Misandry

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Misandry (IPA [mɪ.ˈsæn.dri]) is the hatred of males as a sex,[1] as opposed to misogyny, the hatred or fear of women. Misandry comes from misos (Greek μῖσος, "hatred") + andras (Greek ἄνδρας, "man"). Although misandry is sometimes confused with misanthropy, the terms are not interchangeable, for the latter refers more generally to the hatred of humanity. A concept related to misandry is androphobia, the fear of men, but not necessarily hatred of them. The opposite of misandry is philandry, the love of men.

Misandry is not discussed very often compared to misogyny. The prevalence and extent of misandry is still disputed.[citation needed] Research into misandry is fairly recent and therefore controversial. Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, authors of the 2001 book Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, are primarily responsible for the introduction of the concept of misandry as a serious (though controversial) term in gender politics in popular and academic discussion. Judith Levine calls misandry "the hate that dares not speak its name."[2]

Contents

[edit] Political Definition of Misandry

Authors Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young assert that misandry primarily stems from the gynocentric use of gender, and is used to blame all men as being responsible for imposing gender. To Nathanson and Young this assumption makes men's society the official scapegoats for all evil and the women's society the official victims, responsible for all good. Misandry further asserts that men must pay reparations to women collectively for their crimes against women throughout history. They believe the notion of gender as a social construct that holds the assumptions that the end justifies the means, and "collective rights trump individual rights".

Nathanson and Young assert that political correctness, academic deconstructionism, and "fronts"[specify] are strategies that feminists use to make the world safe, and therefore promote a misandric worldview.[citation needed] They posit that the underlying ideological feminism is an ideology that derived from Marxism and romanticism, with class and nation replaced respectively by gender" to perpetrate the hatred of men as a class.

Individualist and feminist Wendy McElroy believes that "gender feminists have redefined the view of the movement of the opposite sex" as "a hot anger toward men seems to have turned into a cold hatred".[3] Men as a class are considered irreformable, 'all' men are considered rapists, and marriage, rape and prostitution are seen as the same things. In agreement with the assertions of Nathanson and Young she states "a new ideology has come to the forefront... radical or gender, feminism", one that has "joined hands with political correctness-a movement that condemns the panorama of western civilization as sexist and racist: the product of 'dead white males.'"[4]

[edit] Types of misandry in popular culture

Nathanson and Young, in their book Spreading Misandry, noted the following types of man-hating behavior, which they see as prevalent in popular culture; it is listed in order from what they consider most benign to most malignant. While Nathanson and Young attempt to show the full scope of misandry, other independent authors have weighed in as well with similar but more specific observations.[citation needed] Therefore, for brevity, this section uses Nathanson and Young's classifications and characterizations as a preliminary guide within which to contain the anecdotal observations of other authors.

  • Laughing at Men: In this, the most benign form of misandry, sexism is applied to popular forms of humor. Men are routinely made the objects of steoreotypical ridicule in ways that would generate sustained outrage were the sexes reversed. Nathanson and Young note that feminists "may sometimes find it hard to laugh at themselves as feminists, though not as women, but seldom find it hard to laugh at men."
  • Looking Down on Men: Misandric "feminists have convinced many people that women are somehow superior to men." Like other groups, feminists interpret differences between the sexes as "an excuse to assign superiority and inferiority" in the usual hierarchical fashion.
  • Bypassing men: In this view, men are "not necessarily evil, just superfluous." Feminists like Andrea Dworkin urge as little contact as possible with men, separation of the sexes and indifference to men (rather than hostility toward men). Men are considered useless as lovers, husbands, fathers and as human beings.
  • Blaming Men: To blame men for all of human history, gender-feminists use the conspiracy theory of history to claim that "all of human history can be reduced to a titanic conspiracy" of men oppressing women. Nathanson and Young note that "evidence is often deliberately falsified to make (misandric) political claims about gender." The result is that "men are collectively or vicariously responsible for most or all of human suffering."
  • Dehumanizing Men: In this form of misandry, men are shown as inherently evil while women are seen as inherently good or even heroic. Men are highlighted as the evil predatory sex that preys on an innocent, morally superior[5] sex as represented by women. In essence, men are considered morally unredeemable beasts while women are considered morally redeeming human beings.
  • Demonizing Men: Men are shown as demonic, like sinister subhumans and evil superhumans. Men are directly demonized by being portrayed as devils or as evil aliens. They are also demonized indirectly by being relentlessly identified with aggressive men whose actions "either are not or cannot be explained entirely or adequately to viewers in rational terms."

[edit] Intimate, parental, and familial misandry by women

Feminist writer Judith Levine alternatively focuses on private manifestations of misandry in her 1992 book, My Enemy, My Love: Man-hating and Ambivalence in Woman's Lives. She explicates what she considers as the "intellectually and emotionally rich, little explored, often subterranean world of women's hatred of men" and ambivalence toward men. This she addresses "in a unique examination of the family, traces the role of man-hating in the unfolding of contemporary feminism".

Levine classifies the following steoreotypical men as targets of women's misandry within intimate relationships:

  • Infants: the Mama's Boy, the Babbler, the Bumbler and the Invalid;
  • Betrayers: the Seducer, the Slave, the Abandoner, and the Abductor; and
  • Beasts: the Brute, the Pet, the Pervert, the Prick, and the Killer.

Within the family, she asserts that father-abandonment of daughters, familial gender standards that discriminate against daughters and paternal neglect of daughters are a root cause of misandry in women. She also shows fathers, brothers and husbands as misandric targets of the (modern) feminism that smashed the "Family" so that a "politically conscious battalion of daughters" could replace male familial roles "by banding together as sisters" to "run everything" by themselves.

[edit] Misandry and misogyny

Christina Hoff Sommers notes what she calls a 'corrosive paradox' of feminism that she considers misandric: what she believes is an idea "that no group of women can wage war on men without at the same time denigrating the women who respect those men." She says, "it is just not possible to incriminate men without implying that large numbers of women are fools or worse." To Hoff Sommers, women who respect men are seen as being 'in the camp of the enemy" by what she has coined "gender feminists". Therefore, "mysandry becomes misogyny," perpetrated by feminists whom Hoff Sommers sees as a radical and unrepresentative minority of both feminists and women. (Christina Hoff-Sommers, 'Who Stole Feminism', 1995, p 256)

[edit] Degrees of misandry

Misandry may be exhibited to differing degrees. In its most overt expression, a misandrist openly hates all men simply because they are 'men', exhibiting 'masculine' traits that are not to the speaker's liking. Stereotypically, these 'masculine' traits include machismo, emotional bluntness, and a loutish demeanor. Or, a misandrist might simply hate men for a perceived common physical attribute, such as large muscles, a large gut, or copious body hair.

Other forms of misandry are more subtle. Some misandrists simply hold all men under suspicion, or hate men who do not conform to one or more acceptable categories. Entire cultures may be said to be misandrist if they treat men in ways that are perceived hurtful. Misandry is often not recognised, since it exists under many different guises, disguised and qualified. {Judith Levine, 'My Enemy, My Love', 1992}

Misandry is a negative attitude towards men as a group, and as such need not fully determine a misandrist's attitude towards each individual man. The fact that someone holds misandrist views may not prevent them from having positive relationships with some men. Conversely, simply having positive relationships with some men does not necessarily mean someone does not also hold misandrist views.

Misandry can also be used as an excuse to attack feminist groups. Rush Limbaugh has attacked the women's movement claiming it as an excuse to give men the disadvantage.

[edit] Responses to misandry

Nathanson and Young believe that "many ordinary men have a vested interest in not seeing the pervasive misandry of everyday life." For a man to see himself as a victim of attacks by women he would have to acknowledge his vulnerability and therefore become less masculine. This creates a double-bind for men vis a vis confronting misandry because men "who admit to feeling vulnerable are attacked as cowards, and by no group more effectively than women." Nathanson and Young assert that women can easily shame men into silence, "a form of abuse that few women today would tolerate."

Thus despite what Nathanson and Young argue is a "massive assault" on men's identities, most men remain too confused to honor their unconscious knowledge that something is wrong. Most are not "equipped to identify or analyze" misandry. Those few men who are able to see misandry for what it is are rarely rewarded and are usually shamed for speaking about it in public. Although, Men's Rights movements appear to be on the rise.[citation needed]

According to Nathanson and Young, until very recently the "few feminists who dared to speak out against misandry were usually declared enemies of feminism, or even enemies of women, and thus effectively silenced." They state that "most feminists deny misandry" and that "when challenged" most feminists excuse, justify, and/or trivialize misandry. They note that "despite the vaunted capacity of women for empathy, only a few feminist publications, albeit ones of profound moral significance, have so far expressed sympathy for men in general, except as a way of encouraging men to believe that feminism is in their own interest."

Man-hating is an emotional problem inasmuch as it creates pain and hostility between women and men. But it is not an individual neurosis ala 'Women Who Hate Men and the Men Who...' Man-hating is a collective, cultural problem — or to refrain from diagnosing it at all, a cultural phenomenon — and men, as the object of man-hating, are part of it too.

– Judith Levine, My Enemy, My Love[6]

[edit] Criticism

Nancy Lewis-Horne criticises Nathason and Young's views on misandry, saying it is "seriously flawed in three important areas: lack of theoretical connection, especially in its use and misuse of feminist theory, of weak methodology, and its inability to link culture with structure". She goes on to challenge certain points stated in the book: "Contrary to the authors’ comment that work on gender means work about women, there is an excellent literature examining the social construction of masculinity." Lewis-Horne also states that "The methodology that selectively examines some examples of popular culture and not others and then asks us to accept their interpretation as relevant and not others severely limits the potential of the research findings. Nathanson and Young promote sexism and gender polarization in their oppositional approach to gender."[7]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ Levine My Enemy, My Love: Man-hating and Ambivalence in Women's Lives
  3. ^ Wendy McElroy, Sexual Correctness, p. 5.
  4. ^ Ibid. p. 4, 6
  5. ^ [2]
  6. ^ Levine, Judith (1992). My Enemy, My Love. Doubleday. ISBN 0385410794. 
  7. ^ Lewis-Horne, Nancy. Book Review PAUL NATHANSON and KATHERINE K. YOUNG, Spreading Misandry. The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association. Retrieved on January 6, 2007.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women, Christina Hoff Sommers, 1994
  • Sexual Correctness: The Gender-Feminist Attack on Women, Wendy McElroy,
  • Dead Man Walking: Masculinity’s Troubling Persistence, Brendan O'Sullivan, BITCHfest 2006
  • Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture; Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, 2001; ISBN 0-7735-2272-7
  • Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men; Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, 2006; ISBN 0-7735-2862-8
  • Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies; Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, 1995, ISBN 0-465-09827-4
  • The Lipstick Proviso: Women, Sex & Power in the Real World; Karen Lehrman, 1997, ISBN 0-385-47481-4
  • My Enemy, my Love: Man-hating and ambivalence in women's lives, Judith Levine, 1992.
  • The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability, Laura Kipnis, 2006
  • The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men; Christina Hoff Sommers, Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, 2001; ISBN 0-684-84957-7
  • Domestic Violence: The 12 Things You Aren't Supposed to Know; Thomas P. James, Aventine Press, 2003, ISBN 1-59330-122-7
  • The Decline of Males: The First Look at an Unexpected New World for Men and Women; Lionel Tiger, Golden Guides from St. Martin's Press, 2000, ISBN 0-312-26311-2

[edit] News articles

  • As Spots Belittling Women Fade Out, Men Become the Target of the Seemingly Inevitable Gender Sneer, Courtney Kane, New York Times, Jan. 28, 2005
  • In the Battle of the Sexes, This Word Is a Weapon, Elin Schoen Brockman, New York Times, Jul 25, 1999.
  • Hers, Maureen Mullarkey, New York Times, Aug 22, 1985
  • Taliban's Treatment of Women, Los Angeles Times, Nov 10, 2001

[edit] External links

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