Misandry and Mumsnet

[estrogone]

Is it acceptable to hate on men openly without apology? Would it be ok of it were the other way round.

As a woman and mother of sons, the attitudes and comments on MN border on hate speech and I think Mumsnet HQ should do something about it.

Is this really how we want to balance the scales?

E: spelling

Oh I know, and was perhaps poorly attempting to drive your point home.

We don’t hate men because of their sex in isolation.
we hate the dangers men pose to us as a sex class

Misandry doesn't even exist
Men have never been oppressed or disadvantaged
Saying mean words online that hurt your feelings is not oppression

Women have had to deal with rampant, open misogyny for thousands of years. Now we’re supposed to care when men get a tiny dose of their own back?

And it’s really just calling out the shitty, awful, often predatory behaviour of some/many men.

Maybe try to understand why women would say those things?

And the massive difference is many men post "I hate women and they deserve to be raped and killed" or similarly violent fantasies and women post "I hate men because they won't stop raping and killing women and children". The two are just not comparable.

Completely agree with you OP and the replies on this thread are a case in point.

I have a husband and sons. I love them very much.

I am perfectly ok with shining a light on dangerous male behaviours.

I will not place higher value on men's feelings than women's safety.

If this statistic is even correct, it reflects only the number of perpetrators who have been caught, tried and convicted.

Violence against women, rape and sexual assault are not only massively under reported, but the conviction rates are woeful, here and in every other country.

And given that these crimes are only the very tip of a massive iceberg of normalised bad behaviour by men that negatively affects women and children all over the world and at every level in society, this is not quite the ‘gotcha’ you seem to think it is.

As Margaret Atwood said "Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."

Misogyny is not limited to violent crime.

1 in 4 women will be raped in their lifetime.

99% of women will experience misogyny every day.

1. Man spreading on the train
2. Being talked over in meetings at work
3. Doing most of the menial tasks at home despite working the same hours
4. Changing our running routes to avoid woodland where there might be potential for sexual assault
5. Getting a cab late a night when we’d rather walk if it weren’t for the risk of men and sexually assault
6. teaching our DD’s to never leave their drink unattended in case men spike it to sexually assault them
7. Getting only 1% of all budgets for our sports whilst men get 99% in of all global investment in theirs
8. Having to take medication doses tested and produced at the perfect dose for the size of the average male
9. Men earning more than women doing the equivalent work
10. Millions of online rape threats towards women in prominent positions by men. Not excluding murders of female politicians simply because they a were female and outspoken.

Its all misogyny

The conviction rate is low and how many women have left abusive men without telling the police etc. A lot of rapes and beatings are just not reported.

My husband is genuinely lovely, the man I was seeing before him used to try to strangle me regularly. The fact that Dh is lovely does not negate the harm a lot of men do to women and never facing the consequences.

At the extreme end we are talking about rape, murder, violence, at the other end it’s things like not sharing the load in terms of childcare, housework etc. Frankly if anything happens to my marriage I would probably never touch another man, I definitely wouldn’t live with one. I consider myself extremely lucky to be married to a man who is actively kind, hardworking, pitches in with everything and doesn’t treat me like a skivvy etc etc. we also have some excellent men in our family but I can think of more men who are at minimum lazy and maximum dangerous than I can think of women with those qualities.

Men just don’t face the same risks from women.

Q: 1.How many women do you know who have been harassed / sexually assaulted / raped?

1. How many men do you know who commit these offences?

A: 1. nearly all women. 2. Hmmm, a few, but not many - which leads me to suspect that not all the men we know and trust are as we think. The numbers don’t t add up.

You’re being so unreasonable it’s untrue. Surely this must be a wind up. I am a mother of sons and I’m very proud of them. But I can see that misogyny is completely widespread on media and social media and in all areas of society including the workplace and the criminal justice system. It’s even widespread in the health service.

We need to talk about this and we need to root out casual misogyny wherever it exists. If that means talking about many men behaving appallingly then we need a platform for that. Men have been supporting misogyny for millennia. It’s even institutionalised in many countries. People on here discussing disrespectful or degrading behaviour by their husbands and partners is not unreasonable and is in fact an important public service for women.

It’s not misandrist to point out the truth. Just go on sports pages and social media to see what men post about women. Much of it is disgusting. And yet weirdly it bothers you what we say about selfish and lazy Steve and his bloody hobby. Get a grip and see what real problems there are in the world.

Read and inwardly digest what @Cheesemaker26 said above. Reprinted here for ease.

But yes, dear, they are DEFINITELY going to pick you and OP. Well done.

"the massive difference is many men post "I hate women and they deserve to be raped and killed" or similarly violent fantasies and women post "I hate men because they won't stop raping and killing women and children". The two are just not comparable."

There was a thread on here the other day where parents were fearful for their daughters at university. It included discussion of young women who never leave the house when it’s dark (even in winter), never walk home on their own after a night out, cover their drinks in case of spiking. The limiting of women’s lives because of fear of men’s behaviour is an absolute outrage, but we continue to accept it as normal. So, yes when women spend their entire lives accommodating men, being in fear I can understand why women might feel pretty angry towards men as a sex class

Then let men do better. Bring your sons up to be the kind of men that would not hurt a woman and to call their friends out on such behaviour too.

Unfortunately, men in general are a problem and it’s sad, yes, that the ‘good ones’ are swept along in the general consensus that men are bad. But a lot of women who’ve been at the receiving end of men (and that’s a lot of women putting up with some very bad things) aren’t going to generally differentiate between the bad and good ones.

I consider myself to have known a much ‘better’ group of men in my life - but there have been only two that I fully trust.

When I was a child my father was violent and I was sexually attacked twice (but managed to break away).

At a family event recently, I was shocked to hear that one of the younger men ‘loves’ Andrew Tate and another one thinks the women Russell Brand attacked were ‘asking for it’.

My daughter has been raped; another one badly sexually harassed.

Right now, I’m listening to the news and there’s a report that 10% of adults have been sexually abused. In fact, turn on the news and listen to what’s happening. Misogyny, the internet and the dark web are turning men into an even bigger problem, and women and children are simply not safe, and the threat to them growing day by day.

So, yes, it’s sad for your sons but you can blame men for that. That there are some men who are decent isn’t going to sway my opinion that men, on the whole, are dangerous and getting more so.

Misandry is not even a thing @estrogone , it was created in relation to misogyny about 200/250 years after misogyny was first described as a term.

I agree. The man hate on here is off the scale. It’s also always the man’s fault. Women can do no wrong. God forbid a man actually posts something.

Also as a mother of sons I'm trying to raise them to not do all the things that provoke this distrust and fear (and yes, occasionally hate). I don't blame the women and girls for being afraid of them, just as they might be afraid of other men and boys around them.

And that's the other difference - when you say women 'hate' men - what you seem to mainly talk about is fear and distrust. When men talk about hating women, they describe women not doing what they want them to do. Apples and Oranges.

I see far more misogyny on Mumsnet, so casual and frequent (mostly from women).

Can you give an example of a man posting that didn't fall into:

How can I get more access to a woman's body?

How can I discredit a woman in my life?

How can I avoid being financially responsible for my children and make a woman pay more?

Of course there are good men, I know a handful. I think those posting on MN tend to have ulterior motives, much of the time.

This. It’s not complicated, OP. I am also the mother of a son.

I assume by 'misandry' you mean women daring to call you out men for raping/abusing/hitting them, being selfish partners and useless fathers and objectifying women and girls and treating them as second class human beings while obsessing about porn?

Rather than trying to silence women's genuine concerns you should focus on calling out men's poor behaviour.

Pretending there isn't an issue with toxic masculinity is not helping women or men.

Still men though

The big difference is that misandry doesn’t dent the patriarchy. It doesn’t lessen men’s wages, it doesn’t jeopardise their safety, it doesn’t keep them from positions of power, it doesn’t do anything.

No, I don’t abide by discrimination when it comes to following the law in employment, violence, crime etc, but that’s a separate matter.

I’d go as far as to say misandry is barely ‘real’. It’s similar to bringing up black people can be racist. And that’s coming from someone who doesn’t bash men on Mumsnet.