misandry doesn't exist

So I heard, a cunning conspiracy if ever I saw one - I'm particularly impressed by the white male disguise they operate under. Clever, very clever.

Well the feminist government is planning to take everyone's children away Beach, that F4J poster the other day said so.

Is anybody else reading "because they can see where it's going....." in the manner of a drama loaded film trailer voice over?

It is just so ominous isn't it, all this protesting about being women's refuges closing down due to lack of funds and marches supporting the right of women to walk freely down public streets? There are not enough faces in the whole of the internet.

How many weeks was Caitlin Moran in the bestseller lists? I see she's still in the top 100 at Amazon.

And all these sellout feminist conferences and marches that get bigger all the time.... And all the new local feminism groups.

I'm seeing a lot more women embracing feminism than rejecting it right now.

You weren't just talking about close friends though were you, you were talking about everyone you'd ever met.
I don't know why you feel like you have a right never to be suspected of disbelieving rape victims, when you posted something that you couldn't possibly know (ie that you'd never met a rape victim) and tried to use that to discredit the statistic.
Helpful tip: if you go around saying stuff that is anti-woman, people will inevitably wonder if you hold other anti-woman views.

So you removed it because we unreasonably latched onto one aspect of your post? And not because you sounded immensely foolish? Uh-huh.

If I refer back to my 'anyone with eyes' audience, I think it's fairly plain that we aren't 'post' anything and in fact Natasha Walter will cheerfully admit that a) she was first in the charge to sound the death knell for feminism in the 90s and b) that she was wholly wrong in ways she never expected.

Can I have some evidence of this mass of women rejecting or being 'post' feminism, please? Given that there's loads of them, it shouldn't be too hard.

On the other hand, I give you Natasha Walter, plenty of other feminist writers who never sounded the death knell in the first place, feminist blogs mushrooming all over the shop, OBJECT, Men Against Pornography...

Where is feminism going, anyway?

I know you all want to believe I'm some woman hating harpie, sadly I'm not, not at all.

I said you were daft because why on earth, if one of my friends confided in me that she was raped, would I not believe her.

In RL I am extremely approachable and care very much about my female friends, and they have confided in me about all kinds of issues over the years.

I have not discussed with them the views I have wrt feminism very simply because feminism just does not crop up in our discussions.

I withdrew my post because I realised almost immediately that the message I was trying to convey would be lost, and that you would focus entirely on one very small aspect of it, which indeed you did.

I couldn't ask the mods to chop a bit out of my post so I simply removed it. No-one has commented at all about the rest wrt the future.

I expect that that is probably because you all know that is exactly where we are headed. Feminism today does not represent the vast majority of womens views, in fact more and more women are speaking out against it, because they can see where it's going.

How they hell do you know?
They'd want to know you very well before they'd confide in you.
And if they do know you very well they might decide not to trust you, for reasons that may or may not have anything to do with the attitudes displayed on this thread.

apologies, I mean why is it daft?

Why is it stupid? Please explain how you know that no woman you have ever met has ever been raped.

'In my 40 year lifetime I have never met a woman who has been raped.'

How did you know? Have you asked every single one you've met..?!

'I've been assuming she means no-one has ever volunteered the information to Sahara, but perhaps it's not that at all - perhaps they told her and she unilaterally decided not to believe them'

Oh don't be daft, what a thing to say.

I've been assuming she means no-one has ever volunteered the information to Sahara, but perhaps it's not that at all - perhaps they told her and she unilaterally decided not to believe them.

The only people I have told about sexual assault have been feminists. Because I knew they would listen, understand and not minimize my distress.

A recurring theme I find.

That's funny, Sahara.. I run out of fingers counting the women I know who've been abused, either sexually, physically, mentally, psychologically...

I know several women who've admitted being raped. Only two people in real life know the full extent of what I've been through. We don't tend to go shouting it from the rooftops, to anyone who'll listen...

'In my 40 year lifetime I have never met a woman who has been raped.'

What a ridiculous claim.
It says more about you than about the prevalence of rape, I fear.
Did you ask them all? Do you think rape victims wear a badge?

SaharaMerchant wrote - "I?m just tired of radicals. When have they ever made the world a better place?"

Depending on how one defines "radical", it could be said that radicals have made numerous positive contributions to the world, such as inventing things like the wheel, writing and books.

The radical in radical feminism does not refer to "extremism", it refers to "root" as in "the root cause of oppression of women is the Patriarchy."

I love that quote too Beachcomber. And it's a goodbye to you Sahara from me too.

Bye-bye, Sahara!

ps: I would have to be dragged through a hot pit of roasting coals before I told someone who actually believes that misandry is a real institutionalised process about my rape. Just a thought...

I've come to the conclusion that the word misandry exists. It's been used hundreds of times on this thread alone.

I believe that misandry is a word that was invented by 19th century MRAs (Men's Rights Activists) specifically to smear, denigrate and destroy feminists from the start of First Wave feminism in the 1800s.

I believe that the word misandry was not invented to describe hatred of men. On the contrary, it was invented to silence women who dared to point out widespread discrimination by men against women. That discrimination against women is not some imaginary thing, then or now.

I do not believe that MRAs are a modern invention of the 1980s or later. They have been around since the start of feminism. The recent revival of MRAs in the internet age is not about increased discrimination against men. It is to oppose the resurgence of feminism due to the Patriarchal backlash against feminism. For example, anyone following the current U.S. Republican Primary campaign can see how anti-woman thinking has moved even higher up the Patriarchy's agenda.

Most people who shout "misandry!" seem to be obsessed with some fantasy that the world is ruled by feminists, who hold all the power and allegedly are out to eliminate men. The evidence is precisely the opposite of their MRA fantasy. The Patriarchy uses MRAs to fight Patriarchy's enemy, which is feminism. The Patriarchy is not primarily concerned with giving more rights to its MRA foot soldiers. If feminism were to be destroyed, the Patriarchy would not reward MRAs with more rights than they had before feminism. More parental leave for fathers under the Patriarchy, without the help of feminists? No chance.

Misandry is all about the Patriarchy pushing its agenda of anti-feminism. MRAs will not improve the world for most people by fighting feminists. MRAs will preserve the more pro-male, more anti-woman Patriarchy. It's ironic that discrimination against some men in the real world actually comes from the male-dominated Patriarchy, not from feminism.

Misandry is not the "other side of the coin" equal and opposite to misogyny. Misogyny has involved real, documented, systematic, institutionalised discrimination and hatred of women, causing the (often violent) deaths of millions of women at the hands of many men, for at least the past 2,500 years. Women have not done this to men.

Precisely.

And therein there is a potentially interesting discussion to be had of the writing of Solanes for example. The SCUM Manifesto is anarchist - it attacks a system which causes harm to certain groups of society, due to a clinging to of privilege by other groups, using any and all means possible; notably violence and the construction of power structures which institutionalise that violence.

I suspect it is impossible to develop such a discussion in this forum however without it degenerating to the level of the lowest common denominator. A fruitless exercise.

I love that quotation.

What you're saying there is so right - feminist analysis of pretty much anything is a giant invitation for men to stand with us, to work to combat his privilege, etc.