N.B. misandry is not real because men are not systemically oppressed (uninternalize your reddit MRA today: men suffer some drawbacks under the patriarchy but ultimately still maintain it due to the large amount of privileges they receive under it!)

  • Dessa [she/her]
    ·
    6 months ago

    I feel like "misandry doesn't exist" discourse is conflating privilege with prejudice.

    Misogyny and misandry describe prejudices, which anybody can have about any kind of people. The unilateral system of prejudice we have that privileges men and codifies misogyny is called patriarchy.

    Misogyny is an element of patriarchy, and misandry is not, but both of these also exist as their own concepts aside from patriarchy

    • milistanaccount09 [she/her]
      ·
      6 months ago

      I think this line of reasoning implies that 'reverse racism' does actually exist, which I think is a pretty unserious notion.

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
        ·
        6 months ago

        A recent citations-needed had some commentary on antisemitism that highlights an issue with defining racism as prejudice plus institutional power:

        [A]mong scholars on the left and people who think about hate crimes and oppression in the state, you know, there’s different schools of thought around what it means to talk about hate crimes and to track hate crimes... I think that today in the US, it’s probably not really institutionalized antisemitism. There’s not really barriers to accessing housing, jobs, other resources for Jews. And Jews have a good amount of access to protection by the state and everything. So like, it’s not institutionalized, but there still is this antisemitism that can flare up and cause violence and especially coming from a lot of these white supremacist and right-wing neo-Nazi type groups.

        It's a better take to define racism as most people do -- prejudice based on racial animus -- then analyze how institutional power is used to insulate white people from harm while magnifying the harm racism does to people of color.

      • courier8377 [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        6 months ago

        Sounds to me like they're trying to draw a distinction between situational prejudice and systemic prejudice, and yeah situational prejudice that hurts feelings is a very lesser beast compared to its systemic counterpart

      • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
        ·
        6 months ago

        This is actually an excellent parallel because the only situation I can think of where “reverse racism” is even remotely a systemic thing (minorities who are harmed by white supremacy but are accused of being too white) is actually just racism, and the only situation where misandry is even remotely a systemic thing (trans women who are accused of faking it because “there is no such thing as trans women because gender essentialism and men bad”) is actually just misogyny

        Edit: also people who hate white people absolutely do exist, they’re just awesome and cool. People who hate men also exist and they tend to be cool too if they aren’t weird about it.