Is there any such thing as misandry? On a narrow enough definition, there might not be, or at least it’s pretty rare. If we believe that misandry must involve conscious hatred of all men, I don’t think there are many misandrists. It would be a strange thing to meet a woman whose beliefs about humanity depended on gender and nothing else, if she believed that the best man was worse than the worst woman, who had never had a relationship of warmth and trust with a male human being.
In a broader way, though, it’s really worth talking about. Some time ago, I wrote a post for my own blog called “The Rules” and Hatred of Men. I argued that one Jag Carrao was presenting an inhumane understanding of what a man is, and was advising women to act on that inhumane understanding. I doubt if she would say that she hates men. Indeed, the authors of the original book The Rules assert that they love men, even though everything in their book undermines this statement. One problem I have with their assertion is that if they really think that men are as they describe, I don’t see the interest of being with one, except for money and sex.
There are a number of generalizations about men that make me feel hated, regardless of how the authors of these statements may interpret them. These are just a couple of examples. Men with children, in particular, have other examples.
1. Men are dangerously aggressive. Like many of the most dangerous stereotypes, this one is a distortion of a sort of truth, rather than a statement made up out of whole cloth. We have testosterone in us, that’s true. Hormones affect emotions and therefore behaviour, that’s true. In terms of the emotional grounding of our lives, we live in a somewhat different place than women do. It doesn’t follow that men are barely in control of a “natural” violence that women must always watch out for. It was part of my objection to Susan Brownmiller that she subscribes to this very broad and hateful stereotype. Just this morning, I wrote a stiff comment on this blog to one Patricia K, who subscribes to the stereotype.
I think boys might be better taught to know and deal productively with the aggressiveness (not necessarily dangerous) that is in their blood. I think they must not be taught to put up a wall against it, but rather to deal with what it really is. That being said, regardless of mistakes made in upbringing, the great majority of men go through their lives without doing anything violent, and when they do, their most frequent targets are other men.
Sergeant Mom’s post on “gentlemanly behaviour” leads me to reflect that the ideal of being a gentleman is, at its best, male-specific ethics. Sergeant Mom draws a distinction between well– and badly-behaved men that is entirely appropriate. Susan Brownmiller and her ilk generalize about all men.
2. Men love “the thrill of the chase.” I pulled this one out of The Rules, but I’ve heard it from women before. Curiously, I’ve never heard it from a man. The general idea is that in dating, the main thing for a man is pursuing a woman, and if the woman fails to run away, she is cheating his (I’m quoting here; please forgive me) “animal drive.”
Where to start? We take the initiative in dating essentially because women expect this. It’s often not a good position to be in. When you get underconfident or in a bad mood, it feels more like being a beggar on the street than anything else. You’re not after all a hunter: you’re a person in a conversation, trying to establish a relationship, asking for what you want, trying to get her to say what she wants. Establishing trust. I think it’s safe to say that the early stages are not the best part, nor what motivates us to keep going in the dating game.
The process is not easy, and I really do not appreciate having a sort of cartoon image imposed on it, which may make the woman believe all sorts of hateful things about me.
I take these two statements as representative of an overall view of men that I think is very damaging at once to relationships between men and women and to men’s mental health. If we ourselves believe that our own maleness is to be distrusted, what attitude can we take to ourselves? Are we caught then between two different kinds of self-contempt: selfish grabbiness on the one hand and emasculated compassion on the other? Of course we find private solutions. I’m not complaining that our lives are hell or anything. But why do we have to put out so much energy escaping from these culturally constructed traps?
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Comments
Rated.
The problem of male aggressiveness is that, true, only a small minority of men are dangerous to us women - but the dangerous ones don't come with a stamp on their foreheads, so we have to be cautious with them all. This hurts the feelings of gentle, decent men - but tough: it's less hurtful than what we risk.
P.S. - The concept of domestic violence, for one thing, is relatively recent. Not the reality, but the very idea of it and then the re-evaluating of it as a bad thing.
Given that women were encouraged to take the initiative in dating by the time I graduated from college in 1967, it is shocking over 40 years later there isn't some equality. I don't believe most men want to chase. Having to ask the girl is risking rejection.
More commenting later.
Myriad: Certainly, if I had a daughter, I would encourage her to be cautious about strange men, more cautious than about strange women. That's not the same, though, as telling her that "All men are the same." Some mothers do this. I'm serious. Students have told me this.
"This hurts the feelings of gentle, decent men - but tough: it's less hurtful than what we risk." The dismissiveness of this statement is unwarranted. No one is asking women to abandon reasonable caution, any more than black Americans would ask you to demonstrate your freedom from racism by failing to protect yourself in genuinely dangerous neighbourhoods.
I certainly hope you do not view Silvio Berlusconi as representative of men. I don't know why you would, actually. A cover story in The Economist was devoted to explaining why he was not worthy to be prime minister of Italy. His sexism is bad enough, but incredible as it may seem, there are other things about him that are worse.
Mary Jo Redstocking is right. Misandry and misogyny are evil twins, certainly in the process of socialization. If you encourage these broad-brush beliefs about men in children, or in others around you, you are inherently encouraging broad-brush beliefs about women too.
. I lived in Manhattan from age 18 to age 36, and I was never harassed on the street. I have worked in Manhattan and spent a great deal of time in Manhattan since, and I have never had any trouble. Perhaps the red I usually wear is an invisible suit of armor:)
I do meet men's eyes and smile a great deal. I talk to homeless people and street vendors. About ten years ago, a street vendor told me I was a charming, attractive, seductive women, but he would be afraid to bother me. My eyes might turn him to stone.
I dress modesty and classically. I buy most of my clothes from Lands' End overstocks, Target, Walmart, and the Salvation Army.
This doesn't have to be carried over to our perspective here in the 'first world' - but any attention to the media or the number of 'safe' houses for battered women indicates that there is no equality yet between misandry and misogyny.
What is wrong about misogyny is that it affects humans. It's the same thing with misandry: it's wrong because it affects humans. Trying to establish a hierarchy of evil -- this evil is worse, it has more victims to its name throughout history -- is, as a friend once put it, Satan's last trick to get people of good will to fight against each other rather than work in tandem.
Just imagine if you had to choose between fighting misogyny and fighting racism. Or if you had to deal with someone telling you that you should ignore misogyny as a problem because there are other problems -- global warming? natural disasters? wars? -- that deserve our full attention.
One of the sad things about 'safe' houses for women is how some of them assume all men are bad. One of them had a logo which only had little female-shaped figures holding hands. No males allowed. I wondered, would it have cost them very much to simply add one male figurine to that -- to show they understand that there are men who support the idea of fighting against domestic violence, who care about it, who also donate (which is what I was doing in their website)? I wondered how many men gave up donating when they saw they weren't represented there. Not welcome. I did donate -- but I admit I felt like not donating.
Stressing the genderness of the situation -- just like repeating the old stuff about there being more black than white criminals -- is not going to help solve the problem. It's only going to make some people who would otherwise be on our side think twice before joining us. It's a difficult fight already -- let's not diminish our forces.
Thinking that MEN -- or BLACKS, or JEWS -- are dangerous is, in my opinion, failing to grasp the real problem. And that's a pity, because it means the chances of solving it in the long term decrease.
Take your claim that the fact that good men may have their feelings hurt is not important, given the level of danger that women deal with. I, for one, don't think that one thing depends on the other -- I don't think that the things that really hurt decent men's feelings really increase women's security in any way.
Besides, hurting feelings of innocent people is always a bad idea. The only thing you will get from it is, perhaps, resentment -- and more enemies. And I think feminists have enough enemies as it is -- why make more?
It's sort of like the Muslim scene in some ways - I was pleased to see a march by peaceful Muslims in Detroit denouncing the underpants bomber, because too often what happens when one of these things happen is that spokesmen (and in this case I use the gender-specific term advisedly) put out statements complaining about perceived anti-Muslim sentiment - what would they expect?
Anyway, no point in any further back and forth on this ... I can grok why (some) men are stubborn about this - I don't like to take on collective guilt and suspicion as a white person either, or a straight person, or a first-world person, but the facts on the ground speak for themselves.
Of the 14,137 murder victims of 2008 for whom gender was known, 78.2 percent were male.
Concerning murder victims for whom race was known, 49.0 percent were white, 48.6 percent were black, and 2.3 percent were from other races. Race was unknown for 239 victims.
In your comment on women's clothing, I see two valid points and a problem.
Within this post, I've spoken approvingly of the need for male-specific ethics, and I've said that the ideal of gentlemanly behaviour at its best fulfills that role. This does imply the need for female-specific ethics, and translated into my terms, it seems to me you are saying that women should be responsible about the impact they have on the men around them. Fair enough.
I also wouldn't deny that choice of clothing can be an ethical issue. If I show up for my sister's wedding wearing a ripped T-shirt and cutoffs, she will be angry, with reason. And it's not just a social faux pas: if I do that, I'm treating her unethically.
If choice of clothing, in a particular situation, affects a particular person especially, then there is an ethical situation between two people. Supposing I work closely with a woman and she dresses revealingly. I can fairly say to her, "Look, the way you dress does affect me, and I don't want to be affected that way. I am asking you to tone it down." And if she refuses, then she may be acting unethically.
With the more general issue of how to dress on the street, though, we do have problems. A revealingly-dressed woman isn't obviously hurting any other individual. She is increasing risk of unpleasantness or worse to herself, but if she shoulders that responsibility, that's not an ethical problem. If men look at her, she's got no right to complain. If a man attacks her, he's just as guilty as if she were dressed another way. How is this to be resolved without referring back to the old "slut" idea, which is unsatisfactory in too many ways to mention?
I absolutely agree that "If a man attacks her, he's just as guilty as if she were dressed another way." I guess I wasn't clear. I had in mind being hit upon or harassed on the street, in a bar, at a party, not being attacked. Not getting drunk around strange men seems intelligent as well.
I hated wearing uniforms in grade school and high school, but now I think they are an excellent idea. My English husband is surprised that US students don't. It saves parents endless fights with kids on what is appropriate to wear to school not to mention saving money and eliminating obvious class differences.
You write: How is this to be resolved without referring back to the old "slut" idea, which is unsatisfactory in too many ways to mention?
We have an increasing problem as girls are sexualized earlier and earlier. Three year olds are subtly encouraged to be sexy. Bratz dolls look rather slutty. What we have gained in so many ways, we are losing badly as our culture has become increasingly pornified. I do understand why Muslim countries are appalled.
A hierarchy of evil is again Satan's last trick to make people of good will fight against each other instead of against the real problems.
Accusing men of 'whining'... Remember when it was women who got accused of 'whining'? And what was said about that?
You speak as if we had to choose -- either "face what goes on in our midst" or think about our hurt feelings. Why can't it be both?
It is obvious why some women turn against all men -- it's the same reason why some men turn against all women, or some people turn against all Jews, or all Blacks. Nothing new under the sun here.
The facts on the ground do speak for themselves: whenever we stop accepting people of good will as such -- people of good will, who want to progress -- just because of the group they belong to (men), or when we start stereotyping the group they belong to... we move away from our goals, and we start internal fights that only benefit the enemy. We begin to look like the enemy, actually.
I suppose one could reintroduce the ethics in the case of clothes worn in the street in the same way that you introduced it in the case of you wearing the 'wrong' clothes to your sister's wedding: the question of expectation.
After all, why would it be right for your sister to be angry at you if you showed up in inappropriate clothes at her wedding? Because there are accepted rules about what would be appropriate for the occasion. You might have decided to break these rules on purpose -- as a form of protest; but even in this case you are taking them into account.
So the question would be: is there such a set of rules also for clothes worn in public? And if so, what level of responsibility do people who choose to break these rules should accept for the consequences? Of course, being attacked shouldn't be one of them -- but that is also true in the case of your sister's wedding: if her anger at you escalated to the level of physical assault, that would also be wrong.
(And I say this as a person who, in keeping with my absent-minded professor persona, very often dresses inappropriately for a given situation simply because I don't understand clothes and their codes very much...).
I suppose the point is that there is currently disagreement on whether or not revealing clothes in public are breaking rules or not -- conservatives, liberals, etc. disagree about that, and the ensuing debate (plus the danger of blaming the victim) is ongoing. This is not the case for the dressing code at weddings.
Asehpe, I wouldn't put it in terms of rules, or I would make rules only a secondary thing. In the case of my imaginary co-worker, there are two sets of rules active: "one should dress appropriately" and "one should be free." If I ask her to tone it down, I am not really appealing to either. I am saying, "There's an effect on me. I'm asking you to understand that and alter your behaviour out of consideration for me." You might speak of that as a rule, "One should consider others," but this is so fuzzy that I have a hard time thinking of it as a rule.
Kate Harding's post today on some (male) idiot's remarks on men's response to the projected male pill. Go, sister. That's the way to do gender politics.