Comment (118)
Email
Print
del.icio.us
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.
Excellent information and spot on.
Once again Barbara Kay you have penned a perfect article.
In response to David Hughes, don’t get your hopes up.
“The new Equality and Human Rights Commission”, was there something wrong with the “old” commission? Human Rights isn’t new or old, the fundamental building blocks of moral humanitarian behavior has been around a long time. In the Third Reich they changed their shirts from brown, to really nice looking suits with SS decals on them. That was new!! (And a major step backwards for Human Rights). This commission I fear has just change their shirts, and gender, to appease the populace.
A quote-By Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849.
“Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.… where the State places those who are not with her, but against her, — the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.… Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.”
Thank you for this excellent article. I am hardly surprised at the centre’s deliberate omission of sex, and their admission that they have zero interest in helping any men.
A writer for the Ottawa Citizen who is in need of your fact based perspectives is one Janice Kennedy. Her May 25 screed of sexism titled, “We can’t help victims of violence if hatemongers hijack the agenda” is quite
the usual misandrous screed slamming anyone daring to deny that women are not the sole victims of DV. Perhaps a copy of this fine article should be sent to Ms. Kennedy, and to her editors at the Citizen, to correct their MIS-directions.
great read.
The biased reporting is worldwide, almost as though there is a spell on half of the world who can’t see that they are being programmed by the propaganda machine, against men. My other concern is the so called plague of sexual abuse of children, supposedly around one child in every three being sexually abused. That would mean that 10 out of 30 men in a room are sexual perverts. I do not believe it. It would be very interesting to know how they get their figures. “Does daddy dress you? Does daddy wash you in the bath?” probably asked to 3 year old children. Just another reason for the state to destroy families, get control of the kids and denigrate all men.
Congratulations on a timely and truthful article. You have summed up the attitudes of so many in the media and in government today. However, perhaps I could put in a slight word of encouragement to many of your readers who have commented.
After studying these matters for the last 15 years as a member of the ManKind charity in the UK I have sensed over the last year or two a backlash against the attitudes you describe. As yet it is small but I have every reason to believe that it is about to grow considerably.
Let me illustrate what I mean. Last week an article in the Times newspaper reported that the new Equality and Human Rights Commission, set up in the UK about a year ago, has told the National Health Service that they have to start treating men equally. This would never have happened under the alleged “Equal” Opportunities Commission which for over 25 years was a feminist pressure group funded by British taxpayers - mainly men. The EOC was run by women and it had a shocking track record of employing 18% men and 82% women. Never in its history was a man appointed to be the chief executive, and when they had a deputy, she too was a woman; and when they had two deputies, both were women. And this was an “equality” commission!!!
A man is now in charge of the new body, the EHRC and it looks as though it might have teeth. Also, I’ve recently been asked by eleven female undergraduates in universities to help them with their theses on “Domestic Violence Against MEN”. It’s encouraging that the LAST Women’s Studies course is now languishing in just one UK university. During the last year, UK Women’s Aid, which for many years has been a virulent misandric organisation is now running a helpline for MEN who suffer domestic abuse. They have also put ManKind’s helpline on their website. I think that, taken together, these things mean that the pendulum is starting to swing back, but there is still a lot to be done and we must certainly not drop our guard.
Thank you once again Barbara for trying to bring the truth to light in today’s society!
Barbara,
As a survivor of domestic abuse myself, I want to thank you for bringing attention to this problem.
Here in the US, there are three distinct levels of denial of the issue of female-on-male violence:
1) Pretend that it doesn’t happen, or that it’s the exception, not the rule.
2) If the overwhelming evidence makes it impossible to deny it, pretend that it is harmless. To this end, portray women as weak and vulnerable, and men as strong and impervious. (You’d think feminists would take exception to this portrayal of women, but they seem otherwise inclined.)
3) If forced to admit that women are as violent as men, and that they are every bit as capable of causing injury or death, then inquire as to what the man may have done to deserve the attack.
This last level of denial is to my mind the most egregious, since it has long been the custom in the US, that when a woman is the victim of a violent attack, it is strictly verboten (and rightly so) to raise the issue of whether she deserved it, even in cases where the attack was provoked by physical violence on her part.
In one infamous example, Lorena Bobbitt got away with cutting off her husband’s penis by claiming a rape that another jury decided had never occurred, and by claiming spousal abuse for which the prosecutor couldn’t find enough evidence even to file charges. Meanwhile, only a few years later, Bobbitt herself (who now uses her maiden name, Gallo) was charged with assault for repeatedly punching her own mother while the two were watching TV. Gallo-Bobbitt was acquitted, but if she was not guilty, then one is forced to wonder where her mother acquired the lacerations around her eyes.
Let me be the very last to minimize, trivialize, or dismiss the very real plight of abused women. However, as a formerly abused man, I must say that I am offended that my former plight and the plight of millions of abused men is routinely minimized, trivialized, and dismissed.
--- Gos
Ms. Ruddle,
I have been reading your continual support for the misandrist and self-perpetuating “family” court system for long enough and had to interject with a couple questions for you (after I outline a situation for you, in its simplest form):
- woman is removed from home for repeatedly beating on man (in front of the children)
- man is left to continue full-time job PLUS take over job of raising the children
- woman is allowed to stay unemployed
- man is left with responsibility for covering all expenses related to raising the children
- woman does not have to pay any child support
- man is ordered to pay unsustainable level of spousal support (based on salary that was increased by “family” court judge in privacy of his chambers after all hearings had concluded)
- man has to borrow money from his parents every month to meet spousal support commitments
- if man does not continue paying unsustainable level of spousal support, “family” court will take his paycheque and driver’s license (leaving the children without any income to support them)
- children’s quality of life is seriously hindered for the remainder of their years of living at home
My questions for you are:
1) How in the world can you (or anyone else) support a system that does this to two innocent children?
2) Why do you think so few men ever report being abused by their female partners?
Please respond so everyone on this forum can see what you have to say.
Don Dymond (male victim of spousal abuse)
Fort St. John, BC
Men do not report domestic in general. When they do call the police they get arrested by them. I personally know someone who was stabbed in neck by his wife, called the police and He was arrested! He spent hours without medical attention in a jail cell. If when women called the police about DV and they were bleeding from their wounds and they were arrested for the troubles, how many do you think would actually report Domestic Violence?
Men are taught to be strong and hide weakness. I was abused, never hit back but did not feel I was abused. I never would have spoke up and I never did until I saw other men going through the same situation. I think that if a survey by stats Canada was done and asked men about physical and emotional incidence against them in a marriage but did not call it abuse, there would be a startling outcome. If it was categorized by type of incidence, everything from violence, hitting with objects , controlling issues and isolation from family and friends, assaults with objects, death threats, threats to have their children taken away ect.. I think we would have a real eye opener. Now not one of those crazy reports with bad math and critical data left out.
If it was done correctly, and the math and data was presented honestly, I am sure that the truth would be very, very shocking indeed. Are any feminist agencies willing to put some of their money into a non bias report like that? If the truth was different from you beliefs would you have the strength to fight for a better world? If to fight Domestic violence you had to teach some women to control their anger and not pass abusive traits on to their children would you? If you had to educated men that it is not ok to be controlled and manipulated, that they have the right to live in a relationship without fear of violence would you?
If teh only way a man could protect his children was to flee to a safe house, would you open the door for him?
Sarah Ruddle from Canadian Women’s Foundation wrote:
“Shelter from the Storm is not an anti-male campaign, nor does it intend to convey anti-male sentiment through its creative.”
The best response to this has already been written and posted at the Feminism 101 blog, of all places. You just have to forget for a while that the author of that piece ( http://tiny.pl/kh5s ) only recognizes men’s sexism against women as sexism, and it will fit perfectly. In short: anti-maleness or misandry is not a matter of opinion. It can be objectively assessed. Your being in denial about your organization’s misandry doesn’t change the objective reality.
“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.”
Twice as many women than men were beaten by their partners? It is then perfectly fair that they receive twice as much support, but not incalculable-ratio as much, which is currently the case. The ratio is incalculable because men receive zero support, and you cannot divide by zero. Same reasoning applies to all other stats you quoted.
“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.’”
Hmmm? Interesting. Last time I checked, comparing different societies’ levels of civilization was a no-no in the PC book.
JimD said…
Dude start a men’s group at uni tell all the guys about sights like these.Make posters, give them to men only.These silly sheltered people that work in the uni system can not stop the internet.
Misandry is not even in most dictionaries. And if the powers-that-be deny the use of the word, they can deny the action. Thank you, Barbara Kay, for speaking out!
The image says it all: man=bad, woman=good.
Yesterday I was visiting Mohawk College in Hamilton. Prominently displayed in the entrance was a large colour poster - a well-done painting of a flattened rose in reds and blacks, overprinted with the large tread pattern of a man’s work boot in white and a small headline: STOP VIOLENCE. There was no mention of men or women, but of course that wasn’t necessary - the message was clear.
After I left I thought of those awful Nazi propaganda posters - a crude drawing of a sinister face with beady eyes and a big hooked nose and the title THE JEW.
Powerful, ubiquitous imagery, designed to permeate the subconscious - no thinking required. Very effective.
Page 2 of 8 : < 1 2 3 4 > Last »