Reconstruction 7.1 (2007)
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Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young. Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture. Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's UP, 2001 (reprinted 2002). 376pp., hardcover, $39.95, ISBN 0-7735-2272-7.
<1> Normally, a book review considers the book's claims and whether or not these claims are useful, valid or contentious. Nathanson and Young admit immediately that everything about their book, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, has nothing but contentious claims. As they elaborate in the introduction of the first of a planned three book series, misandry, the fear and loathing of men, is the under-examined counterpart to misogyny, the fear and loathing of women [1]. Thus, Spreading Misandry seeks to trace rise of the phenomenon, how it is represented and how it is reproduced in contemporary North American culture. <2> Given men's greater access to power and privilege this culture, the premise of Spreading Misandry intends to startle readers and to challenge the complacency of traditional feminist critiques of patriarchal culture. It startled me and I confess that I subscribe to a hierarchy of "masculinities" with "hegemonic masculinity" at the top [2]. This rubric accounts for the variations of masculinity that the fallacy of a universal patriarchy cannot. Perhaps knowing that (far) stronger reactions are likely, Nathanson and Young spend the bulk of the introduction qualifying the terms, scope and intentions of the analysis. Indeed, they write, "Our hypothesis is that, like misogyny once upon a time, misandry has become so deeply embedded in our culture that few people - including men - even recognize it. [. . .] In formulating our hypothesis however, we are doing nothing that social scientists do not do" (xii). The qualification of their approach has to be even more qualified. Initially Nathanson and Young explain "We looked for patterns, ones that recur over and over both within and across genres [authors' emphasis]" (x). This sounds simple enough until one dissects how they knew which patterns to consider: feminism told them. That is to say, feminist approaches to the study of the ways in which the dominant - i.e., "patriarchal" - culture represents and reproduces gender provide the analytical tools for a study of misandry. Two very relevant concerns then arise: first, have the findings and methods of feminism been appropriated and exploited by "patriarchy" and, second, is feminism being blamed for men's greater sense of powerless (which misandry seemingly entails).
Works Cited
Connell, R.W. Masculinities
Notes
[1] As an aside, "misandry" had to be added to my computer's dictionary while "misogyny" did not. [^]
[2] It is worth noting that, as Robert Connell suggests, most men in white, Western culture derive a "patriarchal dividend," or "windfall" (p#). Simply put, there are benefits given on the basis of adventitious birth. [^]
Marc Ouellette
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