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.

    • star (she)@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      51·
      2 days ago

      my contention is that men are an oppressor class, which should be condemned as a class based on the oppressor status. bad behaviour doesnt really have anything to do with it

      • ☭ Blursty ☭@lemmygrad.ml
        13·
        2 days ago

        Interesting. I’ve been accused of class reductionism for a much smaller common factor. If that’s what I’m doing, then I can’t imagine what you’re doing here. An entire gender is a class now. I’d love to hear your argument. Is this your own concoction or is there any academic serious work arguing this?

          • ☭ Blursty ☭@lemmygrad.ml
            11·
            2 days ago

            Yes I believe Gloria Steinem referenced Marx extensively.

            As did Lenin.

            “I have been told that at the evenings arranged for reading and discussion with working women, sex and marriage problems come first. They are said to be the main objects of interest in your political instruction and educational work. I could not believe my ears when I heard that. The first state of proletarian dictatorship is battling with the counter-revolutionaries of the whole world. The situation In Germany itself calls for the greatest unity of all proletarian revolutionary forces, so that they can repel the counter-revolution which is pushing on. But active Communist women are busy discussing sex problems and the forms of marriage ‘past, present and future’. They consider it their most important task to enlighten working women on these questions. It is said that a pamphlet on the sex question written by a Communist authoress from Vienna enjoys the greatest popularity. What rot that booklet is! The workers read what is right in it long ago in Bebel. Only not in the tedious, cut-and-dried form found in the pamphlet but in the form of gripping agitation that strikes out at bourgeois society. The mention of Freud’s hypotheses is designed to give the pamphlet a scientific veneer, but it is so much bungling by an amateur. Freud’s theory has now become a fad. I mistrust sex theories expounded in articles, treatises, pamphlets, etc. in short, the theories dealt with in that specific literature which sprouts so luxuriantly on the dung heap of bourgeois society. I mistrust those who are always absorbed in the sex problems, the way an Indian saint is absorbed In the contemplation of his navel.”

            James Connolly sums up this sex obsessed website really well.

            “I have long been of opinion that the Socialist movement elsewhere was to a great extent hampered by the presence in its ranks of faddists and cranks, who were in the movement, not for the cause of Socialism, but because they thought they saw in it a means of ventilating their theories on such questions as sex, religion, vaccination, vegetarianism, etc., and I believed that such ideas had or ought to have no place in our programme or in our party.”

            Faddists and cranks indeed.