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!)
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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.
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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”?
you failed your training then 😔
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?
I really didn’t want to comment on anything in this thread because it looks like a shitshow, but I would caution against implying or even believing that any harm inflicted on others is “caused by” autism. Indeed, everyone experiences the same patriarchal conditioning, including autistic people, but a few things to note.
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Be cautious about unilaterally assuming said conditioning. This does not apply to this thread, because this thread appears to be about a man, but many trans women and non-binary people who are AMAB are accused of having “male social conditioning” (and “having experienced male privilege”), which is problematic because it ignores the ways gender dysphoria can outright undermine those forms of conditioning and privilege.
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While patriarchy may be able to exploit certain facets of autism to convince or indoctrinate autistic people and then cause harm, autism as a whole, ESPECIALLY the supposed “low social skills” associated with it, does not inflict harm on others. This is a flipping of blame from the oppressor to the oppressed on the part of neurotypical society. If you have low social skills, ESPECIALLY if because of autism, the blame absolutely falls on others for not accommodating for them. Neurotypical society likes to pretend we are the ones causing harm by not understanding social cues or weird invisible implications, but it is that society causing harm by refusing to accommodate our differences that is to blame, not us for having those differences in the first place.
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.
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.
If it was because you “misunderstood” a weird neurotypical implication they made that they weren’t explicit about, actually you should blame them for it.
objectively bad behavior.
“Misunderstanding” someone’s weird “implications” and invisible social cues is not “objectively bad behavior”. In fact, it’s closer to objectively GOOD behavior because way too many people rely on that shit instead of actually directly communicating which people like us force them to do.
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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.
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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.
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.
If it doesn’t apply to you why even comment?
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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.
please don’t jacket me.
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.
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We really do get some repugnant trolls every now and again
And women will divorce men usually only after being extremly abused.
Men will kill you for not smiling or some weird shit.
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How is that not more a form of racism?
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).
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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.
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
I think this line of reasoning implies that ‘reverse racism’ does actually exist, which I think is a pretty unserious notion.
Sounds to me like they’re trying to draw a distinction between situational prejudice and systemic prejudice, and yeah situational prejudice that hurts feelings is a very lesser beast compared to its systemic counterpart
A recent
had some commentary on antisemitism that highlights an issue with defining racism as prejudice plus institutional power:[A]mong scholars on the left and people who think about hate crimes and oppression in the state, you know, there’s different schools of thought around what it means to talk about hate crimes and to track hate crimes… I think that today in the US, it’s probably not really institutionalized antisemitism. There’s not really barriers to accessing housing, jobs, other resources for Jews. And Jews have a good amount of access to protection by the state and everything. So like, it’s not institutionalized, but there still is this antisemitism that can flare up and cause violence and especially coming from a lot of these white supremacist and right-wing neo-Nazi type groups.
It’s a better take to define racism as most people do – prejudice based on racial animus – then analyze how institutional power is used to insulate white people from harm while magnifying the harm racism does to people of color.
This is actually an excellent parallel because the only situation I can think of where “reverse racism” is even remotely a systemic thing (minorities who are harmed by white supremacy but are accused of being too white) is actually just racism, and the only situation where misandry is even remotely a systemic thing (trans women who are accused of faking it because “there is no such thing as trans women because gender essentialism and men bad”) is actually just misogyny
Edit: also people who hate white people absolutely do exist, they’re just awesome and cool. People who hate men also exist and they tend to be cool too if they aren’t weird about it.
Rightoids are the real misandrists. It’s the soft wokeness of low expectations.
They claim they like us and want to “help” us, but all of their “help” is just special treatment because they think we are too stupid to compete with women.
Some of y’all likely just brought a purge upon yourselves with this thread.
This was a sting operation
Time to check the modlog
a little disappointed to see only one account bonked
Byeah :/ the last one we had was way more productive.
Edit: BABE WAKE UP, new modlog activity just dropped
Many people are saying this.
there are definitely a few others in this thread who deserve it
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.)
Some sort of differentiation needs to be made towards the natural skepticism of men as they are the dominant group and commonly hurt people (what “misandry is real” chuds are trying to complain about) and the kind of weird over-the-top “kill all men” takes that make me deeply uncomfortable as a born AMAB non-binary person (how would you know someone isn’t trans or non-binary and hasn’t realized it?), and has historically been a source of massive amounts of indirect misogyny (both in the TERFs you mentioned and in feminist movements blaming women for IE being straight, because they should “know better” than to sleep with men)
I agree with you btw, it’s just that some of your phrasing makes me very uncomfortable, and I just don’t want anyone coming to this thread coming away with the conclusion being that political lesbianism was somehow good (🤮 cringe political movement).
everyone should read whipping girl
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Thank you, and rereading your comment I don’t think I actually see any particularly bad phrasing. I think I’m being paranoid of my position on the subject being basically erased from existence, mostly by the sheer quantity of dudebros complaining about “removed” and reverse sexism. Basically I hate how this conversation is always primarily dominated by cis men’s insecurities whenever it comes up anywhere, and overwhelms any actual introspection about how harmful gender essentialism is to groups that are not as dominant or fortunate.
Edit: gamergate terminology is automatically censored?
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!
Thank you comrade, it’s nice talking with someone who agrees and is also patient and willing to clarify.
(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
The one by Julia Serano. The first one lol
N.B. misandry
I gotta support nonbinary misandrists
Thanks for supporting the gang
As a white AMAB, I have to deal with both misandry and reverse racism. It’s tough. Prayers up in the chat
tagline
Thanks chat
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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 thought the bit was pretending to be someone else who would say it, I didn’t know you were joking about you yourself, if that makes sense. Forgive me for that misunderstanding.
But, I’m still kind of uncomfortable and confused. You don’t identify as a man, how is you experiencing “””misandry””” (what would actually be misgendering and transphobia) supposed to be some silly privileged complaint? It’s still a weird thing to make a joke about how silly and not-real that situation is because it’s an actually real thing IE TERFS do to non-binary people and trans women, and before you say it’s just some silly online thing, it has happened historically quite often.
Read Whipping Girl if you haven’t already, stuff like “no AMABs allowed at our music concert” was real shit people would do to exclude trans women and AMAB non-binary people. Hence my discomfort.
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
I understand you specifically present outwardly as masc, and as you said lots of AMAB non-binary people do. However the phrasing is just… weird because it implies male privilege is a universal Thing to AMAB people. I am indeed bringing a lot of baggage to this conversation that doesn’t affect you, however I am bringing it because the joke makes me uncomfortable. Please understand that I am seeing this from a different perspective and, while your personal experience might work with the joke, the joke implies at least somewhat that it’s somehow universal to AMAB people and that bugs me. Plus like??? There are a LOT of non-AMAB people that experience male privilege (trans men???)
Like it shouldn’t take this much for someone to say that a joke is just really uncomfortable to them.
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.
Edit: Like if you made a post like “As a white-passing mixed-race hispanic person I experience reverse racism, prayers in chat” it would be blatantly weird and kind of offensive and/or just outright nonsensical because like, sure, it might technically be true they have privilege, in some circumstances, but 99% of the time I’ve heard when people attack mixed-race people for being “too white” it’s just punching down.
Edit 2: https://juliaserano.substack.com/p/on-male-socialization-and-the-trans
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.
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.
Misandry is real and the only people it hurts is trans women and sometimes trans men if you somehow come across a transphobe that respect’s people’s actual gender anyways
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.
The only actual form of systemic oppression “misandry” contributes to is transphobia. See: Self-proclaimed “feminists” accusing trans women of having “born male privilege” or similar absurdities (worth noting, when they make these accusations, they are referring to the privilege of gender presentation and social aspects, not to the economic advantages granted to those who present male in this hellworld, which is why it is incorrect). Here of course it is worth noting that said “misandry” is actually just transmisogyny. Or in other terms 99% of the time the only people who “misandry” hurt on a systemic level is women (trans men, of course, are never truly considered men by these transphobic feminists, so their “misandry” never reaches them).
TLDR if you’re a man and you aren’t trying to defend yourself from a self-described “feminist” who’s angry at you about doing drag, shut up about misandry. And even if you ARE a drag queen I recommend bringing up how the conception of femininity being entirely constructed is deeply misogynistic instead of trying to both sides things. But feel free to complain about misandry in that situation ONLY IF you’re trying to defend your drag from gender essentialists. (And in that case I suppose there is NO reason to call it “misandry” lmao)
