'Man-hating feminism'

[MisterDarsey]

There's an article about this in the Times today by Libby Purves, provoked by Lionel Shriver's portrayal of the boy in 'We need to talk about Kevin'

Just thought you'd like to know

[meditrina]

I know the Times is behind a pay wall now, so can't be linked. But can you give a flavour of what she is saying?

[quirrelquarrel]

I detest this 'branch' of feminism. And it is a branch and it should be stamped out. What are people going to think- that we're struggling against something so inherent we're constantly using up energy fighting them rather than nameless, genderless sexism, so there's no point in even trying? I am well aware that it's only a very small branch, but my gosh, it has enough hate for the rest.

The two most strident feminists I know are full of mysandric vitriol. Whenever they say something perceptive and sensible, they will invariably follow it up with something vituperative about the men they've known, or men in general, or "they are the cause of all this...oh for a man-free world!" etc.

I'll have a look at the Times today.

[msrisotto]

What is this 'branch' of feminism? I haven't seen it.

[quirrelquarrel]

Combine a good dose of mysandry with a deep rooted sense of female superiority and there you have it.
Lucky you if you really haven't seen it.

[SardineQueen]

How strange. I don't think I know any women who hate men as a group.

[SardineQueen]

I know some women who are scared of men, and so don't like them.

That's different though I think.

[SardineQueen]

Are there any websites that these man-haters use? It would be interesting to see that, and see how they compare to the websites for men who hate women (of which there are squillions!)

[msrisotto]

Where have you seen it quirrelquarrel? Maybe we move in different circles but on here and at BrumFems, I have never met women who hate men as a group.

[AnyFucker]

I have never met a woman who hates "men" as a generic group

Some individual men, yes, also some individual women

[SardineQueen]

"Combine a good dose of mysandry with a deep rooted sense of female superiority and there you have it. "

I like this phrase. My dad for eg despite thinking of himself as a modern and forward thinking chap will accuse women of having a sense of superiority if they do wild stuff like disagreeing with him MY GOD SHE@S UPPITY!

[SardineQueen]

misandry = advert with man who is too thick to know how to do the cleaning.

So his wife gets to do it all, all by herself!!!

Those female dominated misandrist advertising bastards, eh. Burn em.

[LRDTheFeministDragon]

It's not a branch of feminism then, is it?

[TrillianAstra]

I believe that 'feminist' is something that self-defines.

I have read things written by people who claim to be feminists who appear to feel that men are the enemy. Therefore they are man-hating feminists.

[TrillianAstra]

It's not what I would call feminism, but then perhaps I am confusing myself with a form of humanism and I am not feminist at all.

[SybilBeddows]

I haven't come across this either. Definitely not a 'branch'.

tbh if someone is using the word 'strident' about feminists I wonder where they are coming from. It is one of those words that people insist isn't sexist because you could use it about men. It's just that somehow people very rarely do, it is mostly reserved for uppity women

[Beachcomber]

Uppity is a bloody great word isn't it? It just reeks of women who don't know their place type sexism.

Although I'm not often convinced by the notion of reclaiming words, I do think uppity has been successfully 'ironised' and is used with fantastic irony and don'tfuckwithmeism by feminists.

[SybilBeddows]

IME the people who complain about manhating feminists are the same people as the ones who think Andrea Dworkin said all men were rapists.

[MrIC]

It is a popular misconception of feminism though, probably a myth perpetrated and augmented by sensationalist reporting (by men, I imagine). But it's also very pervasive - I've got a couple of female students who consistently come out with extremely pro-feminist statements, but then when we talk about feminism their reaction is very "oh no, it's not for me - I actually like men." We're talking about highly educated, proficient-in-3 languages, assertive women here, yet they've still somehow appropriated this misconception about feminism.

[MitchiestInge]

would it actually be completely unreasonable to nurture a little hatred of men-in-general-with-a-few-exceptions though, given that most horrible things in the world are usually their fault?

[Straight2Extremes]

I don't know a good test is to see if it would be acceptable in reverse. Also the majority of men don't do horrible things.

[SpringchickenGoldBrass]

I have encountered this viewpoint - sometimes known as separatist feminism - a school of thought which argues that men are irredeemable raping, killing, world-hating machines and women are nurturing lifegivers and therefore women should have nothing to do with men, they are hopeless and eeevil. Etc. It's the flat-earth, tinfoil hat variation of feminism, but suggesting that this is what all or even most feminists are like is the same as sugesting that every Muslim secretly yearns to be a suicide bomber ie it's judging a wide-ranging lot of opinions which have one thing that links them (in feminisms's case the idea that women are human beings enttitled to ful human rights) as a monolithic viewpoint ie call yourself a fminist and you have to buy in to the most extreme views on the scale.