misandry (mis'-an'-dre') n. hatred, persecution,
prosecution, exclusion or oppression of men;
Misandry is a core belief of hate, just as the KKK core belief of racism for a good ol' tar & feathering.
Nicolas
Chauvin, a fanatical admirer and soldier of Napoleon 1, harboured irrational
and boastful contempt toward others who did not share his views and
principles. The character Chauvin in The
Tricolor Cockade (1831) placed the term ‘chauvinism' in the French
language. ‘Chauvinism' is similar to the
English word ‘jingoism'.
The
jingoistic epithet ‘male chauvinist pig' came into common usage during the
women's liberation movement of the 1960's.
Even today, extremist radical feminists are intractably contemptuous
toward others who do not share their delusional views and principles.
Both
terms ‘misogyny' and ‘misandry' evolved in the 1960's in the United States. Radical feminists
defined term ‘misogyny' as the hatred of women. Originally, I defined misandry
to mean the hatred of men. After reflection, I changed the definition of
misandry to mean the hatred or oppression of males. It is a logical outcome to
state that radical feminists are chauvinists because they hate and berate
anyone who does not share their views.
The
appropriate root term in Greek is ANDR meaning ‘man' -in the gender sense.
Words such as ‘polyandrous' illustrate this root. Using this root and the
existing ‘feminine' terms ‘misogyny' and ‘misogynist' we could form the
following pairings:
misogyny --- misandry
misogynist --- misandrist
Misogyny/misandry or racism, the bottom
line is the person who exhibits these tendencies or promoting the concept of
hatred.
Acts
of bigotry and misandry include:
(1) the
desire or act to subjugate or oppress or punish or harm or injure, or murder a
male because of his gender.
(2) the
deliberate preference of a female's lie against the truth.
(3) the
belief that no father can be a fit parent.
(4) the
assumption that masculinity, male physiology, and male hormones cause males to
become evil, sexually abusive, oppressive, and violent.
(5) the
assumption that every male is or can become sexually abusive, oppressive, and
violent.
(6) the
assumption that females cannot be sexually abusive, oppressive, and violent.
(7) the
attribution of negative qualities and humanity's historic evils to the entire
male gender while ignoring female culpability.
(8) the
promulgation of false statistics against males regarding rape and family
violence. The parallel assertion that female acts of abuse and violence against
males are insignificant and are justified as self-defence.
(9) the
tolerance of female violence and abuse toward males.
(10) the suppression of evidence of a female's violence and abuse
toward a male.
(11) the encouragement or reporting or supporting or the toleration of
false allegations and charges against a male because of his gender.
(12) lying or the deliberate creation of false information against any
male because of his gender.
(13) the deliberate suppression or distortion of facts showing a
female's guilt or a male's innocence.
(14) the suppression or distortion of a male's testimony because of
his gender.
(15) the falsification of transcripts, police reports, court reports,
and evidence to adversely affect a male because of his gender.
(16) the denial of historic male spiritual, intellectual,
humanitarian, and material contributions to civilization.
(17) the act of coercing women to lie against their husbands.
(18) the act of coercing children to lie against their fathers.
(19) the act of encouraging or instructing females to contrive, or
testify to, false allegations of family violence, child abuse, child
molestation, or rape against a male.
(20) the act of making false allegations of family violence, child
abuse, child molestation, or rape against a male.
(21) the act of falsely testifying against a male to support false
allegations of family violence, child abuse, child molestation, or rape.
(22) blaming males for all psychological and social maladies.
(23) encouraging or persuading another to lie against a male because
of his gender.
(24) the abuse of a male for personal satisfaction or material gain.
(25) the failure to provide males equal protection under the law.
(26) the use of female pronouns to refer to victims and male pronouns
to refer to assailants, rapists, and suspects.
(27) the actual or tacit toleration of mental, physical, or sexual
abuse upon a male by a female.
(28) the actual or tacit toleration of any act of depravity upon a
male.
(29) the
claim that masculinity is the source of human vices such as domination,
violence, oppression, and racism.
(30) the
assignment of blame solely to men for humanity's historic evils without
including women's responsibility'
(31) a sexist assumption that;
(a) male genes, hormones and physiology, or
(b) male cultural nurturing produce war, rape, and physical abuse.
(32) the assumption that any male person is probably domineering,
oppressive, violent, sexually abusive, and spiritually immature.
Other
Parts of Speech;
misandrous
(mis'-an'-drËs) adj. (1) practicing
misandry (2) of or characterized by misandry.
misandric
(mis'-an'-dric) adj. characterized by misandry.
misandrist
(mis-an'-drist) n. one who practices misandry.
Dealing with
Misandry
Misandry
is a world wide problem. Those who practice misandry abuse men, women, and
children. These purveyors of hate do not
support the right of all people to live safely and free of false accusations. They
do not care about the damage they cause. They can equally be compared to the
racists in Alabama in the 1960's. Rosa Parks is an example of resistance.
Most
people are not aware of what is happening in courts.
The
greatest danger is that judges, prosecutors, and others possess immunities that
protect them from criminal prosecution and civil liability for their public
crimes and civil torts. These persons
are not subject to public scrutiny and accountability.
Misandry,
misogyny, and accusatorial preferences have no place in our society. We cannot have equality and opportunity when
gender preference is so prevalent in our justice courts.
bigot; n someone obstinately and intolerantly devoted to his or
her own beliefs, creed or party.
bigoted adj. Narrow-minded, prejudiced.
bigotry n. the mental attitude and behaviour of a bigot,
obstinate narrow-mindedness.
echo-feminist; a man who echoes the
gender feminist political agenda at the cost of rational men. These men may
look like men but they have no balls to speak of.
Spreading Misandry
Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young
Paul
Nathanson and Katherine Young argue that since the 1990s men have been
portrayed in popular culture as evil, inadequate, or honorary women, from
Designing Women, Home Improvement, Oprah, and Cape Fear to Hallmark cards,
comic strips, and the New York Times columns of Anna Quindlen. The first of
a three-part series, Spreading Misandry offers an impressive critique of
popular culture to identify a phenomenon that is just now being recognized
as a serious cultural problem - misandry, the sexist counterpart of
misogyny.
Nathanson and Young urge us to rethink prevalent assumptions about men that
result in profoundly disturbing stereotypes that foster contempt. Spreading
Misandry breaks new ground by discussing misandry in moral terms rather
than purely psychological or sociological ones and by criticizing not only
ideological feminism but other ideologies on both the left and the right.
Review quotes
"Genuinely
intelligent and insightful. Spreading Misandry is provocative in the very
best sense and will help point the way toward social harmony and away
from bickering and fingerpointing." Donna Laframboise, columnist for
The National Post and author of The Princess at the Window: A New Gender
Morality
"An important book. Nathanson and Young do a good job on introducing
the average reader to the positions of various intellectuals as they
relate to this moral issue and to moral issues in general." Charles
H. Long, emeritus, religious studies, University of California at Santa
Barbara
"Spreading Misandry turns the tables on the gender wars. It's not
men ganging up on women. It is just the reverse--a long and gradual
cultural attack on men. This book is a brilliant and perceptive
overstatement, but one that is needed to discover the truth that will
heal the rift between the sexes." Don Browning, University of Chicago
and co-author of From Culture Wars to Common Ground
Paul
Nathanson is a researcher, religious studies, McGill University, and author
of Over the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz as a Secular Myth of America.
Katherine K. Young is James McGill Professor, religious studies, McGill
University. She has published extensively on women's issues and ethics.
Spreading
Misandry
Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young
1
Introduction: Misandry in Popular Culture
2 Laughing at Men: The Last of Vaudeville
3 Looking Down on Men: Separate but Unequal
4 Bypassing Men: Women Alone Together
5 Blaming Men: A History of Their Own
6 Dehumanizing Men: From Bad Boys to Beasts
7 Demonizing Men: The Devil Is a Man
8 Making the World Safe for Ideology: The Roots of Misandry
9 Conclusion
Appendix 1: Quasi-Misandric Movies
Appendix
2: The Misandric Week on Television
Appendix
3: Misandric Movie Genres
Appendix
4: Populist or Elitist: Talk Shows in the Context of Democracy
Appendix
5: Deconstructionists and Jacques Derrida, Founding Hero
Appendix
6: Film Theory and Ideological Feminism
Appendix
7: Into the Twenty-First Century
Preface
We began this book, the first volume in a trilogy called Beyond the Fall of
Man, by noting that many pop cultural artifacts and productions from the 1990s
said very negative things about men. This led to our initial hypothesis: that
misandry, the sexist counterpart of misogyny, had become pervasive in the popular
culture of our society that is, of Canada and the United States during that
decade. But how pervasive? And why? These questions presented us with several
problems: (1) defining popular culture; (2) overcoming conventional wisdom; (3)
describing the artifacts and productions of popular culture in a disciplined
way; (4) interpreting them as potential carriers of misandry; (5) demonstrating
that misandry in popular culture has become a significant phenomenon and is
thus worth being taken seriously by scholars; and (6) examining our evidence in
relation to the many studies on misogyny in popular culture.
In some ways, our work presupposes the
existence of a more or less unified popular culture. This is unlike traditional
folk cultures in at least one important way: it is not created by and for a
non-literate segment of the population. It is carried to everyone, moreover,
through the mass media made possible by an industrial society. Contemporary
popular culture is the property of all people, regardless of traditional
barriers such as class or religion (except for the Amish, the Hasidim, and
other groups that deliberately isolate themselves from the larger society). The
poorest residents of rural communities are thus united in at least one respect
with the richest residents of gated communities: they all listen to popular
singers, watch popular movies and television shows, read popular books or
magazines, and so on. There are taste communities, it is true. Consider the
case of music. Some people prefer country and western, others heavy metal, and
still others the sentimental ballads of divas. But all are exposed every day to
the full range of popular styles, and most find some gratification in at least
one of them. Preference is by no means dictated by race and other traditional
boundary markers. Whites are as likely as blacks, for instance, to enjoy hip
hop. Even so, many enjoy classical (elite) music as well. Applicants to the
Juilliard School are hardly restricted to members of an upper class. Although
many people do prefer either elite or popular music, in short, these categories
cannot be considered mutually exclusive. The same can be said of other media.
Just because some people enjoy the art films of Ingmar Bergman, for instance,
does not necessarily mean that they dislike romance or adventure movies. But
the point here is merely that popular movies are accessible to everyone. All
people are addressed. All potential ticket-buyers are expected to understand the
cinematic conventions, be familiar with the imagery, and so forth. To put this
another way, popular culture is not merely the opposite of elite culture: the
two are related in ways that are much too ambiguous and too fluid for so stark
an opposition.
Both conventional wisdom (as revealed in
the anecdotal evidence of everyday life and, not coincidentally, in the
stereotypes purveyed by countless talk shows, sitcoms, movies, or whatever) and
academic fashions (as revealed in the burgeoning literature of women's studies)
have been preoccupied with the problem of misogyny. Until very recently, no
scholar recognized even the possibility of misandry, let alone of widespread
misandry. Consequently, no systematic study of misandry in popular culture has
been produced. This first volume in our trilogy was written for precisely that
reason. Our aim here is primarily to collect evidence and thus demonstrate the
existence of widespread misandry in contemporary popular culture, a phenomenon
that appears not merely now and then or here and there but on a massive scale
and in consistent patterns.
Our method of description is not
scientific, to be sure, but it is far from haphazard. We did not seize the odd
motif or metaphorical allusion. We looked for patterns, ones that recur over
and over both within and across genres. To see any patterns at all, of course,
requires a systematic effort. That meant relying on the systematic use of what
art historians call "formal analysis," observing what is actually presented in
visual or verbal terms, to provide a close and disciplined reading of every
text. Formal analysis was used very effectively by one of the present authors,
Paul Nathanson, in Over the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz As a Secular Myth of
America. That analysis began with the careful observation of consistent
patterns in the use of formal properties. In the case of a movie, of course,
those were cinematic properties such as colour, music, mise-en-scene, time,
space, and so on. At this stage, description, there is no need to speculate
about accuracy; the patterns are either there or not there, and anyone can
check merely by looking and allowing the evidence to speak for itself. What all
this means, however, is another matter.
We argue that the documents discussed here
can be interpreted as evidence of pervasive misandry (although we do not claim
to have exhausted the interpretive possibilities of any item). This is our
interpretation, but is it what the people who produce this stuff have in mind?
It could be argued it was once assumed that correct interpretations are
whatever the creators have in mind. In this respect, we follow the current
tendency to argue that the author is dead. With a few exceptions, we are not
interested in what the creators wanted to say; we are interested primarily in
what their creations do say. But wait. Can we know what they say? Can we know,
in other words, how viewers or readers interpret them?
One way of finding out how they do so or to
put it another way, how they are affected would be simply to ask them. But that
would require elaborate surveys. And the results, based not only on how
questions are selected and phrased but also on the particular people whose
opinions are solicited and how they feel that day, would not necessarily establish
anything remotely like a true interpretation. For decades, experts have debated
the effects on children of violence on television. There have been many studies
but no conclusive proof to support any one position; otherwise, governments would
have intervened long ago with legislation. Everyone agrees that violence on
television has some effect on some children in some circumstances. But
precisely which effect? And on precisely which children? And in precisely which
circumstances? The answers are not obvious, to say the least, because too many
variables are involved. These include class, region, age, religious
environment, educational resources, and family situation. Among the most
important variables, however, is the personal psychology of every child. Some
children are indeed motivated by television to behave in antisocial ways. But
most children who watch the same shows are not.
The same thing applies to pornography. Many
feminists believe that (heterosexual) pornography is dirty and vulgar. But
probably far fewer agree with anti-pornography activists, some of whom consider
even (heterosexual) erotica an indirect cause of violence against women. And
with good reason. That belief has not been substantiated with empirical
evidence. It probably cannot be, moreover, because once again there are too
many variables for any simple cause-and-effect relation. Not being sociologists
or psychologists, in any case, we do not rely on polls or questionnaires. But
there are precedents for drawing conclusions in other ways about how people are
affected by popular (or elite) culture. In the 1970s, anthropologists such as
Dick Hebdige observed that cultural artifacts or productions created by and for
one group are often reinterpreted, adapted, appropriated, and absorbed by
others. Subcultural artifacts and productions can go mainstream, which is what
happened, at least among teenagers, to the styles of music and clothing
favoured in the worlds of punk, say, and hip hop. Or the process can work in
reverse, moving from mainstream to subculture.
An obvious example from the United States
would be The Wizard of Oz. This movie was intended as pure entertainment for
Americans in general and American children in particular, and it has indeed
become an American classic. In addition, it has become a cult movie which is to
say, one that has been appropriated by specific segments of the population and
interpreted in view of their own needs or interests. Hippies liked it, for
example, because Dorothy's trip in Oz reminded them of their own experiences
with hallucinatory drugs. Gay people like it, on the other hand, because (among
other reasons) Dorothy's isolation from society and yearning for community
reminds them of their own isolation and yearning.
The artefacts and productions under
discussion here could all be described as mainstream. They are commercially
successful to the extent that they speak to people. And some have been notably
successful. Many of the movies, for instance, were box-office hits. It is easy
to know which are financially successful and which are not, but precisely why
is more difficult to establish with any accuracy even when people are asked for
explanations of their likes or dislikes (partly because the questions are
notoriously subject to biases or expectations of one kind or another). Why do
so many artifacts and productions show signs of misandry? To put it another
way, why do so many people respond favourably to misandry or at least not
complain of sexism? Our hypothesis is that, like misogyny once upon a time,
misandry has become so deeply embedded in our culture that few people including
men even recognize it. Those who do, moreover, seldom recognize it as a
pervasive problem. And those who do that, it must be added, seldom know what to
make of misandry in the face of so much debate over misogyny. In formulating
our hypothesis, however, we are doing nothing that social scientists do not do.
Faced with statistical anomalies or surprises, they rely on logic or even
common sense to suggest explanations.
Pervasive misandry is surely a statistical
surprise (though not a statistical anomaly in the technical sense).
Nevertheless, we have examined not one or two but many genres and not one or
two examples within each but many. The patterns we identify can be found
everywhere in the popular culture of our time that is, the 1990s. This
phenomenon cannot be explained adequately, or explained away, as accidental. It
surely indicates something. It is true that interpretations will almost inevitably
differ to some extent from one period to another, from one community to
another, and even from one individual to another. This is obvious to anyone who
has examined the history of literary criticism, say, or biblical exegesis. And
it is true that no one can prove the legitimacy of an interpretation. This is
not chemistry or even experimental psychology. Even so, we need not succumb to
relativism. Some inter-pretations offer more fruitful possibilities than other
interpretations.
These problems should sound very familiar.
Precisely the same ones arose thirty years ago in connection with discussions
of women as portrayed in popular culture. Feminists discerned patterns that
they believed were significant, ones that anyone could see once they had been
pointed out. But most people including
women had either not noticed or not taken seriously portrayals of women as
submissive at best and threatening at worst. After enough evidence had
accumulated, it was hard not to see these patterns and equally hard to see
other patterns.
As for the extent to which feminist
interpretations of popular culture have been helpful, well, that is another
matter. In some ways, they have been helpful. We are all much more aware now of
how problematic representations of gender can be and of the specific ways in
which women have been represented unfairly. In other ways, feminist
interpretations have not been so helpful. For one thing, their exclusive
preoccupation with portrayals of women has meant either ignoring or trivializing
portrayals of men. Moreover, many of the most influential feminists have
insisted that portrayals of women are due ultimately and primarily to a deeply
rooted misogynistic conspiracy even though it was once far from obvious that
white, middle-class women were an oppressed class.
At any rate, we have discerned another
pattern. This misandric one can coexist uneasily and ironically (sometimes in
the same medium or genre and sometimes in the same artifact or production) with
the misogynistic one described by feminists and now considered virtually
self-evident. But there are some important differences between misandry and
misogyny in popular culture. Misogyny has been studied and taken seriously for
decades. Misandry, on the other hand, has been either ignored or trivialized
for decades. Also, political pressure has eliminated (or at least hidden) a
great deal of misogyny. Not only has no political pressure been used to
eliminate (or hide) misandry but some of the political pressure used against misogyny
has directly or indirectly exacerbated misandry. As a result, we suggest, the
worldview of our society has become increasingly both gynocentric (focused on
the needs and problems of women) and misandric (focused on the evils and
inadequacies of men).
How did we reach this point? We have concluded
that one form of feminism one that has had a great deal of influence, whether
directly or indirectly, on both popular culture and elite culture is profoundly
misandric. It would be hard to argue that the artifacts and productions
discussed in this book have nothing at all to do with its relentless hostility
towards men as a class of enemy aliens. How could it be otherwise in a
worldview based precisely on gender? It is impossible to discuss women per se without
also discussing men, after all, or men per se without also discussing women.
The precise relation between ideological feminism and misandry, however, will
be discussed more fully in the second and third volumes of this trilogy.
We argue that ideological feminists have
played an important role in creating the gynocentric worldview and
disseminating it. But the process of embedding that worldview in popular
culture is very complex. For one thing, many negative stereotypes of men (as of
women) had long been part of our culture. But feminists have made it
acceptable, in one way or another and for one reason or another, to exploit
them. This, and the fact that feminists of all kinds have made it unacceptable
(though still not quite impossible) to exploit negative stereotypes of women,
has led to not only a cultural preoccupation with misogynistic stereotypes but
also a cultural indifference to misandric ones.
Not all feminists will appreciate this
intrusion onto what has for decades been their turf. Having examined
deconstructionist theory (see appendix 5), we are well aware that the first
response of some will probably be to explain away our unflattering portrait of
what we call ideological feminism.? We know that feminism is diverse, that
there are different and even conflicting schools of feminism. Not all of them
promote the kind of gynocentrism (and accompanying misandry) we describe. But
at the end of the day, gynocentric ideas (and their misandric results) have
become so pervasive trickling down to popular culture that they cannot be
explained away as the results of a few academic loonies. The variety of
feminisms is a second-order phenomenon. The first-order phenomenon is
gynocentrism, because that is surely the one thing that all schools of feminism
have in common: primary concern for the needs and problems of women.
We hope that this volume suggests new
topics of research and encourages other scholars to take a second look at the
ways in which gender is portrayed in popular culture the gender not only of women but of men as
well.
