Additional:
Rethinking Men: What masculinity means in the 21st century
by Anthony Synnott, Ph.D.
Why Some People Have Issues With Men: Misandry
Misandry is not in everyone's dictionary but it's out there.
The
word misandry may not be in everyone's computer dictionary, but the
reality is out there. A reality without a name, however, is largely
invisible.
We are all familiar with misogyny: the hatred of women. This has been well-researched for decades. We are less familiar with misandry: the hatred of men, or more broadly, the hatred, fear, anger and contempt of men. It is worth some consideration, especially since misandry is by no means restricted to women. Indeed some of the most male-negative people out there are men.
There are several levels,
dimensions and causes of misandry which we need to separate, though they
tend to be all stirred up and muddled together in any given discussion.
1.
Reality: First we must acknowledge that misandry is partly
reality-based to the degree that it is in part a reaction to misogyny,
and to the real or perceived oppression of women by men. It's Newtonian
physics and the Marxist dialectic: the harder you hit your head against
the wall, the harder it hits you back. Misogyny generates misandry.
2. History: Misandry is also based in history, or herstory, or a
misreading of history. Most of the major villains of the last century
have been male: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Charles Taylor,
Ceaucescu, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But
the misreading of history is three-fold. First, their villainy was a
matter of power not gender.
Second, women with absolute power have sometimes been absolute villains
too. Third, we cannot ignore the male heroes, including those who
fought against the tyrants and eventually deposed them, or died trying.
It is poor scholarship and short-term politics to portray men as solely villains and to ignore the evil women (no names mentioned) and the good men.
3.
Today: About 90% of all murders in North America are committed by men.
The Top 10 on the FBI Most Wanted List are usually all male. Most of the
corporate CEOs and CFOs arrested recently from Enron to Bernie Madoff
have been men; Martha Stewart was a lowly exception. So there seem to be
real grounds for misandry. But this is the Cyclops syndrome: to see
with only one eye, in only one dimension and only half of reality (as
with #2 above). Cyclops people stereotype
the male by the actions of a minority, define the exceptions as the
rule, ignore the majority, and ignore too the minority of female
villains for a cleaner, clearer (supposedly) picture. Most murderers are
male but most males are not murderers, and some women are. This is not
rocket science. But misandry is less about reality than politics.
4.
Personal: Some misandry is likely to be grounded, like misogyny, in
bitter personal experiences. Many women say that that they have had
unpleasant personal experiences with men: fathers, brothers, lovers,
co-workers, bosses etc. But I suppose that we have all been hurt by
members of the opposite sex,
and by members of our own sex too; however, to extrapolate from a
minority to the general is surely unfortunate, even if understandable.
How
prevalent misandry and misogyny are today in Euro-America is not clear.
I have not found any gender attitude survey statistics. It is also not
clear whether misandry is grounded more in historical understanding or personal experience or gender politics; but certainly misandry is deep-rooted in our culture.
5.
Political Demonization: This new sexism, reverse sexism, is widespread
in feminist and pro-feminist literature - or propaganda, one might say, -
but largely ignored. One does not criticize feminism! But a fair number
of feminists have criticized men in sexist terms. Marilyn French called
men "the enemy." Germaine Greer wrote that that: "women have no idea
how much men hate them." Betty Friedan, amazingly, referred to suburban
domestic life as a "comfortable concentration
camp" for women, and to their husbands a SS prison guards. Rosalind
Miles described men as "the death sex." Valerie Solanas wrote "The SCUM
Manifesto", the Society for Cutting Up Men, and Robin Morgan obligingly
publicized this hate literature. Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" won
the Pulitzer and is totally misandric, as are the best-sellers by Terry
MacMillan. The movies were also were also very popular among women.
Misandry sells. Why these black women should demonize black men,
compounding sexism and racism, I don't know. It just reinforces racism.
6.
Angelization: The political demonization of men is complemented by the
angelization of women in a moral bi-polar totally sexist evaluation of
gender: women/good and men/bad. Elizabeth Cady Stanton stated in 1848:
"In my opinion, he [man] is infinitely women's inferior in every moral
virtue." Maria Montessori: "Perhaps...the reign of women is approaching,
when the enigma of her anthropological superiority will be deciphered.
Woman was always the custodian of human sentiment, morality and honor."
And as I noted earlier, it is not just women who are male-negative. The
anthropologist Ashley Montagu explained that: "Woman is the creator and
fosterer of life; man has been the mechanizer and destroyer of
life...Women love the human race; men behave as if they were, on the
whole, hostile to it...It is the function of women to teach men how to
be human." His emphasis. Women as human: men as subhuman, again. Then
again, Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, the President of Liberia, was asked
recently: "Do you think Africa will be peaceful and war-free if it has
more women in leadership positions?" She replied in classic male-negative vein. "I have no doubt of that...[women have]
a sensitivity to human-kind. Maybe it comes from being a mother" (Time 11 May 09:6).
a sensitivity to human-kind. Maybe it comes from being a mother" (Time 11 May 09:6).
7.
War: Misandry escalated in the 1990s.The battle of the sexes became the
war against women. Susan Faludi subtitled "Backlash: The Undeclared War
against American Women." It was mostly about media criticism of
feminism - the "war" was sheer hyperbole - but it won another Pulitzer.
Marilyn French went further and wrote "The War against Women." In Canada
after Marc Lepine killed 14 women in a school shooting, the federally
funded Committee on the Status of Women submitted a report entitled "The
War against Women" citing the 117 women murdered in the previous year
but ignoring double that number of men murdered in that same year.
Misandry again, ignoring male victims for political purposes, and the
downstream consequences for men and women have to be serious....as in:
8.
Law: The homicidal war against men kills mostly men. Men are the
principal victims of homicide. But never mind reality. Politics is all.
The U.S. government passed the "Violence against Women Act in 1994, and
this was followed soon afterwards by similar legislation in Canada.
Forget the far greater violence against men and, especially in the
States, black men, and in Canada First Nations men. There is a massive
disjunction between legislation and need, thanks in part to our double
standards and the Cyclops syndrome of selective perception...and also
the failure of men to "man up." It is not only the Criminal Justice
system which discriminates against men, so does the health system, the education system and the welfare system. It is all consequential to this same misandry. (see references below)
9.
Popular Culture: Misandry is now institutionalized in popular culture.
Joke books, fridge magnets, T-shirts, coffee mugs, newspaper cartoons,
TV sitcoms all deride all men all the time. There is no equal
opportunity contempt, which in some respects is probably a good thing,
but one wonders about the need for contempt. T-shirts say: "Women Rule.
Men Drool" and "Boys are smelly. Throw rocks at them." - an advocacy of
violence which would be unconscionable were the sexes reversed. "Dead
Men Don't Rape." Nor do most living men, of course. "So many men. So
little ammunition." "What do you call a man with half a brain? Gifted."
And so it continues. One joke book is titled "Men and other Reptiles"
and another is "101 Reasons why a cat is better than a man." The
consequences of such male-negativity are not clear, but such negative
affirmations seem likely to have, and to have had over the decades, a
negative impact on both sexes: self-loathing and/or a
resistance-generated misogyny among men, and contempt for men among
women.
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