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diggMisandry 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.
After two lawyers quit on me refusing to present my side of the story of failed marriage to woman suffering from serious personality disorder in my last bid for custody of my children I included in my submission to the Ontario Family Court pictures that I have pulled out of my family album showing my ex-wife in “action”. I vividly remember hardly veiled outrage of Madam Justice Nancy L. Backhouse after she saw these pictures. I saw same outrage and hostility in eyes of girl making enlargements of the photos, I saw in the eyes of court clerk flipping thru my affidavit. I saw disbelief and disgust in the eyes of policeman who allegedly investigated my reports of abuse of my children by my ex-wife.
The only woman that had a right reaction was my ex-wife’s solicitor who promptly quit on her.
Not that it helped me any as Mr. Michael Barry Miller the crook, a lawyer and professional liar promptly jumped out of the bushes took over the case.
The reason I mention it is that one of the family photos is vividly reminiscent of the one that Barbara offered. My than wife sits in a chair on right side credenza and I sit on a chair on left end of it and three of my children and my brother’s daughter sit on a floor at my feet. In the eyes of feminist world it was not a bid of seeking safety, it was an open betrayal of their cause.
How dare these kids abandon their mother and how dare this man show to feminist court pictures of four years old boy trying to break free from his abusive mother???
Barbara, thanks for your article.
we save the lives of fathers who consider suicide and taking the lives of their members of family condemned by the Canadian anti-family justice system. we find a place to live, work, educate children in a secure, peaceful environment away from Canadian jurisdiction in Europe. the infamous Roger
Barbara,
Why is it that you and I, and most of the people making comments here, have no trouble seeing the prevasive misandry that surrounds them, yet the bulk of society is completely blind to this phenomenon?
What is it that blinds them to the obvious? When I was eight years old (1963) it was obvious to me that both men and women(here in Australia) were heavily restricted by their gender roles. I thought to myself that one day people wake up to this and let people live their lives as they see fit regardless of their sex.
All I have witness in the last 45 years is a rise in feminist cult of female supremism (a belief the superiority of women over men) and a huge ground swell of open hatred against men.
When will this nightmare end?
I must applaud this article, as it’s spot on. Regarding the role of the father, forget the pendulum theory . It isn’t going to swing back because radical feminists have smashed the clock.
Policy-makers world wide need to catch up with reality because involving responsible dads has a huge impact on a child’s wellbeing and life chances. Feminists are selfish and out of step with normality.
Wow! I’m surprised you can still have so much truth printed in a single article in Canada without having it squashed by government “free speech” bureaucrats. Good thing your name is Barbara and not Bob, or this would have never passed the editor’s desk.
Better tone it down though, as so many people are sleeping comfortably rest assured by ubiquitous anti-male stereotypes that they might not like being shown how indoctrinated and easily manipulated they have been for the last decade or two.
My children were taken from me and turned over to a group of pedophiles so that some lawyers and judges in the USA had an excuse to take my life savings for themselves, all “in the best interests of the children” of course. We may very well have widespread misandry, but institutional hatred towards men and fathers is destroying our children too.
the ad is also seen by children. in many countries children are forbidden to feature in ads. it is worse in this case because children tend to blame themselves for the trouble between their parents. this ad contributes to the malfunction of many generations of families to come. thank you Barbara for showing that the bias is really money-grabbing by misandrist organisations who don’t shy from destroying the futures of our children.
Fr Seán Coyle, the term “husband” also means to nurture and care for.
I’ve travelled extensively through SE Asia but the Philipines is one area I am not so familiar with. I still find it doubtful that more is expected of women there. You say women are well-represented in the professions - but which sex digs the ditches, builds the roads and does the untold unglamorous jobs that keep society going? I often hear women complaining that they are not professionals but I rarely hear them complaining about the lack of female sewer workers, construction workers, oil workers and so on. The article pointed out that over 90% of workplace fatalities are male and that holds true in every nation I know of.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I won’t be happy until women are dying and injured in equal numbers - my point is more that society tends to view men as somehow disposable. Perhaps that notion worked best in a tooth and claw environment but a whole library of social science proves that the role of fathers is actually of equal importance to that of mothers - if you want civilisation rather than mere survival. I don’t want more women injured, I want fewer men killed and injured.
We see the same with war. Only recently I read an article where someone lamented that women soldiers were being killed in Iraq. Sure but if we cared about MEN being killed in war they’d be fewer wars, no? You hear it all the time: “15 people were killed, including women”. Not just people but VALUABLE people were killed! Shocking! Stop the press, some of the dead people weren’t just men. People that actually matter died too. Tragedy.
Regarding being parents first, spouses second, do you have children? I think most parents consider that pretty normal. To me the issue is we seem to have forgotten the importance of BOTH parents. If we truly care about children we should care about fathers.
Barbara
Thank you so much for this wonderful article!!
Misandry is rampant in our society and around the world. It is most distressing when a man finds himself shackled to a violent and emotionally abusive woman and tries to protect the kids from her… no one will believe him and “he” is routinely blamed for her abuses. Custody of the kids is given to the abuser… She can then terrorize them with no witnesses and they will have no one there to protect them… Women can do no wrong, Right? And this is what they call protecting the children…
I would really like to see that add with the angry controlling woman with a fry pan and a box of dishes on one side of the couch and the dad and children and elderly mom on the other… with him trying to protect them. it’s something that really needs to be shown !
T
Jungletrek,
Here in the Philippines, where I live, girls are generally brought up to be more responsible than boys and far more is demanded of them, in general, around the house, for example. Women are well represented in many of the professions. Indeed, there’s a shortage of male teachers now, especially at primary level.
I would demand far more of boys here than is demanded of many of them at present.
A subversive element in marriages here in the Phiippines, in my opinion, is that for perhaps the majority of women it’s more important to be a mother than to be a wife. I’ve asked married friends if this is so and they have told me that it is, in general. This is not seen as something that undermines a marriage. When a wife gives more importance to the children than to her spouse it’s really demeaning him under the guise of motherly love. Many Filipino spouses also address each other as ‘Pa’ and ‘Ma’ or their equivalents, which seems to indicate that for many husbands too it’s more important to be a father than to be a husband. But I once heard a young boy of about ten at a family day saying that what he loved most about his parents was that they were ‘always together’. That couple got it right. By being spouses first of all they were truly loving parents.
By the way, Jungletrek’, Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary points out that the ‘hus’ in husband’ means ‘house’. I guess the female equivalent of a ‘househusband’ is a ‘hushousewife’. One of the basic definitions that Webster gives for ‘husband’ is ‘master of a house’. Many husbands are taking on that role again while their wives take a job that brings in the family income. That is what you are happily doing and may God continue to bless your family. ‘Househusband’ is a meaningless PC-feminist term.
90% of articles I read these days provide a very superficial analysis of critical issues. They tend to take the easy road, regurgitating popular views to please the readership.
This was not such an article. Good job.
I want to thank Barbara as well. The article was great and covered the spectrum of misandry in Society and leagal system.
There are many divorced people in my church as well. Christianity only works if both are committed to its truths. Most people in the church today have been influenced by humanism rather than a true faith in scripture. If you’re dating, watch her behavior on these issues. Bring it up as a topic of conversation at some point. It won’t take long to find out what she believes about divorce and the legal system.
Whether or not 70% of the domestic violence is committed by men doesn’t make the misandric treatment of men acceptable or justified. The whole mindset of the hatred of men is completely immoral.
Don’t get married until you’ve been with her for at least two years. If she won’t stick around for that, she won’t stick around after you marry her either!
Barbara Kay is a national journalistic treasure and this piece on misandry exposes a crisis in our culture with dire consequences for the family and children. It contradicts the conventional wisdom which so often is nonsense but it takes courage and talent to do so. I think of the great Edward R Murrow in this context. Society’s most precious asset is journalists with the courage to go against the ratpack mentality which has infected journalism in recent decades. Misandry and misogyny are social diseases which infect the very roots of our society and the children are the principal victims. Thank you Barbara
There is another form of non physical violence called manipulation and family law abuse by CAS/MCFD.
I am a mom with a physical disability,among many other disabled parents. Who have their children apprehended and are acused of abuse neglect or whatever accusation is choosen.The family is either distroyed or eventually distroyed at the hands of our Child Servives.
Laws are ignnored or horribly manipulated to serve the branch of government that actually should be helping families(parents and child).
READ MY WEBPAGE.
In 1994, Dr. Christinna Hoff-Sommers wrote the blockbuster expose on domestic violence, “WHO STOLE FEMINISM?” In spite of that exposure of the truth, feminists, and their dupes in the media, have continued to portray men as always the perpetrator, women as always the victim. In 1998, Dr. Sanford Braver wrote, “DIVORCED DADS, Shattering the Myths”. One of those myths was the myth of domestic violence being always perpetrated by males. Now we have this excellent article by Barbara Kay, restating what has been known for more than 14 years. Want to bet that media personnel will continue to ignore the truth about domestic violence, in pursuit of their anti-male agenda? Doesn’t any of them have the sense to ask the logical question: If their cause is so righteous, why do they have to lie?
Paul Clements
DADD-SC
USA
Rick: I wouldn’t be so sure about meeting “Dreamgirl” in line for penance at church is the answer…
As a lifelong christian I too thought if I married a christian we’d live happily ever after, with the bible as our “marriage rulebook.” Our “referee” in times of dispute.
I was wrong...twice. If one side doesn’t play by the rules, there is no benefit. I still like your idea though, please don’t get me wrong, but I would add another criteria along with your idea… Make sure the lady has an education, ALONG WITH, “her bible education”, because there is nothing worse than a person who backs up everything with mis-quotes and misinterpretations of the bible!!!
Jim Baxter: You made me want to sarcastically ask you, “what language is that you are speaking?” Do you have real life experience on the subject of Barbara Kays article? What is your point?
Barbara: Thank you so much for your fair and open mind, and another great article!
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