From The “Wha Wha Wha Poor Men” Files

This is a relatively-new blog so I have not yet had the time to get into Everything, but if there’s one thing that irks me (and let’s face it, we know there are sooo many things that do bother me), it’s men complaining about how bad they have it.

Poor poor men with their hugely disproportionate power base. Poor poor men who — despite a 100+ year old suffrage and other assorted women’s movements — still retain a huge majority of the economic, legal and brute force (via armies etc.) power in the world. Poor poor men who can’t deal with (amazingly small) micro-changes in gender roles. Wha wha, my heart so does not bleed for you.

Not that we women hate me; many of us who complain the loudest have men for fathers & grandfathers, are married-to and happily live-with men — some of us even lovingly raise male children. Who knew?!

But every time we point out the disparity, the inequality, and yes, the personally & publicly horrifying things that men do, we are man-haters. It can’t possibly be that we are offended & disappointed by the male refusal to accept the responsibility which comes with power; we must simply hate them.

I tell a true story about a dog that mauls a child and, whether I have a dog or not, that doesn’t make me a dog hater; but tell a true story about a man who beats a woman and I’m a man hater. Totally stupid. :snort:

But it happens.

And if you dare to point out just how stupid that thinking is, you are only more of a man-hater. :sigh:

Today, on Twitter, a public conversation about this man-hating phallacy fallacy which highlights a seemingly rather benign conversation about women and their hate of men…

Briancarter, self-described SEO optimizer and “funny keynote speaker/stand up comedian” (it will become crystal clear in a few minutes why the funny-man makes a living being the opposite of funny), asks: Is there an antonym for misogynist? And to be perfectly clear, he is searching for “a hater of men” — and, yes, lesbian jokes will be made ha ha ha — let’s laugh at the lesbian-man-hating stereotype.

Two minutes later he tweets: lol classic! I asked is there an antonym to misogynist, RT @zainyk: @briancarter The View.

He gets a more serious reply from shellerae: @briancarter a misandrist hates persons of the male sex, a misogynist hates persons of the female sex, & a misanthrope is a hater of mankind

He replies: @shellerae nice, but no one ever uses misandrist…?

And then it disintegrates into more mocking of The View and women while Brian ignores more insight from shellerae, who tweets both “I love men {shrug} so would be hard for me to use & would avoid people who described themselves as such!” and “I think there are people who don’t hate the “gender” but more don’t respect it.”

And then we get to the meat of the matter when Brain says, “ya I was thinking: there are women who hate men, so why don’t we hear a word for that as often as we hear misogynist?”

Maybe it’s because man-hating is — if not a complete myth — then far, far less prevalent than the hatred of women. Duh.

As Astrogirl426 says: And anyway, there is a word for man-haters (of either sex): misandrope. Perhaps there just arent as many of us– I mean them ;)

It seems that the conversation ended with Brian’s lame tweet: lol no I think you took it way too personally- a lot of people answered that way… sorry :-)

Sorry? Sorry?! That’s all you have to say?

You start a conversation, one that adds to larger public discourse, which reduces valid female complaints of factual disparity to the simplistic, nonsensical, and dismissive “women hate men” — and then, between making and encouraging lame negative stereotypical jokes and ignoring sane comments, when you learn that you offend people, and all you can do is blame them for taking it “way too personally” — ending with a “sorry” which reads more like you are sorry for what they did or said than taking responsibility for your own actions?!

Jeebuz.

4 Comments

  1. Wow. As a married woman with some man-hating tendencies who has asked why there isn’t a popular antonym to the term misogyny, this was a good read. You say,”Maybe it’s because man-hating is — if not a complete myth — then far, far less prevalent than the hatred of women,” which I think is true, at least in the raging, bra-burning sort of way. But perhaps it’s also less prevalent because it’s a matter of voice, and that those who have the most reason to be hateful (and/or fearful) also have the least power to say it.

  2. You make good points about the matter of voice; it’s a very important issue, especially for women. I plan in getting into that more later. But I don’t think you, a self-described “married woman with some man-hating tendencies,” or even women like myself who have survived domestic violence, really hate men at all.

    We may mistrust, we are certainly disappointed, and we may even live in (at least momentarily) actual fear (as opposed to the common or even perpetual feelings of vulnerability); but I don’t think we hate.

    Feeling angry, indignant, et all, is still situational. We can separate ‘the man’ who hurt us from ‘The Man’. Conversely, we can spot where ‘The Man’ has failed us, purposely, yet not blame ‘the man’ before us (tho in some cases, perhaps we should not; sometimes they are accountable in silent complacency).

    I just don’t see man-hating as an actual philosophy, let alone any movement, so it’s really frustrating to hear or see discussions about it as if it is fact.

    I hope you’ll come back and continue this… over time anyway, Holly. :)

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