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!)
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!)
We agree this type of prejudice is bad, so why even argue that misandry doesn’t exist? Arguing definitions is not a good way to talk to people about these issues.
Compare:
With this:
why attempt to cede to a misunderstanding in order to get a ‘foot in the door’ to talk to someone instead of fully and correctly explaining it? i’ll cosign on not jumping to calling a random man a reactionary for expressing their feelings of constraint and friction under patriarchy, but sympathetic rhetoric should not compromise the central ideas of the theory. you wouldn’t teach LTV without explaining the limitations of supply-demand curves
There is no “correct” here. It’s social theory; we don’t have a provable, exact answer, we’re dealing with words and definitions that people use in multiple ways. The terminology is far less important than getting agreement on the sentiment, and eventually getting people to take action in a better direction.
So what’s the use of arguing that this concept that already exists in language isn’t actually real? To me, the only difference between the two example statements I gave above is that more people will tune out the latter (even if you drop the accusation of being reactionary, which is hard to imagine in practice).
what’s wrong if some people use rhetoric that rejects misandry vs. not then? clearly the former still works or there wouldn’t be people advocating it here
but i’ll explain how this discourse functions anyway: misandry is semantically coequal to misogyny. they have the same prefix and suffix, they’re used the same way. it is not unreasonable to think these equivalent words describe equivalent things, that’s how words usually work. what i want to avoid is validating this, because it does not reflect reality. in rejecting misandry, we hop over the semantic hurdle and contextualize struggles of men in the system of oppression they live in, where it is never unclear whose oppression is salient–patriarchy.
“Misandry doesn’t exist” is a debatable position that gets you little or nothing even if you win the argument. From what I’ve seen, statements like this also lead to unproductive turns like “and if you disagree you’re a reactionary” in a way “misandry is a symptom of patriarchy” doesn’t.
Fair point, but it’s easily cleared up by saying that misogyny exists systematically in a way misandry doesn’t.
i don’t think this thread would have so many comments if this was true
in any case i don’t think we’re fundamentally at odds having chased this argument into the very small redoubt of ‘what pedagogy works best’, i won’t complain if you teach a man to be less shit with “misandry is a symptom of patriarchy”
Another fine day on Hexbear!