misandry doesn't exist

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.

Who writes the scripts of these dumb sitcoms anyway? I doubt very much its a group of malicious feminists out for revenge but rather a group of writers who are trying to second guess what the public wants to see, which they think is a battle of the sexes a la Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. If the media were that concerned about offending feminist sensibilities they wouldn't perpetuate the objectification of women to the extent that they do.

They're just a bunch of chancers who try to get away with what they can and direct sexism against women is a no no, but taking the mickey out of men is perceived as harmless. And whilst it may be harmless to grown men who weren't brought up with these annoying stereotypes it may well be harmful to our DSs who aren't yet assured of their own abilities.

While it is true that low level misandry exists in the way men are portrayed and discussed in the media (and especially adveriIsing) as others have said.

It doesn't come close to the level of misogyny and discrimination women face in every other area of life though.

You have to consider context and scale though.

For every programme portraying men a bungling idiots and women as strong and capable, there are 100 others that reinforce the old sexist stereotypes.

One white person calling a black person a n**r in 20th-Century Alabama would have had no effect if there was no cultural norm of legally endorsed racism. The same is true of sexism.

People don't react with cries of sexism at programmes like Peppa Pig because the threat to male status as a result is virtually non-existent, and indeed can actually be considered to be reinforced as a result of this affectionate sexist portrayal (see post by messyisthenewtidy at 21.33).

Whereas there is a well-established link between the negative portrayal of women in media and negative effects on women in society, such as sexism, objectification and violence.

I think there is a bit of misandry going on at the moment. The fact that in most non-serious TV programmes, including children's TV, men are generally perceived as bumbling idiots (I use Peppa pig as a perfect example) demonstrates a general feeling that men are hopeless creatures who can't do anything.

I would describe this as misandry. Of course it is not on the same scale child marriages and prostitution etc, however, if we are looking for complete equality, if a woman was perceived as not being serious in the same way (being into fluffy bunnies and all) it would almost certainly be perceived as sexist / misogynistic.

But it's not man-hatred to portray pornhounds or chauvinists as lovable fools. It's helping sexist men by setting the bar even lower for them aka boys will be boys.

Just watching re-runs of Friends and musing over the ludricous portrayal of men (especially Joey) as sex starved simpletons. Is this misandry?

It's certainly derogatory towards men, but I would say its origin was a patriarchal interpretation of the battle of the sexes which pretends to mock men but really seeks to excuse behaviour such as doing no housework, objectifying women and being emotionally illiterate. It presents men as cheeky charming and simple, who can't help themselves, thus letting them off the hook entirely, whilst women must be the uber competent, emotionally mature and effortlessly beautiful creatures that make the rest of us feel like failures in comparison.

This kind of misandry ultimately harms women because it's no more than a variation of the Angel in the House which placed much higher expectations on women's moral behaviour and thus imprisoned them.

That's my gin filled take on it anyway.

Late to this but agree with LRD and thunderbolts.

Women who hate men have no power or cultural endorsement to inflict their hate on anyone other than the odd individual. Such women tend to stand out in society and suffer consequences for their views/behaviour.

Men who hate women have the whole structure and culture of society excusing, and sometimes actively reinforcing, their actions.

If people are interested in feminism they should be interested in the anti-femininst misogynistic roots of the popularisation of the term "misandry".

It was a political move by MRAs to give this word respectability and thus their claims that men are hated for being men (they aren't). What's sad is that so many people who perhaps might know better have seized on it. I think it makes a lot of people uncomfortable the amount of woman-hatred/misogyny that exists in the world, so for them it's a relief when they can find a reason to claim that "women do it too".

Yes, that's it LRD. There's no question that the word exists. You can find it in dictionaries and on line. But, the concept it represents as perpetuated by those who coined and promote it, well no, that doesn't actually exist.

sams - what you have described is the etymology, which is not exactly the same, IMO, as the definition. I think it was thunder who explained where the term misandry comes from and how it has been privileged by the people who used it. Given that, no, I don't think misandry exists. I don't think I'm redefining a word according to my own agenda at all.

Why do certain posters constantly seek to redefine words just to serve their own agenda? The term 'misandry' means hatred of men, therefore if you have someone out there who hates men, then it exists. Yes I would agree that misogyny is much more common and ingrained in society, but you cannot claim that something does not exist just by changing its definition!

Also agree with what Trills said - you cannot claim someone is 'a misogynist' and apply that to an individual if you are not going to allow it to work the other way around.

Yes, if we put the semantics and term "misandry" aside, what we've got is a system that is prescriptive about acceptable attitudes, roles, appearance, behaviours, etc. for both men and women which constrains the opportunities and aspirations of all but the most privileged.

However, it's important not to lose site that those who are most privileged are men (and white, and straight, and socio-economically advantaged, and non-disabled, etc.) and that all men do benefit from privileges that come from being male within a sexist society.

In brief, it's the most privileged men that set the rules that screw things up for both men and women, but more acutely for women. It's not women who set the rules that screw up things for men (or women for that matter.) So it's most definitely not even close to "even steven."

In my book, that means there is a specific responsibility there for all men to one, acknowledge that they are privileged because they are men (albeit to differing degrees because of factors like ethnicity, faith, class, sexuality, etc.) and two, be aware of how male privilege is played out all around them and never collude with the the "that's just how things are" explanation for injustice (which effectively sustains their own male privilege and that of other men,) and three, actively challenge examples of gender oppression wherever they encounter it. Staying silent just ain't enough.

Quite trills.

As the mother of boys and a girls I am concerned that none of their lives are circumscribed.

Whether misandry does or does not exist (and however we choose to define it) I hope we can all agree that the current situation is not ideal for women or for men. It needs changing and we should (if we are reasonably intelligent and aware of the world around us) want it changed.

I don't think you are being 'what about the menz' at all Manatee; it is a really good post.

Men are more likely to complete suicide because they are more violent, they kill others very much more often and when they kill themselves they choose the more violent methods.

You don't have to be depressed to commit suicide but women attempt it very much more often.

Without wanting to get dragged into the whole stupid tit-for-tat 'war of the sexes' thing, there is a school of thought in clinical psychology that argues that normative masculinity - while it does bring considerable advantages in terms of power and opportunities in some areas - does have a considerable attendant cost.

Men are between 4 and 10 times more likely to commit suicide than women, a statistic which is weirdly at odds with the fact that women are diagnosed with depression twice as often as men. Men also die younger (often from heart disease, which is associated with stress) and have higher incidence of substance abuse (something like 39% of American men will have a substance dependency problem at some point in their life).

This isn't to say 'oh the poor menz, let's let them all off the hook' but has provided a way into discussions within psychology about the ways in which normative masculinity, as well as often having a negative impact on women, can also be a significant cause of distress for men.

What I'm talking about here is quite different to misandry, and does not prove in any way that misandry exists. In the sense in which women experience misogyny, I don't think it does - or if it does, its impact on men is not proportionate to the impact on women of misogyny. But to conclude from that that there are no gender role based stresses on men would I think be mistaken.

This is the article I always link to when the topic of misandry comes up:

Misandry: From the Dictionary of Fools

"While men have long enjoyed attacking ungrateful women as ?man haters,? the epithet seems more than a little bit silly when transposed onto the printed page?something demanded by the burgeoning market for so-called Men?s Studies materials. It certainly lacks the gravitas required to reflect the widespread injury and social disadvantages that many white males believe they endure on a daily basis. Thus a more scientific-sounding term was needed for ?the hatred of men? and antifeminists crafted one out of their own perverted imagination of antiquity: misandry.

Cobbled together from two generally recognizable Greek components, ?misandry? has the appearance of consequence and refinement. Words with such roots are privileged in our society. They are used by doctors and lawyers, not out of necessity, but as a matter of status: they can view their own image in that mirror of history, standing tall with the great men of the ages. The capital letters we afford to Classical Civilization is an artifact of both racism and sexism. That very same authority, unearned as it is, was harnessed in order to fashion the word misandry. As it is an unfamiliar term to most who encounter it, many automatically assume that it has sound intellectual underpinnings given our society?s expectations for such words and the biases that surround them. This is no accident.

Furthermore, the archaic roots misrepresent misandry?s status as a new word, a neologism: antifeminists want nothing more than to mislead the public into thinking the word has always existed. With the seed of that deception planted, they can then blame its esoteric status on a feminist conspiracy that quietly removed misandry from our vernacular, just as reports of abusive women and battered men are allegedly censored by the agents of Political Correctness. This tactic has actually met with a good measure of success: many who encounter ?misandry? for the first time are given cause to wonder why they have never before heard a word that is made to seem ?obvious? in nature by its proponents. By adding a veneer of Pentelic marble to ?man hater,? these men are able to act as if ?misandry? were an unearthed treasure waiting to be found and not a newly minted piece of plastic.

The word and its variations (misandric, misandrist, et. al) were first used only by the most militant of antifeminists, where even the most published and professional remained outliers in male society. One early adopter of ?misandry? was Warren Farrell, a man who once wrote on the benefits of incest for Penthouse magazine. Yet its constant repetition over the past decade has turned it from the battle-cry of the pathetic to a banal trivia question. It serves as the answer to ?what is the opposite of misogyny,? a rhetorical question often posed to the editors of online-dictionaries by readers, all seemingly possessed of unlimited quantities of mock-innocence. Misandry?s less combustible presentation has allowed it to surge ahead of competing antifeminist devices (?androphobia?) that have since fallen by the wayside.

This transformation has framed the term in a ?common sense? approach that many feminists, especially young ones, have difficulty discounting: if the word misogyny exists, logically and mathematically, there must be another side of that coin to restore balance. This tact has the advantage of highlighting ?rationality? as a masculine attribute. Those who refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of misandry, both as a word and as a sociological fact, are portrayed as effeminate and thus bereft of logic, no matter how detailed and thought-out their arguments might be. Feminists who employ the so-called ?soft sciences? of history and sociology in their rebuttals are easily disregarded by men who invoke ?hard science? on their own behalf: the Coin Defense involves mathematics, of a perverse kind, and is thus deemed ?objective? even though it is nothing of the sort."

The issue with racism and societies in which race wouldn't exist as a social construct, I would say in such a society that a person could be capable of disliking geographically linked human variation, which most certainly does exist. But then that person might dislike people like me for their lack of ability to have a functioning placenta in a high altitude part of South America, or my lower lung capacity than certain groups in East Africa. It wouldn't be based on lumping all 'black' people together as if they share a wide number of physical traits when they are in fact a hugely disparate group, because 'black' is a social construct.

In terms of our own society, I would say that sexism is equivalent to racism and misogyny is equivalent to white supremacy. A man could experience sexism in our society and I could experience racism. But it would be a bit far fetched to say that I, over the course of my lifetime, was in any meaningful way experiencing black supremacy or that a man was experiencing misandry, because there is no institutional black supremacy or misandry in the UK. I am sure there are individual black supremacists and misandrists but within the context of what is legal and what is acceptable in wider society, they are going to have to go to some pretty extreme lengths to have an impact on my life or the life of a man.

Having a son, I do find that a lot of the treatment of boys is damaging, but that is largely a consequence of boxing them in to narrow modes of behaviour to separate them out from the 'other' which is women and girls. It is very sad for everyone.

Windyandrainy, Urban Dictionary isn't known for being sensitive or inclusive in its language! The content is user generated, so you'll also find plenty of sexist definitions there. However, the one Team Damon linked to kind of busts open what's behind the concept of "misandry."

Earlier today, I peeked into an old discussion forum I used to be fairly active in to find alot of white folks wailing about Dianne Abbot's recent Tweet taken out of context. as yet "further evidence" of reverse discrimination against white people. On another thread, some bemoaned the money spent pursuing and convicting two men for the murder of Stephen Lawrence with comments like, "they wouldn't have spent that money if he'd been white." Apart from completely missing the point about why it too nearly two decades for anyone to be brought to justice for his murder, these are examples of the "backlash" against perceived gains by people of colour in society.

Misandry - the idea that there is another side of the coin which is equal to misogyny is the product of a backlash against the perceived gains of women in society.

It comes from the idea that you can "neutralise" claims that some people are privileged while others suffer injustice and oppression by insisting that those seen as privileged are equally victims of some kind of injustice or oppression. If it's all "even steven," then nothing needs to be done about those original claims of oppression.

Cogito, I don't quite get your thinking on definitions in that last post. Okay, if misogyny is the hatred, distrust or dislike of women, then misandry would be the hatred, distrust or dislike of men. Yes, there are probably a few women who hate, distrust and dislike men. But, not only are there quite a few men who hate, distrust and dislike women, they are "supported" in that view by political, social and economic institutions that perpetuate hate, distrust, dislike, disadvantage, inferiority, abuse, etc. of women. Because of the vastly different "scales," the two concepts in now way could be considered to be counterparts.

"What is the evidence that "misandry" exists apart from the cobbling together some greek words?"

I'll ignore the fact that you've cobbled together quite a few greek, latin and words of other origin to create that sentence. :) Men have not been subjected to violence and oppression by women. That's not the debate. The debate is does misandry exist. Looking at a phrase like 'all men are rapists' ... which was something of a rallying cry in feminist circles in the 1970s and I'd hope you agree that it's a misandronic statement. They absolutely hated men as a group.

Yes, it's a really interesting thread, thanks OP!

I don't think I have posted even once on this thread without other people posting in the time between me reading and hitting "post"

Yes, I think LRD put what I was thinking much much more articulately!