Mapping the Enemy: Feminism V. Residual Misandry

The various Men's Movements are, by common consent, much less effective than they might be. While this impotence is partly the result of incoherent aims, other problems are also at work. When a movement cannot clearly identify its targets, its energies cannot be effectively directed. In order to function and effect positive change, a movement must possess a clear conceptual map of its environment and adversaries. At present, the Men's Movement lacks such a map.

The main obstacle to producing this map lies in the movement's obsession with organized feminism. Indeed, many MRA blogs and sites incorporate the title 'anti-feminist'. This is not to say, of course, that feminism does not exist. Indeed it does, and exerts considerable influence on most western nations (most especially those in the Anglosphere and Scandinavia). The recent attacks on legalized prostitution in France and Germany are the work of feminists, for example.

However, much of the daily oppression men experience is not the work of feminists, as such. Rather, it is the product of what I shall term 'residual misandry'. Residual misandry is not 'created' by anyone; it is a free-floating entity embedded in most western societies at a deep, structural level. The notion that men are expendable is a good example of residual misandry. This assumption is embedded in law, politics, academia and the media, and long antedates the rise of pan-Anglosphere feminism in the late 1950s.

American Civil War dead: males were considered expendable long before feminism.

The distinction between feminism and residual misandry is crucial to understanding male oppression in the West. 'Conservative' masculinists seem to view all anti-male agendas as 'feminist' - as if feminists produced all films, books and laws, or ran all courts or political parties. Of course, a great many anti-male agendas are products of feminism - especially educational misandry, a rampant force in schools and colleges. However, if we consider anti-male agendas in the mass media or the family courts, it is hard to identify organized feminism as specifically responsible. Instead, such discrimination seems to be the product of a free-floating, ubiquitous misandry that, while present in all western nations, is especially potent in the Anglosphere.

The Anglosphere's legal bias against men would still exist without feminism

In many instances, feminist views concur with institutional misandry. Hatred of the dynamic force that is male sexuality has a long history in the Anglosphere, for instance. And feminists have exploited 'residual misandry' to label all prostitutes as 'trafficked' and their patrons as 'abusers'. Indeed, the potent misandry of pan-Anglosphere feminism owes much to the residual misandry specific to Anglo-Saxon culture.

However, feminism remains for the most part distinct from 'residual misandry'. The fact that a male criminal is far more likely to receive a custodial sentence is not the result of organized feminism, but rather a free-floating notion that all men are 'evil'. Likewise, the fact that family courts favour ex-wives in every circumstance results from the same 'residual misandry'. My own contribution to the Men's Movement has been to describe this embedded, subliminal agenda, at least as it exists in the Anglosphere. Now, armed with an accurate map of the battleground and our adversaries, effective resistance is possible.

Map it right: Feminism in politics and academia is distinct from 'residual misandry'