Misandry

Misandry is hatred of men or boys. Misandry comes from Greek misos (μῖσος, "hatred") and anēr, andros (ἀνήρ, gen. ἀνδρός; "man"). It is not to be confused with the term misogyny, the hatred of women or girls. Misandry - as well as misogny - also are comparable with (but not the same as) misanthropy, which is the hatred of humanity in general. The prefix miso- (meaning "hate") applies in many other words, such as misocapny, misogamy, misarchy, and misoxeny. Misandry is the antonym of philandry, the fondness towards men, love, or admiration of them.

Misandry in ancient Greek literature
Classics professor Froma Zeitlin of Princeton University discussed misandry in her article titled "Patterns of Gender in Aeschylean Drama: Seven against Thebes and the Danaid Trilogy." She writes: The most significant point of contact, however, between Eteocles and the suppliant Danaids is, in fact, their extreme positions with regard to the opposite sex: the misogyny of Eteocles’ outburst against all women of whatever variety (Se. 181-202) has its counterpart in the seeming misandry of the Danaids, who although opposed to their Egyptian cousins in particular (marriage with them is incestuous, they are violent men) often extend their objections to include the race of males as a whole and view their cause as a passionate contest between the sexes (cf. Su. 29, 393, 487, 818, 951).

Misandry and literary criticism
In his book, Gender and Judaism: The transformation of tradition, Harry Brod, a Professor of Philosophy and Humanities in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Northern Iowa, writes: In the introduction to The Great Comic Book Heroes, Jules Feiffer writes that this is Superman's joke on the rest of us. Clark is Superman's vision of what other men are really like. We are scared, incompetent, and powerless, particularly around women. Though Feiffer took the joke good-naturedly, a more cynical response would see here the Kryptonian's misanthropy, his misandry embodied in Clark and his misogyny in his wish that Lois be enamored of Clark (much like Oberon takes out hostility toward Titania by having her fall in love with an ass in Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream).

Julie M. Thompson, a feminist author, connects misandry with envy of men, in particular "penis envy", a term coined by Sigmund Freud in 1908, in his theory of female sexual development.

Misandry and feminism
Alice Echols argues that radical feminist Valerie Solanas displayed misandry in her tract SCUM Manifesto. Echols states: ""Solanas’s unabashed misandry — especially her belief in men’s biological inferiority — her endorsement of relationships between ‘independent women,’ and her dismissal of sex as ‘the refuge of the mindless’ contravened the sort of radical feminism which prevailed in most women’s groups across the country."" Some other researchers have argued that Solanas' SCUM Manifesto is a parody of patriarchy and the Freudian theory of femininity, where the word woman is replaced by man. The text contains all the clichés of Freudian psychoanalytical theory: the biological accident, the incomplete sex and "penis envy" which has become "pussy envy.

Wendy McElroy, an individualist feminist and Fox News commentator, argues that some feminists "have redefined the view of the movement of the opposite sex" as "a hot anger toward men seems to have turned into a cold hatred." She argues that men as a class are considered irreformable, all men are considered rapists, and marriage, rape and prostitution are seen as the same. McElroy states "a new ideology has come to the forefront... radical or gender, feminism", one that has "joined hands with [the] political correctness movement that condemns the panorama of western civilization as sexist and racist: the product of 'dead white males.'"

Pundit Charlotte Hays argues "that the anti-male philosophy of radical feminism has filtered into the culture at large is incontestable; indeed, this attitude has become so pervasive that we hardly notice it any longer."

In his book The gender knot: unraveling our patriarchal legacy, sociologist Allan G. Johnson states that accusations of man hating work to discredit feminism because people often confuse men as individuals with men as a dominant and privileged category of people. He argues that given the "reality of women's oppression, male privilege, and men's enforcement of both, it's hardly surprising that every woman should have moments where she resents or even hates 'men.'"

In the entry in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinity (ed. Michael Flood, et al.), Marc A. Ouellette directly contrasts misandry and misogyny, arguing that "misandry lacks the systemic, transhistoric, institutionalized, and legislated antipathy of misogyny."

Analogies to other forms of bigotry
Masculist writer Warren Farrell compares dehumanizing stereotyping of men to dehumanization of the Vietnamese people as "gooks". "In the past quarter century, we exposed biases against other races and called it racism, and we exposed biases against women and called it sexism. Biases against men we call humor."

- Warren Farrell

Religious Studies professors Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young make similar comparisons in their three-book series Beyond the Fall of Man, which treats misandry as a form of prejudice and discrimination that has become institutionalized in North American society. Nathanson and Young credit "ideological feminism" for imposing misandry on culture.

Their book Spreading Misandry (2001) analyzes "pop cultural artifacts and productions from the 1990s" from movies to greeting cards for what they consider contains pervasive messages of hatred toward men. Legalizing Misandry (2005) the second in the series, gives similar attention to laws in North America.