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.

As a white AMAB, I have to deal with both misandry and reverse racism. It's tough. Prayers up in the chat

Yes but have you considered that I'm not getting laid (more important)

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.

And women will divorce men usually only after being extremly abused.

Men will kill you for not smiling or some weird shit.

"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."

---Margaret Atwood

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.

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.

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.

89 comments

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.)

I'm glad to see so many nice people valiantly proposing misandry exists even if not to the same degree as misogyny.

Except of course OP is right, misandry isn't real, for the same reason anti-white racism isn't. Social inconvenience on a personal level does not add up to be comparable to actual bigotry, therefore some analogous concept doesn't exist.

I saw a short video the other day about a woman saying "alright we'll just call men ~males~ from now on" and then the guy doing a response said okay and made his video.

I think this fully highlights the point about how dehumanizing language from people with power in society is never equivalent. I'm not saying it's not rude or it won't hurt someone's feelings but the fact that a man can shrug and go on with his day vs. actually threats of implied violence that often undertone the other shows why these two things are different.

Misandry in its basic form is real though, just like so called “reverse racism.” Even the OP says so, they’re just not equal. But You don’t need to care about power structures to fundamentally hate someone for a particular characteristic. If you belong to the dominant group, you likely won’t really care about it outside of individual occurrences. Like if someone calls you a cracker or yells at you about manspreading, you’re just gonna be annoyed, offended. But if someone calls you the n word or cat calling you on an empty bus, you’re gonna fear for your life, as the OP states.

N.B. misandry

I gotta support nonbinary misandrists

"Misandry isn't real because there's no systemic backing" my god will hexbear stop generating dumbass takes

In before I get called a reactionary and some user pretends I'm some "misandry is JUST AS BAD" moron like the Divorce Guy in the OP just because I think it's fucking stupid to tie in "has a systemic and institutionalized backing" to the definition of a fucking word, like the very concept of misandry is unreal and cannot exist unless you're living in the Feminist Femocracy of Manhatea

Some of y'all likely just brought a purge upon yourselves with this thread.

Time to check the modlog

I've always believed that these Firstname8Numbers usernames on twitter were bots or psyops. Something's going on with them, it's not a name any person would choose, it's the kind of name you mass generate.

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

Women will kill you too, but usually it's because you abused them to the point where they snapped. As opposed to men who will kill you just because you don't want to suck their pee pee

"If it's not systematic it doesn't exist" doesn't make sense and is a losing argument, anyway. You don't have to stake out the complete opposite position of reactionary weirdos to refute them.

Mods need to ban the incels in this thread.