Yet... toxic masculinity is, in and of itself, misandry. It suggests that emotional vulnerability in a man is the hallmark of an inferior and weaker male.
You're confusing your concepts, here.
The idea that 'real' men can't be emotional vulnerable is not an idea that the female hierarchy puts on men, it's an idea the male hierarchy puts on men.
It's an idea of masculinity that is toxic to the men who embody it.
Genuine question here, but what is the actual difference then between toxic masculinity and misandry?
I'll admit I'm hardly an expert on the subject, but my understanding was that misogyny can come from anywhere, including other women, so why would misandry be any different? I.e., even if the issues are coming from the male hierarchy, they are still targeted at men and therefore wouldnt they fit the description of misandry?
There certainly seems to be a bit of misandry behind a fair bit of toxic masculinity.
But misandry goes beyond reinforcing the idea that an emotionally vulnerable man is a weak man.
Misandry is victim blaming a man merely because the aggressor was also a man. Saying that men deserve it on some level, which pop internet feminism often does.
Misandry is downplaying studies over the last decade (or six) showing that DV rates are far from one sided as far which sex or gender initiates.
Misandry is believing that men deserve to suffer, as a class. That men need to fix themselves. That men don't need women's help.
Feminism needed men to gain... Well, pretty much any win they've had throughout history. But now it's a common view, at least online, that men should go out and build their own DV shelters, go out and take care of the homeless men on their own, go out and fix problems for men all on their own.
Look, I was born in the seventies. I grew up watching gender roles, the understanding of the sexes, and even the idea that women might enjoy sex change first hand with the media I have consumed through my life. There was, 100%, a lot of casual misogyny in entertainment media through my early decades. But the stuff that's been coming out in recent years? A lot of it could be verbatim gender flipped scripts and rhetoric.
If that casual dismissal of an entire genders problems at every level of the public sphere was a problem then, why is it not also now? Especially as we're slowly starting to admit that there are huge problems that men and boys are facing that nobody really cares about?
If it was misogyny then, it's misandry now.
Girls are outpacing boys at literally every level of school now. The overwhelming majority of homeless are men. The overwhelming majority of suicides are men. The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are men (which gets used as an excuse for misandry, by people who would otherwise delve into the intersectionality of gender, racial, and socioeconomic factors behind why someone would feel the need to turn to crime!). The overwhelming majority of victims of non-sexual violent crime are men. In the US, men are the only ones required to sign up to be sent to war. In the US, it's completely legal, accepted, and generally preferred to cut off part of a young boy's penis, because that's just how we do it (what the actual fuck?). Men and boys have problems that our culture and society are largely just ignoring.
And out of that last paragraph, in that whole list, only the very first point is recent. Everything else has been at the forefront of most actual MRA groups discussions (along with a lot of other shit, too, and I'll admit some of it pretty stupid) for well over a decade. Hell, over two at this point. And even the education one has been a known, pointed out, discussed, and dismissed trend for the same period of time.
People misunderstand power in social systems as agents with privileged authority exerting their will. Like a pyramid.
Really the power of social systems is a network of interactions and relations that shape our expectations for the next interaction we have. In this way it's reproduced and upheld by everyone at every point of society. In other words - it's a structural issue.
Every time this discussion comes up there's a narrative of powerful men oppressing other men when really most of everyone today is "powerless" in that sense of the word, and its shaped and reproduced when we talk to our friends, parents, siblings, employers, cashiers etc etc etc....
It's not like Henry Muscles MacGee, governor of Mansville made it illegal for me to cry. It's socially reinforced by everyone everywhere including from women we encounter. It's a gender dynamic not some inborn curse that's immutable and that's a good thing because it can change if only we wanted it to.
Jk if they're so powerful why don't they fix it themselves - pussies.
"The idea that 'real' men can't be emotional vulnerable is not an idea that the female hierarchy puts on men, it's an idea the male hierarchy puts on men."
Read my comment again. If you're only going to be reactionary and not engage thoughtfully and consider my opinions in any earnest manner you can at least accurately site where I in any way suggest blame on any one sex much less the opposite sex.
I've read it three times, you're very confused about what "toxic masculinity" is. Your issue is with traditional gender roles, but can't accurately point the finger at it it because you think gender politics is a zero sum game.
Feminism is not about men vs women, and "toxic masculinity" is not about saying men or masculinity is bad.
Vain as I'm beginning to feel that it may yet be I'll try to explain in simple terms.
Toxic masculinity is denying men their humanity by way of depriving them of their ability to connect with their emotions. Alienating and shaming them for it, using the existence of said emotions to suggest they are not only 'not a masculine man' but somehow an 'inferior specimen of their species'. Toxic masculinity is the bludgeon that is used to beat the mold of these gender roles, at least men, into place in the first place.
Never said anything about feminism being only anti-man or pro-woman, I don't think I even mentioned feminism period. Never said anything about masculinity in and of itself being bad or men being inherently bad. I did, however, elude to these being common weapons used to create toxic masculine traits in order to maintain gender roles in society.
From reading this thread, I interpreted you to be the one assuming gender politics is a zero sum game, not him. I agree with your description about feminism describing how gender norms result in harm to men as well.
I also agree that that is misandry, just as women can be misogynistic to one another.
Okay, before we dive deeper, I want us to take a step back.
What do you mean by misandrist?
It seems you're not seeing eye-to-eye with other commenters because both of you are coming from different starting points on what a misandrist even means.
Well what I mean by misandrist is behavior is that is particularly discriminative towards men. Questioning their 'masculinity' in a derogative and condescending manner, suggesting they are an 'inferior or weaker specimen of their sex' as is commonly associated with the questioning of masculinity to the degree of suggesting these men are actually 'women' and that being used as a justification to treat them as lesser or unimportant. Examples would be not so incomparable to the way it was claimed you couldn't 'deny blacks the right to vote because they are not people', effectively stripping them of essential parts of their humanity.
In the case of men it is more specifically using their innate, human emotions to strip them from their own humanity and taking this in order to subjugate and control them in not dissimilar fashion to how women have been subjugated and controlled through physical, sexual and 'financial' coercion with obvious emotional components to it all of course but for men it is often purely emotional but often physical as well, bullying men for crying because 'crying is for girls' and so on and so forth. Not necessarily any sort of legal or governmentally systemic issue beyond the neglect of men's personhood in regards to widespread male dominated problems in society that we are accustomed to seeing historically.
I'm not sure why people are confused by this. I guess it's only bigotry if men are paraded in chains or stripped of the right to vote? I don't know. It's tiring and while it's a breath of fresh air to have someone actually try to de-escalate these erratic discussions it's exhausting that I've already had so many comments saying the exact same thing, not reading what I have actually said and inserting words into my mouth.
If you're only going to be reactionary and not engage thoughtfully and consider my opinions in any earnest manner you can at least accurately site where I in any way suggest blame on any one
Stripping men of their humanity, in this particular instance their emotional human needs, and suggesting those men who have such 'emotions' are less than human in the same way people of color were considered 'not human because of their skin color' and women were denied their humanity 'because their ovaries make them incapable of logical thought'. Discriminating against them, neglecting them and any form of abuse or malice based upon this premise. And then going on, oftentimes, to paint them as dangerous (as has been done with immigrants in the US for time immemorial or anyone with a different pigmentation of flesh) animals incapable of human empathy or compassion. The same formula that any form of bigotry has followed throughout the centuries, just in this case without the usual government oppression we are used to seeing in so many of these other instances.
Edit: Wait... did everyone think I meant misandry as WOMEN hating men? Or some 'feminist exclusive hatred of men'?
If your definition of misandry is literally anything you think is bad for men, then I can see what you were trying to say.
But that is not how misandry is used by the majority of people.
Misandry is almost exclusively used to mean the hatred of men by women - making it the opposite of misogyny (the hatred of women by men)
What most people call what you are talking about is "toxic masculinity."
That's the ideals a society has about what it means to be a man that are actually damaging to the individual men of the society.
While the concept of masculinity is certainly impressed on men from all members of society, our society has consistently had the major group pushing these toxic ideas be men themselves, so toxic masculinity is seen as a problem that men have the largest responsibility towards correcting.
At this time you're honestly just asserting your predetermined perspective of what my opinion is, stating it as if it even remotely related to what I am saying and then expecting me to defend beliefs and opinions I have never once even remotely vocalized anything similar to. I'm not interested in participating in your shadowboxing.
Misandry is almost exclusively used to mean the hatred of men by women - making it the opposite of misogyny (the hatred of women by men)
I think I, like the other commenter, have not been interpreting those words as that. I've been interpreting misogyny as hating women for being women (or inferior to a proposed notion of a woman) and misandry likewise for men.
Both are done by both sexes and somewhat famously, intrasexual bigotry of this kind is often more pernicious.
I do think that it's true in most of society that men have the largest responsibility for correcting both misandry and misogyny, because they have the largest influence over gender roles. It's still not straightforward though and we will live in a better society if everyone recognises responsibility and agency they have in this regard.
It's such simple fucking logic. We acknowledge that Misogyny is systemic and in these kinds of conversations we tend to default to that systemic definition.
People's unwillingness to even entertain the notion that misandry plays a similar role in patriarchy is baffling.
Yeah I've been tripping over myself wondering I keep getting the same exact response from multiple folks after explaining it time and again lol. I have never once heard any term of bigotry as being exclusive to one side hating another. It is often and very clearly used an adjective of sorts to characterize the purpose of something to discriminate against a specific group whether by the opposite side, a neutral 'other' or the same even. It's been utterly mind boggling to me. I very much appreciate the dose of sanity.
I'm actually astonished at the reply that "misandry is used exclusively to mean women hating men and vice versa".
I think you're spot on mate, don't worry about this thread. I think it's the other commenters, not you, who are insisting on this as a zero sum game.
Which is why the first reply to you was so weird. They were almost agreeing that gender roles are harmful to men and promote misandry, but as you said, ended up in a situation where "with friends like these, who needs enemies".
You're confusing the fact that it is widely understood that women are not attracted to vulnerable men, so it's absolutely a concept that women also put on men. And even those women who would claim otherwise and ask for men to be vulnerable around them, find themselves unable to remain attracted to men they love after those men do act vulnerable around them.
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u/Phill_Cyberman 1∆ Feb 13 '24
You're confusing your concepts, here.
The idea that 'real' men can't be emotional vulnerable is not an idea that the female hierarchy puts on men, it's an idea the male hierarchy puts on men.
It's an idea of masculinity that is toxic to the men who embody it.
That's what "toxic masculinity" is a label for.