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

'I don't think that 'its misogyny' is a good explanation for complex phenonmena like domestic violence, rape, sex specific abortion, the status of women, lack of reproductive rights, child marriage of girls to older men, trafficking and exploitation of women etc....'

Why not, though? The common factor to those things is that they either exclusively or disproportionately affect women. Why is anti-woman sentiment a bad explanation? Surely it is a pretty unavoidable explanation, even if you want to advance others too.

Jamma, you just seem to be tossing out random factoids about unrelated incidents and insisting there are some conclusions to be drawn in there, some kind of great conspiracy. They're just random factoids (and you keep mewing and crying about how horrible it is for you to "have" to read them - good grief.)

Despite saying you were a social worker in 1987, your recall of the Cleveland case is pretty patchy. Children were taken into care and in some cases investigations of child sexual abuse were launched against families due to "diagnosis" by the two paediatricians involved of abuse using the later discredited "anal reflex dilatation" technique.

Three and four years later, there were different cases in Rochdale and Orkney where therapists used controversial models of therapy with children who disclosed information interpreted by social workers as evidence of ritual satanic abuse.

There was no grand Christian conspiracy or feminist conspiracy or any other conspiracy going on in any of these cases. They were examples where practitioners introduced untested methods to diagnose that children had been harmed, their methods were not scrutinised or challenged and were later found to be inaccurate and inadequate.

These cases remind me of those where women were accused and convicted of murdering their babies on the evidence of controversial paediatrician Roy Meddow (when it transpired they died of natural causes and convictions were overturned.)

Again, no grand conspiracy, but a convincing practitioner who wasn't challenged by the powers that be.

All of these "scandals" happened within health and social services systems that operated an "orthodox" approach to families, not ones influenced by feminist views on the family.

Interestingly enough, the work of Liz Kelly and many others who are critical of the "orthodox" approach of social services, health and the criminal justice system towards violence in families is that the approach fails to identify where children are at risk because it clings to "traditional" beliefs about family structures, relationships, parenting, etc. It's these approaches that have let down vulnerable children, not feminist critiques of them.

LRD -

I think about it like the parallel with the way children are treated in society.

60 years ago, and still in many places around the world children were treated in ways that we now recognise as physical and emotional child abuse, exploitation (child labor) and socially condoned sexual abuse (child marriage).

I don't think people did these things because they hated children or were anti-children. They did them for all kinds of reasons - lack of knowledge and education, desperation, the fact that children are demanding, economic need, the greater good of the family ...all underpinned by a view that children were not full human beings, entitled to full human rights.

I think oppression of women is the same kind of thing....all kinds of complex things...underpinned by the view that women are not full human beings entitled to full human rights.

...which isn't the same thing as hating women, or denegrating them.

That's interesting, Himalaya: I would say that the few of women as less than fully human is precisely what is at the root of misogyny. But apart from disagreeing on the semantics of it, I agree with a lot of your reasoning.

LeBOF ....you will say this is semantics I am sure ...but I think there is a difference between saying that women are less than fully human, and less than full human beings.

Less than fully human implies part something else, or being something other than human (...which is silly...) whereas less than full human beings is about being an independent person with full human rights.

(e.g. children were for a long time seen as fully human, but not full human beings IYSWIM)

Well, this is drifting a bit, but I do sort of see the point about groups of people being exploited and denied full human rights because of the belief that they were not actually "full human beings." Sometimes the powers that be did and do call upon religion, economic theory, science, psychology, etc. to "prove" that such treatment is actually justified.

There are shedloads of examples including the enslavement of people of African origin in the Americas, labour of children as young as 5 in the South Wales mines, North of England mills, etc., forced sterilisation and incarceration of people with mental illnesses, disabilities or learning difficulties, allowing dire housing and labour conditions for working class people and yes, denying women legal and social rights because of their sex.

But, even if these things didn't happen because those in power hated the subjects or wanted to cause them suffering and pain "on purpose," they did cause them great suffering and pain. It's like the old stomping on the foot analogy. I might stomp on your foot by accident, but it will hurt just as much as if I did it on purpose. And, if I do it by accident and you tell me it hurts, but I keep leaping around the room, at times continuing to stomp your foot, though not intending to hurt you, it really ceases to be "just an unintended consequence."

It's not as though all the people in our social, economic and political institutions of the time or even today have no idea of the harmful consequences of policies for people who suffer harm because they were or still are regarded as being of "less value" than other people. Then, and now, folks in positions of power can "choose" to believe the "evidence" they want and ignore that which doesn't support their view. That's like carrying on leaping while aware that you could end up crushing someone's foot in the process (but insisting that your leaping is more important than them getting a broken foot.)

Yeah yeah, whatevs

I was up very late.

See, I would say that treating someone as not a full human being, entitled to full human rights, is denegrating them.

Unfortunately I've been diverted from this fascinating discussion.

Delving deeper into Child Sexual Assault: Feminist Perspectives (2001) I was shocked to find how many essays from Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse were listed in the Bibliography, many by American fundamentalists such as Pamela Sue Hudson and Jean M. Goodwin. Joan Coleman's fantastically-paranoid Satanic cult practices from that book features heavily.

I am now writing a draft contribution for an American web site to publish a chapter-by-chapter analysis of this particular volume.

I'm afraid that in the last 24 hours I have had to alter my initial opinion; British feminism is rank with misandry - it positively drips with misandry and it is there for all to see, in the written work of British feminists. Worst of all British feminism, or at least a mino;rity of its key protagonists are still heavily engaged in collusion with American and British religious fundamentalists. For some, you can't see a gap in their paranoid rantings.

Sarah Nelson's essay in Child Sexual Assault: Feminist Perspectives, Satanic Ritual Abuse - The Challenge for Feminists, with its numerous references to the work of extremist fundamentalists (and in the References section at the end of the essay) - is an incredible pointer to a world of paranoia I thought had long gone. It would perhaps be best suited to a David Icke publication. But it does display that the alleged collusion between feminists and religious fundamentalists was still in place in 2001 in Britain, and that very collusion appears driven by misandry. The damage done to those children caught-up in the scandals, particularly in Rochdale and the Orkneys seems to be deliberately ignored by Nelson.

I don't think there is any further value in me contributing to the Mumsnet feminism pages; now I have an insight into the somewhat unsavory obsessions that some 'feminists' (I have to use the term lightly) still possess.

It's been an eye-opener.

Gather round, everyone, don't all push to the front at once ...

Oops, sorry mitchier, wrong thread! Didn't meant to derail with irrelevancies there.

Well, it's always nice when someone finds what they are looking for I suppose.

Have a nice day jamma!

Of course misandry exists, women can hate men just as much as men can hate women. To deny that is like denying that the holocaust happened. OK it's nothing like being on the same scale, and I'm not suggesting that so please don't attack me for the comparison, it's just to make a point and not to suggest there's any other way that the two can be compared, only by the fact that both parties deny something that is so obviously real.

I'm just suggesting that it's an obvious truth that many women hate men, you only have to visit a few feminist sites to see that. And a woman who hates men is the definition of a misandrist in the same way that a man who hates women is a misogynist. To say that one exists but not the other is quite simply a lie.

I have seen women call a man a misogynist for the slightest of slights, and I have seen extremely hateful attacks made by women on men without any such accusations being levelled at her. Is this a level playing field?

Whenever a woman tells a man that he should move out of his home with his mother, or he should get a life, or has a small penis, is gay or too weak to handle "a strong woman" or any of those things certain women say to men who disagree with them, then she is acting in a misandrist fashion.

I also believe that the word "misogynist" has been a great weapon for feminists who don't believe in equality but oppression of anyone who dissents with their views, and that now the word "misandrist" has entered the language - with a vengeance - these same women are threatened by "their" weapon being used on them.

In other words they love to dish it out, but they don't want to take it.

They will do anything they can to destroy the concept of misandry because "misogyny" is a mind control method that they've had all to themselves until being challenged recently.

"Whenever a woman tells a man that he should move out of his home with his mother, or he should get a life, or has a small penis, is gay or too weak to handle "a strong woman" or any of those things certain women say to men who disagree with them, then she is acting in a misandrist fashion."

A feminist would be the last person to say any of those things.

Slating a man for having strong emotional bonds, implying that a man's penis size is indicative of his manhood, homophobia and the general belief that men must be "strong" are rooted in patriarchal beliefs and represent everything that feminism is against.

So you've just proven that if misandry does exist then feminists are the least likely suspects.

IME the kind of woman who says such things is one that is trying to find ways of coping with the patriarchy, of carving out her own little niches of power and superiority in a system that values the masculine over the feminine. It's a coping mechanism. Feminism doesn't seek to cope with patriarchy but to replace it with a society in which men can love their mothers and not be called gay.

@messy - I've proven no such thing. This is only "proven" if I accept your assertion that "A feminist would be the last person to say any of those things."

Have you ever had a good look around feminist sites? Feminists use these kinds of put downs on men ALL THE TIME! The last person? Hah!

I also do not subscribe to your "patriarchy" theories.

Oh FGS Lilly, you can find all sorts of extremist nonsense relating to any movement if you choose to look for it, which you obviously do. Malcolm X said some pretty extreme things apropos white people but that didn't discredit the entire civil rights movement did it? The overwhelming majority of civil rights supporters didn't hate white people did they, just sought to overthrow the system that favored whites over blacks. Likewise with feminism.

Patriarchy theories? Are you saying that patriarchy never existed? Or that it existed until kind of recently and then all of a sudden stopped and has no legacy or effect whatsoever on current society as we know it? Because yeah, society changes that quickly. The word naive comes to mind.

But anyway really? A homophobic feminist? Almost an oxymoron some might say.

Dear Messy,

First of all thanks for taking the time to answer my post.

Oxymoron? Well IMO there is nothing special about a feminist that would make her any more or less likely to be homophobic. Except perhaps homophobic with a slightly different slant, where we take "homo" to mean man, as it actually does. Plenty of that kind of homophobic feminists abound!

I'm sorry I know this whole "patriarchy" thing is a tremendously popular theory, but it's something I've never been able to swallow. Sacrilege?

A patriarchy would mean that men are dominant over women, something like the way masters were dominant over slaves, right? So why do we women get onto a lifeboat while the men are left until last, perhaps meaning the difference between life and death? Wouldn't the masters normally save themselves and let the slaves drown? Why do women have the vote while men can only vote if they've signed for the draft? Why are family law courts overwhelmingly in favour of women over men? Why is wife beating condemned while husband beating is encouraged, or swept under the carpet? Why do people deny that husband beating is almost as common as wife beating? Why are people outraged when they see a man beating a woman, but amused when they see a woman beating a man? Why do only men have to sign for the draft? Is a man's life worth so much less that a woman's? Why is it that rapists are so widely condemned while women who sexually mutilate their partners are lauded as heroes, including a woman who mutilated her husband because he was going to leave her. So many more examples I could give where society favours women over men, and yet I see so many feminists ignoring or minimizing facts that don't suit "the cause".

Yes, of course there are examples where Western society favours men over women, and I will leave it to you to give me some examples of that. I also challenge the whole "male privilege" thing. Maybe in years gone by, but not today. If you disagree, please give me some examples of male privilege in the United States today. I actually believe that today white Western women are the most privileged people in the world!

I fought for women's rights when there were real issues to fight for. The right not to be harassed, better pay at work, voting rights and equal footing to men.

I got off that boat once these goals had been achieved and the movement was hijacked by man haters - yes MISANDRISTS - even though we didn't have a word for it back then. I'm all for equality but I'm not for hatred and contempt of the opposite sex. I love men!!! What made sense to me back then and now is equality between the sexes. I have never been swayed by the wordy tomes of complicated jargon and theories of a patriarchy, it always seemed to contain too much twisted, subjective and convoluted "logic" for my liking.

I am now a liberationist who believes in men's rights as well, because as I once saw injustice to women I now see injustice towards men.

Yes there are still injustices to women, but is it right to ignore or downplay injustices to men, or pretend they don't exist? Men and women ought to work together for fairness to both genders and my problem with feminism as it is practised today is that it's all about women's rights but not about men's rights. The very name "feminist" suggests a bias towards women. I believe in equality for women and men.

Without lots of jargon and theory what I see is men being hateful to women as misogynists, and women being hateful to men as misandrists.

It's really that simple.

Wrote a longer comment but the web ate it. Racism and sexism are both forms of prejudice. My reading of the social psychology literature convinces me that prejudice is in fact deeply biologically rooted. Look up 'in group out group bias'. Human beings (men and women) are incredibly good at hating other groups based upon difference, be it sex, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, accent, hair colour, taste in music, clothing, child-rearing practices, etc etc. Social psychologists have run studies in which two groups of people will start hating each other based on the most trivial and spurious differences (differences which the experimenters made up). Then, once you have started hating and dehumanising the 'out-group' it is easier to start being nasty to them. Prejudice becomes oppression.

Going back to misandry, if it is defined simply as the hating of men by women, then it exists, but globally I would say that misogyny leads to the greater oppression of women. Greater predilection for physical violence means perhaps men are better at acting on their hate?

LillyJ123, not downplaying any individual injustices to men, but how many female presidents has the United States had?

The following is a quote from a blog post which could have been written with our current MRA guests this very thread in mind

This post really is About the Menz...

I've been thinking a lot about privilege and oppression lately. I try to think about these things a lot, anyway, but there have been a number of posts on other blogs lately that have been addressing privilege or the nature of oppression lately, and it's got my mind whirling. It started with Jill posting someone's request for help, which turned into a "discussion" about men and privilege. Someone there posted a link to a post from Dizzy about men on feminist blogs who use overtly male sounding names. Thin Black Duke's post about the common elements of oppression just added to the storm...

On the big blogs, it's pretty near impossible, I think, to have a conversation about male privilege without someone like Burton (comment 23 in that feministe thread) coming along and derailing the discussion in some way. Part of the problem with a guy like Burton is that he's not interested in the actual discussion of privilege and oppression. His comments aren't intended as thoughtful analysis or even a result of unintentional misunderstanding- they're intended as a "Gotcha!" moment.

When someone is talking about male privilege or patriarchical institutions, pointing out that women don't register for the draft, or that abused men don't have the same access to domestic violence shelters that women do doesn't negate that. Pointing out that men die at higher rates from work accidents or criminal violence? Sorry, that doesn't prove anything either. See, the problem with the list that he's throwing up, and with many of the criticisms that MRA groups and antifeminists seem to have, is that a lot of those complaints and criticisms are about issues that are a direct result of men pushing public policies.

Take the draft. The fact that women don't register for select services is one of the things I see come up all the time. I'm not really sure why, given the complete and total lack of support for the draft, but it really bugs these types. They'll go on at great length about how unfair it is that men register for select services but women don't. And, if that were the end of the story, sure, that would be unfair. It would be unfair to expect any particular subgroup of our country to be solely responsible for the draft (even as we should recognize that the draft, when instituted, tends to fall on the shoulders of the poor... which isn't that different from voluntary service).

Of course, the story doesn't end there. You can't just look at the draft and pretend that it just happened that way. It's important to remember the context of these things. You can't point to the draft as some example of unfair privilege towards women when it wasn't women who pushed for the draft, and when there are plenty of women and women's groups that actively oppose any draft.

It's not the fault of women that men register for the draft, or that women don't serve in infantry units. Men made those rules, based largely on sexist notions about what women are and are not capable of. When feminists point out that the patriarchy hurts men, too? This is an example. Patriarchical thinking says that women can't hold their own in combat, and that they need to be protected, lest enemies capture them and do horrible things to them. Women are delicate and need to have the strength of a man to keep them safe. That's why women don't register for the draft. That's why women have been kept out of combat.

One of the reasons that this is so frustrating to me, as a guy, is that there are legitimate concerns to be raised about the lives and experiences of men in our country. There are things that happen that should probably be changed, and there are ways that the lives of men should be improved. But, those experiences and those issues get overlooked or ignored because men like Burton are too busy worrying about playing a Gotcha! card against feminists to actually take the time to give those issues the attention they deserve.

Going onto a site like feministe and complaining that men can't have access to women only domestic violence shelters doesn't prove that men have it worse than women- it proves that you're an insensitive asshole who hasn't taken the time to examine why it's important to create shelters that cater specifically to the type of victim seeking shelter. A woman seeking shelter from an abusive husband or boyfriend isn't going to find the safety and peace of mind she needs in a shelter full of men, and there's every reason to believe that a man being abused by his wife or girlfriend may want a shelter that caters to his needs, and can provide him the peace of mind and safety he needs.

I can't quite decide how much of this- if any- is a legitimate misunderstanding of what constitutes privilege, and how much of this is intentional intellectual dishonesty. The move here is from "men have privilege", which is true, to "men never experience negative or harmful consequences", which isn't.

Being a part of the privileged class does not mean that one never experiences harmful or negative treatment. It's possible to be a man in a patriarchical system, and still have people treat you unfairly sometimes. It's still possible to be a part of an advantaged class and find that there are times when you are at a disadvantage.

When we say that we live in a patriarchical system, we're not saying that every single member of the class "men" have a set number of advantages over every single member of the class "women". When we talk about men having unearned privileges, that doesn't mean that no woman has any of these privileges, or that every man has all of them.

Pointing out that I do not have the same advantages or opportunities that someone like Hillary Clinton has doesn't prove that we live in a society that favors women, because the comparison doesn't even make sense. It makes more sense to examine the advantages and disadvantages that face me and my sister, or Bill and Hillary Clinton, because we live in a world where sex is only one of a number of factors that create advantages: race/ethnicity, economic status, age, and education (to name just a few) are all factors that can influence your level of privilege.

And, yeah, like I said, I think that there really are things in our society that are harmful to men. I think that the under-reporting of, and general lack of understanding about or resources for men who are the victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault is harmful. That's not feminism's fault, though. One of the main reasons that men under-report sexual assault is because of the culture of masculinity we live in. We're brought up to think that men can't be the victims of sexual assault. That a man is incapable of not wanting sex. And in cases of male on male sexual assault, there's the homophobic element complicating things, too.

Ultimately, there's nothing that prevents men who are concerned about these things from taking action, just like there's nothing that stops men who are legitimately concerned about father's rights from taking action, either. If a man is really concerned that he's being denied rights as a father- that custody should have gone to him, or that he's not getting the visitation rights he deserves, or something along those lines... do something about it.

Feminists didn't wait for men to back them up before they fought for their rights. They couldn't afford to. The fact that so many of these men use these issues as a way of trying to score points against feminists hurts their cause. It makes it seem like their interest in men's rights is less about the actual problems that men face, and more about winning arguments with feminists.

Most of the 'evidence' being offered as to the existence of misandry is actually evidence of sexism rooted in misogyny. As such, the answer is more feminism.

For example 'Why do only men have to sign for the draft?' That would be because women are considered to be too weak to fight (and it wasn't exactly women who made up those rules) or 'Why are family law courts overwhelmingly in favour of women over men?' which is a consequence of seeing women as 'natural' child carers (and it has been feminists who have demanded greater involvement of fathers in child rearing)

Most of the complaints about misandry are criticisms of sectors / structures / cultural where men wrote the rules and for all the times they end up disadvantaging men, there's usually a great big pay off for them too (eg men portrayed as bumbling idiots with regard to housework means they don't have to do their fair share and women are supposed to fall over in gratitude for them even looking in the direction of an ironing board)

I'm pretty sure the basis of a belief in 'misandry' is the v. simple notion that males/females are simply the reverse of the same coin, and for an action there must be a similar( if not equal) reaction. ( I know I have used this analogy here before, and it may be obvious but nonetheless it's still true, I think.)

So without any real, pointable-to evidences, the proponents insist it must exist, by a simple logic of 'physics', the laws of which have little or nothing to do with how humans interact on a social, personal and economic scale and quality.

There may be women who bitterly and personally 'hate' all males, (though I have never actually met any of them), but there is no structure at all through which that 'hatred' can be exercised.

as a bit of of a clarification as well, I have met amny, many women who may have v. good reason to 'hate' all males due to their life experiences, but ime it's never been an observable trait.

I just wanted to clarify something based on some of the comments I'm seeing.

Comments like "There may be women who bitterly and personally 'hate' all males, (though I have never actually met any of them), but there is no structure at all through which that 'hatred' can be exercised."

OK, let's just get back to basics. Pulling out my old 1977 copy of "The World Book Dictionary" the definition of "misandrist" is: "n. hatred of men". Looking up the word "misogynist" the definition is "n. a hater of women".

Pretty simple definitions, and they mention nothing about power structures.

So if there are women who "bitterly and personally 'hate' all males" then they are misandrists. Pure and simple.

I can't help but wonder what the agenda is when people expend energy into putting a spin onto something this simple in order to deny and claim that misandrists or misandry does not exist. What is the benefit? My own belief is that it is to do with winning some kind of propaganda war whereby women are continued to be seen as the good guys/victims and men are seen as the bad guys/oppressors.

I also wonder what motivates people who deny the holocaust. Sorry if that's going off thread and I'm not comparing, but I do also wonder why people would deny that something that so clearly happened didn't happen.