misandry doesn't exist

[MitchierInge]

not in a sort of homologous (if that's the word?) way to misogyny anyway - society just isn't that evolved yet

here's one

Sources are shown after the facts quoted.

Also, this link shows that women are more likely to be killed in a domestic violence setting than men Men are also less likely to be murdered in a DV setting by women, than by other men. It also doesn't state what number of these men were the abusers, and thus were killed in self defence.

LillyJ, you are absolutely right to say that the language used in SCUM is disgusting.

The reason Solanas used it, was because she was making the point that all that language had been used about women at one point or another in history.

She was taking texts which said stuff like that about women, which had gone unnoticed and unremarked, or been seriously discussed as a proposition (theologians spent centuries discussing whether women could be regarded as fully huuman) and reversing it and applying it to men. Which of course, resulted in the howls of outrage and horror that had been so conspicuously missing when men said this sort of stuff about women.

Because it's OK to say stuff like that about women, but it isn't about men.

Satire is always tricky because you will always get people who don't "get" it Lots of people still think Alf Garnett was meant to be admired and identified with. In the case of the SCUM manifesto, it was kind of inevitable that the men who control the media, deliberately ensured that most people didn't get it, because from the start they pretended it it was a ranting hate tract. Misogynists have a vested interest in pretending that women hate men as much as they hate us. Thye can't point to vast numbers of men being legally, economically, socially and sexually systematically abused by women, so what they do is take obscure satirical tracts from the 1970's written by a woman who later developed mental health problems and pretends that proves we hate then as much as they hate us so therefore it's OK to continue to treat us and talk about us as less than human.

There's a facebook page put up today called Hope-you-have-pet-insurance-because-Im-about-to-destroy-your-pussy. It's for men to click into and have a good laugh about how funny it is to rape women. Nearly half a century after Valerie Solana's satire was published, we still live in a society where men aren't even vagulely ashamed to click on "like" and leave smileys so that they can bond with other men over their hatred of women. This sort of page appears with monotonous regularity on Facebook, but no such hate-speak pages appear about men for us to have a good giggle over what fun it is to hurt and abuse men. Because the depth of hatred for men, simply isn't there. When misogynists think it is, they are simply projecting their own hatred of us.

Basil, that's the difference isn't it? The magnitude of it and the normalcy. People laugh and say "oh it's just a joke". The day there is no violence against women in reality is the day I'll believe it's just a joke.

Lilly, I wish wish wish I could find this article I read months ago. I think it was after that poor woman was stabbed to death by her ex and I was feeling a general fear/malaise that comes from paying too much attention to the news. So I decided to investigate to see if it really was that bad or if it was just the media. Anyway I found an article which listed all the deaths in the last year due to spousal violence. I wish I hadn't, because it contained names after names of women and the way they had been killed. There were definitely some men in there, but mostly women.

Anyhooo, if you look in Wikipedia there's some basic stats there and I think the ratio averages out to about 1:4.7 - so for every man killed by his spouse, there are almost 5 women killed by their spouses.

Actually Lilly, thinking about it, I have to admit to a certain prejudice when I hear about men being murdered by their wives, one that doesn't make me feel good about myself:

When I hear of such a case I subconsciously ask myself if it was the last desperate attempt by women who have endured years of abuse. This is probably because I once knew a woman who was in jail for killing her husband after years of battering.

However this is probably completely wrong and unsympathetic on my part, as is my tendency to think "well men are stronger than women, so how on earth can be afraid of them?" I guess I just can't understand how a woman can have the same controlling psychological grip over a man, that a man can have over a woman. I admit that I must be completely wrong on this, as this is probably what people used to say about female victims of DV "why didn't she just leave?"

Plus there is the added factor for men that they are more likely to lose contact with their children if they leave so have more of an incentive to stay? I don't know. If someone with more experience/knowledge could educate me, I'd be grateful!!

The figures on women killed by their male partners comes from the Home Office and is based on actual figures for homicides in England and Wales.

Unfortunately the link from the Home Office website on on this page doesn't seem to be working so I can't tell you the exact page of the 2012 report where the data is contained, but it's in there.

What is interesting is that the media reporting of crime has no correlation with the actual incidence of crime. For example, if you go by reports in the popular press, you'd think that older people are most at risk of violent crime or robbery when they are amongst the least at risk. This is because papers know that stories about vulnerable elderly people being assaulted or burgled will pull the heart strings, sell papers and advertising. Those at greatest risk of assault or robbery are actually young men who are targeted by other young men. But, there is less sympathy for this kind of victim, so you don't get many reports about such assaults, unless there are particular circumstances likely to gain sympathy for the victim.

Same goes for reports of violence against women. Statistically, false accusations of rape are very small, but at least once a week a paper like the Daily Mail will have an article featuring a "false claim of rape." We know at the same time there will have been far more convictions, but these aren't interesting enough to report unless they are pretty extraordinary. This gives the false impression that lots of women lie about rape and very few men actually rape.

Similarly, the media use the most coy language when describing those all too frequent cases where men do kill their partners, often with their children and sometimes then kill themselves. Usually first reports go something like, "Two adults and two children were found dead in their Acacia Avenue Home yesterday. No one is being sought in connection with the crime." It's SO bland that you almost don't think of what is involved. When the names and circumstances then come out, articles tend to be peppered with testimonials from shocked neighbours who thought they were "just a normal family," and especially those saying what a loving devoted father the killer was, how they can't understand what would have "made him" do it. And, more often than not, there are suggestions if not allegations that the dead wife was somehow to blame. She'd left him. She was going to leave him. He thought she was going to leave him. He thought she was having an affair. She was having an affair. Dead women tell no tales so can't defend themselves against allegations that it was THEIR wrong doing that "drove" their partners to kill them and their children.

This, too, gives the impression that men are perhaps justified in killing partners and children.

All this creates a kind of atmosphere that seeps in to our minds, telling us repeatedly that women are bad/wrong/evil/vengeful and that men good/caring/sensible, and if they do something wrong, it's rare and really not their fault.

So, as others have said, we come to accept language and assumptions about women being bad/wrong/evil as just fairly normal. But, we feel shocked or even get defensive when the same descriptions are applied to men, particularly in relation to their abuse and control of women. We can't wrap our heads around it, it just sounds so extreme and implausible (although in reality, it's not,) so the response can be to point the finger at those who use such descriptions and insist they are men-haters and misandrists. That's because we're all conditioned to a degree to believe that they are. We're all being duped (including those men who believe they have to live up to the stereotype model of controlling, aggressive, anything-that's-not-feminine masculinity when it's not really who they are.)

Hi Messy, Kritiq and Frothy - thanks providing those links and other information.

It is such a sad and tragic thing when good and innocent women are abused by their partners, sometimes to the point of death. What kind of "men" are they I have to wonder; to bully, intimidate and batter the women in their lives, women they even claim to love. I can't speak for the UK, but certainly in Australia we do not have an attitude that (to quote you) women are bad/wrong/evil/vengeful and that men good/caring/sensible, and if they do something wrong, it's rare and really not their fault. We tend to think that if a man hits, abuses or kills a woman he is an absolute scum bag and we very much side with the women this happens to. Such a shame that people in the UK think that way, I think misogyny over there must be far more rampant than I realized.

What kind of man does that to a woman and thinks it's ok to hit her? What kind of man would abuse a woman to the point of murder?

Messy I must confess I have a similar prejudice, it's very hard to believe that men can be abused by women in a similar way to the way men abuse women, how they can bully them in a similar way. I have scratched my head over this one quite a bit. I do know, of course, that not all men are physically stronger than all women and so there must be some relationships where the woman is the stronger, tougher partner; and I do know that a lot of men have been brought up to never hit a woman. If a violent and abusive woman were to take advantage of that then I can see one scenario where the stage is set for female to male abuse. There is an American comedian I have heard of who bases a lot of his material on the abuse he suffered at the hands of his ex-wife, I will see if I can find a link to it if you're at all interested.

Messy, I couldn't find that comedian I was looking for, but I did find an interesting story about a comedian who picked up a shy girl at a comedy gig, little knowing how it would turn out...

www.bbc.co.uk/leeds/altogether/flatlands/domestic.shtml

Misandry exists as does misogyny.

However the impact of misandry on my life as a man is minimal. It is an annoyance that makes me shout at TV adverts on occassions. It makes me disagree with certain posters on MN. Thats it.

Misogyny affects women constantly and in far far more serious ways.

There probably are people within the feminist movement who dislike men intensely and very few who probably want to do men real physical harm. They are exremists but the chances of me ever meeting one are diminishingly small.

Women are far more likely to suffer harm at the hands of men who they know.

Let us just agree that sexism is a bad thing and let us seek to stamp it out.

Sorry but misandry doesn't exist in the same way as misogyny.

It has not had the centuries long history of validation in the form of laws, social mores and customs. It has not underpinned every single aspect of daily life for most human beings for thousands of years, resulting in a psychological underpinning of it today, even though we have dumped many of the laws and customs that buttressed and fed it. It has not left us with the legacy of gendered violence , insitutionalised sexism, inequality and gendered poverty, that misogyny has.

There simply is no comparison and it is frivolous and trivialising to pretend that there is.

MoreBeta Those kind of adverts can presumably be labelled as misandric because advertising is run by women?

For TV adverts denigrating men as useless to be capable of being described as being misandric, advertising as an industry/sector would have to be systematically matriarchal and run by women. Please note I do not agree with adverts like this and have complained to the ASA in the past about adverts like this - mainly ones showing men as incapable of housework so they have to delegate to women to look after them offensive to both sexes -

Institute of Practitioners of Advertising (IPA) report in 2010 stated that women were severely under represented in senior management positions in the UK advertising sector (they noted that it was overwhelmingly run by white men under 50).

So why are men so heavily invested in presenting other men in this light? What is it called when men are being 'misandric'?

Hi Wheezo, in my mind misandry is misandry just as misogyny is misogyny and men can be misandrists as women can be misogynists.

What is it called when men are being 'misandric'? Misandry.
What is it called when women are being 'misogynistic'? Misogyny.

Yes, I find it hard to believe that a group of women advertising executives are sitting there planning these misandric adverts.

The male dominated advertising industry obviously think it is what women (their demographic for such look-after-your-man-cos-he's-too-dumb-to products) will find funny. But I would bet that most women don't. It's annoying because it gives the MRAs something to hold up as an example of misandry when in reality it doesn't reflect how women really feel or treat their men.

I would be happy to give up these dumb adverts if it meant advertisers stamped out sexual stereotyping of both genders. Wrinkle cream, anyone? But of course they won't because they are too scared to be original and find it easier to stick with the same old world vision.

But do men really hate themselves Lilly? There has never been in society the popular opinion that men are intellectually or physically inferior to women, seeping into their psyches filling them with self-doubt.

Hi Lilly

So if men are overwhelmingly in power and are oppressing other men in power it is misandry/ institutionalised economic, social, legal, political hatred of men = so misandry is hatred of men by other men.

And where men are overwhelmingly in power and are oppressing other women it is misogyny = hatred of women by men.

Which seems to point to the fact that as men are most definitely overwhelmingly in power and appear to be both the architects of both misandry and misogyny and therefore we need feminism more than ever!

I'm afraid misandry is alive and well..

An ongoing argument centres on men's participation in the "Race for life"
so Cancer Research UK conducted research to gauge womens feelings on the issue. The underlying opinion was that a large body of women would fail to register if men were allowed to participate. It seems (in these cases) that the hatred of men supercedes the fear of Cancer.

Oh dear. I bet that'll get blamed on the feminazis!

mug - sorry ... so you're actually trying to say that, because some women feel unable to participate alongside men, it must be because they hate men more than cancer and are 'misandrist'?

You can't think of any other reason women might be afraid or upset? It's not as if these women were even going to make a fuss - they would just quietly not register.

Misandry does not exist. What you are seeing is women who are being crowded out by men and also - by you - blamed for this.

The logic in Mug's post defies belief. I thought it was a joke I have to say

Oh ... maybe I am a humourless feminist.

I didn't think it was a good enough reason to bump a very old thread, TBH.

I also assumed it was a joke, though it would be even funnier if it wasn't

Check the dates;

Wheezo Sun 13-May-12 00:07:42
followed by
Mugofteaforme Thu 31-Jan-13 19:27:11

Necro-posting to try and stir up trouble.

" TeamDamon Fri 06-Jan-12 11:04:55

Love this definition of it though..."

The same user who posted their definition of misandry on urbandictionary (and actually did a bit of spamming by flooding the misandry page with several duplicate definitions) also posted this definition of a man:

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=man&defid=5810747

"Man: 90% are useless, worthless arseholes who vote up and post misogynistic definitions. when they're not doing that they're probably whining their egocentric hearts out that people are complaining about their stupid misogynistic arses whilst desperately.......[etc]"

"Misandry does not exist."

What about the "SCUM" manifesto thing would that be misandry?

Or to put it another way would the SCUM manifesto be regarded as misogynist if it was written by a man against women?

Vitalstats, you obviously haven't read the posts in this thread.

Basileatsfouleggs posted the following about SCUM:

"LillyJ, you are absolutely right to say that the language used in SCUM is disgusting.

The reason Solanas used it, was because she was making the point that all that language had been used about women at one point or another in history.

She was taking texts which said stuff like that about women, which had gone unnoticed and unremarked, or been seriously discussed as a proposition (theologians spent centuries discussing whether women could be regarded as fully huuman) and reversing it and applying it to men. Which of course, resulted in the howls of outrage and horror that had been so conspicuously missing when men said this sort of stuff about women.

Because it's OK to say stuff like that about women, but it isn't about men.

Satire is always tricky because you will always get people who don't "get" it Lots of people still think Alf Garnett was meant to be admired and identified with. In the case of the SCUM manifesto, it was kind of inevitable that the men who control the media, deliberately ensured that most people didn't get it, because from the start they pretended it it was a ranting hate tract. Misogynists have a vested interest in pretending that women hate men as much as they hate us. Thye can't point to vast numbers of men being legally, economically, socially and sexually systematically abused by women, so what they do is take obscure satirical tracts from the 1970's written by a woman who later developed mental health problems and pretends that proves we hate then as much as they hate us so therefore it's OK to continue to treat us and talk about us as less than human.

There's a facebook page put up today called Hope-you-have-pet-insurance-because-Im-about-to-destroy-your-pussy. It's for men to click into and have a good laugh about how funny it is to rape women. Nearly half a century after Valerie Solana's satire was published, we still live in a society where men aren't even vagulely ashamed to click on "like" and leave smileys so that they can bond with other men over their hatred of women. This sort of page appears with monotonous regularity on Facebook, but no such hate-speak pages appear about men for us to have a good giggle over what fun it is to hurt and abuse men. Because the depth of hatred for men, simply isn't there. When misogynists think it is, they are simply projecting their own hatred of us."