Too often there is this separation we invent where misogyny is a ubiquitous tool of patriarchy while misandry is somehow separate. This becomes so intense that many are not even able to admit that misandry is even theoretically possible, and even if it’s undeniable it is still seen as highly irrelevant to patriarchy.
But misandry does advance patriarchy and it is a force that intensifies misogyny.
Consider homophobia. This is an obvious case where misandry advances heretopatriarchy. Certain men can entrench their status through an infrastructure of hatred against homosexual men that can be accessed by nearly everyone else as well.
Consider transphobia. Another obvious realm where misandry is at play. Trans men are shown hatred in ways that are unique to the experience of cis men, and these experiences drive cis heteronormativity.
Consider how our actions and ideas impact the world. If we live in denial of misandry we live in denial of patriarchy. Denying misandry does not make you a quality feminist. It does not make you theoretically sound. Hating men just gets in the way of challenging patriarchy.
Consider how misandry enforces gender roles. Misandrous discourse functions to discipline people. When misandry is denied, there is almost always an element of “you have to man up, because women are weak.” The narrative is familiar; women are subjected to patriarchal violence and are thus too hysterical to have sound or reasonable options about men, thus, men must internalize misandrous attitudes out of sheer emotional intelligence and masculine willpower. The men who fail to do this are weak, unable to maintain a rational, stoic attitude and are thus lesser, unmasculine men. Men who can master their performance of masculinity in a self-denying or sacrificial way will benefits from misandry but will certainly be thoroughly disciplined by it.
Women, other non men genders,and queer communities often play a role in policing masculinity for patriarchy which may obfuscate the patriarchal power at play. This ultimately reinforces misogyny by haphazardly enforcing binaries, devaluing feminity, and promoting a supremacist view of masculinity.
Let me paint a situation. Imagine a comedian making a joke about their trans wife; that she removed the worst part of her–being a man. Everyone laughs in support of trans women and implicitly they laugh AT trans men and cis men. Next joke is about how stupid bisexual women are for dating men, how they make the queer community worse.
Now imagine you are a man who wants a little clarity in life. How should you feel about such language which is clearly both misandrous and misogynistic? How should you feel that it is directed at you, as a man? I’ll tell you:
You should feel safe because you are a man. If you don’t feel safe it’s because you are a weak man, incapable of performing.
Because “misandry” is not real.
Men are not oppressed just by being men. Whatever ‘hate’ men may experience for their maleness is totally irrelevant by every metric. Men aren’t subjected to abuse, exclusion, violence, etc. on a social or institutional level by any serious percentage just for the ‘crime’ of being men expressly because being a man isn’t a crime.
You are rewarded for being a man. You are celebrated for being a man. You are empowered for being a man. This is true at all levels of society and it’s why we live under patriarchy - the rule of men.
You might be oppressed for some other factor - such as being gay or trans - while being a man and the nature of that oppression may look different from how women or enbies are treated but you will never be oppressed just for being a man by itself.
Masculinity is a cult of male worship. Men aren’t excluded from holding power in the sexual hierarchy just for being men; they will be excluded on other grounds like race, class, sexuality, or how they express their gender (i.e. not conforming to the ‘ideal’ masculine standard).
Misogyny is prejudice + power. Misandry is just prejudice with no power behind it making it an irrelevant social phenomenon. If the worst thing a man can face for being a man is mean words then he is not oppressed by any conceivable metric. Misogyny is a real thing that actually harms and kills; misandry is not and does not.
You may as well be talking about ‘heterophobia’, ‘cisphobia’, or ‘anti-white racism’ because that would make just as much sense. You can’t oppress the oppressor class.
I think a large reason why these conversations keep happening is that many people fail to grasp this point, and it results in people talking past each other.
Many take “misandry is not real” to mean that no prejudice or situation negatively affects a man for being a man. This is then contrasted with personal experiences of toxic masculinity, negative social experiences mostly unique to men, and experiences of feeling excluded from some circles due to being a man, etc.
Some men would then think to themselves “how could you say that ‘misandry’ is not real when I had all these negative personal experiences?”, unaware that these experiences don’t translate to a systemic form of oppression.
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
Though I would say that I’m still somewhat sympathetic to people expressing points like OP because if you’re not aware of this, then you feel like all your personal experiences and hardships are invalidated. Especially given that most of the time when people try to explain this point, it’s done pretty aggressively and antagonistically. Can’t say I would blame people airing their grievances against an oppressing force, but I can see how some people would feel victimised by it.
The antagonistic attitudes that some feminists demonstrate when talking about these issues is entirely understandable tbh.
Most feminists are women (obviously) and womens’ opinions, perspectives, needs, wants, & feelings are regularly being dismissed by our patriarchal society. The lack of value in our words, thoughts, and experiences lead to regular abuse, abandonment, isolation, and gaslighting. This is doubly so for feminists - who expressly reviled & ridiculed often by the public & institutions alike.
Naturally this leads to frustration, bitterness, and hostility. We get tired of being mocked and ignored while trying to discuss the nature of our oppression, its origins, and how to resolve it.
I don’t and can’t blame feminists who are more confrontational. I know what their feeling and I get it. The onus is on men to start listening to women if they want women to talk to them about womens’ liberation and gender equality.
Yes, like I said, I wouldn’t blame them. What I mean is that, regardless of blame or finger pointing, the people caught in the crossfire are still affected by it.
This isn’t talking about priorities, blame, or what issues should take focus on a systemic level. It’s more on an individual level where I sympathise with the negative experiences they had and the feelings of social isolation that they go through.
At the risk of making a bad analogy, we could say that if someone stubs and injures their toe on a living room table, we should be able to sympathise with what they’re going through without assigning blame to an inanimate object. The concern is not to find someone or something to assign blame to, but to help out the injured person and give them some support.
That doesn’t mean that we would go on a country-wide campaign about the dangers of tables.
Class society. Capitalism. Sexual relationships will be liberated by changing the relations of production. This is the focus. We are communists.
What you’re doing is the equivalent of “Death to America”. While completely understandable that people rage against the USA, it’s not an ideology that is ever going to fundamentally resolve anything. If not this USA, there would be another. No amount of telling Americans that the onus is on them to listen to the Global South is going to change anything meaningful.
I’m still shocked at how poor quality this thread is for Marxist analysis. I had to check twice that I was on this website and not some shitty federated one.
This is class reductionism. None of these issues can be solved under capitalism, but ignoring the unique systemic issues faced by roughly half of the population is going to make organizing and agitating very difficult. Systemic misogyny, transphobia, racism, settler-colonial relations, etc. need to be dealt with as part of the revolution, and before seizing state power, recognizing these issues and providing solutions (for both the present and future) is essential for building support among these populations.
Directly blaming even, not just ignoring. This is gender reductionism.
Agreed. That system being capitalism, not the resultant social constructs of it. Trying to push the gender rope and ignoring the root causes is doomed to failure, alientation and wasted effort.
I can’t believe I was sucked into this but there’s some humdingers in this thread. It’s impossible for men to be hated because they are men just because and Men aren’t subjected to abuse, exclusion, violence, etc. on a social or institutional level by any serious percentage just for the ‘crime’ of being men expressly because being a man isn’t a crime. are particularly jaw dropping western chauvinist observations.
No one here is arguing that gender is the primary contradiction. No one here is saying that we shouldn’t address capitalism. What people are saying is that there are contradictions other than capitalism. After all, patriarchy existed way before the system of capitalism. Abolition of the latter does not automatically abolish the former.
And also, do you disagree than men have a privileged position in society? Just so we get our basics covered.
Agreed, that would have been something at least. Instead we have “Men bad”.
Nor that we should. We should just address men and get them to “listen”, then everything will be okay.
As communists, we strive to abolish Class Society, of which Capitalism is only the latest manifestation.
Which society? I assume this is more western chauvinistic American defaultism again? We’re talking about the entire global gender here. Do you deny that some women have a more privileged position than some men? Or are we only dealing with this absolute. In which case, no is the obvious answer.
you are again bringing up morality when i am talking about class issue. you seem to be fixated on this idea that men are ontologically evil. i have never brought it up, maybe you are confusing me for someone else
again, nobody said that
yes!
do you really think that only in the US men are a privileged class? because it doesnt seem that you even think that to start with
i do not deny that! but class is not absolute, it is an aggregate concept. some proletarians being more privileged than some bourgeois (a worker in europe vs a shopkeeper in the global south for example) does not mean that on aggregate the bourgeoisie is the privileged oppressor class. another example is racism in the US: just because Obama became president does not mean that black people in aggregate are not being marginalized.
This here is misandry in several paragraphs. Unsubstantiated, unsupported, baseless claims with no argument.
I would argue against it but there’s nothing to argue against. There is no reasoned argument put forth, just tautology and obvious bigotry.
Replace it all with female analogues and see if it still works.
I see you have no response to the below comment that destroyed this.
Otherwise, isn’t this a Marxist-Leninist space? What is this liberal bigoted claptrap doing here?
this is not how oppression works though. you cant just replace the oppressed class in place of the oppressor.
All men do not oppress all women. This is as reductive and facile, not to mention bigoted and anti-Marxist. Many men actively work against gender inequality and advocate for women’s rights. many men seek to overthrow the class societies that cause oppression of various groups, just as many women support the status quo.
the same is true for any groupings of classes. there are bourgeois and proletarians who work against their class interests, settlers who are against their state and indigenous people who are for it etc etc. this does not negate the class dynamic.
Thank you. Glad we agree. Maybe you can help me elsewhere in the thread now?
Men are sent to war to get shot at, mutilated and blown to pieces en masse.
Most of the murder victims are male.
Male suicides are off the rails and no one gives a shit.
No one cares about male victims of pedophilia.
One in 3 domestic abuse victims are male.
People laugh at male victims of rape which is barely reported.
20 million of Soviet men which includes 80% of males born in 1920s died in WW2 for some idiot today to be able to wish death on entire gender.
Some of my male ancestors died in concentration camp while defending their country.
Wishing genocide on entire gender is probably not sexism according to you.
Fuck right off.
Edit: I remember you, you were the one who wanted to talk shit about Traoré and find his flaws, beside the fact that he’s literally the best leader on the continent right now. Westerners really need to stay the fuck away from Africa, Muslim countries in general and serious topics such as feminism.
These are just men’s rights talking points. Why exactly are you laundering them here?
I’m not sure where you saw that someone was “wishing genocide on an entire gender”, but no - it’s not sexism. You’re missing the “systemic” part in all your arguments. You can talk all you want about how shitty the world is where men were the driving force of creating it, but ultimately that doesn’t mean that anyone other gender has more systemic power than men. Them creating a shitty world does not equal sexism
this is a reactionary who was banned for transphobia, came back, then immediately doubled down. MRA shit is expected tbh
😭 & here I am taking them seriously
Why are we not doing perma bans for repeat offenders?
I wasn’t banned for transpohobia, because I never once said anything against trans people and never even mentioned gender.
yes you were
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I never said anything against trans people so that was bs.
Ohhhh I remember you on that transphobia post. This is the first post you decided to comment on after that? To defend men?..
What ‘‘transphobia’’?
Saying that denying and encouraging sexism is bad is apparently such an abhorrent thing equivalent of defending Hitler according to you.
You compared intersex people to a genetic deformity
I didn’t even mention them, i’m not even sure I heard of the term before that but I mentioned ambiguous genitalia.
These are not ‘‘talking points’’ these are facts which you choose to completely ignore. Female pedophile or rapist assaulting a male child or adult isn’t the fault of males or female serial killer killing is not the fault of males.
I constantly hear shit like wishing death on entire male gender go unquestioned and denial of sexism towards males and here we see another denial of sexism towards males.
Western ‘‘feminists’’ aren’t feminists and have no right to call themselves like that. Feminism aims to establish equality of sexes, not to exterminate an entire gender.
This is so unserious I can’t engage any further.
You can’t engage further because you have no response.
Don’t.
I can see where you’re coming from comrade but I think you’re missing a lot of the points here and likely what a lot of us take for granted, which is progressive views on gender/sex and a more nuanced understanding of what you’re speaking of.
I can absolutely see how people saying ‘death to all men’ can make you feel like that. When understood as a red army soldier saying ‘death to all nazis’ or a black person in america saying ‘death to all white men’ we understand that its not to be taken literally, I doubt 99% of people who say that fully wish to genocide the entire group of people - it is more of a expression of frustration and a role reversal of the violence being inflicted on them; they really mean ‘death to this iteration of oppressor, burn it to the ground and let new forms take its place’ - they want the group direction to stop and take a different course.
I remember reading Angela Davis’s legal analysis of cases of rape and abuse by slaves vs other slaves and slave owners. The legal arguements tended to be from the slave owners that the women they raped wherent human and didnt have the same legal rights as other human beings as they where slaves and as have the same rights as a chair they owned.
Given that Angela noticed that often the most horrific acts of violence didnt come at the hands of the slave owners, it actually came from the women slaves - to fit in to a system of violence and oppression created by slavers they had to act like a slaver, and why not go above and beyond? It was a system designed to be horrificly violent and reward savegary, so people acted accordingly and even tried to ‘one up’ the slaver - its a survival strategy.
All im saying is that when women emulate abusive men its a similar dynamic, they are mirroring the dominant hegemony, and it is the upper classes brain - which is setup to protect men like trump who SA with impunity.
This “I was just joking” then would apply to all misogynist comments too? Or do those words suddenly have real meaning and effects?
Which grants very convenient absolution to all women here. It wasn’t them, it was their conditions, they didn’t have free will, they were automatons. Everyone has their story. You can play the same game with men and say it was because of their culture, peer pressure, imperialism, they were “of that time”.
It’s the same tired apologia.
there is a difference between punching up and punching down
This reasoning then admits all bad behaviour of women and only condemns it of men. Because all women are “down” and all men are “up”. Is this your contention?
do you not understand how class works? do you think all bourgeois behave badly and the proletariat behaves goodly? class is not a measure of morality
Its not ‘I was just joking’ its ‘this is whats being done to me and im flipping the table over’, you really think I want to kill every single landlord personally or do away with the system of landlordism?
and yes thats quite literally what materialism is, are you lost?
One instance is a court case, when it repeats again and again its systematic.
Its not absolving the guilty, its directing the blame at the correct source; the upper class.
The states ideological apparatus produces these outcomes, you think misogyny and ID politics just appeared out of the natural spirit of the working class, or was it taught to them?
I wouldn’t have a major issue with that in the right context, minus the personal killing all landlords part. It would be a tremendous task.
That is not what materialism is. I think what you’re probably trying to say is that the material conditions explains behaviour. My point is that it doesn’t absolve. Yet you were using it to grand absolution to all women, but not men. It’s hard to know what you were trying to say beyond tetchy sniping though.
Okay? Also unclear.
Thank you for restating my point. I seem to have breathed some ML thinking into the thread finally. Please carry on with this in mind.
I never said that at all and have consistently been pointing at the upper classes schools and domination as the thing that keeps producing these outcomes for both men and women, merely observing the fact that men are put in a special status above women as the dominant hegemonic force doesnt mean that men are also not victims under this system - an inequal class divisions of oppressor and non-oppressor drives toxicity both ways, the forms they take might be different but when it comes down to it, women are the objects of the objects that are men, and men are the objects of the upper class.
The only real way to beat this cycle and resolve the violence being taught and perpetuated is to break the wheel, not keep it spinning by positioning one gender over another. That also requires actually listening to the perspectives of those ‘three times oppressed’ as Claudia Jones calls it.
These conversations tend to test my patience, nothing good tends to come of them other than alienated people shouting about their own trauma and grasping at the dark for answers.
Saying ‘‘death to nazis’’ is one thing, but literally wishing death to entire gender which makes up 50% of worlds population is the most insane statement I’ve heard. When they say white, they typically mean white Americans and Western Europeans which are the main oppressors and colonists of entire Global South, Malcolm X said it best, so that’s also understandable. Gender has nothing to do with it, humans can be good or bad, for every Hitler, there is one Stalin.
But generally, most men and women are good, the way some people like this like to present it is that we’re living like caveman or apes or in Middle Ages and everybody’s out there pillaging, beating, raping or killing one another. Most of the men and women I know personally are some of the best people you’d meet, just because my father, aunt and 2 grandparents(with which I’m not in contact for years now) are insane doesn’t mean that every man is conservative nagging asshole or that every woman is screaming abusive lunatic.
There are: Hitler, Himmler, Mussolini, American presidents, Caligula, Louis, Leopold, Nicholas II, Pol Pot, Ted Bundy etc, but there are also: British Queens, Thatcher, Elizabeth Báthory, Marie Antoinette, Madeline Albright, Hillary Clinton, Aileen Wuornos etc.
The point is gender doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that someone can be evil piece of shit.
It might seem insane to you but I kinda get it when its coming out of the mouth of someone whos suffered violence or known someone who has as a result of the patriarchy - like only 3% of sexual assault cases in the UK actually end with the man being charged, its clearly structurally setup to protect serial sexual abuser men, your point of women doing it as well isnt without relevance, but from a social science standpoint women only make up like at most 5-12% of these cases, its fair to see it as a socialization and ideology issue amongst liberal men.
Because all the males are obviously serial rapists or killers including gay and asexual men and entire gender should be exterminated because of it.
The reason for that are good lawyers and corrupted system, female criminals get out from same shit if they have money to pay for a lawyer, or hell, for being fucking ‘‘too good looking for prison’’ meanwhile poor people and especially African-Americans end up in prison and used for legal slave labor in 21th century for lighting up weed or simply existing in wrong place at wrong time. Most of male rape cases aren’t even reported, less than 1 in 10 are, let alone those who have the rapist tried and convicted, this stands for pedophilia where male kids are ignored and pedos aren’t even tried, this has to do with class, not gender.
By that logic I should hate all women for the sexual assault and all the advances I got, my mother should hate all men for horrible ex-husband instead of finding the most generous and friendly man I’ve ever met, my sister should hate all men for all the disgusting guys she met at former school and my uncle should hate all women because of his abusive wife am I right?
Why are you putting words in my mouth?
I didnt claim to discuss anything other than men who have been accused of sexual assault and you’re taking it to mean ‘all men’, reflect on why you are constructing my arguments to seem worse than they are.