Misandry - Men don't exist, unless they do something bad!

reply to post by SearchLightsInc


I think you actually have a point in that both "misandry" and "misogyny" refer to "hatred", but what they discuss actually goes into entire discourses. traditions and paradigms.
In that sense many words used by various activists are slightly misleading, and were probably chosen for their impact.
Nevertheless, I feel my OP clip was well situated as a discourse analysis in the study of misandry.

On circumcision: I merely want the UN to make a declaration that will encourage the SA government to truly regulate initiation schools for boys, and to make sure that no boy or young man is kidnapped and forced against his will (even if culturally an uncircumcised man will forever remain a "boy").
I'd also like them to declare the sexual abuse and torture of men in war-zones a hate crime.
I'd hope that culture will follow the language, and it's at least a start to tell groups of men who are most physically at risk that they are not disposible, and they also have gender rights.

On comedy and the male buffoon: This was actually not one of my points, but I've thought very often about dysfunctional male characters and how they are rarely questioned.
I'd hate to see censored or politically correct comedy, but people could become more critical and aware of how gender is used to define identities on a daily basis.

reply to post by halfoldman


Misandry and misogyny exists because pop-society is generally anti-people and the powerful benefit from a divided people.

Women are expected to look certain ways according to mainstream society. Who determines that? Magazines and product lines. Who controls virtually all women's media and women's product lines? Other women.

Men are expected to quietly shoulder the brunt of physical labor, war, and maintain a balance of alpha-male and sensitive soul. Who determines that? War profiteers, makers of tools and trucks, and male product lines. Who controls this? Other men.

It's all self-loathing. The second post in this thread covered quite nicely how I feel about the patriarchal shift towards a male-dominated violent culture but I think that only kickstarted what the rest of us blissfully and ignorantly propagate every day with every commercial we watch and every product we buy.

halfoldman
reply to post by SearchLightsInc

 

I think you actually have a point in that both "misandry" and "misogyny" refer to "hatred", but what they discuss actually goes into entire discourses. traditions and paradigms.
In that sense many words used by various activists are slightly misleading, and were probably chosen for their impact.
Nevertheless, I feel my OP clip was well situated as a discourse analysis in the study of misandry.

On circumcision: I merely want the UN to make a declaration that will encourage the SA government to truly regulate initiation schools for boys, and to make sure that no boy or young man is kidnapped and forced against his will (even if culturally an uncircumcised man will forever remain a "boy").
I'd also like them to declare the sexual abuse and torture of men in war-zones a hate crime.
I'd hope that culture will follow the language, and it's at least a start to tell groups of men who are most physically at risk that they are not disposible, and they also have gender rights.

On comedy and the male buffoon: This was actually not one of my points, but I've thought very often about dysfunctional male characters and how they are rarely questioned.
I'd hate to see censored or politically correct comedy, but people could become more critical and aware of how gender is used to define identities on a daily basis.

These are idea's i can absolutely get behind from a humanitarian point of view.

reply to post by SearchLightsInc


I was at a James Bond film once. The bad spy, James's nemesis, happened to be a Russian female. At one point both of them got in a fight in the woods. The bad girl gives our good James a kick in the groin. When this happened many of the women in the cinema cheered out loud, triumphantly. Now remember, James is the good guy...

Then Mr. bond jumps to his feet and gave her a kick in the fanny and sent her flying into a tree. None of the men cheered at this. Why cheer the bad spy? Could it have something to do with the fact that she kicked a man in the evil place? - cos all men are bastards? I don't say that all women hate men, they don't, but there was a lot of women cheering in the cinema that night. Make of this what you will.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


It is blatant. You have lots of anger towards male sex. You have seem to decided already that men are to blame, for everything. Stupid you.

Men do this, they do that.

I am a man, a male. I cannot support thin ideas. (yours included) The thing you are failing to see here, is that you project no better world than the one you are fighting over. It makes me, a male, sad, while visualizing your hatred toward the sex i'm representing. There is something in the water you can't see.

And you ask questions like: "Really?"

May i..?

Really?

reply to post by halfoldman


The bottom line is, I think, that men are no more morally good or evil than women just because they happen to be men. Likewise with women. They are no better or worse than men. Anyone who thinks otherwise is unbalanced. It is terribly destructive to portray a whole section of society as evil. In the 30s Hitler and Gobbles portrayed the Jews as evil and the irony of it is that this propaganda did as much harm to the Germans that listened to it as it did to the Jews. They ended up bringing a holocaust on themselves as well as the Jews. But that's the way it was bound to end.

It is poisonous to go through life thinking that all X are bad simply because they are X (X = Jews, blacks, women, men, Communists, Democrats - you name it).

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” - Neitzsche.

If we go through life thinking 'they' are monsters we are likely to become worse monsters than the ones that are 'out to get us'. Some women are in danger of this. There IS a lot of advertising that portrays men as buffoons or denigrates them. In a previous post someone asked who are the ones that commit most crimes?

Men? Certainly not. A lot of crime is invisible, psychological. Domestic violence in psychological terms. Crime in the physical world at large is not because men are evil, it is because the world affords opportunities for crime. Women would be the same (not worse) as men if they had access - Rebecca Brooks is in the news lately because she apparently committed a 'manish' crime in a 'man's world' because she works in that world.

I recently saw a documentary on a gang of neo-Nazi skinheads in the UK, and it tracked down 3 former members a decade or so later to see how their lives had changed.
www.youtube.com...

Actually one of the women involved with one of these men gave a shocking example of misandry.
She said that her parents only wanted daughters, and they were not pleased when they had a son after several girls.
Her brother ended up in hospital as a baby because he was neglected and malnourished.
Now that was a case of primary (hateful) misandry.
I was very disappointed that the documentary makers did not follow this line of investigation, because these men all showed signs that their dysfunction stemmed from somehow not being wanted, or they were somehow considered disposable in their formative years.
I'm not sure whether it was psychological reasons just for those parents to neglect their boy-child, or whether it was class or culturally specific (perhaps boys are just considered too much "grief" or "trouble"), or whether some institutional reason favored girls over boys?

To me misogyny and misandry actually function as mutually reinforcing trends.
They are probably most effective as analytical tools when focusing on specific groups, and not all groups have the same strength of misandry or misogyny.
For example, it would probably be difficult to speak of "misandry" in countries and cultures where laws or social pressures blatantly discriminate against females, for example by banning education for girls.
In such cases it is probably understandable for the oppressed person to hate the oppressor.

That being said though, there's probably mixed feelings amongst men and women in such systems, where some men may also not feel free and support feminism, while some women might be very patriarchal and conservative.
"Formenism" is becoming a hot topic amongst gender workers looking at especially female religious narratives that reinforce traditional patriarchy from women (ostensibly for women) under the banner of "empowering women".
Such systems go beyond individuals.
Apart from proposing equality for all, it's actually very difficult to make judgements from the outside, without being accused of using gender to promote Western imperialism or cultural hegemony.
That's not to say we shouldn't speak of them (with an awareness of the limitations), but unless one takes on a very radical position one could also dwell into politically incorrect territory and imagery of inherent "savagery".

However, in most "northern" or "Western" countries things have changed since 1970, and the first wave of feminisms.
So the potential certainly exists to deconstruct misandry, and to encourage men to become more familiar with feminist deconstructions and opinions (and there are many types of feminism, and even dissident feminism).

On education in the US, for example, there was an interesting book titled: The War on Boys: How misguided Feminism is harming our young men. It was written by Christina Hoff Sommers, and originally published in 2010, although I'd hope the new edition will encourage more male input into the debate, also globally.
ideas.time.com...

reply to post by halfoldman


Maybe - people are abused and generally used to fulfill the agenda of the system.
Men and women - children and old people alike.
Don't forget the abuse of animals.
This world needs sorting out ...

reply to post by halfoldman


Yeah, any abuse of someone when they are very young usually messes them up significantly and often forever, of either gender. Issues culture-wide with parenting (or lack thereof) make each generation worse I suspect. We may see this as being prejudiced against a gender of child, and I suppose it can be sometimes, but it's mostly just damaged people with damaged behavior across the board.

Culturally this only seems to be getting worse, and I don't really see any movement toward avenues of making it better.