English

Etymology

miseo (miséο, “to hate”) + andres (anér-andros, “man”).

Pronunciation

• [mɪ.ˈsæn.dri]

Noun

1. The hatred of, or pathological aversion to men.

Synonyms

• misandrism

Antonyms

• philandry

Derived terms

• misandric
• misandrist

Usage notes

Comparable to misogyny, the hatred of women. A related concept is androphobia, the fear of men, but not necessarily hatred of them. Sometimes confused with misanthropy, the hatred of humanity.

The opposite of misandry is philandry, the love of men.

Misandry (IPA [mɪ.ˈsæn.dri]) is the hatred of men or boys, as opposed to misogyny, the hatred of women; or misanthropy, hatred of the human species. Misandry comes from misos (Greek μῖσος, "hatred") + andr-ia (Greek anér-andros, "man"). Those holding misandric beliefs can be of either sex.

Misandry in literature

Misandry in ancient Greek literature

Classics professor Froma Zeitlin of Princeton University discussed misandry in her article titled "Patterns of Gender in Aeschylean Drama: Seven against Thebes and the Danaid Trilogy."

Contemporary literary criticism

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 the introduction to The Great Comic Book Heroes, Jules Feiffer writes that this is Superman's joke on the rest of us. Clark is Superman's vision of what other men are really like. We are scared, incompetent, and powerless, particularly around women. Though Feiffer took the joke good-naturedly, his misandry embodied the Clark and his misogyny in his wish that Lois be enamored of Clark (much like Oberon takes out hostility toward Titania by having her fall in love with an ass in Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream).

Misandry in theoretical discourse

Kate Millet (1970) sees a charge of misandry against girls in Sigmund Freud's theory of female sexual development. Freud (1908) proposes a stage of development he calls penis envy. Millet proposes a much broader social envy, that involves the penis only by association. "Confronted with so much concrete evidence of the male's superior status, sensing on all sides the depreciation in which they are held, girls envy not the penis, but only what the penis gives one social pretensions to." Millet's work is usually cited as the basis of modern theory of misogyny (and is implicit in the quote provided). Julie Thompson (2002), defending Millet's theory, provides a list of near synonymous phrases used in criticisms, which include "penis envy" and "overt misandry". If Millet and the writers Thompson alludes to are correct, Freud's theory of penis envy would be the first modern theoretical treatment of a form of misandry.

Millet's theory of misogyny interprets a range of historical references to women in a similar fashion. She reads them as perceiving women to be fundamentally enimical to men (evil, malicious and dirty), and charges the authors with misogyny. Again, if Millet is correct, theories of misandry are ancient and pervasive (and constitute evidence of misogyny equally ancient and pervasive).

SCUM Manifesto

Valerie Solanas, the radical feminist who shot Andy Warhol in 1968, provides a famous example of misandry in her self-published SCUM Manifesto. Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto, which she wrote in 1967, was one of the earliest, wittiest, and most eccentric expressions of second-wave feminism. 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.Alice Echols, University of Southern California, Department of Gender Studies|

Judith Levine on misandry

In My Enemy, My Love (1992), Levine classifies these stereotypes of men as targets of women's misandry within intimate relationships:

• Infants: the Mama's Boy, the Babbler, the Bumbler and the Invalid
• Betrayers: the Seducer, the Slave, the Abandoner and the Abductor
• Beasts: the Brute, the Pet, the Pervert, the Prick and the Killer

Conservative discourse on misandry

Christina Hoff Sommers, a conservative commentator, argues that feminism has a 'corrosive paradox' and that no group of women can wage war on men without at the same time denigrating the women who respect those men."

Wendy McElroy, a Fox News commentator, argues that some feminists "have redefined the view of the movement of the opposite sex" as "a hot anger toward men seems to have turned into a cold hatred." She argues that men as a class are considered irreformable, all men are considered rapists, and marriage, rape and prostitution are seen as the same. She says "a new ideology has come to the forefront... radical or gender, feminism", one that has "joined hands with [the] political correctness movement that condemns the panorama of western civilization as sexist and racist: the product of 'dead white males.'" Conservative pundit Charlotte Hays argues "that the anti-male philosophy of radical feminism has filtered into the culture at large — is incontestable; indeed, this attitude has become so pervasive that we hardly notice it any longer."

Analogies to other forms of bigotry

Masculinist writer and frequent speaker at the Cato Institute Warren Farrell compares dehumanizing stereotyping of men to dehumanization of the Vietnamese as "gooks."

Religious Studies professors, Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young make similar comparisons in their ambitious three-book series Beyond The Fall Of Man, which treats misandry as a form of prejudice and discrimination that has become institutionalized in North American society, causing real harm to men. Nathanson and Young credit "ideological feminism" for imposing misandry on culture. Their book Spreading Misandry (2001) analyzes "pop cultural artifacts and productions from the 1990s" from movies to greeting cards for what they consider contains pervasive messages of hatred toward men. Legalizing Misandry (2005) the second in the series, gives similar attention to laws in North America.

See also

• Antifeminism
• Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them!
• Equalism
• Female chauvinism
• Men's movement

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Hoff Summers, Christina, Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women, 1994.
• Farrell, Warren. The Myth of Male Power. Berkley Trade, 2001. ISBN 0-425-18144-8
• Schwartz, Howard. The Revolt of the Primitive: An Inquiry into the Roots of Political Correctness. Revised Edition. Transaction Publishers, 2003. ISBN 0765805375
• Levine, Judith. My Enemy, my Love: Man-hating and ambivalence in women's lives. 1992.

External links

• article critical of the use of the term
• antimisandry.com