No it is NOT Man Hating, Here's Why

Graphic from an article titled "Five Reasons to Teach Feminism in High School"

Hey readers! Long time no see (like over a month... whoops, *sheepish laugh*)  Sorry about that, I've just been really busy, and tbh lazy so I haven't gotten around to doing a new post, but I had some time today so I thought I'd put something up. So without further ado:

No it is NOT man hating. Here's why:

Nowadays topics such as gender inequality, gender-based violence and intimate partner violence seem to be getting more and more attention, and before I say any more, I have to say that is AWESOME. 

Without a doubt it's great, but like many awesome things it does not come without hurdles, in this case, I think the biggest one is that sentiment that keeps on showing up that varies but essentially goes like this: "But what about the MEN?" 

Those who take it even further will even say "xxthing happens to everyone, the fact that you are only concerned about the women PROVES your misandry." 

I'm not saying that misandry does not exist; I'm not saying that men's problems are not important; and I am certainly now saying men are never mistreated, it's just that what you're really doing in making a comparison like that is comparing apple to oranges. 

I'm going to start by looking at that specific

argument and I'll talk about why -- though it seems like it is -- it is actually not logically valid. 

The main thing is, the argument is based on the assumption that men and women are on the same level in society, that men and women hold the same power and can access the same amount of privilege, and that is simply not true. 

(For those of you who might want to better understand the concept of "privilege", you'll find some good stuff here, but essentially what it is is that certain groups have more advantages/certain groups are more disadvantaged in society because of certain things about them.) 

Elena Serova recently became the first Russian Cosmonaut aboard
the ISS and the media asked her about her hair...

Men still hold most of the power in society (it helps that most politicians are men). They tend to be taken more seriously -- when a man does something great, the media doesn't tend to totally disregard that and ask about their hair, and of course there is the infamous wage gap.

Just by being male, males don't have to deal with a lot of things that can hold them back. When have you ever seen anything about politicians trying to impose laws on a man's body?

This is not to say that men don't suffer, they are just privileged with not having to deal with certain things.

So giving more aid to women in an issue that affects both genders is not misandry, because women need that aid to level the playing field and make things fair. 

Think of it this way. Say there are two towns on

the coast and a tsunami is headed their way. Both villages are the same distance from the shore, but one is a couple hundred metres higher in altitude than the other (this would represent privilege). 

Does sending more aid for the village lower down after the tsunami mean you're mistreating the village higher up? 

No! The village lower down would require extra help to get on its feet compared to the one higher up, since it would be affected more because of its lower position. It's only fair, it's only right to send more help to the village lower down because they need more.

It's the same way with men and women. Women are disadvantaged compared to men, and because women started off disadvantaged, to make things fair, women would have to be given more help with the issue. 

Emma Watson gave a beautiful analogy recently in a conversation with HeForShe, stating that the human race is like a bird and right now, one of its wings is clipped, so we can't fly as high as we're capable of. 

Taken from a Huffington Post Article

Before we can really move ahead and make things better for all people, we need to even things out so women are not disadvantaged by just being women, so women's lives are better, so we can help the human race soar. 

If we keep giving the same amount of support to both sides, we're never going to reach what is fair -- an even playing field -- so though it is unequal to help women out more than men, right now we need that in our journey toward what is right.

Because as I discussed in this post, we don't need equal, we need equitable.  

It's the same the other way around too. For example with the issue of the objectification of women, there are a lot of indignant cries about the fact that men are also objectified. 

This is true, but the objectification of men does not hold the same detrimental effects to men as the objectification of women does to women. 

Here's another analogy to help see why: imagine that a man and a woman are both standing on some sand. They are the same height, but the woman is standing in a hole dug out in the sand. Two mean people come along and one starts kicking sand at the man and the other starts kicking sand at the women, the two people do this at the same speed. 

Who would be buried by sand first? The woman, because she started off partially buried, she started off disadvantaged.

Similarly, with the objectification of women, even though the same thing is being done to both genders, the effects are for worse and far more concerning when it's being done to a woman because women started off with less privilege; and when men objectify women it has a greater effect than when women do so to men because there is that imbalance of power.   

We simply can't say that because something happens to both genders, that not including what happens to the men in the conversation is mistreating them. It just doesn't apply the same way and doesn't incur the same results because of the imbalance of power privilege.

I'll be real, I'm kind of sick of hearing about
women too. All the time it's just a string problems that women face, but my question is, why have things not changed already? We talk about these issues over and over until they seem overdone, still it's hard to find some concrete evidence of change. 

And when it does happen to both genders it bothers me when they make it seem like it only happens to women

But in the end, you can't forget that things like gender roles contribute to the plights of men and that conversations around violence against women, for example, work to break gender role expectations for BOTH men and women, so though the focus is not on men, these campaigns "for women" are working to make things better for men as well. 

I think just as a society we need to have an understanding that though, in general, women are portrayed more often as the recipients because we are the ones experience these negative things more often, we are not the only victims. We need to understand that the problem is not men, but bad people of ALL genders. 

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