What I should have written here last night, but didn’t because I spent most of it vomiting after a makeshift dinner of microwave chicken and cookie dough (not together, obviously, because that would have just been disgusting) was…
The problem with “anti-misandry” activists like this is that they aren’t fighting against negative depictions of men in popular culture, they’re fighting against the idea that we should see those depictions as negative in the first place. The linchpin of the anti-misandry movement – or the linchpin of Nathanson & Young‘s bleating, anyway – is the belief that negative male stereotypes are a relatively new phenomenon that popped into existence a few decades ago, after women got the vote and laid the groundwork for the All-Pervading Matriarchal Conspiracy. No. Men have consistently been depicted as distant, brutish, hedonistic and emotionally stunted throughout history. What has happened is that we’ve reached the point where we’ve started to recognise that these are bad things and feel guilty(ish) about them. My reference to “emotionally stunted” is as good an example as any; a lack of emotion was, and in many cases still is, supposed to be a positive attribute, because it meant that men were more rational, sensible and made better leaders. Now that we’ve reached the stage where we recognise that being emotional is part of a healthy human experience – recognise it, even if we’re not entirely accepting of it – the old idea of men as cold and rational has started to look as unfair and restrictive as… as it was in the first place. Yet instead of encouraging this kind of criticism – which would be integral to dismantling negative male stereotypes – they want it to stop it entirely, because it makes some men feel slightly uncomfortable.
Not that said criticism has actually made much difference. The same stereotypes are still out there, fulfilling the same functions, only they’re tempered by gentle mockery rather than totally unquestioned. All that’s happened is “Father knows best” has mutated into “Father is a blundering doofus, but he still knows best in the end because he’s got common sense and a heart of gold”. And even then, anti-misandry whining would be tolerable – wrong, but tolerable – if they didn’t insist on claiming that women are apparently immune from negative depiction in the media, as if priming women to put up with a brainless manchild who can’t tie his own shoes isn’t also a bad thing.
There. Now that I’m satisfied with my response, I can throw up the remainder of the chicken.
