Product Code Database
Misandry () is the hatred of or prejudice against men or boys. Earliest recorded use: 1885. "No man whom she cared for had ever proposed to marry her. She could not account for it, and it was a growing source of bitterness, of misogyny as well as misandry." Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine September 289/1. "Misandry" at Merriam-Webster online ("First Known Use: circa 1909")
Men's rights activists (MRAs) and other masculinist groups have characterized modern laws concerning divorce, domestic violence, conscription, circumcision (known as male genital mutilation by opponents), and treatment of male rape victims as examples of institutional misandry. However, in virtually all societies, misandry lacks institutional and systemic support comparable to misogyny, the hatred of women. (1989). 9780520065468, University of California Press. ISBN 9780520065468
In the Internet Age, users posting on manosphere internet forums within 4chan and Reddit addressing men's rights activism have claimed that misandry is widespread, established in preferential treatment of women, and shown by discrimination against men.
MRAs have been criticised for promoting a false equivalence between misandry and misogyny, as part of an antifeminist backlash. (2025). 9781138590373, Routledge. ISBN 9781138590373 (2025). 9781135045197, Routledge. ISBN 9781135045197 (2025). 9783030126339, Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783030126339 A 2023 research article, which combined multiple studies conducted by the authors, found that feminists are no more likely to be misandrist than other groups, including non-feminist men and women. The authors coined the term "The Misandry Myth" to describe the popular notion that misandry is commonplace among feminists.
Translation of the French misandrie to the German Männerhass (Hatred of Men) is recorded in 1803.
Anthropologist David D. Gilmore coined the term "viriphobia" in 1997, when the term "misandry" was little used and there was no commonly accepted term for hatred of men. He writes that such terms as "misandry" typically refer not to hatred of men as men, but to hatred of machismo or men's traditional gender role. He argues that misandry is therefore not equivalent to misogyny, which "targets women no matter what they believe or do". Gilmore says that hatred of men as men is extremely rare in historical records, in sharp contrast to misogyny, which he argues is a "near-universal phenomenon".
Marwick and Caplan argue that usage of the term misandry in the internet age is an outgrowth of misogyny and antifeminism. The term is commonly used in the manosphere, such as on men's rights discussion forums on websites such as 4chan and Reddit, to counter feminist accusations of misogyny. The critique and parody of the concept of misandry by feminist bloggers has been reported on in periodicals such as The Guardian, Slate and Time.
Marc A. Ouellette argues in International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities that "misandry lacks the systemic, transhistoric, institutionalized, and legislated antipathy of misogyny"; in his view, assuming a parallel between misogyny and misandry overly simplifies relations of gender and power.
Marwick and Caplan have examined the use of the term misandry within the manosphere as a weapon against feminist language and ideas. They characterize men's rights activists' use of the termas a gender-reversed counterpart to misogynyas an appropriation of leftist identity politics. Marwick and Caplan also argue that coverage of the discourse of misandry by mainstream journalists serves to reinforce the MRM's framing of feminist activism as oppressive toward men, along with its denial of institutionalized sexism against women.
Racialized misandry occurs in both "high" and "low" culture and literature. For instance, African-American men have often been disparagingly portrayed as either infantile or as eroticized and hyper-masculine, depending on prevailing cultural stereotypes.
Julie M. Thompson, a feminist author, connects misandry with envy of men, in particular "penis envy", a term coined by Sigmund Freud in 1908, in his theory of female sexual development. Emphasis added. Nancy Kang has discussed "the misandric impulse" in relation to the works of Toni Morrison.
In his book, Gender and Judaism: The Transformation of Tradition, Harry Brod, a Professor of Philosophy and Humanities in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Northern Iowa, writes:
In 2020, the explicitly misandric essay Moi les hommes, je les déteste ( I Hate Men) by the French writer Pauline Harmange caused controversy in France after a government official threatened its publisher with criminal prosecution.
Historian Alice Echols argues that the misandry displayed by Solanas in her tract the SCUM Manifesto was not typical for radical feminists of the time: "Solanas's unabashed misandry—especially her belief in men's biological inferiority—her endorsement of relationships between 'independent women,' and her dismissal of sex as 'the refuge of the mindless' contravened the sort of radical feminism which prevailed in most women's groups across the country." Radical feminist Andrea Dworkin criticized what she called a biological determinist strand that she found "with increasing frequency in feminist circles"; according to Dworkin, this included the view that males are biologically inferior to women and violent by nature, requiring a gendercide to allow for the emergence of a "new Übermensch Womon".
Melinda Kanner and Kristin J. Anderson argue that "man-hater feminist" represents the popular antifeminist myth which has no any scientific evidences, and it's rather the antifeminists who perhaps hate men. (2025). 9780313375972, Praeger. ISBN 9780313375972
Feminist author bell hooks writes that the contemporary feminist movement was from its beginnings portrayed in the mass media as man-hating, even though anti-male factions were a small minority of women's liberation advocates. Hooks argues that ' demonization of men as all-powerful misogynist oppressors was a product of bourgeois white women's envy of the privileges held by upper-class white men, and that such anti-male sentiments "alienated many poor and working class women, particularly non-white women" from the movement. She writes that anti-male factions received outsized attention from the mass media, leading the men's movement to take an anti-female stance which "mirrored the most negative aspects" of the women's movement.
Sociologist Anthony Synnott argues that certain forms of feminism present misandristic view of gender. He argues that men are presented as having power over others regardless of the actual power they possess and that some feminists define the experience of being male inaccurately through writing on masculinity. He further argues that some forms of feminism create an in-group of women, simplifies the nuances of gender issues, demonizes those who are not feminists and legitimizes victimization by way of retributive justice. Reviewing Synnott, Roman Kuhar argues that Synnott might not accurately represent the views of feminism, commenting that "whether it re-thinks men in a manner in which men have not been thought of in feminist theory, is another question."
Sociologist Allan G. Johnson argues in that accusations of man-hating have been used to put down feminists and to shift attention onto men, reinforcing a male-centered culture. Johnson posits that culture offers no comparable anti-male ideology to misogyny and that "people often confuse men as individuals with men as a dominant and privileged category of people. Given the reality of women's oppression, male privilege, and men's enforcement of both, it's hardly surprising that woman should have moments where she resents or even hates 'men. emphasis
A meta-analysis in 2023 published in the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly investigated the stereotype of feminists' attitudes to men and concluded that feminist views of men were no different than that of non-feminists or men towards men, and termed the phenomenon the : "We term the focal stereotype the misandry myth in light of the evidence that it is false and widespread, and discuss its implications for the movement."
|
|
