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Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men

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Following on their study of the systematic hatred of men (misandry) in the popular media--SPREADING MISANDRY--two Canadian scholars present in this volume the second of a trilogy on the topic. The third will discuss misandry as it is being proselytized in college and university classrooms. They have no need for shocking journalistic revelations and rhetoric, but rely instead on sober, close examination of court decisions that have slowly but surely changed the way men are treated under the law in Canada and the United States. The authors show how interest groups, lobbying and media pressure have leveraged a sea change in the treatment of men, especially as husbands and fathers. Their position is ethical. The focus of their examination is ideological feminism's effect on the framing of legal sanctions by our nation's courts that are stacked against men. As a result of the influence of ideological feminism, certain topics may not be discussed in academe, the media will always support its agenda, and increasingly in the home, husbands and fathers are identified as dangerous and evil. Demonizing men in this way is the work of misandry. Its sources are complex, but they rest solidly in ideological feminism. The authors' plea is for reasoned consideration of misandry and exposure of its motives. After reading this book, no one can fail to admit that we have reached a point where it is increasingly thought to be a shame to have been born male in North America. And we cannot forget that what is promoted here soon sends out spores to settle and grow elsewhere in the world. For now, this reader is grateful to the authors of this volume in the series of their studies for their courage in offering a point of view that those who are in academe know quite well MAY NOT be brought up in committee and faculty meetings and, soon, in all classrooms.

My worry is above all for boys, the sons and students of men who are portrayed as evil, not only in the popular media but also increasingly in the eyes of the law. That boys are leaving school should not surprise us at all. That fathers are leaving their sons is also no less unpredictable in such a climate. Scholars of divorce may find a fuller understanding of their topic by reading this volume of Nathanson and Young's trilogy.

It must be made clear that this is NOT an exercise in victim studies. Nor do the authors call for a counter-revolution to the positive feminism that brought women into the workplace and politics. They make no declarations. Instead they present evidence and examine arguments.

This is an important work in ethics, gender studies, and history. It deserves wide readership, media exposure, and discussion in academe.

One of the more intriguing questions which this massive and massively-researched volume will raise in the months and years to come is the degree to which it will be politicized, i.e., viewed as a salvo "in favor of" males in a gender war conceived by academic feminists as a marxist political-group war between oppressors and oppressed. Academic feminist scholarship explicitly has an activist political agenda, which means among other things that it opportunistically exploits the tolerance of the modern university in the name of pursuit of an ethic of truth-seeking in order to advance what can be called an ethic of power-seeking. In that context, "Legalizing Misandry" will be seen by academic feminists as "just another" (though necessarily formidable) blow aimed at resisting feminist attack strategy in behalf of the enemy (no quotes) male.

Perhaps the single most important thing Nathonson and Young do is refuse to draw back from saying that academic feminists--most of the feminists they discuss are professional scholar-teachers, most with PhDs--are unabashed hatemongers. In going so far they only stop short of annoncing that the "gender war" is in no way a metaphor, that feminists are just as determined to wreak damage on males as they contend males are determined to wreak on them.

In a way, it will be interesting to see just how far this gauntlet thrown down to academic feminists will be picked up by them and responded to. To admit that feminists are explicitly anti-male, for instance, is to open up the whole academic industry of "Women' Studies"--which includes the female professors who teach in them--to the charge that they violate federal, state, and institutional regulations against hostile environment sexual harassment. We may yet see female professors, and indeed female management types in the workplace, banished like males have been to the shadowy darkness of having sexual harassment charges on their resumes, with all the attendant difficulty of getting new jobs that this implies. It would indeed be ironic that feminists would suffer the same fate, since it was precisely feminist activists who formulated, brokered, and finally put into the U. S. code of federal regulations these very sexual harassment laws.

The tone of "Legalizing Misandry" is considerbly more outspoken, even edgy, by comparison with that of the preceding volume "Spreading Misandry." Clearly, the co-authors find themselves less able than previously to maintain the cold distance of investigative impersonality when dealing with the vast evidence that we have on our hands in Canada and U. S. nothing less than a civil war founded on gender. That it is a war--so far--without combat should not be allowed to dilute this characterization on the assumption that war is always combat. There's a difference--you can have one without the other--and that's what Nathanson and Young end up describing in overwhelming detail. It's a real war, and this book may go a considerable distance to persuading a critical mass of North American males finally to recognize that fact.

Misandry: hatred of men. Legalizing Misandry is a large, dense, thoroughly documented scholarly work that lays out the history of the legal shift in the US and Canada from one of equality under law to one of females first, men go away. For men it's pretty depressing to confront all the many ways that men no longer get justice or anything resembling fair treatment under law. Nathanson and Young use examples of highly publicized (read: media feeding frenzy) bellwether cases that have been used as excuses to shift our laws more and more against men. From the daycare witch hunts of the 1980s to Marc Lepine's counter attack on feminism, the authors show how these bellwether cases were used by misandrist political forces to enact more and more misandrist laws. They document how misandry is now the basic law in entitlements, marriage, divorce, and child care, pornography and prostitution, sexual harassment, abuse, violence and even murder. They suggest that no sane man who really knew the legal ramifications would even consider marriage under such misandrist law. They document how political and moral misandry is being taught at every college and university under the front names of "women's studies," "gender studies," etc. They show how "equality" has come to mean female dominance, and how the feminist lesbians who control radical feminism won't be satisfied until men are eliminate altogether. As a man I found it really depressing to review all the many places where hatred of men is codified into law and promoted by my tax money. This is a serious scholarly work with hundred of detailed footnotes and references. It needs to be part of every discussion of law and education. Their hard hitting honesty and the history of how misandry became the law of our lands is the opposite of feminist PC dogma. I'm sure that instead, it will be shunned by the misandrists who control education and law. I strongly recommend it for anyone who is a serious student of law, politics, education, or gender studies. And, it ought to be read by every man who considers getting within 500 yards of a female, it's scary and depressing.

The sequel to SPREADING MISANDRY, LEGALIZING MISANDRY: From Public Shame To Systemic Discrimination Against Men is a thorough study of the extent to which ideological feminism has corrupted public opinion and modern jurisprudence against men. The authors, Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young have taken a position that is not likely, one might think, to endear them to a majority of their colleagues in or out of academia, or to the political and intellectual avant-garde. It is that sexist discrimination against women, while certainly not vanished from history, is largely vestigal in the universitities, the workplace, the media, and the law; that the only widespread, obvious, and unremarked discrimination today is against males.

Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, rigorously recount how high profile legal cases have been inflated into acts of class warfare between men and women and conflated into causes celebres for feminists bent on further polarizing men and women. They show how feminism's doctrinaires have made their way to the pulpits of Canadian and American legislatures only to politically correct government's predilections about gender in order to legally consolidate, in totalitarian fashion, the victim status of women.

They also make it clear that men have a right to be unhappy with what these women's activists have accomplished at men's expense.

That domestic violence should be framed as an exclusively male attitudinal and behavioral problem, that there ought to be recognized some officially denounced "War Against Women," that acts of violence against women are the sine qua non of sexual inequality, that this inequality is the brainchild of "the patriarchy," that patriarchy is maintained by masculine conspiracy, that this conspiracy is advanced in every incident of violence toward women. etc.. these are just some of the rhetorical devices of misandry in the academic and public domain.

Spreading Misandry showed how misandry breeds contempt for men by moral imputation through books, plays, and movies. Legalizing Misandry shows how legal minds have been affected as well. It effectively argues that though the courts may marginalize feminist's radical rhetoric, the ladies' mantra has, nevertheless, been repeated enough to become accepted as true, in part. The author's discuss the long road of Affirmative Action's departure from its original intent to becoming a quota system -- from assuring equality of opportunity to being a guarantor of social "equity." Next, the authors make a cogent case against the bureaucrats running our divorce courts and the child support agencies whose destructive and often exploitive policies place men in double-jeopardy and push them over the edge. Nine times more divorced men than women commit suicide. Imagine if that stat were the other way around. Wouldn't that be a "topic' for Oprah? The authors think so. In their estimation, discrimination against men is made all the worse by talk shows and all the other hours of gynocentric programming that consign men's troubles to trivia and silence men's dissent.

The authors analysis of the pornography vs. free speech debate reveals how it is that Canada has seen fit to outlaw pornography while the United States has not. Think feminists haven't had a part in the former, think again! The authors go on to show how pornography (might we prefer "visual erotica?") is made all the more evil because it's "a guy thing" statistically. We all "know" how guys think. In effect, we've been taught that male lust is morally inferior to female lust, that men's ogling at women objectifies and dehuminizes women but oddly, men suffer no such ill and dehuminizing effects due to women's lustier glances. The authors argue that most feminists, not having exorcised their own inherited sexual neuroses, mingle their rhetoric with the prejudices of the religious right when dismissing pornography. Their argument shifts subtly from whether porn itself oppresses women or whether it only seems that way because women are oppressed. Fundamental tenets equating pornography with 'sin' are rarely questioned.

Nathanson and Young also make a point of the fact that there ought not be any fundamental conflict between society's concern for justice for women and concern for the legal rights of men, particularly as fathers. Nevertheless, for ideologists in the feminist camp, that doesn't prevent charges of patriarchal evil-doing and conspiracy being made, published, and honored, even by males. Facts and logic are one thing. Guilt feelings are quite another. Politicized concern with women's issues polarizes men and women as it leaves little or no time for men's issues nor concern for the effects of modern day stresses upon their well-being. Nowadays, say the authors, the issues and arguments made against men are legion. And who has any concern for the "bad guys?" To quote another of my favorite authors, Florence King, "The darkling obsessions that feminists develop mark them as closet misanthropes. For the past several years, their leading obsession has been incest. They've gone to the mat with it, but the American media maw demands constant stoking, so they can't get much mileage out of it. A feminist without an obsession is like Abbott without Costello, so what other age-old perversion is waiting in the wings? Today, incest; tomorrow -- what?" With all due respect to King, feminist's obsessions more likely mark them as closet misandrists. What next indeed! Legalzing Misandry reveals a cornucopia of what has been next for some time. How about battered wives and abusive fathers, blame them on the patriarchy! Then of course, there's rape, marital rape, date rape, and vicarious rape, as in pornography. And least we forget, there's archetypal rape in every act of heterosexual congress!

According to Legalizing Misandry, men are on trial and "the verdict is clear: guilty as charged." For the nightly news, stories about pedophiles, sexual harassment, sexual predators, or "deadbeat dads," are all just "good copy." (There ought to be an award for journalism that cloaks itself as an expose of dubious, behind the scenes behavior, but really selectively integrates topics that obsess the public - sex, sexism, crime - with other issues.) The issues evoked have their desired effects - increasing news and talk show ratings. They also have their not so desirable effects - inducing fear and contempt for men. Whatever the problem or latest obsession, men as a whole are implicated either by nature or nurture. As a result, each "timely" topic becomes only one of many "political trump cards among idelolgical feminists" to create a kind of feminist victimology. In their gynotopia, all men are nasty egoists and sexual power trippers. Reductionism reigns in gynomerica not because people prefer simple answers to complex questions but because, as Nathanson and Young make clear, reductionism is the inevitable means of a convoluted ideology.

Among some feminists, the notion of equality between the sexes has recently morphed, say the authors, from one where double standards were officially rejected to one in which they are tacitly endorsed. Why? Because you can't impose a single standard on two dissimilar creatures and expect similar results. With one gender being dissed as the sexual oppressors and the other coddled as the sexually oppressed, policy regarding how they should be apportioned prerogatives or dealt with for the same offences is not likely to work on the same pressumptions nor show them equal consideration. The authors have compiled a list of double standards and sexual double speak negatively affecting men that will become a reference for years to come.

Be assured, Legalizing Misandry is not some conservative or otherwise pathological rant against the legitimate goals of the women's movement, it is a well reasoned, well order, and well documented analysis of how and why misandry has become entrenched at various levels of legal discourse and decision making. I highly recommend Spreading Misandry, Legalizing Misandry, and that work in progress, Transcending Misandry to all men looking to renew some semblance of a good conscience about themselves as men and to everyone concerned with fixing the misandric hole in our culture.

With Legalizing Misandry, Nathanson and Young continue with the outstanding scholarship and analysis they first put forth in 2001 with Spreading Misandry, which was the first work in this trilogy. In fact, if anything, this is an even more meticulous study of the subject than was their earlier (and perfect) endeavor; although, considering that it took them five years to produce it, we should not really be surprised. The text is extremely thick and its endnotes lengthy. Unlike the feminist academics they debunk, both authors are dedicated to intellectual rigor and scholarship. Currently, I am writing a book about women and have numerous citations of SM already, but I now have to go back and add "2001" to my original endnotes because delineation must be made between volumes one and two. It is a pity that McGill could not have given this one more publicity. I heard about its release months after it became available. Something this monumental deserves serious PR, and I wish they would have spent the cash or exerted the energy to get the word out. Nathanson and Young have exactly the type of sober insight which is most needed in our times of over-emotion and sound byte politicking. I eagerly await the final installment to the series.

I should note that, despite the tremendous amount of time I've spent studying it, part of me still cannot believe the way in which serious minds are so influenced by feminist hogwash. It would take only a few seconds of searching to disprove many of their lies, but the conformity and laziness of our politicians and judges appears to be endless. They don't want to think and they resent us making them do so. The only broad based way to rollback misandric laws and codes is to rollback the size of the state. The state has always been the muscle behind feminist totalitarianism because the average person would never support their views and desires. Without the state they are nothing. In our current environment, in my humble opinion, only a libertarian stance will remedy the situation. Slashing budgets and bureaucracies is the only way to free ourselves from abusive laws and statist coercion.

I am about half-way through my second reading of this book, and am noticing even moreso than on the first, how much work the authors have done, in the design and laying out of their facts, explanations, and theories (which by the way, are all true).
If someone, say my best friend (male), had told me even just a couple years ago that there was a branch of feminism which seeks some sort of utopia, and in the process is undermining basic human rights and threatening the very existence of men, I would have told him he was a paranoid lunatic. After having read "Spreading Misandry" (the authors' previous work) and now "Legalizing..", I would say my friend is one of the very few who knows what is going on underneath the surface of the misandric culture we live in. Yes unfortunately, very few..notice the extremely small number of reviewers here. It really is depressing, isn't it? The way I figure it there are only two ways out of the current situation (at least in the short run): either 1) There will have to be at least a couple high-level female politicians and judges, who have tremendous integrity and who will challenge feminism; or 2) There will need to be a massive "man's march" on Washington and in other cities, consisting of one million or more guys.

Misandry, the Hatred of Men, Masculinity and Normal Heterosexuality, is so ingrained in our government, media & the pathetic farce that passes itself as the social engineering field of Adacementia - that it resembles flouride in the water supply.

I live in Alameda County CA (across the bay from Frisco) and the Alameda Library system not only refused to purchase and display this book - but doesn't even have a Subject Category in their Catalog for MISANDRY. This appears to be a pattern amongst libraries and similar institutions - which want to Deny even the Very Existence of Misandry, let alone censor books exposing its nature such as this.

In fact - the Most Moral Womyn in all Idaho (Susan K Christensen - Deputy Attorney General and Head of the Idaho Bar Moral Character & Fitness committee)is on Record as stating that "Misandry is Not a Real Word that you can look up in Websters Dictionary" - despite the fact that it is easily found in the copy of Websters in the Idaho Bar Headquarters Lobby. She has punished applicants for Law Licenses in Idaho who dare to disagree with her Misandrist Lies - saying that those who assert Misandry is a Real Word are "Dishonest"

Hence - This book is subject to a serious Censorship Campaign, designed to keep its very existence a secret, because it is so hated by Male Bashing Radical Gender Feminist Bigots - like other books exposing this campaign of hatred by Tammy Bruce (Death of Right & Wrong), Lively and Abrams (the Pink Swastika),Heterophobia (Patai) and others...

This book is an outstanding, albeit incomplete effort, which for all its political incorrectness still pulls many punches in an effort to appease the academic crowd. For example - it never uses the term "DYKE" - despite the authors having extensive invformation about Misandrist "Dyke Marches" across Weimar America banning male citizens from the streets.

Like its predecessor "Spreading Misandry" (which for example failed to include TV / Movies making "humorous' jokes about Homo-Anal Rape, such as Seinfeld on SNL) - this book could have benefitted from more widespread review by Men's Rights Advocates prior to publishing - which could have provided more relevant material than the authors included.

Still - as one of the Only Books Available to Deal Directly with the subject of Misandry - this is a Grand Slam, and a challenge to future authors to meet or exceed this new Gold Standard in the Field.

I am only just now reading Spreading Misandry, so I have not yet gotten to Legalizing Misandry. The telling sign is that when I became aware of this series, neither book was anywhere to be found in the entire Pittsburgh public library system. I had to go through the interlibrary loan request system, and eventually received a copy by way of Temple University. What's telling is that this would appear to be a sign that the subject, and by extension men's perspectives, seems not to be treated with any where close to the same level of seriousness or respect as women's studies. This could be either because misandry doesn't exist, OR precisely because it does.

I gave the book 5 stars for it's scholarly approach (judging by Spreading Misandry and the various reviews) to bringing this issue to our "collective conscience".

Lady Margaret Thatcher's motto for political action was, "You win the argument, then you win the election." Or to put it differently, first you build consensus, then you enact laws.

The first volume of the Fall Of Man trilogy, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, focused on the consensus-building that occurs via the arts. This much larger volume deals with the second half the formula.

Since politics deals with the use of coercive power (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: and Other Writings (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)), we need to think, and to think hard, about what laws are passed, what policies are enacted, and what rulings our courts make.

This last one is critical, considering that, in the United States, the Supreme Court has no check or balance.

Here are my observations.

* It is a worthy successor to the previous book. The things they discuss are the things I have both lived and felt. They have tapped a branch of truth and are tracing it to the roots.

* This is really three books in one. There the book itself. Then you have the multiple appendices. And, surprisingly, the end-noted themselves could be published as a stand-alone books. It is worth the bother to read them.

* I have stylistic concerns. Chapter 5 could have been subdivided, and in most of the chapters the longer paragraphs could have likewise been spliced. I would suggest the use of section subheadings--it is easier on the eye. It is a simple matter of Strunk & White The Elements of Style (4th Edition) orthodoxy.

* Here and there the tone is casual, conversational--and at times, Coulteresque--which is inappropriate for a scholarly book. The first volume had no such problems.

* I disagree with some of the end suggestions in Chapter 7. Marriage involves fidelity, self-control, loyalty, passionate devotion, and the imperative to meet other's needs, specifically physically giving oneself to the other spouse. Physical fissures reveal the underlying emotional and intellectual fissures--even a type of romantic schizophrenia (Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments). There is no need--and indeed, there is no place--for hiring hireling or surrogate spouses. This chapter reminds me of Peter Kreeft's comment that most academic's problem with God is the Seventh Commandment (C.S. Lewis for the Third Millennium : Six Essays on the Abolition of Man).

* The BEST IDEA in the book is on page 217. They gently suggest that feminism, due to its preoccupation with men and male power, is itself really phallocentric.

* The SECOND BEST idea (discussed in passing) is the distinction between anger, which is an emotion, and hate, which is a worldview. Anger gets institutionalized as hate.

This volume is the second of a trilogy. But I was left wanting more! Although they touch upon these topics in this volume, I would like to see several sub-volumes, or extended studies in some of these other areas:

* Teaching Misandry. Studying relationship between feminism and the Academy, hich would include an assessment of feminist curricula, degrees, informal pressures, scholarship and research grant allocations, speech and conduct codes, marches, and woman's support centers.

* Preaching Misandry (See Sanctifying Misandry: Goddess Ideology and the Fall of Man). How the macro-Church supports misandry, Gaia worship, and also an assessment of denominations (such as mine) that have a positive view of Eve and the Fall of Adam (Doctrines of the Restoration: Sermons and Writings of Bruce R McConkie).

* Employing Misandry. How affirmative action, testosterone ceilings, and "Old Girl's Networks" exclude men in the workplace.

* Medicating Misandry. What are the affects of feminism on healthcare, and the allocation of research dollars, especially considering the impact of "pink ribbons" and "red dresses" that shape public perception.

* Profiteering Misandry. Is there a feminist-industrial complex? And what is the GDP for the various feminist industries?

Yes, this book was a chore to work through. But, like a trudge up Everest, it is worth the work. It left me wanting and waiting for the last volume, Transcending Misandry.

Admittedly, this book review does not say a lot about the book. But what it doses cover is what the book did to me. It was a fuse for fireworks of feelings, and an explosion of ideas. It is not so much devotional, as motivational. And it certainly got me thinking.

And that tells you something about the book.

Many people will discount this idea. Unfortunately, those who do either have themselves a political/personal agenda, or they are sheep like other failed societies in history! People believe what they want to believe, irrespective of reality. Just read histories of the treatment of other people, such as the Indians in earlier days. It isn't hard to find these in our society,or others. And like these, the discrimination is discounted or ignored,or worse: excused. Our culture holds myths and stererotypes of males, and presumes all manner of behaviors and expectations, many of which while examples can be found, are not as common as is promoted. Then for females, we pretend the opposite stereotypes. Our legal system operates still with unConstitutional double standards, and this book addresses such idea. Recommended are watching the film Taxi to the Dark Side. See how the female guards and personnel in Abu Ghraib etc. acted. Study how same in Germany in WWII acted. Note female participation in the horrors of Rwanda. We ignore and excuse behaviors for females, and presume them in men. Until our society treats everyone as an individual, our society is NOT practicing anything remotely resembling equality. Girls planning and aggressively deciding to have a baby is not treated as sexual, but a boy looking at a girl, is. This is not mythology. Girls beat up others, and this is a news blip, but if boys act out, it is jail time!We still talk of glass ceilings. While this issue began in the 1960's, 58,000 men, mostly boys, died in Vietnam. Where's the glass ceiling for them? Until we realize context and again, individuals, we will continue to operate on a sexist basis. And this actual sexism is anti-male!Worthwhile book, but only the beginning of information that actually exists.Pages of examples exist beyond this book. Anyone doubting this once again, either themselves hold bias and ignorance, or have an agenda. Talk to real people,and do unbiased, actual research. Recommended.