If only men ran feminism, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in. We wouldn’t have to worry about offending them or arguing among ourselves. We would simply take instruction from consultants on gender struggle. Only the prettiest would be allowed to fight the gender jihad. And we would have to do it topless.
You can’t make this stuff up. And I am not. It turns out that that Femen, the Ukrainian feminist group known for semi-naked media stunts, slogan “Our mission is protest, our weapons are bare breasts” was actually founded by a man, Victor Svyatski. It gets weirder. This man hand picked attractive women knowing they would make the front pages – and they did. […] “These girls are weak. They don’t have the strength of character … Instead they show submissiveness, spinelessness, lack of punctuality, and many other factors which prevent them from becoming political activists.” Yes, women are so useless we can’t even get our tops off in the right way. Who knows how we ever got the vote?
This whole ridiculous tale is symptomatic of the huge muddle around men’s relationship to feminism. […] Increasingly […] to talk about gender-specific issues invokes cries of “misandry” from the What About The Men brigade. According to some, anyone who mentions breast cancer therefore doesn’t care about prostate cancer, anyone who mentions “domestic violence” doesn’t care that men are victims of violence too. Female genital mutilation? What about circumcision? […]
This week, for example, activists who amazingly kept their clothes on were asking whether there is a connection between trolling, online stalking and actual violence against women. Women’s Aid workers are reporting that there is. Immediately the What About The Men brigade suggests that somehow this means we don’t care when men are killed.
The battering ram of misandry is another attempt to silence debate. It is misguided. It operates from the assumption that we are all on a level playing field. I say tomato. You say to-mate-oh. I say misogyny. You say misandry. What is missing here is any analysis of patriarchy. Or, indeed, global reality.
[…] patriarchy […] produces a multi-faceted system in which men at the top are the most advantaged. […] patriarchy is a system that […] according to Jung, keeps men unable to fully mature. […]
Misandry will be equivalent to misogyny only when women are equal to men. There are no blurred lines here.
Suzanne Moore on Femen, patriarchy, misogyny and “misandry” in The Guardian (via politics-r-us)