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TechnoratiMisandry is the message
A Canadian columnist lifts the lid on the last respectable form of cultural bias.
The family on the sofa is divided, but not equally. On one side a sullen, rather menacing father stares defiantly at the camera; on the other, a waifish, stressed-looking mother is shielding anxious children. The message of the advertisement is one we have heard or seen innumerable times in the media: domestic violence is only perpetrated by men, who are by nature disposed to controlling behaviours, while women and children (an inseparable unit) are always innocent victims. I call it misandry, discrimination against men, but although the Ontario Human Rights Code bars “discrimination via signs or symbols,” I doubt that any charges of discrimination will be laid against the Canadian Women’s Foundation, which has been carpet-bombing the media with this ad. Its appearance in newspapers, bank statements and on the sides of buses is aimed at promoting awareness of domestic violence:
| Generally speaking, men are portrayed as objects of scorn, objects of wrath or disparecidos -- that is to say, they are often not treated at all. |
The image represents a half-truth and therefore a lie. The truth, established by all credible, peer-reviewed research, including our official number cruncher StatsCan, is that unprovoked intimate-partner violence is about equally split between men and women. Imagine another picture based on a half-truth: a woman on one side of the sofa, a man protecting children or even his aged mother on the other -- because women abuse the elderly and their children more frequently than men do. You never will see such an ad. Media bias against men is as notable for what you don’t see and hear as for what you do.
(And speaking of what you don’t see or hear, when was the last time you saw a public service ad around the alarmingly elevated statistics for male suicides (up 81 per cent), especially those involved in acrimonious custody disputes? We’re inundated with breast cancer ads; when do we see ads about prostate cancer? And if 94 per cent of work-related deaths happened to women rather than to men, I think more of us would be familiar with that shocking statistic.)
Except for radio talk shows, where real people with no ideological axe to grind control the agenda, misandry is ubiquitous in the media – and by media I mean all kinds: advertisements, sitcoms, films, political ads, TV talk shows, social service agency websites and billboards, and of course the punditocracy.
But it flies beneath most people’s radar, which is another way of saying that misandry is such an acceptable form of cultural bias – the last respectable form of cultural bias – that people are unaware of it when they hear it, read it, or see it.
White, heterosexual men
We live in an age in which the media are scrupulously rigorous in self-censoring when it comes to the terrible social crime of offending women, gays, people of colour and natives. Only one identifiable group – white heterosexual men (if they’re Christian, so much the better) – is considered fair game for overt collective prejudice.
Identifying active misandry is easy. One has only to imagine the same words, image or falsehood or failure to report attached to any other identifiable group, and the imbalance becomes clear.
Here for example, is mainstream writer Nora Ephron, ironically a revered romantic comedy writer (she scripted When Harry met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle), in a recent post on the Huffington Post blog regarding the American political primaries:
“This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don’t mean people, I mean white men…the outcome of the general election will depend on whether enough of them vote for McCain. A lot of them will: white men cannot be relied on, as all of us know who have spent a lifetime dating them…” It goes on in this vein.
Her claim is absurd. Blacks and blue-collar white women vote as bloc-ishly as white men, so why the anger at white men? It’s unseemly, and yet it went completely unremarked. Apply the same words to black men or women and watch the sparks fly. Of course no mainstream writer would ever say these things of blacks or women. They know better.
As a print journalist, my particular interest is my own peer group, many of whom echo Ephron’s gratuitous contempt for men. While most male writers take up journalism because they are news or political junkies, a good many women journalists have entered the field specifically as women with a feminist axe to grind.
That’s not quite the same as spreading a conservative or liberal or libertarian message, where you attack a line of thinking, not actual people. Urging feminism on readers and viewers is tantamount to spreading misandry, for feminism as it is ideologically conceived and played out in society today evokes zero-sum thinking and the conspiracy-theory temptation. When women succeed, it is because they are superior; when they fail, it is because they have been thwarted by men.
Male writers who try to defend men from anti-male bias or who criticize feminist ideology find it a very impolitic career move if they are not already well established. I personally know two excellent male writers, probably Canada’s most under-utilized researchers, who can’t get a media foothold because they critique feminism.
Male desaparecidos
Once you decide to take conscious notice of the problem, media bias in a myriad of forms leaps out at you. Positive images of women are ubiquitous; positive images of manly men are uncommon. Generally speaking, men are portrayed as objects of scorn, objects of wrath or desaparecidos -- that is to say, they are often not treated at all.
The cumulative message is that if men try hard to meet criteria established by women as lovers, husbands and fathers, they can hope to achieve status as contributors to women’s and children’s happiness, though on the whole they are unnecessary to it.
But all too often they are portrayed as active agents of women’s and children’s unhappiness. Women who rid themselves of these bad eggs are portrayed as heroic. Promiscuous women in TV sitcoms like Sex and the City present as warm, loyal and liberated. The promiscuous men in these stories are depicted as shallow, untrustworthy and opportunistic.
When men are characterized as heroic fathers in films, it is usually because the woman has fled the scene or died, a paradigm that debuted with the 1979 film, Kramer vs Kramer. Men are only allowed to present as good parents when they are desperately trying to fill the shoes of a mother. It is a role they must learn. In movies with couples, it is rare for the father’s parenting skills to outshine the mother’s, whose commitment and skills are presented as inherent.
The past few years have seen a spate of “baby” movies: Juno, Waitress, Knocked Up, Baby Mama, Then She Found Me. All have in common career women challenged by fertility issues or inconvenient pregnancies they choose not to terminate. In every case the elective mother may have foibles, but she is on the whole mature, smart and responsible.
The men are undesirable parent material, lumps of animated clay to be tossed away, or spun and shaped by a woman potter into a domestically useful artefact. These potential or accidental fathers range from the merely wimpy, to infantile, to explicitly abusive. None of the films express reservations about a child’s future with no father.
Anger and violence
The most disturbing aspects of media misandry revolve around the issues of anger and violence. Domestic violence is -- apart from custody -- the hottest of the hot button issues for demonisers and myth busters alike.
The message that male anger is a problem, while female anger isn’t, ends in overt publicity campaigns like the divided-family ad I mentioned at the outset. But it begins in a common stereotype, pervasive in the media, of female anger as cute, inconsequential and victimless.
For example, a current TV ad promoting a stop-smoking aid features a flight attendant in the throes of nicotine withdrawal. A series of vignettes shows her screaming at male passengers for no reason, snarling and sobbing over the public address system and in general acting hysterically and irrationally.
The choice of setting -- an airplane -- is no accident. On airplanes and in airports in general, "civilians" are at the mercy of officials and airline personnel, who wield absolute power over passengers. There is no recourse for unfair treatment. The male passengers subjected to her tirades shrink away in bewildered acquiescence. Their “wussy” reaction is played for humour, but in fact their fear of her is rational. There is nothing funny about being arbitrarily thrown off an airplane.
But far from critiquing this woman's egregious misuse of her power, the ad makes light of it. In the end, once the nicotine remedy begins to work, she is sheepishly laughing at herself.
One cannot possibly imagine an ad in which a male flight attendant harangues and menaces a female passenger. Indeed, that would be considered a form of sexual assault under today's feminist- inspired governmental guidelines.
The message here is that when women humiliate and threaten men as a side effect of personal "issues", men can just suck it up, since their right to respectful treatment is always subject to women's discretion and situational needs.
Casually misandric ads like this can be found at one end of the spectrum. The other end is more socially and culturally consequential.
With the media’s facilitation, an entire industry has been built on the Montreal Massacre, a tragedy – unlike male gendercides, which frequently occur in war – that has no historical precedent or sequel. The weeks before every December 6th anniversary produce a media orgy around domestic violence against women, with Marc Lepine, who was a solitary sociopath, touted as a mere exaggeration of typical male drives.
Conversely the media treatment of Remembrance Day, the one day a year feminists tacitly lay off men, no longer celebrates the specifically manly trait of physical courage. If you’ll notice, Remembrance Day now is played out in gender-neutral programming, with combat/non-combat lines blurred to equalize the contributions of men and women.
Gays excused
While the plight of abused heterosexual men is ignored in the media, whatever afflicts gay men is instantly picked up on. When StatsCan released figures last month indicating intimate-partner violence was disproportionately high amongst gay and lesbian couples, the Globe and Mail immediately commissioned a feature article – “A Skeleton that’s Still in the Closet”.
The violence scenarios described in the selected gay-couple examples are exactly the same as those in straight couples, reinforcing objective research which finds that partner violence is gender-neutral, a function of individual pathology. Yet, unlike hetero male violence, for which no explanation other than an inherent urge to control women is ever offered, this article falls over itself finding reasons to excuse violent behaviour by gays.
In their treatment of men, a lazy perpetuation of falsehoods, an incurious acceptance of bogus studies and statistics, and an eager willingness to recycle superannuated stereotypes constitute the present media template.
I began with mention of the Ontario Human Rights Code. I will end with it as the central motif of a seemingly trivial but memorable example of misandry that was brought to my attention by an extremely vigilant reader.
Ninety-nine per cent of funded social services in Canada, even those advertising “family services”, provide counseling and other forms of help only to women victims of domestic violence. Here is how the Crouch Neighbourhood Resource Centre in London, Ontario provided itself with the moral high ground for refusing funded psychiatric help to men in crisis:
From their website last Fall: We at Crouch want to ensure that all our programming [is] accessible to all. The Ontario Human Rights Code states in section i: Every person has a right to equal treatment with respect to services, goods and facilities without discrimination because of race, age, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sexual orientation, age, record of offences, marital status, same-sex partnership, family status or disability.
Sounds official, eh? But in the actual Ontario Human Rights Code, between the words creed and sexual orientation is the word sex. Its omission was no accident. To accommodate an ideological bias, this website deliberately falsified the Ontario Human Rights Code.
The excision of those three letters was, for me, in its Orwellian implications, the most chilling of all examples of media misandry.
Barbara Kay writes for the National Post, a leading Canadian daily.
Sarah Ruddle: In reading your misleading comments above and remembering the wrangle began when your organization misquoted The Ontario Human Rights code, this attempt at a quote might interest you - “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive”
There is no justification for the continued abuse of men and children and there is no justification for the continued use of deceit and deception to further the financial aspirations of womens groups.
Thank you Barbara for fignting for true equality. I am from Ontario, Canada’s male-bashing capital.
I am not white and I am equally being abused by family law system. Men do not have he same rights that women do. They do not have the same status in front of the courts that women do. They constantly are accused and arrested with no proof of the violence. This is shame on the face of those who claim human rights. Once they accused by the wife, they are being regarded as criminals. The false arrests which end up being dropped before trial are counted as the violence agaisnt women by shelter industry which is managed by gange of otherwise jobless people.
However I don’t beleive male bashing is limited to white males. It is targetting all males of all colors and ethnics
Barabara Kay: Wow...you hit the nail on the head. Your article captures the feelings expressed by over 95% of normal healthy men. The other 5% I would say are probably on the pay-roll of Sarah Ruddles organization or the likes of it.
Sarah Ruddle: The views and opinions of your organization concern me a great deal. I recall in the 2nd world war, all societal problems were attributed to Jews in Germany. Similarly, your organization seems to attribute all societal problems to Men. I am very concerned that if you are not stopped, elements within your organization will exterminate all men. “NEVER AGAIN” is a motto I live for. I shall do everything in my power to correct your mis-representation - peacefully.
>>Men, particularly white men are clearly fair game without limitations, it seems. Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that those who create and enforce policy; laws against males are white male in high places.
>>Go figure.
I like easy questions. The sort of men who become high ranking officials and legislators are generally ego driven, childish individuals. People like Bill Clinton, womanizer. These dudes, as badly as they treat women, actually believe they are better than most men. So, they really feel they are saving women from other men when they pass laws that destroy good men.
I am with jungletrek, except I am in Mexico. Alas, not all the time, but most of it. I married my Mexican wife in 1975, after we retired we got this place in the Third World part of Mexico.
In a middle European nation, in the first half of the 20th Century, a group of people was demonized based on their ancestry, just as men in the Anglosphere are being demonized based on their gender.
The smarter ones bailed out. They lived. Those who thought they could tough it out died by the millions.
I tell other men that even the most primitive, ignorant African slaves knew to go to Canada if they could. And, I ask them what is their problem that they are still in the Anglosphere?
When I must come back to the States, I feel like a Viet Nam soldier who was dropped off in the bush by chopper, and told they’d be back in two weeks for a pick-up. The difference is the soldier got a lot of ammo and grenades and claymores, and if someone menaced him, he could fight back. I am not allowed to do that.
It is pretty bad when a person lets out a sigh of relief when he crosses the border into Mexico, especially with the state of war along the border thanks to the US war on drugs. A war which makes the VN war look successful.
It is also pretty bad when a person is less afraid of Mexican police than the US police. The Mexican cops only want $20. The US cops are trying to steal your car.
The “defence” put forward by the poster from the Canadian Women’s Foundation is somewhat stale and tired. This idea that somehow “women get it worse” has been debunked more times than I can remember. Firstly consider the wording; how many men, even if attacked by another man, would describe themselves as “beaten”? Other common attempts to frame the debate include such questions or results regarding which gender was most “frightened”, again something few conventionally raised males are likely to admit to even in the face of imminent death.
Shame is a the standard tactic of such feminist stragedies, from “be a real man” (translation: quit complaining, serf) to twisting statistics by essentially asking “Are you a wimp?” They then use men’s very reluctance to complain, admit being beaten and to avoid getting a woman into trouble, by crowing about how vastly more women than men REPORT abuse, describe themselves as “battered” or attempt to prosecute, be it in a hospital, police station or wherever.
As Farrell once put it “Studies are studied when studies are funded. If the topic is gender the funding is feminist”. Those who have studied without the feminist blinkers and revealed the kind of stuff mentioned in this article have literally received death threats, not to mention killed careers.
Tell me, has anyone looked at the stats from the Men’s Foundation of Canada?
Oh yeah…
Sarah Ruddle: Nobody here said violence against women was not a serious matter. Why are you trying to change the subject? How does evidence of the persecution of men somehow put women at risk?
Here are some statistics from the report you mention (StatsCan 2004 General Social Survey on Victimization) as well as some others:
Percentage of domestic abuse shelters that refuse to admit men: 90
Annual operating costs for women’s shelters in Canada (2006): $317 million
Annual operating costs for men’s shelters in Canada (2006): there are none
Number of lone-parent families in Canada: 1,414,060(2006 Census)
Number of children in Canada: 5 million
Average number of children per Canadian family: 1
Ratio of Canadian children who live without their father: 1 in 5 (Canadian Press-Harris-Decima survey 2007)
Number of Canadian children who live without their father: one million
Number of Canadian fathers who live without their children: one million
Number of provinces and territories that have agencies dedicated to enforcing court support orders: 13
Number of provincial and territorial governments that have agencies dedicated to enforcing custody and access court orders: 0
Leading cause of non injury-related death among Ontario men aged 35 to 64: suicide (Canadian Institute for Health Information 2001)
The Canadian Women’s Foundation believes that violence against anyone is unacceptable, whether it’s perpetrated against a male or a female, and we applaud other campaigns that focus on ending violence in its other forms.
Shelter from the Storm is not an anti-male campaign, nor does it intend to convey anti-male sentiment through its creative. As a women’s organization our mandate is to focus on violence against women which is a critical issue in Canada.
What you fail to mention in your StatsCan reference to prevalence (7% of women vs. 6% of men), is that (quoted from the same report):
“women are more frequently subjected to severe forms of violence from men than men are from women: twice as many women than men were beaten by their partners, and four times as many were choked. Moreover, 16% of women who were victimized by a spouse were sexually assaulted, and twice as many female as male victims of spousal assault reported chronic, ongoing assaults. This finding suggests that despite similar prevalence rates reported by women and men, assaults on women are more serious. One shortcoming of the data is that they do not indicate the degree of force used in each of these acts. However, the impact of spousal assault, in terms of injury and other consequences, is more severe for women.”
Further, the same study endorses a gender-specific approach to addressing violence:
”A generic approach to ending violence against all Canadians risks failing to address the different gender-specific experiences and support needs of victims of violence… While men are more likely to be injured by strangers in a public or social venue, women are in greater danger of experiencing violence from intimate partners in their own homes. Women are also at greater risk of sexual violence.
I urge readers to look beyond your bias and read the full report for themselves: http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/85-570-XIE/85-570-XIE2006001.pdf.
Sarah Ruddle, Canadian Women’s Foundation
Karol,
I too was in front of Judge Backhouse, Supreme Court of Ontario and rest assured the Best Interest of the Child is of no concern to her.
Just look at her judgements, she is doing her activist part to shape the dysfunction of family law. You will not find one judgement in a father’s favour. No bias though, its just that during her time on the bench there has never been a father worthy of a judgement????
Barbara, a wonderful article and unfortunate that it is not front page news, as it should be. It’s a paper I would purchase immediately!
I guess the front page news is reserved for the results of a disfunctional system, instead of the root causes?
This ideology, when conceived in half truths only ends up negatively impacting the people it professes to be helping and society as a whole.
On the bright side, it ‘s your tax dollars that are paying for it. So, every time you look at your paycheck, remember that it supports this agenda.
Next election, if there isn’t a candidate that is willing to publicly support the end of such things, get involved politically yourself to make that change!!
Thanks again Barbara,
Glenn
Barbara, Thank you, thank you, thank you for this article. The only way the situation will change is if more people speak up about it, in the media, on the net, and, especially, to politicians seeking your vote.
GREAT JOB!
Misandry is normal, acceptable and even funny in Canada.
There are too many abused men who know what it is like to be victimized by the Family Law system, the Police and Children’s Aid Societies in Canada.
Thank You Barbara for giving a voice to male victims of abuse and male victims of Canadian injustice. To everyone else, we are just a joke.
Thank-you Barbara!
The media and politicians need to start recognizing that they are indeed part of the problem, to do some independent investigation, and act on the realities of this world, not the concocted version we are led to believe.
Ian Wilson said…
“Barbara,Why is it that you and I, and most of the people making comments here, have no trouble seeing the pervasive misandry that surrounds them, yet the bulk of society is completely blind to this phenomenon?”
Good question. To understand the roots of this pervasive self-delusion, take a look at Canada’s theme for International Women’s Day 2008, as presented on the federal government’s Status of Women website:
“Strong Women, Strong World - This theme draws in part from one of the fundamental beliefs underlying the modern women’s movement, that ‘a woman’s place in society marks the level of civilization of that society.’”
The fundamentalist ideology here is very explicit: women, and women alone, are the measure of civilization. Not A measure, but THE measure. Why not, “a man’s place in society marks the level of civilization of that society”. Or (this one’s right out there), ”Children’s place in society marks the level of civilization of that society.” And who determined that social morality had to be gender-based in the first place? The same gender that also identified themselves as the superior group? Isn’t that rather a conflict of interest?
This not from some fringe group’s website, this is straight from our Federal Government. That explains the root of the problem. What allows it to continue is the lack of responsibility among the public agencies that are entrusted with societies health and safety. Once a society accepts the fundamentalist premise that a specific gender, race, ideology, theology, etc., is naturally morally superior to the others, you have the essential requirement for totalitarianism.
Men, particularly white men are clearly fair game without limitations, it seems. Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that those who create and enforce policy; laws against males are white male in high places.
Go figure.
Barbara Kay has to be the smartest woman in Canada. She works for a living AND reports on the institutionalized abuse of men and our children.
If only there were eight million more like her!!!
Alfred Watson
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