Cut From the Same Cloth

A few weeks ago, I went to the university library to collect some books to help me in my research. I was looking in the gender studies section (HQ, etc.) and came across a big, bright blue book with the title Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men by Nathanson and Young (2006). I picked it up. I’m not sure why. I think I thought it’d be some nice, light, funny reading to do between essays. I did expect it to be aggravating, sure, but I didn’t think it’d be so outright anti-feminism. Alas, it is. Despite its glaring MRA feel, in one of the essays, I found some very feminist sounding sentiments, and I just wanted to discuss them here. (Besides, it’s been for-frickin’-ever since I last updated this blog. Grad school is time-sucking.)

This book is the second in a series of books (flanked by Spreading Misandry and Transcending Misandry) by Paul Nathanson and Katherine K Young that explores the “needs and problems of men” in a society that is apparently “gynocentric” (ix). According to the writers, “gynocentrism now has both official status (in law) and quasi-official status (in institutional policies), [and] its bias has become deeply embedded in public policy,” negatively affecting men morally, psychologically, politically, and physically. They blame this deep-rooted gynocentrism on “ideological feminists,” who they claim have worldviews that are “profoundly dualistic” because according to these feminists, women are good and the victimized and men are the evil oppressors. They also claim that ideological feminists are essentialists who uphold hierarchies of women over men and that they don’t believe in men’s individual rights. This book is intended to look at how media reinforces a misandric worldview through a metaphor of litigation:

In Part 1 we show that men as a “class” have been put on trial in the court of public opinion by journalists exploiting the emotions generated by sensational events, and that they have been found guilty by a hung jury of academics or professionals manipulating evidence to fit their postmodern or ideological theories but undermining scholarship in the process. . . . Parts 2 and 3 are specifically about men in the courts of law, the ways in which public perceptions of men (and women) have been translated into the legal codes and public policies of both the United States and Canada. . . . Chapters 5 and 6, which are about men and rights, show that the prevalent legal rhetoric favours rights of women and undermines rights of men. Whether intentionally or not, feminists who support that point of view have placed the whole notion of human rights on trial. (xiv)

First of all, I’m not exactly sure how anyone can be “found guilty by a hung jury” of any group of individuals. A hung jury is a jury that cannot agree on a verdict — which means no verdict of “guilty” can be given. This leaves me with little hope for Nathanson and Young’s collective critical reading skills. I’m no lawyer, and even I know this is wrong. Beyond the fucked-up metaphors with no hope for resuscitation, I just don’t see how this book can achieve the goals it has set out to achieve. I’m not exactly the intended audience, as I identify as a feminist and don’t agree with the notion that men “as a class” have been put on trial, and especially not by the “court of public opinion,” but this premise just sounds illogical to me.

Additionally, I guess I don’t know any feminist ideologues, or it could be that people who identify as feminists are reductively caricatured in this book. Yes, I believe that many women — so many women, in fact, that they could be considered a class — have been victimized sexually, psychologically, physically, emotionally, financially, etc. at the hands of men. I’ve read about this. I’ve experienced some of this myself. But I don’t think that women are inherently better than men, because I, and most feminists, especially radical feminists, don’t believe in any sort of essentialism — because it tends to work against women and women’s rights in the long run. And I definitely am a fan of human rights and men’s rights — but only to the extent that men should have rights. That is, I don’t want men to have rights over something that’s not theirs, such as my body and my choices about my body. Nathanson and Young believe that women who fight for women’s rights are effectively fighting against men’s rights. (When the truth is we’re fighting against men’s privileges.)

So that’s the introduction of the book. Because it’s so long, I decided to pick out an essay from the table of contents to read to get a taste of what the writers are actually doing in this book. I picked chapter 4: “Martyrs vs. Murderers: The Montreal Massacre.” The École Polytechnique Massacre is the now infamous massacre of fourteen Canadian women at École Polytechnique University in Montreal in 1989. Marc Lepine, the shooter, claimed that he was “fighting feminism” in his rampage and targeted only women, though he injured a few men in the attacks, before he killed himself. In this chapter, Nathanson and Young

discuss the massacre itself and its immediate aftermath, the public response to it, the institutionalization of its ideological interpretation in quasi-religious forms, its institutionalization in political form, and the extent to which the feminists involved in promoting that interpretation have contributed to sexual polarization. (53)

Shorter Nathanson and Young: We’re going to show how Lepine was just an individual, not a symptom of a larger problem, and then while we pay lip service to the problems with masculinity, we will show how the larger problem at play is in fact feminism.

They talk about Lepine at length from his childhood and upbringing to the weeks preceding the massacre. Apparently, Lepine harbored no problems with women in general, only some possible resentment toward feminists (or women in his life he thought were feminists) because “he thought that they had rejected him or because they were successful and took jobs away from men” (56). From this discussion of his relationships with women, Nathanson and Young transition into a discussion of Lepine’s relationships with men: as a child, he was apparently abused by his father, who was absent from his life from the time Lepine was 7. Lepine said that a boyfriend his mother had had sexually assaulted a child and was in jail for it. And Lepine wanted to be in the military but was summarily rejected for “antisocial behavior,” as he wrote in his suicide note. According to Nathanson and Young, “[Lepine's] room was filled not with sadistic pornography in which women are portrayed as victims but with videos, books, and pictures about war in which men are the victims” (57).

The writers continue to make the argument that “Lepine was a boy who had long suspected that he could not become a man. . . . To Lepine, the only way to prove himself might have been to kill the enemy. In doing so, however, he defied society. Killing himself was his last act of self-loathing, his last act of defiance, or both” (59). They discuss different media responses to the massacre, from those who said that Lepine was acting individually and just had “personal demons” to those who said that Lepine was a symptom of a society that inherently misogynistic, because he sought to kill only women and succeeded in that venture. Instead, Nathanson and Young claim that Lepine and his actions aren’t solely individual or a symptom of misogyny — he is both individual and part of a community, and this massacre must be considered in this light.

Then, a little more woman- and feminist-blaming: Some feminists after the massacre said that this incident showed that men see women as “appropriate victims or targets for violence — but this is gynocentrism’s/feminism’s fault because “until very recently, [women have been] protected by a powerful taboo” (63). But now, that taboo has all but disintegrated because of, apparently, shows like Alias, which show that “women want to be treated just like men” (64). They say, though, that the problem is “the way that men are taught to treat other men” (64). From here, Nathanson and Young discuss the problems of manhood and masculine identity.

I really want to read this essay — and this book — with the grain and with generosity. It’s difficult to be open-minded to the ideas embedded in this text when the writers exclaim such absurdities as the following:

Why would the murder of women be more significant than the murder of men? One feminist answer would probably be that the former is the paradigm of all violence. But is it? A gynocentric ideology, as we say, encourages women to believe that all of history revolves around themselves. Consequently, they often find it difficult to accept the possibility that men might be motivated by needs, desires, or problems that have little or nothing to do with women. . . . But was [feminists'] own analysis of [the massacre] any less superficial or biased than the others? (65)

I would like to see more evidence of this “gynocentric” ideology. Besides, this passage goes against the ideas laid out in the rest of the essay: If Lepine is indeed representative of a community in addition to being an individual, then he represents a community that hates women, especially women who may identify or be identified as feminists. He was obviously acting out against women, so perhaps there’s a bit of “gynocentrism” going on in this situation because of that. And he obviously had some issues with women in the years leading up to the massacre — soooo, what’s the point of having this passage in this essay at all? This is not the incident to talk about “gynocentrism,” if such a thing even exists.

Feminists have argued persuasively that there is something inherently wrong with blaming victims (at least when the victims are women). But these arguments are based on logic. In our society at this time, feeling is more important. Those who ignore male victims want revenge, in short, not justice.

Uh, WTF? For one thing, why is feeling “more important” right now? And what’s wrong with arguing on logic? For another thing, I don’t see what feminism has to do with male victims of male-generated violence. Why is this getting pinned on feminism? I know N&Y would say that feminism has inspired this violence by ignoring male victims because of its inherent gynocentrism. But that doesn’t make any sense since feminism has been around for maybe 150 years — maybe — and male-generated violence against women and men has been going on for centuries. Millienia, even.

Over and over again, Marc Lepine’s example has been used to prove that boys are socialized in destructive ways. And we agree. But Lepine’s example raises a very interesting question. Precisely why are boys socialized in destructive ways? Even though parents may not be aware of any link, the attitudes and even games that they themselves have inherited and passed on to their sons are related to the skills that their sons might need someday. These skills might be useful to society on the battlefield and in the boardroom, to be sure, but not necessarily to the individual men in daily life.

NO WAY. Now, this is where the almost-feminist thinking comes into play. Feminists have been saying for years that there’s something wrong with masculinity, and for the last 20 years, at least, feminists and sociologists have been saying that most of this masculine behavior — like, 99.9% of it — comes from socialization. This is nothing new or earth-shattering. The problem with this passage from Nathanson and Young is that it veers a little to the side of evolutionary psychology and gender-essentialism. Yes, men for centuries have been the protectors of the community. But they aren’t necessarily that any longer, and ev-psych theories don’t do anything about that. And it’s not feminism’s fault either.

N&Y continue their essay by describing a number of memorial ceremonies in honor of the fourteen women killed in the massacre: there are candle-lighting ceremonies, ribbons, music, and talks from women about the dangers for women in a world of violent men. N&Y characterize these ceremonies as “essentialist” (68), “dualistic” (68-69), and “polarizing” (69), and they imply that they are immoral, manipulative, misandric (oh noez, the menz are “literally marginalized” because they have to stand on the sides of the auditorium during ceremonies that aren’t about them [68]), over-strategized, over-politicized, and “quasi-religious” (71).

After describing the many different memorials and sites dedicated to the victims of the massacre, N&Y turn to “overtly political assaults on the alleged victimizers” — or teh menz — specifically a Canadian governmental report called The War Against Women (71). If they didn’t blame all of this on institutionalized “gynocentric” feminism, this could be a relatively compelling argument because men are more often the victims of (male-generated) violence. Alas, it’s all feminism’s fault.

[T]his metaphor [of war] works more effectively in reverse. It could be argued that ideological feminists acting in the name of women have declared war on men. The former are heavily armed, as it were, with very sophisticated political and academic weapons. They have organized themselves politically in opposition to”the patriarchy.” More specifically, they have established a wide variety of organizations to coordinate their efforts and achieve their goals. They have leaders to represent them. They raise money through both private agencies and government bureaucracies. They are proud to acknowledge their affiliations and goals. And one of these, for a particular group of women, is to establish the idea that men are responsible for virtually all of human suffering. (72)

No, they don’t actually make that argument, but they might as well have. N&Y continue to claim that feminists — especially radical feminists such as Andrea Dworkin — are actually declaring war against men, reinstating vigilantism, and reintroducing capital punishment “through the back door” of Canada’s legal and justice system. An example of the rampant misandry N&Y are seeking to fight is the acquittal of one woman who killed her abusive husband after he’d set his gun aside: “No matter how difficult or painful, she did have some choices to make at that point. Shooting him was only one of these. The point here is that by acquitting her, the jurors legitimated a prevalent desire for (at least vicarious) revenge” (73). And yet, even after multiple pages about the problems with masculinity, manhood, and male violence, N&Y still blame the victim of abuse and remain silent on the obvious issue of male-generated violence in this particular example. Yes, the husband died, and that is bad. But how do these writers not see that the woman killed him because he was abusive and violent?

Despite this glaring pile of illogic, N&Y go on to question why the Canadian Parliament made the decision they did to do the War Against Women study. They claim that this study has done away with justice for men and that there were two alternatives: one, to look at the causes of violence in general, and two, to look at the “increasing polarization of men and women” (74). If they’d gone with the first alternative, Parliament wouldn’t have had to assume a “gynocentric” and essentialist and misandric worldview, according to N&Y, and violence against women may have gained some more broad research. The second alternative would not have focused solely on violence but also on other problems, such as drug addiction, which may have some root in gender-polarization. But, they say, the problem with this government report is that “[m]en are in a no-win situation. They can either be politically correct but ineffective or politically incorrect and equally ineffective. . . . And those who did [present an opposing point of view] could have expected to pay a heavy political price: public ridicule” (76).

So, really, all of this over some apparently very “threatening” public ridicule of people who are already privileged by the public eye. Because the physical threat of rape, sexual assault, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment, to name a few, that are a daily reality for nearly all women in the West aren’t important.

Nathanson & Young conclude:

No event could possibly have illustrated more dramatically than the Montreal Massacre, along with its aftermath, the extent to which men and women had become polarized. Because Lepine targeted not merely women but feminists, moreover, it raises an important question: To what extent have ideological feminists contributed to the general climate of hostility between men and women? . . . Some men feel profoundly threatened by [feminism], and sometimes — when they are threatened by loss of identity or loss of custody, say, and not loss of illegitimate privileges — with good reason. It is at least conceivable that this partly explains the fact that male suicides have increased dramatically over the past twenty years. . . .

Ideological feminists believe that women are fundamentally autonomous and have no need for men, except as sperm donors; men, they add, are fundamentally dependent on women and therefore make demands on them (the result being oppression). . . .

Women really do need to defend their lives. But men, whether they realize it or not, need to defend their lives as well. Moreover, they need to defend some sense of identity, no matter how that might be defined, without which their lives would be meaningless. We do not believe that women have no reason to protest when their safety is endangered — they surely do [oh, thank you for your concession] — but we do claim two closely related things in addition. First, women sometimes choose very inappropriate ways of doing so. Second, men have good reasons for protesting. In short, both men and women, as groups, have something vital to defend. (77-78)

I think that Nathanson and Young could have used a less emotion-laden topic to make their point that men need to “defend” their identities. It makes me angry that this essay even exists — it’s disrespectful and hypocritical of N&Y that they criticized feminists for using the massacre as a political arena while doing so themselves. This leads me to my other big problem with this essay — and with the whole book: Why, oh why, is men’s identity, or lack thereof, feminism’s problem? If men are so threatened and emasculated and freaked out by women having power or whatever they’re threatened by, why can’t they just have their identities and be okay with themselves? If feminists are so autonomous, why can’t men say that they’re autonomous too and go about their merry autonomous ways? Why, why, why is this feminism’s fault? And finally, why do you, Nathanson and Young, get to tell women that some of the ways they choose to defend themselves are “inappropriate”? Have you missed the whole “women are autonomous” piece of your argument? So, it’s inappropriate for women who have been abused to kill their abusers (who, in case you conveniently forgot, are usually male)? Why? Because killing is bad? What about abuse — that’s not so bad because it doesn’t always end up in death (just emotional and mental death)? What about the fact that most abusers are men? What about your whole fucking argument that there’s something wrong with the way boys/men are socialized?

I initially thought that I could link Susan Faludi’s stunning book, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, to this essay by Nathanson and Young. There are some shimmering connections, but they disappear when you look at them directly — or when you read the conclusion of “Murderers vs. Martyrs.” Faludi ends her book — which details the ways that men have been betrayed by their literal and metaphorical fathers in the US over the last 80 years, which she claims has led to a lack of masculine identity and sense of usefulness — by saying that, yes, there’s a problem with masculinity, and while it’s not feminism’s problem to deal with masculinity, feminism can offer men some helpful strategies for counteracting the harm that patriarchy bestows upon men as well as women. Faludi basically says that patriarchy harms everyone, not just women, and that everyone can and should look at how to change the patriarchal society that forces us all to lose our identities and conform to the mainstream’s expectations.

But Legalizing Misandry seems interested only in blaming feminism for men’s problems, not joining feminism to fight the problems that are patriarchal but not necessarily only male-generated. I don’t understand why Nathanson and Young are blaming ideological feminists for the polarization of the “sexes” when they — obviously not ideological feminists — are participating in it also. I want to be open-minded and I want to work with people who maybe aren’t feminists in changing the world — but when feminists are to blame for everything for no flipping good reason, it’s really difficult to be open-minded and collaborative.

(I think it’s telling that “misandry” is misspelled, according to Firefox spell-checker, but “misogyny” is not.)