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I urge anyone who has ever encountered another individual who laughs at the idea of misandry to forward said individual this review (or even a copy of the book).
While I'm reserving judgement on the book until I've read it (I'm ordering it now), I find encouraging the news that there are two more volumes about the subject in the works.
Cheddah: why not forward this news item to your Webster's contact?
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at http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/2001/nathan.htm there is the table of contents and some reviews. but more importantly, there is the categories this book falls into: cultural studies, sociology, women's studies.
on the upside, it's considered their book of the month ( http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/bookmth.htm ).
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- thanks, I will forward this...
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I just e-mailed the following to the contact listed on their Contact Us page:
To whom it may concern:
You have misplaced "Spreading Misandry" in your list of subjects to which it relates. "Women's Studies" should not be among them. Rather, you should establish a "Men's Studies" category for "Spreading Misandry" and books like it.
Thank you for any attention you give this matter.
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I'm very anxious to see the next 2 volumes. And I'm very glad that someone at least has written this one. And, as I have found with all other men's issues books, I'm sure if I try to find it at the local Barnes and Noble bookstore it will be buried in the wrong section underneath some feminist book, like they always do with men's books.
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While I applaud this topic being discussed I find it disheartening that the idea that misogyny is a thing of the past and misandry is the next new thing we have to decru. Both are a huge problem. The media hasn't suddenly switched from misogyny to misandry. Both are, unfortunately, quite prevalent. As usual, a perfectly good discussion is framed as 'us vs. them"
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I disagree with you, Lorianne. There are volumes upon volumes of books about misogyny, and still books in the works about it. I don't think we're pushing misogyny into "the past" by addressing misandry. I *do* think misandry is far more prevalent these days than is misogyny, and I *do* think it's high time there were volumes upon volumes being written about it.
Just my opinion.
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Hey, SPJ. Rather than going to B&N or another chain bookstore, look for your local independent bookstores. There's one in Franklin, Tennessee's CoolSprings area which I love, although I don't get out to it very often. They have a specific "Men's Studies" section right beside "Women's Studies" (although the women's studies section actually takes up three shelves and the men's studies section takes up half a shelf).
Among the selections in the Men's Studies section of this particular bookstore are all of Warren Farrell's books, Sommers' "The War on Boys," a few books on male sexuality, and several copies of Robert Johnson's "He."
Also, when you visit a bookstore which does not contain a Men's Studies section, ask for the manager and request one. Never hurts to ask.
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p.s. Reading back through the threads on this topic, I'm curious about what you found to be "us vs. them." I see no such arguments here. Enlighten me?
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"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," they write.
"Once upon a time" to me implies either/or that misogny is somthing in the past or that is was a fairy tale to begin with.
"They take issue with Blondie, Hagar the Horrible and Beetle Bailey, saying "pathetic men are de rigueur in comic strips."
Yet they do not acknowledge misogynist comments in the same comic strips plus many more!
"The brunt of their attack, however, is reserved for television and movies, everything from Home Improvement and Beavis and Butt-Head to Sleeping with the Enemy and Silence of the Lambs. Men are laughed at, denigrated or demonized, receiving treatment that would never be acceptable if directed at women, they say.
The above statement implies women are no longer laughed at denigrated or demonized in popular media which is patently false. Although I agree with the fact that men are as well and even agree that it is increasing for men, it is not an either/or situation by a long shot.
These comments is were I get the "Us vs. Them " argument from the authors. They do their won premis a disservice by framing it in such a way.
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Although I have not read the book yet, here's my perceptions of your perceptions about it, in order. :-)
"Once upon a time" I took to mean that misogyny is more obvious these days. And if it isn't, it is quickly pointed out by feminists. The same is not true with misandry.
The authors do not acknowledge misogyny in comic strips because the book is about misandry, not misogyny.
Likewise, the authors know as well as I and most other people that hate toward women in movies--if it does exist these days--will be quickly removed and censored if women speak out about it. Hollywood and the like spend a great deal of time attempting to please their female audiences, which is why you'll never see a woman kicked in the crotch or punched in the breasts on film.
Quite honestly, if women really ARE still denigrated or demonized in popular media, I never see it. Would you point out some specific examples?
I really can't tell you what the authors intentions were, but I CAN say that I disagree with your "us vs. them." Just because the book focuses solely on misandry doesn't mean that the authors believe misogyny doesn't exist. Again, VOLUMES have been written about misogyny, while misandry remained ignored. What's wrong with one book dedicated completely to misandry?
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It seems to me that if anything promotes misogyny, it is the current hateful treatment of men by the media and general society. Men and boys feel attacked, and may come to resent women as a whole, rather than seeing them as individuals (much like gender feminism does with men). There has to be a better way.
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Oh geez there is plenty of both misogyny and misandry in popular media. Not to get bogged down, but it is highly disengenous to mention the comic strips mentioned and only focus on misandry when both ore the basis of nearly ALL the humor in these comic strips. How can you fail to note that when you claim misandry in these comic strips?! Please. In my opinion, it hurts the author's credibility in making the case that misandry exists to give examples where there are just as many misogynist jokes.
In fact, if you take humor as a subset, a large percentage of humor both in comic strips, and in TV sitcoms is based in poking fun at stereotypical characteristics of men and women. Again, the examples given do an equal share of both. The only reason misandry is more common now than before is that "misogyny" used to take up a larger share of the laughlines. Now its more equal so to speak. The real question is why is this type of humor so universally popular? Look at the jokes circulating about the internet, the majority are poking fun at either men or women alternatively, or both, not to mention racial humor, sexual orientation humor etc.
I haven't read the book yet but from the synopsis given it would seem that the authors are not very thorough in their appoach to at least the subject of humor. That doesn't bode well for the rest of the topics, and like I said, I think it is a serious topic that deseves serious discussion.
By the way, Susan Faludi's book Stiffed was excellent and dealt with many of these same issues.
Re: Violence. I have noticed a more cavalier attitude in media towards women punching, kicking, slapping, shooting men than in the past. However, I think this is part of a larger Hollywood trend to make women emulate men in action hero movie type characterizations order to increase their appeal (to whom?). It seems to be a hit with teenagers. The underlying messages are plenty scary for both sexes I think. I view it at least as harmful to women to be portrayed as violent in order to "equal" a man as it is for men to be see themselves onscreen being beaten up or killed by women.
I'd be curious if the book talks about the harmful messages action movies send about men being violent. These types of portrayals of men have been popular for a long time, Dirty Harry, etc even though most men don't live violent lives. Is a preponderance of violence committed by men in movies harmful? Or just when they show a men stalking or harming women? In other words, do they discuss men beating/killing other men a many many popular movies as being harmful to men's self image?
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Ok will someone clue me in how to make paragraphs?
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Just hit enter twice when you want a new paragraph. If there's something freaky with your browser, you can always use two HTML breaks (the BR tag).
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Sorry, but I completely disagree that "jokes" denigrating men and women are dealt equally these days. FWIW, I have no problem with Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, or Silence of the Lambs, so I think you could be correct that the authors are going to an extreme to prove misandry. However, one really doesn't need to go to extremes to show that misandry is more prevalent than misogyny in pop culture.
Take Hallmark and American Greetings, for example. Both of these companies practically have entire divisions dedicated to male bashing. Many of their so-called "jokes" are based on how "funny" it is to watch men die. ("Honey, men are like slinkies. It sure is fun watching them fall down the stairs." "You say you can't sleep for him snoring? I say you're not pushing hard enough on the pillow.")
I've repeatedly written both card companies asking them to either stop with the male bashing or provide female bashing for men, but neither of them responds or complies.
Likewise, violent "chicks" in film don't bother me. It's when their violence is directed specifically at manhood that I am disturbed. Thelma & Louise is a ridiculous piece of male bashing garbage designed to make all men look like scoundrels and rapists. Charlie's Angels is a campy, fun movie, in my opinion. And not only do the three leading ladies kick ass, they kick BOTH feminine and masculine ass (without using a single firearm, mind you).
Internet jokes: the only woman bashing Internet joke ever e-mailed to me was "Wife 1.0," which I'm sure most of us have seen. It's lately been turned into "Husband 1.0" by the misandrists. I am the IT manager for my newspaper, so I get to see some of the misandrist "humor" that comes across the wires to my female coworkers: everything from pictures of mutilated penises to "jokes" about ways to murder your boyfriend and get away with it.
Again, I would LOVE to hear of some specific examples of misogyny in film or in print or on the Internet these days that is in any way equal to the horror described above. Every time I ask one such as yourself this question, I never get a response.
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Good point, equalitarian62.
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Down by the submit/preview buttons when you enter a comment is a drop-down box. Select "Plain Old Text" and things should look as you typed them in. I think the default is HTML.
Scott
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I agree with you 100%, Nightmist - especially what you said in your final paragraph. It is common for feminists to impose the interpretation of misogyny on things which they simply do not like, but which do not actually contain any hatred of women. This is the root of the idea of a 'backlash' against women. It is also common for feminists to put women at the top of the 'victim list' irrespective of the reality of their experience. Look at this statement of Lorianne's, for example:
"I view it at least as harmful to women to be portrayed as violent in order to "equal" a man as it is for men to be see themselves onscreen being beaten up or killed by women."
Notice the use of the phrase 'at least'. This imposes the *minimum* interpretation on the portayal of violence by women against men as being just as misogynist as it is misandrist. This is bullshit; there's no other word for it. The portayal of violence by women against men is misandrist, period.
This 'corruption of interpretation' is used by feminists to give the illusion of widespread misogyny. I'm sure we've all heard stories of men being chastised for holding a door open for a woman, the 'argument' being that his actions somehow demean her or are a sly insult. In any interaction between men and women, no matter how seemingly benign, feminism seeks to impose an interpretation that generates animosity towards the male gender. The effect of this is to induce feelings of resentment in her and feelings of self-loathing in him. These feelings are used to legitimise attitudes and policies harmful to men.
In a TV discussion of 'male-bashing' I saw a few years ago the subject of the portrayal of men in adverts came up. One female feminist journalist stated "Men are afraid of being laughed at by women, whereas women are afraid of being killed by men." The intention of this was to trivialise the way we now treat men by comparing two things at opposite perceived extremes of the harm scale - laughter with murder. This remark contains both of the things I mentioned above: the corruption of interpretation and placing women at the top of the victim list. Moreover, it contains the indirect assertion that it's OK to denigrate men precisely because women are afraid of being killed by them. However, most murder victims are men, and most men will never commit murder or any serious act of violence. What is being established, then, if a faux morality in which systematically corrupt ideas about men and women are used to attack men. It should come as no surprise that no equivalent examples of misogyny are forthcoming; they never existed to begin with.
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I haven't kept up with this entire thread, but my impressions (before I read "Spreading Misadnry," which is sitting on my desk as I write) are that men are more than willing to laugh at themselves, but that there are so many, MANY subliminal messages that are anti-male. As an example, my son watches Rugrats on TV. There are occasions where the women go out and leave the kids with the dads, whereupon, the kids make an incredible mess and have an absolute, unrestrained blast while doing it. When the moms get home, the clear spirit of the ensuing conversation is that the dads are berated for failing to keep the kids under control and the house clean. I've never seen the dads admonish the moms for ANYTHING, though I have to admit that my sampling is not scientific. But it IS random, and in that I would have expected to see the moms getting browbeaten by the dads at least once.
I don't think for a minute that all forms and instances of misogyny are banished, but I do think that, in their efforts to present women in a favorable light, Hollywood and the advertising industries have WAY outstepped the bounds of balance.
I will say I think it is improving in advertising. I do see more ads that favor men. This is to be expected, of course. The ad agencies are compelled to react faster because market choices are made much faster. But Hollywood is far behind.
As long as there is balance, I have no objection to the occasional insult to men. And I suspect that most reasonable women would agree.
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“The underlying messages are plenty scary for both sexes I think. I view it at least as harmful to women to be portrayed as violent in order to "equal" a man as it is for men to be see themselves onscreen being beaten up or killed by women. “
The reality behind this statement is that a plethora of contemporary shows are specifically marketed with female violence towards men. To name a just a few that are explicitly about women hurting men are, Dark Angel – a show that depicts a small young woman routinely beating up men and thus the “establishment”, Ally McBeal which has episodes that violently injure men and celebrate the fact that there wasn’t any legal consequences for this act (the show where Ally’s roommate kicked her wanna-be lover in his face and broke his neck), and the routine references to men’s reproductive organs as “dumbsticks”
So many shows have been marketed with this one-sided gender bias since the early 90’s they have become blindly mainstream (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena, Charlies Angels, Tomb raider,). If it is a PG rated film, than you can almost guarantee that someone will get hit/kicked or struck in the crotch.
The nightly sitcom lineup has reduced men into ineffective Men-children, (“Men Behaving Badly”) there is a general lack of strong (true to life) masculine men in just about every sit-com. If the show is domestically oriented (like Raymond) then the wife is the ruler. If the show is about the workplace - men a depicted as harassers (The Street) or sexual toys (Ally McBeal, Sex in the City).
Children’s shows marketed at boys have replaced half of the male superheroes with female superheroes that almost always fight the “bad (male) guys,” Powderpuff girls is specifically about girl-power while you can’t find a show about a group of young men banding together for boy power. Rug-rats, Simpons, King of the Hill all are major shows that depict a negative fatherly influence.
Just about every show has denigrating elements aimed at masculinity. There has been virtually no study done on Misandry (my spell check doesn’t even recognize the word!!) yet every library is filled to the brim with books that look for misogyny in places that it simply doesn’t exist. Every girl that goes to college is assaulted with a barrage of inaccurate statistics that vilifies the male gender and creates contempt for gender relations based upon the experiences of radical feminists and fringy lesbians.
Loraine, you have been blinded by your own ideological prejudices to think that contemporary media is evenly sexist towards both genders. Men have been on the receiving side from the sexist feminist revolution for decades now. The fact of the matter is that a feminist “utopian” society will never be achieved by waging gender warfare the way the gender feminists and gay activists have done by attacking the masculine element in our media. The hate has to stop. When this is achieved, maybe we can all start laughing at ourselves again.
Misandry sucks.
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It is being touted as how-to manual!
Only in Canada!?
pitey!
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Re the feminist slogan: "Men are afraid of being laughed at by women, whereas women are afraid of being killed by men."
This sounds like what a white-supremacist guest would say in a show about anti-black racism: "Black people are afraid of being called 'nigger' by white people, whereas white people are afraid of being gunned down by black people."
You can figure out for yourself the reaction there would be if someone said something like that.
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Thanks for the paragraph tip nightmist. Let's see if it works.
Ok, I have no idea if misandry and misogyny are "equal" in media these days. I haven't done an exhaustive study. Also, I don't watch a great deal of TV. But as I said, the shows I have seen I've been shocked at the amount of male bashing on them. Specifically Ally McBeal and Sex and The City (I have a lot of other problems with both these shows).
Sitcoms I feel are equally insulting to both genders. While men are routinely shown as hopeless bunglers in the domestic front, women are still stereotyped as vacous "shoppers", vain, and irrationally jealous of the men they so love to berate. All of these shows are insulting to the intelligence of BOTH sexes IMO. Not just from a male-bashing or female-bashing point of view but from a simply human point of view.
Let's face it. TV is a vast wasteland of stereotypical middle-class values. Everything in them is designed to support the "status quo" thought from 30 years ago, repackaged in PC wrapping paper. The women are shown no better than the men in my opinion and when they male-bash it reflects more poorly on them, a new stereotype of women (and completely false).
And commercials, don't get me started... STILL to this day never show a man cleaning a toilet! Meanwhile they show women gleefully cleaning a toilets and washing everyone else's clothes while implying the people who's clothes they washed would be dissatisfied if she doesn't do a good job of it! Good grief, do you're own #$%#@ laundry if you're so concerned about your whites being white! If a commercial does show a man doing a domestic chore, they emphasis how easy it is that even a clueless man can do it with product X. This is not just insulting to men, it is insulting to women too. The backstory is ... women are naturally adept at cleaning and housework and men are not (because the've obviously got more important things to do). Also, men, if you bungle the housework enough (oh giggles), eventually you'll get out of it doing it. In the meantime, we'll make the product "foolproof" for you since you can't be expected to figure out how to use a highly sophisticated piece of domestic equipment like broom or a dishwasher.
On Hallmark cards... I can't say that I've noticed what you cite but I'lll take a look. I have noticed lots of women as the butt of jokes basically for being older or overweight. But I'm sure there is just as much "humor" aimed at men.
Movies. Yes Thelma and Louise was male bashing and sordid. But it was also highly insulting to the intelligence of women viewers! The message was, the only way you can "get even" (in pure Hollywood drivel style) is to act out like the caricatured Hollywood man with violence. In other words, women aren't bright enough to think of ways to improve their lives without emulating a [stereotypical] male response to percieved inequity in relationships! Also, let the women use guns and violence instead of their intelligence to get out of bad situations. The whole thing was a caricature of women acting like a caricature of men.
I haven't seen Buffy but I've heard similar complaints. The new Hollywood femme fatale is Angelina Jolie who in movies and in fake "real life" persona is made out to be an aloof, loner, weirdo, violent prone "tough girl" person (funny just like her husband). Obviously the new female ideal is to be like a caricature of the "cool" Hollywood man, aloof, violent, slightly off-kilter.
"Likewise, violent "chicks" in film don't bother me. It's when their violence is directed specifically at manhood that I am disturbed."
I find this statement confusing. Does it bother you if violent men direct violence at men or manhood? It seems to me we're missing the point. Why is violence so acceptable at all? Why is is so popular in movies and TV? If it is "accepted" and approved of by the general public, then why wouldn't violence by either gender directed at either gender be accepted?
Basically, again, it find it offensive when women are portrayed as violent towards anyone, not just men, as a substitute for real power, which is of course, just basic intelligence and an equity in political/legal power. But if we as a society blanket accept that guns and/or violence solve problems, then I guess we should accept both sexes solving problems that way. It seems naive and PC-ish to expect women to kill only women (and men only men) in our media so as not to offend anyone. Novel idea, how about nobody kills anybody?
Internet. I get scads of humor over the internet, 90% I delet without reading it. Of the ones I do read the humor is directed at men and women equally, and I haven't noticed the humor at men being more violent in nature. I'll pay closer attention to see if I'm missing something. Basically the "humor" is more of the same old gender stereotyping we see on sitcoms. Some of it is vaguely funny but not very original.
Sex and the City. I've only seen about 6 episodes (it's all I could bear). This show has lots of examples of misandry I agree. But even worse (admittedly from my female point of view) is the tired old trotted out notion that for women to "equal" men, they have to behave in the same stereotypical boorish fashion as men. Again, a caricature of a caricature, hightly insulting to both sexes, but more to women because it assumes women can't be boorish in their own original ways, they have to follow men. This show is so insulting on so many levels it is hard for me to see misandry as the primary "offense". It's just heaped in there with all the other offensive stuff. Somebody who's only picking out misandry from that show isn't really thinking in the larger "what's wrong with this picture" way.
I don't think you can talk about misandry in a vacuum. It doesn't exist outside other cultural phenomemnon. If fact the whole existence in media of misandry is some kind of a backlash for women against the artificially promoted misogyny or men it proports to combat! This is so convoluted it gets confusing to discuss but it's definitely not a one sided, one-dimensional phenomenon.
As I said, I haven't read the book only the synopsis which (I think) implies misandry is discussed in a vacuum of other cultural forces. I did read Susan Faludi's book Stiffed which discusses men in society and popular culture in a more wholistic way. I highly recommend it.
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What of catharsis? I think there is an emerging mass venue in which women and men can both equally vent their frustrations with each other in safety. Maybe the emerging trends in media are more of a reflection of the growing maturity of both groups. There are many "researchers" that publish studies that border on junk-science. It is a mistake to too quickly decide what is leading and what is following.
Hatred is a strong "thing" and reserved primarily for the few people who have had traumatic experiences such that an overwhelming emotion like hatred could arise within them. Grief is a cleansing process and most people prefer to move on with their lives after traumatic events.
I think the real danger for both males and females lies in law that badly or poorly tries to level the playing field by targeting one group for the benefit of another.
I can speak only for my experiences in Canada. The current attempts to level the playing field in this country are horrifying.
They do to fathers who have left the family setting things that if applied to any particular ethnic group would surely bring sanctions by the United Nations for human rights abuses.
You really should look at the Canadian legal system (Canadian Family Law and our virtually omnipotent Family Responsibilities Office) if you want to see a system that has gone quite insane. If looking at that is not bad enough to send shivers up and down your spine, then look also at the Young Offender's Act that created a special secret society - a legal area free from the public view and especially free from the meddlesome press. Continuing further into living hell consider that there is no "burden of proof" imperative in our legal system, so any reasonably intelligently constructed allegation is accepted prima facie by the court and the defendant must prove it false. Then, fight like hell in your own countries to prevent similar disasters.
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Excellent post cheddah!
What is evident is that the barrage of anti-male stereotypes, sentiment and "humour" has become so pervasive that it truly is difficult to separate the harmless from the sinister. Some might argue there is no such thing as harmless anti-male or female "humour". However, I guess I'm saying that the gentle poking of fun at each other, where we can even self deprecatingly acknowledge our mutual faults, becomes difficult.
I work beside a female who has been so brainwashed that she rolls her eyes and says "typical male" around 10 times a day. This covers everything, none of which could be considered gender specific. e.g. "I'm hungry" response? "typical male"... or "I'm tired" response "typical male" etc etc. I had a word with her recently about it and to be fair, she has certainly stopped saying it around me. But is it any wonder when in the UK advertising industry, it seems to be derigeur to have a smart/sassy/feisty (yawn) female triumphing over an inadequate male?
see http://uk.geocities.com/rob_ex_2000/media.htm
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And commercials, don't get me started... STILL to this day never show a man cleaning a toilet! Meanwhile they show women gleefully cleaning a toilets and washing everyone else's clothes while implying the people who's clothes they washed would be dissatisfied if she doesn't do a good job of it!
They may not show a man cleaning a toilet, but they DO show men cleaning house, and making a screw-up of it. Being a single man who cleans my own 2,500-square-foot house, I find those commercials decidedly offensive.
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Basically, again, it find it offensive when women are portrayed as violent towards anyone, not just men, as a substitute for real power, which is of course, just basic intelligence and an equity in political/legal power. But if we as a society blanket accept that guns and/or violence solve problems, then I guess we should accept both sexes solving problems that way.
As I said, I have no problem with women being violent in film. Personally, I love horror flicks. Always have. Violence on film doesn't bother me. It's when that violence is intended to justify a social stereotype that I become disturbed. Madonna's "What It Feels Like For a Girl" video, for instance. She and an elderly woman steal a car and use it to run down men. What are the men's crimes? Being male. They've done nothing to these women. One of them even has his back turned to them, using an automated teller. Perhaps if the men had somehow been vicious to Madonna and the elderly lady, I wouldn't have been bothered by the violence at all. As it stands, the men were innocents, and framing of Madonna and the elderly woman in this video is not of murderous criminals, but "fiesty" exterminators.
It seems naive and PC-ish to expect women to kill only women (and men only men) in our media so as not to offend anyone.
That's not what I said. If you'll re-read my post, you'll see that I think Charlie's Angels is a fun movie, and the women in that film beat up both on men AND women. Interestingly, guys, there is NOT ONE SINGLE kick to the crotch in that entire film. The women fight the men (and other women) on fair terms.
Novel idea, how about nobody kills anybody?
Then my side career as the author of horror fiction would come to a dramatic standstill. :)
Internet. I get scads of humor over the internet, 90% I delet without reading it. Of the ones I do read the humor is directed at men and women equally, and I haven't noticed the humor at men being more violent in nature. I'll pay closer attention to see if I'm missing something.
Please do, because I think you are. I ended up complaining to my employer about having to clean off the hard drives of women who left behind images of men being brutally beaten and mutilated "for fun." One image that sticks in my mind was of a male corpse lying naked on his back and woman in high heels crushing and manipulating his genitals with her foot.
I don't think you can talk about misandry in a vacuum.
And I think that right now we must discuss misandry in a vacuum. If we don't, then the problem doesn't get solved because it is drowned by society's all-consuming concern for women alone. Lorianne, I would agree with you on many, many points you make above except for the fact that you seem to believe that it's acceptable to discuss misogyny on its own, but no discussion of misandry should be allowed to take place without a discussion of misogyny. I disagree with that completely. I think it's high time men were able to find a book that puts words to what we've been feeling all these years, and does so without apologizing to women for doing it.
That said, I want to assure you that I do not believe misogyny is "in the past" or "does not exist." I choose to focus on misandry because it directly affects me, and very few people in this world are focused on solving the problem of misandry compared to those who fight misogyny. That makes misandry a larger problem in my mind.
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Lorianne, Regarding your passage, "the tired old trotted out notion that for women to "equal" men, they have to behave in the same stereotypical boorish fashion as men." In my reading of other folks' posts here, and I think this site represents the center of energy for the men's movement, it seems to me that 'we' believe that men and women are equal but not the same. I think that's in contrast, at least when it's convenient, to the radical feminists.
But...
I COULD be wrong :-)
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Hey, Lorianne.
I'm really enjoying this debate with you. This thread will be archived in a few days and we'll be unable to post to it anymore. I would like to make a suggestion.
I've ordered the book. Why not order one yourself (or borrow a copy from the library). When I've read it, I'll post my own review of it here and we can compare notes. I can assure you that my read will be with a suitably critical eye. Simply because a book claims to support a fight against misandry doesn't necessarily mean I'll agree with everything between it's pages, and I'm just not comfortable commenting on it so much without having read it. :)
How about it?
Also, feel free to e-mail me at nightmist@mensactivism.org after the thread has been archived, just in case you'd like to debate more off the site.
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ok I'll rustle up a the book. I'm curious.
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By "once upon a time," we don't mean that misogyny no longer exists. We mean that it is no longer unnoticed. Misandry, on the other hand, remains almost unnoticed. Even those who do notice it and acknowledge the double standard, moreover, often say that they don't care.
On the very next page after the quotation you cite, we write the following: "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 misogny. 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 worlview 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)."
Women are still sometimes ridiculed or vilified in popular culture, it's true, but not without the accompanying phenomenon of massive protest.
In view of the mountain of research already done (and still being done) on women and misogyny, it is unfair to insist that any book on men and misandry also include a discussion of women and misogyny. Our book is about men, not women. No book on either sex can be written without reference to the other, of course, but there is no reason why the focus shouldn't be on one sex or the other.
We don't advocate the expansion of "political correctness" to include protection for men (although even that would be an improvement over the hypocrisy of excluding only men from the list of human beings worthy of common decency). We advocate more research on men--and especially on the ways in which boys can and cannot form a healthy identity (based on at least one distinctive and necessary contribution that they can make to society as a whole)--in the hope that this will generate mutual respect between men and women and make possible what we call "intersexual dialogue" (which is by no means the same as debate).
As for the "us" versus "them" discussion, we definitely don't foster that mentality. In chapter 8, actually, we explicitly reject that as "dualism" (a worldview in which the forces of good are associated with "us" and the forces of evil with "them"), which has a lamentably long history in our civilization (but not only ours). Although its origin lies in ancient Near Eastern religion (two gods, a good one and a bad one), it has been adopted at various times by Judaism and Christianity (God and the Devil or Antichrist), and most recently been translated into secular terms by modern ideologues on both the left and the right. One branch of feminism, what we call "ideological feminism" (but which has been called "essentialist," "romantic," "militant" or even "gender" feminism) has adopted the dualistic mentality. And, as we hope to show in the second volume of our trilogy, that mentality is pervasive (though not universal) in the academic world. Moreover, it has filtered down to popular culture via the talk shows. Dualistic assumptions (notably what we call the "conspiracy theory of history" and the notion of "competitive suffering") have become embedded in conventional wisdom. Few people even think of questioning them. In order to challenge all this dualism, we must first be able to identify it. We consider that a requirement of scholarship.
At the heart of our book is not the question of who is or isn't "offended" by misandric references (some of which are jokes but many of which have far more sinister implications). It is about two things: the damage done to boys in search of a healthy identity (witness the high school shootings by boys with identity problems, say, or the soaring suicide rate among men) and the damage done to society as a whole when a moral double standard of any kind goes unchallenged in the public square.
Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young
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Authors:
Thank you very much for your contribution to this discussion. I am looking forward to reading your book (I've already ordered it). I would also like to notify you about a "masculist anthology" I and Steve Imparl (another frequent visitor here) are pulling together. We're in the accepting contributions phase and we now have a publisher in cyberManBooks.com. If you'd like more information about the anthology and how to contribute, please see the following link:
/article.pl?sid=01/10/0 7/1947239&mode=flat
I would love for someone to write for this anthology about misandry in popular culture. If you own the copyright on your book, perhaps we could even excerpt a chapter from it for inclusion in the anthology.
Again, thank you for contributing to this discussion, and thank you for tackling a long-ignored subject.
If you would like to contact me about the anthology, you may do so by e-mailing me at nightmist@mensactivism.org. You may e-mail Steve Imparl at simparl@aol.com.
Take care of yourselves. Looking forward to reading the book.
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Dear Nightmist and Lorianne,
Lorianne. Your wish for balance is surely sincere. However, if the authors are a disappointment, it is not necessarily in bad faith. Nightmist is correct in noting that where you've said "this implies that" you've produced a couple of non-sequiturs.
Nightmist. The feminization of America is so pervasive that it has even changed the way men talk, not just their tones but the whole thrust of the conversations. Persuaded that normal masculine directness and unequivocality might offend, they are careful to be PC and have even adopted the old-age feminine stategem of hurt feelings and the newer feminist technique of politicized nagging. Expect that Spreading Misandry might get some flack for this. (As might mensactivism.org. What the hell, it's our turn!)
Would it be too cynical to reason that perhaps we're becoming a nation of closet misanthropes?
It was not for nothing that Walt Whitman defind America as the place where, "the men hate the women and the women hate the men." He said this in good humor, of course. Misandry and misogyny are simply subsitutes for misanthropy among those who are not yet ready to take that giant step forward for mankind (and womankind) and hate everybody equally. :)
From the philosophy dept.,
Marty
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Dear Lorianne,
"Why is violence so acceptable at all? Why is is so popular in movies and TV? If it is "accepted" and approved of by the general public, then why wouldn't violence by either gender directed at either gender be accepted?"
Lorianne
Forgive me, but your posts are peppered with so many questions, the questions seem rather rhetorical. :)
The point being made is that we are not just concerned with violence per se, but rather with the breakdown of who is being portrayed as the unworthy verses the worthy victims of the violence.
(read Noam Chomsky's MANUFACTURING CONSENT for an elucidation on this spin of agitprop)
In response to another of your queries: The Battle of Good Against Evil is one of the oldest and most enduring of themes. When men are the protagonists and when it's men vs. men, men are represented on both sides of the equation. This is not generally the case when women play the protagonists and it's women vs. men The last good exception to this unremarked rule was the movie MISERY.
Respectfully,
From the philosophy dept.,
Marty
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