Taking A Stand

We Must Take a Stand Against Male-Bashers.

I would like to address the problem of male bashing in our culture, and to propose the solution. Male bashing cards are everywhere. TV commercials portray men as fools. While violence against women on TV is denounced, revenge fantasies in which hundreds of man are cut up, castrated and tortured are blockbusters. Sin City got $33M in sales the first weekend it was released. In 2005, a TV series called "Bring Your Husband to Heel" compared men to dogs. A recent ABC presentation described men as unnecessary.

Men are the the only birth group against whom negative generalizations are acceptable. The slightest negative generalization about women by a reporter would get him subject to a long series of attacks and possibly fired.

The constant stream of male-bashing solidifies the perception of men as violent, inferior, and undeserving of fairness. It teaches our dear daughters, sisters, and mothers and our beloved wives and girlfriends to see us as the enemy. It also robs us of dignity and humanity, and destroys our self-esteem.

Anyone knowledgeable about domestic abuse knows how much harm is caused by constant verbal abuse. And yet this is the abuse all men have to endlessly endure from misandrists.

I would like to address the question of why there is so much hate and abuse of men in the modern media. Many of us -- even many MRAs think that misandrists do not understand how much they are hurting us. Many of us would think that these abusers do not understand how hateful would their humor sound if it was directed against any other birth group -- like women or an ethnic group. That is where I disagree. The main goal of male bashers is hurting men. If they did not want to hurt us, they would not do it!

Another issue we need to look at in order to understand male-bashers is the psychology of a predator. The sad reality of life is that some people need to put others down in order to raise their own self-esteem or take out their frustrations. And any predator is very likely to select a target which can be considered safe or fair game. That is why most child abusers and spouse abusers would never try to beat up their boss at work. That is also why misandrists would not try to attack any politically incorrect target.

Many of us hope that as time progresses the nightmare of male-bashing will go out of fashion. That is what we hoped for in 1986 and 1996. But history has proved our optimism to be wrong. Male bashing has greatly increased from 1986 to 1996 and from 1996 to 2006. Male bashing has escalated not only quantitatively but also qualitatively. In 1990 portraying a man as a villain was enough, but now the theme of revenge against men is becoming increasingly popular. In the 1980-s male bashing shows were content with showing men slapped, by the late 1990-s groin kicks became more popular, and now castration is the ever-growing theme. As time goes misandrists will have to introduce worse and worse themes to make male-bashing appealing.

Likewise, we can expect misandry to grow in volume.

Fortunately, more and more men and women are speaking up against malebashing.

Between 1992 and 2002, the number of complaints from men about the bashing grew 10 times. Australian Bureau of Advertising gets more complaints about malebashing then it does about misogyny. When BBC aired "Bring Your Husband to Heel", it got 350 complaint emails. No less then 4,000 individuals have participated in Glenn Sacks' campaign against boy-bashing. After the above-mentioned misandrist ABC program, most of the discussion on their 20/20 forums was about their misandry.

Given that more and more of us are protesting against misandry, many of us can hope that the wave of male-bashing may subside. But I do not share the optimism. I believe that before the wave of male bashing will stop its escalation, there will need to be qualitative changes in our response to male bashing. Our current responses are very inefficient. We tell male-bashers how much they have hurt us, which is good news for those of them who do it for fun and no news to those who do it for profit. We appeal to their sense of fairness, which is futile.

In my opinion, the only way to contain the verbal abuse of men is to hold the perpetrators accountable. One suggestion for doing so is to boycott male-bashing companies. Given that the majority of Americans are too used to misandry to notice it, that approach is unlikely to work. My suggestion would be to take another look at the First Amendment. The First Amendment allows any misandrist "producer" to air a show with a message that all men are dogs. But the same amendment allows any man or any women who considers us human to write a blog entry about similarity of that "producer" to a dog. Or to address her/him in four-letter words. Or write a sexual joke about them.

Our laws are very liberal in respect to what we can say about a public figure. Any major production comparing men to dogs or otherwise abusing us should result in more then just 350 complaints. In an ideal situation it would also result in 500 derogatory blog entries (by different authors!) about the producer plus a blogosphere review of the producer's past faults. If that is ever achieved, then the reputation of any male-basher would suffer as much as the reputation of any other bigot. That will provide some deterrence against verbally abusing men for fun or profit. Moreover, that will encourage more men and possibly women to stand up for men's rights.

Another solution to stopping male-bashing would be to create an online encyclopedia of male-bashers, their quotes, their indiscretions, and their verbal characteristics from website users. Such a site would allow anyone insulted by media male-bashing to register the abuser, expose the abusers faults, or just vent about them. That would be neither illegal nor unfair. Indeed, many such user-generated databases exist. On ratemyteacher.com and ratemyprofessor.com, anyone can rate their instructor. These databases contain anonymous comments on most schoolteachers and professors in the USA!

A male-bashing website dontdatehimgirl allows anyone to post anonymous accusations against any man, along with his name, photo, and city of residence. Some men are trying to sue the site, but according to the Communications Decency Act of 1996, webmasters are not responsible for posts made by their website users. Hence, a site rateamalebasher.com would be a great idea.

As I write this article I can almost hear a choir of critics saying "attack the idea -- not the person". But it was very well known even before Hammurabi that until the abusers are held accountable, the abuse is not going to stop! Some of us would argue that making a webpage ridiculing some male-basher is unfair, but I believe that not doing so is far more unfair to all men suffering constant verbal abuse from the media.

Given that I am not a major player in the men's movement, I understand that my article will accomplish very little. I understand, that most men's activists will continue to address male-bashing without holding the perpetrators accountable. And yet I do predict that sooner or later -- I would guess within the next two decades most MRAs will reach the same conclusions as I did on their own. And only then will we see the gradual liberation of men from constant abuse.
© 2006 LibertyUNH