Misandry is hatred of, contempt for, and ingrained prejudice against, men. As a term, it has risen in prominence as a slam-dunk riposte to the term misogyny. These days, every time someone talks about misogyny, they are usually accused of being a misandrist, especially if they are female.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t think you are one, if it’s a simple case of mistaken identity. The first time it happened to me, I didn’t even know what it meant — I had to look it up. In those days, misogyny was mainstream, misandry was very niche. Now it’s everywhere just about anyone can be called a misandrist, it’s not special anymore.
Those who make it their business to seek out misandry have done a sterling job of “finding” it just about everywhere, and, by doing so, popularising and formalising the concept. “Misandry!” goes the cry every time concerns are raised about, say, domestic violence, parliamentary representation, pay-gaps — all those man-hating classics.
However, while misandry exists (because everything exists), it will always be small fry compared to misogyny. It will never make it into the big leagues. It’s not just that misandry hasn’t got the numbers, it also hasn’t got the rage.
Male rage takes many forms, and one is misogyny. It’s not the same as anger from either gender, which comes and goes.
Male rage seems to be as cold and calculated as it is horribly permanent. While of course women get angry with men, I’ve never known a woman to carry that chilling aura of compressed perma-rage against the opposite sex that hangs around certain men. The relentlessly churning core of hostility, condescension, entitlement and resentment.
Only recently a study from the University of Florida said that men are far more likely to secretly want their wives or girlfriends to fail, to be less successful than they are, because it boosts their own sense of self-worth.
It said that men were more likely to feel threatened when their partner succeeded, preferring them to fail, and this remained true in more equal societies such as Holland. By contrast, however well, or otherwise, their partner is doing had no effect on a woman’s self-esteem.
Well, this feels new. The male competitive streak was always presumed to be about the workplace. Now it seems that “dog eat dog” has not only gone inter-gender, it has invaded personal relationships.
What does this mean when increasing numbers of women are the main, if not sole breadwinners? Could it be affecting those figures of recession-related domestic violence women bearing the brunt of male frustration, when ironically women are often cited as the worst affected by the recession? Is this going to be another sign of these hard times; the rise of the threatened perma-enraged male?
Is it even possible to debate this, without the predictable zombie-drone of “misandry”? After all, here is a study about male rage, swirling around women, everywhere, even in their personal lives. How else would you describe these men needing women to fail to make themselves feel better, while curiously women (supposedly such big man-haters) need no such thing?
See what I mean about “small fry” — misogyny outguns misandry every time. In this one way, in terms of entrenched cold rage, women are unequal. Pathetically, we can’t even muster up enough bile to resent our partners’ success. Those who cling to “misandry” as if it were the sex war’s holy grail are going to have to face it — women just aren’t up to the task of hating men as much, as imaginatively and as permanently as some of them hate us.
Guardian News & Media Ltd
