misandry doesn't exist

And if someone started a thread about basilisks I might think "well Harry Potter isn't the best basis to start a discussion, I'll look it up in the dictionary and base what I say on that".

If I responded to a thread about basilisks thinking that a basilisk was "a mythical reptile with a lethal gaze or breath, hatched by a serpent from a cock?s egg." and then people said "no actually we mean something entirely different so your opinion doesn't count" I might be a bit annoyed.

I don't say misandry exists because it is in the dictionary.

I say that misandry as defined by the dictionary is a thing that exists.

The thing that you are calling misandry (an institutionalised hatred or mistreatment of men analogous to the misogyny that is ingrained on our society) does not exist, that is something we agree on.

The thing that the dictionary calls misandry does exist.

(Also 'basilisk', which frankly gives me more cause for concern.)

trills, 'God' is in the dictionary, too. I never realized that arguing with atheists had such a simple answer ... do you think I've solved that issue once and for all now?

what thunderbolt and sunshine said. (That's a strange sentence for you...)

Depends which dictionary you're looking at. Ten, probably five years ago, the word wasn't in any standard dictionary (not the kind that has every obscure word listed). Misogyny was.

So does that mean that suddenly man-hatred has appeared as a phenomenon and thus needs a word for it in the dictionary, or is the backlash is in full swing and MRAs have had influence that feminists aren't able to match? I'll go for the latter.

The forcing of men into gender stereotyped roles is not a byproduct of systematic misandry though, it is a byproduct of systematic misogyny. It is the flip side of keeping women in their place.

Feminism has always recognised that the patriarchy harms a lot of men as well as women.

The thing that I say exists is based on what the dictionary says the word means, not based on "making up" anything.

If one is required to have special knowledge that says "the word means much more than the dictionary says it does, therefore the thing doesn't exist because the word doesn't mean what you think it means" then I'm out.

I guess the dictionary is wrong then.

Did a bit of research, as I find this really interesting.Found this blog post, which argues that if forcing women/girls into gender roles is misogynistic, then the flip-side must be that forcing men/boys into gender roles is misandronic. That certainly happens on a scale that could be described as systematic.

But then, from Wikipedia: "Gilmore also states that neologisms like misandry refer "not to the hatred of men as men, but to the hatred of men's traditional male role" and a "culture of machismo". Therefore, he argues, misandry is "different from the intensely ad feminam aspect of misogyny that targets women no matter what they believe or do"."

Misogyny is not just a word that expresses the hatred an individual has for women which is entirely separate from the way society is organised, though. It conveys the participation of people in a system of hatred-fuelled oppression.

There is no systematic hatred/oppression of men by women. There may well be individual women who have decided they dislike men, because they have generalised their personal experiences with them, but they are not participating in any system rooted in society. So there is no 'misandry', per se. Just because you can think of a word, doesn't make it actually exist.

Did you skip a page somewhere?

Thunder, with respect, I never understand your posts. It is a logical impossibility that somebody could hate men because female infanticide? Sorry to sound facetious but that genuinely seems to be about the gist of your argument.

Thanks Kritiq the joy of someone getting what I'm on about. - Never happens to me in RL.....

Snap messy! :)

Ha - no way am I going to start watching tv again. When I do, it feels like it's poisoning my brain! :)

But, you're right in your point that it's all about cherry picking examples from the popular media to "prove" how men are now objectified and demeaned as well. The reason is either to argue that it's "fair game" to objectify and demean women because look, it happens to men, too, or to "prove" some grand feminist conspiracy to turn the tables and dominate men.

Thunder I think you are misunderstanding what I'm saying. There are a gazillion of negative portrayals of men if you want to look for them , from the sex starved boob obsessed manchildren of inbetweeners, big bang theory, friends, etc, to the kindly yet half brain celled characters of Tracey Beaker, Dani's House, Ice Age etc who are ostensibly no match for the wise manipulative female characters, not forgetting those ads like theBoots one where the men are too babyish to get off their arses to get their own medicine.

But that is my point. These characters just provide the opposition with the opportunity to cry "reverse sexism" and obscure the fact that every single sodding comedy panel is overwhelmingly male and that men are over represented in the media at every level. Plus the fact that the trope of the shrewish wife vs hard done by incompetent hubby leaves us feeling sorry for the husband. Think Mr/Mrs Bennett and who we are supposed to side with.

And yes you're right. All the popular shows you quoted are male dominated. Because women watch men but no one expects men to watch women leads. Women leads are marginalized to chick flicks and special interests. But women support men at every turn. It's tiring and not gonna change till kids films bring girls out of the princess sideline.

I'd need more current examples than that!

My point is that they are cherry-picking - finding a handful of examples and claiming that represents the whole when it clearly doesn't. Men are allowed the full range of portrayals from bumbling idiots to superheroes and everything else in between.

It's women who are limited and stereotyped and often treated as stupid (see Sherlock this week for one example).

Not meaning to answer for Messy, but I understand what she means - (06-Jan-12 22:40:22 post), "The problem is that these "bumbling idiot" stereotypes are seen as evidence of a feminist agenda in action which is the opposite of the truth because feminists are the least likely to go with gender stereotypes."

I haven't had a TV for about 4 or 5 years, so to be fair, I can't really comment on tv programmes or even commercials that are out now. But back in the mid 1990's, I ended involved in a live radio programme with an MRA type guy (don't ask!) who rambled off a list of adverts and sit come sketches that he said depicted violence and abuse against men, "things they'd never show if it was against a woman," he claimed. And this, he insisted, was evidence that "our feminist society tolerates, even encourages women's abuse of men."

I remember one of the examples was a car advert at the time where I think a woman throws a man's things out of a window and handcuffs him to stair railings before driving off (something along those lines,) and another was a sketch with Les Dawson (I think) dressed as a woman talking about hitting her husband with a frying pan.

He was talking shite, but since MRAs, racists and others seeking to "prove" reverse discrimination are constantly scanning the horizons for the tiniest shred of evidence to justify their hatred, they'll pick up on almost anything and dress it up as "proof."

Most popular on i-Player for example are:

Eastenders
Tracy Beaker returns
Little Britain
Eastenders
Never mind the buzzcocks
Earthflight
Sherlock
Public Enemies
Wonderland
Natures Weirdest Events
Top Gear
Ratatouille
Public enemies
The Grammar School: A secret history
Under the Tuscan Sun

I'm not really seeing this anti-manism on TV from that.

Thumbs up to the recent posts pointing out what's behind the portrayals of men as bumbling, silly or incompetent in comedies or adverts. It doesn't stem from hatred of men. Face it, most of the script writers and advert copy writers are men themselves. In my view, such portrayals are generally used as a comic device - by either inverting gender stereotypes or overplaying them (e.g. man who can't clean or look after a baby) for comic effect.

This is reminding me of the folks who cited programmes like The Real McCoy and Goodness Gracious Me as evidence of "reverse racism," because they sometimes also inverted racial stereotypes or overplayed them for comic effect. Yeah, in the context of gazillions of other messages in popular culture and society in general perpetuating demeaning stereotypes, beliefs and actions toward people of colour.

I'm sorry what negative portrayals of men in the media, messy?

What was the most recent one you've seen?

Thunder I do agree with you because obviously the ostensibly negative portrayal of men in the media masks what happens in reality. For example the supposedly comic portrayal of violence against men in the media masks the fact that in reality it goes the other way. It gives an unrealistic portrayal of the actual power balance.

But what I'm saying is that our DSs don't know that and when my DS asks me why men are made to look stupid on tv I can't exactly quote gendercide statistics to him. But I agree with you on the over representation of men in the media. It's as if it's so woven into the fabric of our society that no one notices it and it appears to be normal.

It's also pathetic to be complaining about being portrayed badly in sitcoms, when the context of hatred agaisnt women is genocide against us in some parts of the world.

It's like Germans complaining that Charlie Chaplin was rude about Hitler.

How many men are portrayed as bumbling fools, compared to the number portayed as confident, heroic, admirable, sexy, manly, intelligent, assertive etc.

If I can be bothered I'm going to check out the TV listings and see whether this myth actually lives up to any kind of reality (probably not).

What is true is that overwhelmingly men are given space in the media, to the detriment of women's voices or experiences and to the detriment of women's careers and incomes.

Do sitcoms even exist anymore, apart from My Family?