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!)
The drawbacks men suffer from under patriarchy are also all directly linked to how they're broken and molded for their role as opressors. The suffering of men under the patriarchy is inseperable from how they are trained to inflict suffering upon others. There is no non-reactionary activism for men's rights that isn't just a specific angle of feminism, the one that is concerned with understanding and overcoming toxic masculinity.
how they're broken and molded for their role as opressors. The suffering of men under the patriarchy is inseparable from how they are trained to inflict suffering upon others.
I can barely talk to people and almost never leave my house, what makes me “trained to inflict suffering upon others”?
Aaaaaaand here we go with the full on antifeminist chud shit about how "feminism 101 holds that it applies to him regardless of his personal circumstances", like mfer that's literally how some redpilled techbro would describe feminism.
I can barely talk to people
Not that women who are bad at talking to people don't exist but you can rest assured this inability would not have been tolerated by whatever parenting or social pressures existed when you were growing up if you were a girl/woman.
I’m not denying that women experience these problems of intolerance and social pressures and I’m not denying that they’re worse and more common than what guys experience. They do and they are. But the ideas that all guys are “trained to inflict suffering” [the comment I initially replied to] and that guys never experience the same or similar problems (although to a lesser degree) [your comment] are ridiculous.
Most autistic people experience problems related to their social inabilities. I’ve been spanked for crying when my dad didn’t understand why I was crying (which in retrospect were mostly things related to me being autistic, like experiencing sensory overload) and yelled at me to stop which just made me cry more. That didn’t train me to inflict suffering on others, if anything it did the opposite. A large part of my social anxiety that developed as I got older is not wanting to bother others to any extent or make them uncomfortable.
To use as a metaphor a related topic that’s IMO more straightforward to discuss and understand due to its direct physical consequences:
CW: sexual violence
I completely recognize that female genital mutilation is much much worse than circumcision. But that doesn’t mean that circumcision isn’t a problem or that all guys in a society that practices FGM are accepting of and perpetuating FGM.
As somebody also on the autistic spectrum I can tell you we experience the same gendered social conditioning as everybody else, and we have an even harder time realizing it due to difficulties accessing the emotions driving our own actions. A lot of autistic people like to think of themselves as martians come to earth who exist outside of human cultural mores. This is a very flattering self-deception. We have to do the same work as everybody else unwinding the things we were taught. It's fine that you withdraw so as not to inflict yourself on other people, I do the same thing. But is this not an admission that we do in fact inflict suffering on others? How much of that is due to patriarchy and how much is due to autistic social skill shortfalls, perhaps exacerbated by patriarchy?
Maybe. There are a lot of times where I've caused hurt feelings for reasons that I later came to understand and internalize. I would not put the blame for those feelings on the people I hurt. It's easy to talk about accommodations for low social skills in the abstract but when you get to what it actually entails it puts a lot of burden on others to not take offense to objectively bad behavior.
probably your immediate reaction to defend yourself and your gender. If you hadn't been trained, your knee jerk reaction would be to look for ways to accept a viewpoint like that, rather than to poke a hole in it. I know it sounds serious and scoldy, but just let it sit with you for a while.
Perhaps I'm projecting, but I noticed it was something I was guilty of at times.
For starters, you're really good at immediately trying to silence women criticizing the patriarchy and centering yourself in a conversation about the systemic opression of women. I'd hazard a guess that traditional concepts of masculinity where men have to be the strong stoics working through every problem on their own at least contribute to your problems, but in spite of patriarchy having harmed you that badly, you still run to its defense in the expected ways like the good pupper you are.
i see where he asked how it applied to him, but i don't understand how it's silencing or a defense of patriarchy, could you elaborate?
It's not one of those "I am defending patriarchy" moments.
Its more the conditioned response of "what about me, a [member of the dominant group]?" whenever liberation or the conditions of the oppressed are being discussed.
It is in effect a defense of patriarchy, regardless of the benevalence of intentions of the poster.
Notice that, even here on Hexbear, the conversation is centered on whether misandry is real rather than ways to tackle the problems of systemic violence against women.
i still don't understand how it's doing a defense of patriarchy. i'm not even bringing edge's intention into it. he asked about himself in reply to a comment that was already about the suffering of men under patriarchy so i'm not even sure it was derailing the way we usually mean talking about men making discussions about feminism about themselves.
Notice that, even here on Hexbear, the conversation is centered on whether misandry is real rather than ways to tackle the problems of systemic violence against women.
The OP is about these ideas not being equal, the way the tweet is written takes misandry for granted and rightly says they are not equivalent. We don't organize on here, the "what is to be done" kinda shit is basic stuff that everybody already knows like the men here not themselves doing violence, yelling at people we should probably stop being friends with, and running our orgs so it doesn't happen (or holding them accountable if necessary) and there's not really any conversation to have there unless someone has a specific question about running orgs or deradicalizing someone.
i still don't understand how it's doing a defense of patriarchy
It's reaffirming the centrality of men, that he, as a man, has to be considered in his particular case as a matter of course in this discussion. You might disagree and think that it was an appropriate place for such a question; however, there is also an implicit refutation of the claim that men are trained to inflict suffering by asking how he has been if he never leaves his house. It's honestly kind of a non-sequitur; you don't have to be engaged in inflicting suffering to have been trained to do so.
It's not an exact process, but the result of social conditioning -- the outcomes differ a little for everyone. I can't speak to your personal experience, but a culture that expects men to cut themselves off from their feelings, to never cry or show vulnerability, to treat women as some distinct other? It can't help.
As a white AMAB, I have to deal with both misandry and reverse racism. It's tough. Prayers up in the chat
Because most people who actually refer to themselves as AMAB are not men
You've almost got it
I’d recommend changing it to “as a white man” instead
I'm NB, not a man, so I'd rather not misgender myself to make you more comfortable thanks
I am masc presenting and AMAB, so I still experience privilege because of patriarchy. Much as a white person, I still benefit from racial privilege. My experience is in no way comparable to how TERFs treat transwomen, nor do I wish to comment on a subject that I have no personal experience of. Which is precisely why the joke was at the expense of my own privilege and, indeed, privileged people in general.
I'm going to cut you some slack here because you're it seems like you're coming at this from a particular trans femme perspective(?), but you're making a lot of assumptions about me that aren't based on anything I've said. Not everyone who uses AGAB language is visibly gender nonconforming to a casual viewer. I am a masc appearing person who doesn't identify as a man, and the reason I refer to myself as AMAB is simply to acknowledge my biological sex where relevant to the discussion while not misgendering myself. I would experience misandry in the same way a man would, as an entirely incidental happenstance that has no structural backing (like "reverse racism").
If you want a take on whether what TERFs do is properly called misandry or transphobia, it would be better to direct it to someone who has been more directly affected. But either way I think you're bringing a lot of baggage to this conversation that really doesn't have anything to do with me.
Also, I've heard Whipping Girl is good. I probably will read it at some point
Like it shouldn't take this much for someone to say that a joke is just really uncomfortable to them.
Nor should I have to go so far to justify a joke to you that is based entirely on my own experiences
You have to justify the joke because it also reaches into and comments on MY experiences because I'm an AMAB person, Jesus Christ
No, I don't, actually. I never said or implied that I was speaking for every AMAB person. I'm also not Jesus Christ.
Like if you made a post like "As a white-passing mixed-race hispanic person I experience reverse racism, prayers in chat"
I support the right of any white-passing Hispanic person to say this lol, and I honestly am not sure what you're trying to get at. What right do you have say this is offensive if that's their experience? What are you policing this hypothetical person for anyway?
https://juliaserano.substack.com/p/on-male-socialization-and-the-trans
Great article, except I've already read it and it doesn't have anything to do with me. If you want to go tell at some TERFs, go right ahead, they deserve it. But spare me your outrage over me joking about experiencing male privilege
It's alright. I can tell this touched on an issue you care deeply about
Yes but have you considered that I'm not getting laid (more important)
And women will divorce men usually only after being extremly abused.
Men will kill you for not smiling or some weird shit.
Racism certainly has gendered aspects to it that some populations of women can exploit to do violence on other populations of men, but since this form of discrimination isn't universally applicable, I wouldn't call it misandry (because misogyny is universally applicable to all women, so there's a false equivalence).
i've never even seen anyone call it misandrnoir or any of the other ways you could do that portmanteau. everybody just calls it racism and maybe talks a little about intersections.
misandry isn't a serious concept even if we could choose to use it to describe some of us having to register for the draft and so on, but the disposability of men comes from patriarchy anyway so there's little interest in formalizing it further.
No, that's misogyny because it's an aspect of the objectification and enslavement of women to provide unpaid socially reproductive labor.
If you applied the same sentence to the racial equivalent in 1700s-1900s America it would be, "If we are treating humans like property then black people are valued more than white people." I think you can easily understand the problem with what you said.
I always feel uneasy about discourse supporting misandry (even though I am a misandrist for all intents and purposes).
This stems from me being an AMAB non-binary person, honestly. I am not a man, I am definitely systemically oppressed, but some people with misandrist outlooks will have an essentialist mindset and use it to hate me as if I'm not systemically oppressed (simply because cis men aren't; they equate me with cis men).
As a non-binary person in particular, I feel this strongly because most people don't take non-binary people as valid, so I'm effectively interpreted as just a "weird" variant of a cis man even though I'm on HRT and seeking surgeries. Not so shockingly, I find that this happens to binary trans women too but to a lesser extent.
I also don't believe that a lot of mainstream feminists are actually opposed to transphobia, so that heightens my fears too.
Don't worry, TERFs aren't being misandric towards you. They're too busy allying with reactionary men and being misogynistic to trans feminine people instead.
It's not just TERFs. That's why I said I don't believe that a lot of mainstream feminists are actually opposed to transphobia. I'm talking about liberals when I say this. Since pretending to give a shit about oppression is a major part of being a liberal, this isn't shocking, though.
I didn't say I wanted to stop being a misandrist; that's far beyond the point. Is your reading comprehension there?
"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."
---Margaret Atwood
i like that quote in a 101 sort of way, but we should be advanced enough here to clarify that men are afraid they'll kill themselves.
Well, actually, when a woman divorces a man, the man's life expectancy drops precipitously because men are terrible at taking care of themselves. In many ways that's worse than me committing violence towards women directly!
misandry is not real because men are not systemically oppressed
Structural misandry doesn't exist, but "misandry isn't real" is not something I'd agree with. It exists on an individual level. It's just not a real systemic issue.
There's definitely cases of structural misandry, it's just not as nearly as common as structural misogyny. There are fields of work where men are definitely discriminated against/less preferred. Divorce/child custody is historically slanted towards women, although that's downstream of historical misogynistic forces (women having trouble with employment, pay equity, etc) and it's become more equitable. I think you could make the argument that combat military service in some countries being restricted solely to men is a form of structural misandry.
Just to reiterate, I am not trying to do gender wars. I am gender Switzerland.
When you have a clear opressor side and a clear opressed side, you do not bothsides things, that's literally all lives matter tier shit. The points you are making are key talking points of manosphere chuds arguing against feminism, and that kind of shit is coming up on here over and over again, not only by one day old accounts, but by people who've been posting here for ages.
It would be fucking ridiculous how open to antifeminist, misogynist reasoning hexbear is if it wasn't so obnoxiously common even in leftist spaces. Don't be surprised when women are "misandrist", never trusting a man is a normal, necessary survival instinct for us.
I paraphrased things bell hooks was writing about 20-30 years ago in Feminism is for Everybody and The Will to Change...
the draft, yes, but the disposability isn't only from that.
oh I read "combat" as "compulsory"
Idk to me it still makes more sense to frame it in the context of feminism internalized misogyny
it really seems my tomboy wife who was influenced by her dad to be a boy because he wanted a boy and thus she inititially hated women (they treated her badly growing up, continued to hate them and uhh say weird stuff like women are inherently manipulative when she is moreso really headstrong and act before you think) and when she hated men it wasn't for stuff you could not explain by sayinf they were chuds or cruddy.
Where as with most hatred towards women does seem to be poorly explained without the conception of a patriarchy or as women being considered or once considered property of men.
But you already called it what it is: gender essentalism. There is nothing the word misandry does that is useful that isn't covered by essentalism.
Misandry definitely isn't a systemic issue but I feel the need to push back to say: men are systemically oppressed. The whole point of the concept of patriarchy is that while the form is different both men and women can be both oppressed and oppressors under it. Part of the entire reason why MRAs are completely full of shit is that basically all of the issues they are concerned with, to the extent that they are real issues, (ie family court) can all be traced back to patriarchy and capitalism.
Any oppressor-oppressed relationship inherently limits the human condition, but the oppressor always has more to lose than to gain. Feminism is good for men as humans as they will be able to wear whatever they want and have whatever sort of relationships they want with whoever. But it also means giving up higher wages, rape, etc. so it's no wonder a lot (not all) of men don't see feminism as a net benefit to themselves.
I would argue that it's quite reductive to suggest that having 'higher wages" is more to lose than being able to have "whatever sort of relationship they want".
I think it's accurate to say that men tend to perceive themselves as having more to lose than gain under feminist liberation...but i would argue that perception itself is based on falsehoods steming from patriarchy.
But it also means giving up higher wages
lol who's getting high wages?
any economic damage to "men" would be far outweighed by the gains we all make under socialism outside of a small handful of people everyone on this website would kill if we could.
Do you really not know about the wage gap? Women make less money than men.
And yes, I explicitly said #notallmen because communist men are smart enough to know socialism would be more economically advantageous anyway, and they're also much less likely to be rapists.
yeah, and it's worse if you're not white.
if we do wage equality and socialism at the same time, "men" will all be better off just on the money number too.
I think it is systemic but not the conscious focus. The artificial elevation of men and maleness under the patriarchy means that those who don't reach that elevation are seen as lesser beings, and even those are elevated, are often elevated for the wrong reasons, such as drafting men to war because we are “superior fighters.”
Misandry is a feature of patriarchy, but MRA types don’t want to talk about that. Whenever the topic of drafts come up, their first instinct is to complain how women get special treatment and aren’t required to fight, not that fighting for capitalist wars is bad. And even as they complain about women not having to fight, they uphold the same misandrist views by opposing integrating women into the military because they’re “weak,” therefore more men must be fed to the meat grinder to uphold this glorious system.
Do none of you people arguing for the existence of misandry understand that “a woman was mean to me once” is not in any way remotely comparable to the systematic undervaluing of women as people for the benefit of men. If you’re a man and you ever feel the need to express a hot take on how misandry totally is a real problem, you have to remember first that you are benefitting from patriarchy right now whether you know it or not and like it or not.
Do none of you people arguing for the existence of misandry understand that “a woman was mean to me once” is not in any way remotely comparable to the systematic undervaluing of women as people for the benefit of men
They seriously don't. Like, they have no idea how it is out there. As a trans woman, i at least sorta kinda know both sides - i always completely sucked at being a guy and could rarely if ever actually enjoy the decidedly guyish parts of my pre-transition life, but i can still safely say that i know what it's like to have male privilege, to be the man in a straight relationship, to be able to hang out with the boys at / after work, to be your parents' son instead of their daughter, to be with the guys instead of the girls at a social gathering, to walk home at night when you're read as a dude vs walking home at night when you're read as a girl, and they just don't. And because they are the cultural default and their experiences are always the ones being centered, it stays that way. A huge part of how male suprematism works is that guys, average guys who aren't Andrew Tate and think of themselves as not being toxic douchbros, are still being completely oblivious to how different a woman's day to day life is from theirs. Most of them would not be able to make the same amount of use of women in their professional, private, sexual and emotional life if they understood how much we are still subjected to serve men in nowadays much more subtle, but still very noticeable ways. And if you point it out to them, if you point out that the difference between them and Andrew Tate is in most cases gradual, not absolute, they do everything in their power to reject that realization, because our servitude is so damn useful to them.
you have to remember first that you are benefitting from patriarchy right now whether you know it or not and like it or not.
The benefit is relative. Patriarchy does harm to everyone, even men, but elevates men's social power over women. Perceived "misandry" is just a latent side effect of men wielding that social power to the detriment of women.
We really do get some repugnant trolls every now and again
I am gonna say it. Women being scared of or mean to men isn't mysendry. It is caused by misogyny.
If there wasn't misogyny that women would have to try to dodge that wouldn't need to happen. Hold that L
Misandry exists in non-systemic forms and the line of logic that says otherwise, in addition to being just plain incorrect, is easy for liberals to weaponize against us and against the concept of solidarity. I have seen this way of thinking used many times to split up groups rather than focusing on education and solidarity. It also runs contrary to several socialist analyses of this topic that are essentially dialectical where misogyny creates the basis for misandry, for example. This tweet is a good example of it. Patriarchal oppression creates (justified) disproportionate fear and distrust of men among non-men. Men must then also contend with being feared and distrusted.
And as you can see from "the discourse", men are often not equipped with ways to constructively deal with this reality and go down the reactionary path that tells them it's very unfair to them but without placing blame on the patriarchy itself - nor the underlying material basis for the patriarchy. It's our job to provide our own, more correct understanding of what is happening that pipelines the people who could move in our direction and have solidarity with us.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting bending over backwards to chase those that often benefit from oppression. Sometimes people overcorrect and make their spaces crappy and tolerate reactionary sentiment to be "inclusive" (I've seen it!). But it's self-limiting and counterrevolutionary to fail to educate and include those who do seek solidarity and working in our fight. We are much stronger together. Take the money from class traitors. Take the white people willing to put their bodies on the line for BLM. Take the Christians standing between Proud Boys and your Palestinian encampment. Or at least, try to educate them.
I don't like the both siding of misandry vs misogyny; men's suffering (at least in the u.s, but it can absolutely apply to the globe) can be usually categorized as due to white supremacy, capitalism, or the patriarchy. Misandry is probably <1%.
Women can suffer from all three aforementioned categories as well as misogyny.
Oh another thing for the "misandry is totally real it's just not systemic" people: "misandry" as a term is itself antifeminist. It's a manosphere and mra chud term that manosphere and mra chuds use as a weapon against feminists. As a comparison: you can say that "all lives matter" has a literal meaning outside the context of its use as a reactionary dogwhistle, but in the real world that's the way its used and you can't separate it from that use. Find me a place where "misandry" is discussed as a serious thing that isn't a reactionary space. You can't, but good luck. Ironically, the idea of "misandry" is weaponized against women in a misogynistic way by denying them even the ability to express anger at their oppression. If you're going to go to bat for the idea of "misandry" as a real, coherent issue, even if you add the caveat that it's not the same as misogyny, just know that you're going to bat on the side of manosphere and mra chuds.
Women who do actually "hate men" would not hate men if men did not systemically oppress them in every aspect of life. This shit doesn't exist in a pool of neutral generalized bigotry that could be theoretically directed anywhere and just happens to be worse towards women. We live in a world that oppresses women. And a world in which reactionaries have always tried to discredit feminism by painting it as being motivated by hatred towards men. (And don't bother bringing up TERFs/radfems, who direct their "hatred of men" towards being misogynistic towards trans women and enforcing patriarchal bioessentialism + cissexism.)
(Totally did not mean to delete my last comment, it was a complete accident, so I'll just rewrite it as best as I remember it.)
Oh no I totally understand, that is what I meant by "enforcing patriarchal bioessentialism + cissexism" if it wasn't clear! Gender essentialism is really harmful and antithetical to feminism, as it relies on upholding misogynistic views rather than challenging them (like when TERFs argue that trans women shouldn't compete with cis women using misogynistic ideas of women as "weaker".)
I am totally not an advocate for political lesbianism or radical feminism, and please let me know what parts of my phrasing made you uncomfortable, I'll edit them and do some self-crit. And I definitely need to pick up Whipping Girl soon.
https://archive.org/details/whippinggirltran0000sera_y0i6
Or
https://www.ebookhunter.net/whipping-girl-by-l-jacobs-epub/
These are very different books
I would maybe edit my own original comment to say that radfems engage in "gender essentialism" more broadly because it's not always necessarily bioessentialism, though of course bioessentialism is a huge part of gender essentialism. And yeah, I totally feel you on how this whole thing always becomes about cis men's feelings.
I should also clarify that I put "hates men" in quotes just because I know that a lot of chuds claim that feminists hate men when they don't actually hate men, they're just angry at patriarchy. I know what you're talking about with the whole over-the-top "kill all men" takes though, and those are definitely gender essentialist, and the material effects of those statements are directed towards transfems and non-transfem AMAB nonbinary folks rather than cis men. Intersectional feminism and transfeminism are the way to go!
