejection of the victimhood narrative. Rejection of hypoagency.
Most disturbing for me is Ms West’s use of Fleetches and Flootches. Perhaps evidence that serious social commentary and Dr. Zeuss don’t always mix?
This is Toy Soldier’s take on West’s article.
tl;dr – He demolishes the article.
Fogg:
“When feminists say that misandry isn’t a thing, what I hear is that these issues are so minor, so marginal that they are insignificant. It is not just that they are unworthy of attention, they are not even worthy of a word to describe them. If Lindy West really wants more men to be allies to the feminist movement and wants us to believe that feminism really is on our side, then I struggle to see how this type of rhetoric is in any way helpful.”
Precisely. Not only does it fail to recognise, let alone acknowledge, the circumstances in which women can be powerful and men vulnerable (cf Sacred Cows, Ros Coward), it means even men’s attempt to identify the problem for themselves gets ignored, or even dismissed altogether (presumably the idea is that in arguing that ‘misandry isn’t a thing’, it clears the space so ‘gender issues’ are 100% about women, 100% of the time). It’s also difficult to see how men could ‘ally’ themselves with a movement that seems only able to frame them within an overclass (aka ‘the patriarchy’) in relation to their impact on women (i.e. ‘misandry’ either doesn’t exist, or it’s nothing to do with feminism or weak spots in feminist analysis, or it’s all the fault of the patriarchy anyway, and in any case the men should just STFU).
Ally@
That’s what feminists are saying at the University of Toronto at the moment – “We should be working together” – even as they attempt to shut down any discussion of men’s issues. It’s a tactic.
The fact is, as I’ve said before, we should be allies, but the only thing standing in the way of that is feminists don’t accept allies. They only accept total ideological surrender. We are, in their eyes, monsters, but if we do what we’re told and don’t presume to have a point of view we can at least be useful monsters.
You really think that’s rare? That’s how always sound when they try to talk to men (as opposed to when they talk about men, or attempt to stop men from talking). The Good Men Project is a very good example of that. You can practically hear the sighs, see the eyes rolling, and feel the contempt.
But the term “mansplaining” was invented by feminists to declare it invalid to respectfully say “I disagree with you on that, and here’s why”. Trying to engage with them becomes as “misogynist” as opposing them. It is one of the many tactics they use that make it impossible to be allies with them.
I don’t believe in taking feminists’ fallacious arguing tactics, switching the gender and turning them back on them. What’s wrong for the goose is wrong for the gander.
@paddybrown, I agree the vast majority of feminists who call for men to be allies don’t actually ‘get’ that what they are asking men to do is to get involved in THEIR (i.e. femst’s own) project of gender equality for women only, and don’t get how this is unattractive and even insulting for men – not because of the content or goals of the project (which are excellent and are worthy of our support) but because such feminists insist on keeping control of the scope and problematics which define the project. In other words, most feminists don’t get that involving men means making room for men’s views on gender and thus expanding the scope and problematics of the project of gender equality.
This is kind of like a gender-reverse example of the glass ceiling women face in the workplace: we are allowed to be worker bees and drones, but aren’t allowed into the upper echelons where all the major decisions are made. The word “allowed” here exposes the power relations in each case…
That said, there are a small number of feminists who totally get the problems with this widespread feminist attitude, who recognise that gender affects everyone though in quite different ways, and actually are eager to engage men and engage with men. We need to be identifying these women, connecting with them constructively, and bringing our own leadership and initiative to those relationships. As Ally keeps on implying, there is a massive amount of constructive work women and men can do together around change in gender – as long as these collaborations recognise the full agency of all parties, the legitimacy of everyone’s contributions, and our differing histories and socio-political locations.
We don’t need to wait for these collaborative relationships to emerge, however. We can also in the meantime be acting under our own leadership to take initiatives which claim the legitimacy of our place in shaping the gender debate, and in communicating men’s experience and perspectives on gender. I believe Ally is one example of this (and perhaps yourself and some other commenters here too).
“In other words, most feminists don’t get that involving men means making room for men’s views on gender and thus expanding the scope and problematics of the project of gender equality.”
Instrumentalizing people this way is a form of objectification. This is not a feminist problem, this is a human problem and it is perhaps worse in a market society with narcissistic cultural values in which one’s own personal good is fetishized. But since feminists are in this society along with the rest f us, it’s their problem too. they should be able to find some way to denounce and reject this tendency.
As I have written many times before, I believe people who are concerned about women’s human rights and wellbeing and about men’s human rights and wellbeing should be natural allies.
Agreed Ally but certainly in the developed world i don’t see that happening.I’m involved in the fight to get fathers equal custody rights of children with mothers and in my experience most feminists of whatever ilk aren’t interested.And they’re not interested because the rights of fathers and the positive input most fathers have on their childrens lives doesn’t fit in with the agenda they’re too often trying to promote. An agenda which usuually involves a lot of talk about mothers and children and where fathers are only mentioned either as an afterthought or in a negative light.
Not really surprising is it? More custody rights for fathers means fewer rights for mothers. Men and women have opposing interests here, as in some other places. ‘We should all work together’ like ‘we should all be feminists’ deliberately ignores that point.
In my above comment i meant to say”in the UK” and not ”in the developed world.” I should have also qualified my comment by acknowledging that there are women in this country like Erin Pizzey who take seriously the issue of mens rights without in anway detracting from the issue of womens rights.However amongst high profile feminists the issue of mens rights is usually treated as a joke.
It certainly applies to the US and Canada as well, Paul, and apparently the situation is even worse in Australia. NOW US has come out repeatedly against equal parenting. The standard “Well, it’s really all about the children” shuck is wearing thin in the light of study after study showing the effects of fatherlessness on children, but since children are clearly not the target audience of people like NOW, they can go hang. It’s really all about empowering women, indulging the decisions of young women.
‘I’ve made clear my disdain for men’s activists who lay blame for most of men’s problems at the door of feminism’
Mind you, I do think it’s uncharacteristically naffsville of Ally to put that in this way. I mean, if we take ‘men’s problems’ to mean those problems which affect men disproportionately in society (so much so that they clearly need to be dealt with on a policy level), then there’s a whole plethora of evidence which demonstrates that ‘gender feminists’ have, by various methods, been getting in the way of this being done (one example from this thread being PaulJB’S allusion to UK family law).
Hence this evidence is so prolific and strong that the possibility that gender feminism is one of the main factors – or possibly THE main factor – for these problems not being properly addressed is clearly at least worthy of exploration.
But if you start out from the position that you say something like ‘I disdain people who might have such ideas; I basically hold them all in contempt’, then you’re surely just sending a signal that your mind is closed to having such a discussion in the first place, and that any evidence or arguments which can be made are going to be completely dismissed in advance.
I think it’s a tactical error if Ally wants to win people round to a thoughtful consideration of gender matters, rather than being lured to the more bigoted, radical fringes of the MRA movement.
“Gingko, I think that Typhon Blue video is pretty confused.
The comments she reads from the letter don’t sound like the words of any feminist I’ve ever known. It sounds like some kind of conservative traditionalist. (I note that she doesn’t actually specify the woman was a feminist.) I also can’t think of any feminist I know who would endorse what was said in that letter. ”
(Couldn’t find where to reply; had to claw my way out of the nesting.)
Yes, Typhonblue is talking about traditionalist women. Exactly. She is talking about the traditional bargain that comes with traditional gender roles. What you are missing is that you think these are antithetical to feminism. They may be antithetical to theoretical feminism, but this is quite in line with actual feminist practice and advocacy. Actually Typhon is not a bit confused.
The entire narrative around rape and how rape is a male problem a la “Only men can stop rape” is just more of making men the work horses, or in this case, a press-ganged security force, of women, rather than actual empowerment of women.
Traditionalism? Look at actual feminist advocacy. What is NOW’s poition on equal parenting? Their position is to block every legislative initiative aimed at ensuring or even just facilitating it.Can you think of a more traditionalist and retorgrad position on the issue?
As for rape, you have only to look at feminist organizations’ disgraceful record of rape denialism and mistreatment of victims in rape centers when those victims have been male for thoroughly traditionalist assumptions and gender stereotypes. It’s the same story with domestic violence, where the actual feminist response – at least from NOW in California – has been firmly grounded in tradtionalist assumptions and reinforcement of traditonal gender roles. With feminists like these, who needs Phyllis Schafly?
These are the feminists that (hereticated) feminists like Christina Summer- Hoff and Camille Paglia inveigh against.
Thanks for this Ally – I began to watch a discussion between Michael Kaufman and Jude Kelly called “Misogyny And Misandry” trailed:
“Misogyny is the hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women. Some men claim “misandry” (a hatred and devaluing of men) is even more rampant.
But does it even exist?
Here’s the link:
http://wow.southbankcentre.co.uk/events/misogyny-and-misandry/
I stopped watching because it didn’t sound like they were going to seriously talk about misandry – but I may be wrong as I haven’t see the whole conversation
On cultural misandry – my experience of advocating for men within feminist and female dominated cultures is that they can be deeply – and subtly – misandric.
You touched upon the domestic violence sector – and the pull to always label victims as women and perpetrators as men is so strong as to be hateful – I feel hated as a man when I enter those environments
Another sector is childcare – I’ve heard lots of great men working in childcare talking about the sexism they experience in those female dominated workplaces – and they feel deeply unwelcome and at times hated
I personally also find some men’s campaigners misandric – an example being men (and women) who namecall men who don’t agree with them – using their ‘manhood’ – or lack of it – from ‘man up’ to ‘mangina’ – for me, attacking men in this way is misandric – it’s being hateful towards men who in your opinion don’t comply to the masculine norms
I also think violence against men and boys by men and women is misandric – the majority of ‘hate’ crime against BME people and religious people has a gender dimension – it’s not just a race hate crime it’s a gender race hate crime as we are more tolerant of violence against men and boys – and as a result you get racist and misandric hate crime – but of course those who campaign on Violence Against Women are generally opposed to highlighting Violence Against Men And Boys
Why? Dunno? Maybe they’re a bit misandric
Anyway, enough from me, thanks for the post – I enjoyed it
Glen
Mangina doesn’t imply feminine/unmasculine, it implies “white knight”, someone who is at the beck and call of a woman and won’t defend his own self (ie he’s so selfless and pedestalizing women that he’s stupid).
In traditional roles, being a protector of women would be seen as masculine. Being a protector of women at his own expense is still that…but also stupid.
I see White Knight and Mangina used very differently.
I agree White Knight, to me, is applied to a man who takes on the masculine protector role – this might generally be applied to a man who has traditional values who supports pro-feminist initiatives – eg stop violence against women campaigns – not because he’s pro-feminist but because he sees men’s role is to protect women – this kind of attitude shows up a lot in christian men’s groups
Whereas a ‘mangina’ is a man who ‘has no balls’ – and is clearly linked to female genatalia and is said with the venom that people say the c-word . Mangina is an insult far more often hurled at men doing good work for men and boys who aren’t anti-feminist but we’re not doing it the “right way”.
A mangina is more likely to have pro-feminist sympathies than a White Knight, whereas a White Knight would support a stop violence against women campaign – and would personally beat up a man who hit a woman – a mangina would support such initiative because he thought it was important deconstruct masculinity and work to dismantle the patriarchy
White Knights are generally pre-feminist, Manginas pro feminist – men who are post-feminist tend to get called both because people can’t work which one they are
I find mangina by far the more offensive term because it’s used like the c-word and implies any man who doesn’t follow the masculine norm (as defined by the anti-feminist using the insult) – is less of a man than he ‘should’ be – and I find all those “real man”, “man up”, “mangina” type insults deeply offensive and damaging
You capture it there, but not in the other places.
Mangina has nothing to do with femaleness. It has to do with being a brainwashed doormat who doesn’t think he has the right to his own self-interest. An example would be Julian Real, or Hygo Schwyzer, who think maleness is defective (inherently, irremediably) and self-flagellate about it in the hope of atoning for the sins of their metaphorical fathers.
In their eyes, men can never be right, and have to change. Women can never be wrong, and never have to change.
A 11 years old boy is responsible for his own rape at the hands of his female nanny, because of male privilege. How victim-blaming can you get?
In contrast, femaleness doesn’t view being selfless, self-effacing and having no self-interest whatsoever as the one defining thing of its role.
The female gender role actually encourages individuality, expression and such. That’s huge self-interest.
The male gender role encourages to repress it all, in the name of a more functional society for the ‘real people’.
In short, men are the robots making the society function so the aristocrats don’t have to do it and can instead enjoy the leisure. That’s the role anyways, overly simplified.
The robot-like function of men is reinforced through shaming of all emotions, and punishing of the one allowed emotion (anger) disproportionately (you think women being called bitch when aggressive is bad – how about all your actions being viewed as inherently threatening?)
Through the disallowance of clothing and hairstyle expression, where the allowed range is extremely narrow, with very few choices of colors, fabric types or clothing types (jeans, stretch jeans, skinny jeans, capri jeans, short short jeans, legging-length jeans, in multiple colors, with or without embroidery – vs non-skinny jeans for men being pretty much the only choice, blue or black only).
Short hair, or shorted hair, or no hair, are the allowed choices. If you have hair longer than that and you’re not outlier by your line of work (ie rock star, geek jobs), good luck being accepted for who you are, and not having comments about being unclean, a hobo, a hippie, too rebellious and not serious enough to succeed in life.
Rock stars accept long hair because it’s a show, and status solves every problem. The NFL star can cry, because he’s a NFL star. Geek jobs are ironically accepting more of variety and difference because most geeks tend to be outliers themselves, and most have rejected the “conformity is beautiful” mantra society swallows whole. They’ll accept trans women extremely easy compared to a regular office, because they don’t care that the woman is trans, only that she does the work she’s paid for.
The robot-like function is reinforced also directly in work, with enormous pressure to provide for themselves and others, never be dependent on someone else for subsistence (at least financially). Doing so doesn’t only make you unmanly, it makes you a burden on society, worth nothing because you provide nothing, not even a uterus (providing an uterus is usually reason enough to not be considered a burden, on its own). As such, the wage gap is a response to this pressure.
That’s why in Sweden 75% of men view “working full-time” as their ideal arrangement. That’s not because men love working, it’s because it’s the only option. Even “ideally” doesn’t mean “if staying at home was just as accepted for men as it is for women, socially, would you?”, because then I suspect the response would be different. Ideally means “in the current paradigm, wether or not you work now, would you rather work full-time, part-time or not at all?”.
33% of women prefer full-time, 47% prefer part-time, 20% prefer not at all. That’s for Sweden too.
Because women’s gender role regarding occupation is open to choice. Being supported, supporting yourself, career or not. Men not so much. Men can do it…or opt out.
Oh well, we’ll have to agree to disagree on what Mangina means – to me it will always be a jolly laddish portmanteau word that used to refer to that Stag Night when Big Rick stuck his little rick between his legs and ran around the house naked shouting “Trev, Trev, look at me I’ve got a Mangina to match my Moobs” – and now, sadly, has been grabbed by the loonies to insult any man you think is a “girly c-word!” – and i find that offensive
I enjoyed your other points – do you have a reference for those interesting statistics
I read that statistic from an article written from a men’s right perspective about Sweden. I’m not certain but I think it was from men’s right reddit of 2 days ago (they linked to it, not wrote it).
It showed that even in a ‘feminist paradise’ like Sweden, the gap of careers and high powered positions between men and women increased, despite high quotas.
And that was because of large maternal leave (it’s parental leave, but mothers take way more, men have a mandated minimum that is taken or lost, but its probably less than 16 months) and an allowed hour reduction up to 8 years after a birth (reduce work hours to 6 per day in exchange for lesser pay), plus women being more allowed (financially) to take part-time work.
As such, employers are more likely to select against hiring women if they want someone serious, who won’t work only 6 hours/day and take a year and a half off per child. And this choice being only open to women (culturally) means men still have to provide, meaning they work full-time and bring home bigger paychecks than women.
Women can work part time, stay-at-home with kids, work full-time and they likely won’t be shamed unduly for taking any of those choices.
Men can work full-time. Anything else is him not pulling his weight.
Who’d you think would tend to work more and gain more money in such a situation?
Personally, given the choice in an ideal world:
1) Do something meaningful for myself regardless of pay and schedule.
2) Not work at all, maybe look after kids if I have any.
3) Minimum job to sustain lifestyle (and I’m generally frugal).
and 4) Full-time soul crushing job, my last option, only if I want to buy something option 3 cannot afford, or 4 is needed to do option 3 (ie shitty pay).
Thanks – be great to know were those statistics came from – they seem to reflect some of the statistics quoted in Catherine Hakim’s work on preference theory
In fairness to Sweden dads do get more choice than in the UK – the Fatherhood Institute’s 2010 Family Fairness Index measured paternity pay in terms of full-time equivalent pay (FTE) – ie, how many days you could afford to take paternity leave without a fall in income
In the UK it’s 2 days on average – in Sweden it’s 40 weeks
Here’s some more stats from the same report
From a women’s rights perspective men in Sweden do 44% of childcare – while men in UK do 35% – so better paternity pay clearly reduces the “burden” of childcare on women
As for men’s rights to choose their working pattern, in Sweden 36% of part-time workforce is male compared with 24% of part-time workforce
As for fathers’ rights, one of the key bones of contention is the amount of time separated dads have with their kids – and dads in Sweden are three times more likely to share care after separation than UK dads
So there’s lots to applaud in the Swedish approach – when men have more support and choice they will enjoy more time with the kids and are more likely to choose part-time work
And when it comes to women in management positions – there’s a slightly higher proportion of women in management positions in the UK than Sweden and notably more women in management positions in US
And this points to the Norwegian Gender Paradox – that when given more choice women (and men) tend to revert to gendered roles and this is most noticeable in the most gendered jobs like engineering and nursing
This issue is covered in the Norwegian documentary series Hjernevask (Brainwash) which is available online with English subtitles – episode 1 looks at
– “why do girls tend to go into empathizing professions and boys into systemizing professions? Why does the labor market become more gender segregated the more economic prosperity a country has?”
Worth a look
I think that, save people who are passionate about a subject AND can manage to work in a connected domain (they love their job, not what it provides) – most people would rather not work at all.
So people work the minimum that satisfies their boredom (some people can’t not-work), their ability to support themselves, how it might make them attractive, and how they can be viewed socially (positively or not, in what way, by peers, not just potential mates).
The weight to each of those depends on the individual, but it’s generally seen as more acceptable almost universally for a woman to be supported financially by a man. The reverse is hardly ever seen as acceptable. Regardless of his capacity to earn, he’s seen as a freeloader, taking advantage of her. Only women who go towards unattractive yet rich (usually much older) men earn the same scorn (gold diggers).
A man who stays at home is seen as a freeloader too, even if he takes cares of the kids. Since a man’s only societal value is his utility (financial one), he’s seen as a burden. A woman isn’t seen that way unless she has kids without a designated father (then the kid is the burden).
As for your last point about the documentary. I think it’s all due to insecurity about people’s own sex.
As gender roles become eclipsed and society becomes more and more androgynous, people seek to define themselves oppositionally (ie I’m “not-this”) regarding sex, because it’s the easiest type of identification (which should be abandoned by age 5, not kept until age 70). The less evident markers of sex exists, the more people try to overcompensate to “prove” their sex.
The fix is obvious:
1) Reduce the insecurity of everyone regarding their sex, by augmenting people’s critical thinking skills.
2) Stop segregating the sexes so routinely for every reason under the sun.
3) Stop treating the sexes differently, making us vs them, and teach children that sex identity isn’t that big of a deal (no more than handedness, hair color, etc).
4) Remove gendered connotations from toys and colors and clothing by making skirts, dolls and pink (amongst others) gender neutral.
Only by removing the female ghetto can male expression equal that of female expression. Then it would just be expression period, without a prefix. There won’t be sexism about defining yourself as not-that, because there won’t be a need felt to do so.
Of course, men’s issues need to be treated too, or men will feel they’re forgotten completely. I mean outside parenting and expression allowed. Have DV and rape shelters for men, have services for men+family in homeless shelters (not just women+family and men alone), remove the male=bad=perpetrator and female=good=victim paradigm from all legal documents or application thereof, stamp out bias such as the Duluth Model (patriarchal male violence because of male privilege, how far out there can it get?).
And lastly, we should allow for balanced portrayals of both men and women in media. So that we’re allowed to mock women as much as we mock men (bumbling fools), remove ‘funny violence’ (kick in the balls) or at least the funny part or make it equal opportunity. Allow women to be beaten, by men, in movies where the scenario calls for such, without making the man a monster. He’s probably just an equal-opportunity fighter (just not of the “won’t hit a woman” variety) – because She Fu and woman-vs-woman only combat in media is ghettoizing women out of even the mere possibility of having a John McLane like role (he gets beaten, plenty, by people of all sexes, he’s always bruised – She Fu practitioners never have bruises).
Fathers in countries like those in Scandinavia generally have more rights than is the case here in the UK. For here in the UK fathers are up against a powerful coalition of traditionalists who believe that children are best served being with their mothers and feminists who view fathers as being an optional extra. And feminists will also ruthlessly misuse the issue of domestic violence and child abuse to undermine the position of fathers within the family unit.
Sadly fathers groups can expect no support from either feminists or traditionalists and are wholly dependent on their own resources to ensure their voices are heard. And fathers groups should take no lectures from feminists in particular who criticize those fathers who either dress up as superman or end up protesting on the roofs of high profile feminists like Harriet Harman.For feminists have historically resorted to direct action to raise awareness of the inequalities women have faced by chaining themselves to railings,throwing themselves under horses,flour bombing beauty contests and issuing death threats against those who oppose them.So why shouldn’t fathers do the same?
Feminists have have a fair degree of success in promoting the myth that all men have a collective responsibility for promoting and underpinning patriachal structures which oppress women.,And because of this generally don’t take seriously the inequalities that men can face purely on account of being male.And i make no apology for saying that this attitude of feminists really pisses me off. Which is why i believe that fathers- as one group of men who face discrimination purely on account of being male- shouldn’t waste time trying to placate either feminists or traditionalists when it comes to doing what’s best for children. For in most cases what’s best for children is having a relationship with BOTH their biological parents irrespective of whether their parents are living together or not.
The following is a link to an article in the Independent about the problems faced by male victims of domestic violence in this country.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/domestic-violence-as-a-man-its-very-difficult-to-say-ive-been-beaten-up-8572143.html
Not entirely toothless.
[…] On the Misandry Isn’t a Thing […]
Reblogged this on oogenhand and commented:
A balanced, almost gender-blind take on things.
Misandry includes any belief in a patriarchy. There’s no genuine evidence that men as a gender oppress women as a gender. Believing “men” as a construct oppress “women” is in and of itself a misandrist belief. You are equating male-ness with oppression.
You are a misandrist, that’s why you can only see things through the lens of men being responsible for oppression and not women. You are going to be harassed for your views because they aren’t acceptable. Deal with it.
[…] On the Misandry Isn’t a Thing Thing […]