“Misandry” is hatred of men. While the equivalent term for hatred of women, “misogyny,” is ubiquitous in social, psychological, and political discourse, I almost never see the word “misandry.” I just did a google search on “misogyny” and got (about) 49,400,000 hits; “misandry” got (about) 1,680,000. As with mga, I assume this is because misandry is a near universal blind spot. Nevertheless I’ve found some very interesting things simply searching this term, and I’ll do a series of mini-articles on what I’ve found. There are several earnest articles proposing merits and downsides of misandry, with conclusions ranging from “misandry is bad” to “misandry is good feminism.”

Before I dive into analyzing these articles, I thought I’d make an overview now of a kind of position or attitude that I keep running into, which I think represents a common, garden variety of modern pop misandry. This is an attitude that I see spelled out in some of these articles, and implied (with more or less subtlety in different cases) in TV and movies.

1. It is impossible, irrelevant, or some combination of both, for women to hurt men.
2. When men are hurt by (or scared by) women, this is a good thing; it teaches them a valuable lesson about what women go through constantly at the hands of men. It is men getting a taste of their own medicine.
3. Expressions of misandry are clever and sophisticated, and have a relationship to feminist theory, which ratifies them.
4. Expressions and acts of misandry are valuable for women; when women see the misandry of other women, they feel understood and supported.
5. Men who are bothered by misandry are either weak, stupid (they “don’t get it”), or misogynists.
6. If a man is bothered by misandric expressions (or actions), then the misandry worked, because the very men who need to learn a lesson about what it’s like to be a woman are learning that lesson. Conversely, the men who “get it” embrace and celebrate these expressions and acts of misandry.
7. There is no justifiable rejection of any act or expression of misandry, as they don’t count (women hurting men is impossible, irrelevant, and/or actually teaches men a lesson). For the same reason, there is no such thing as an excess of or particularly egregious examples of misandry.
8. All of this adds up to expressions of misandry being “performative,” which is academic speak for “they don’t count and they are cool and clever.”

I’ll be reviewing a number of articles where you will see this attitude manifested. Sometimes it will be heavier on one or another of these points, or lighter, but I think the above list captures the idea. I also think I’m more or less making a list that the writers of these misandic articles would agree with (possibly with a desire to add some nuance or spin). I don’t think I’m caricaturing the positions we’ll see, although perhaps I’m simplifying and clarifying them. Mostly you’ll see verbatim quotes that are close to identical to the contents of my list. I might also review some articles that are relevant but not themselves clearly misandric (along the lines of “we feminists need to stop tweeting #killallmen”).

I hope it goes without saying that I am not presenting that list as coherent. It’s not coherent to say “it’s impossible for women to hurt men” and at the same time “when women hurt men it’s a good thing.” I would say It’s not coherent to believe that fear and dehumanization are unhealthy for women but good for men. Certainly it’s not coherent to believe that a woman can’t hurt a man…can’t hurt his feelings, can’t fire him or get him fired, can’t physically assault him, and so forth…nor is it coherent to believe that that hurt can’t have a negative impact outside of that man, that we can just hurt that one man without hurting other people and things.

Reviews of specific articles soon…if you want to get a head start, simply google the word “misandry,” that’s what I did; you can also try googling the hashtag #killallmen, which I will discuss in my next post.