Misandry in U.S. culture

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I watched some DVDs this past weekend and it occurred to me that there are many elements of misandry (contempt and hatred for men) presented in the media outlets of television and movies. I don't watch much television but I admit sometimes when it gets too quiet at home I turn it on for a little while. I watch quite a lot of movies on DVD and I have noticed that inevitably men who play the role of husbands are portrayed as brutes or idiots. I'm not the best at reading nonverbal cues but I can often pick things up on a t.v. commercial that I can't in real life social situations. I sense a sneering contempt for men in a lot of commercials. One commercial showed some people in an elevator who had just gotten off from work. Some women were on the elevator and it showed them smiling and dreaming about going home to eat an individual serving of a Betty Crocker microwaved cake. In this commercial a handsome man walks into the elevator and the women close their eyes and completely ignore him. He looks completely dumbfounded. I know this commercial was trying to reach a certain demographic, but still it seemed to send the message "Who needs men when you can go home and eat cake?"

I have noticed a double standard in movies. Women who have been wronged by a man react in extreme and disproportionate ways and somehow they are portrayed in such a way as to make the audience sympathetic to her. People laugh uproariously at the sight of a woman kicking a man in a sensitive area or wrecking his car or bashing him over the head. Yes, there are jerks out there, no doubt. But somehow I doubt people would find the sight of a man beating a woman up when he found out she had been unfaithful to him amusing in any way. In the last fews years some t-shirts were sold by some retailers that had messages such as "Boys are smelly" or "Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them." There would be outrage if t-shirts saying "Women are stupid. Beat them."were sold. So I am particularly curious to know if the guys on here have noticed growing misandry in U.S. culture.

Growing? Thirty years of open hate, and a lot of she could not do any wrong before that.

It is best to not know them, avoid them, ignore them. MTV shows them as they are.

its a product of the popular Obsession with the supposed differences in genders and gender based stereotypes.

ive never understood the obsession or the so called differences/stereotypes. i think its like some kind of severe socially disabilitating psychological disease that affects mainly NT's or something

I used to consider myself misanthropic as a teen. I figured it was situational and co-morbid to the self-disgust I had fallen upon myself then.

<-- are you confusing misandy with misanthropy?

misanthropy is a hatred for all humans.

hmmmm... I suppose so...

It is very true. It is the world men live in that many feminist don't want you to see.

Violence is one area that this is ignored. Irony has in case of domestic violence. In the US men are blamed when they start arresting people women are just as likely to be the cause. If a woman his a man it is ok. Man hits a woman it is not.

Then we have sex abuse. If a 15 year old girl gets hit on by an older man or has sex with them it is abuse. More often than a 15 year old boy is suppose to accept it and brag about it.

I see it all the time. I don't like most mainstream media.

Same thing's true here at WP: Several threads where female posters made it abundantly clear that not only weren't we welcome to contribute, we weren't even supposed to read their thread.

Basic wrong-headed prejudice...

Should one wish to read a book about misandry in the U.S., there's Warren Farrell's "Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say". I agreed with some of his points but not all of them.

It's the pendulum swinging back from women being treated as second-class citizens and third-rate thinkers.

Women being beaten by their husbands was ignored by police for decades before one police department was sued. Some people still expect men to "control their women".

After WWII Rosie the Riveter was pressured by society to become June Cleaver or face ostracism and ridicule.

Today, women still have the opportunity to do the same work as men for a lot less money. As a bonus, they also still face the good ol' boy networks in many jobs.

While men physically beating women is addressed, the issues of women beating men are beginning to be addressed. The demographics show women make more money than they used to and they spend more of it shopping than men. Therefore, sales are boosted showing men as idiots next to women.

The problem with backlash directed at a broad group like men in general is that the men who are willing to treat women with respect are also bashed. Some of them may change their minds.

yeah commercials make husbands and men look like dummies that exasperate their witty and patient wives. theyre trying to show that women are at the same level as men, but the funny thing is, you can tell theyre overcompensating so it just kinda looks hokey in a commercial.

I agree with a previous poster... I'm a misanthrope.

I see a lot of contempt for men at work, 80% of the people at my company are women. To be fair to them, with the exception of a handful of us, most of the rest of the men ARE contemptable. We have supervisor's sleeping with their assistants, VP's who are the next best thing to functional morons... I'm one of a very few that most of the women seem to respect, on the other hand, when I talk to them, I make a POINT of looking in their eyes or OVER their heads, like I'm thinking. Most of the men tend to look down and never look back up.

there's another book about it; "The War against Boys"...written by a woman, just to set things straight...

Totally agreed. You put it much more tactfully than I will. People look at little things here and there and whine about it being unfair and hypocritical, but seem to forget that as a group women still have it far worse than men do. So what if men are the butt of a few jokes on TV? Women still are too, and not only that, they're still sex objects in the media, they're still not taken seriously in many professions, and they are the most frequent target of group hatred. You will find more hate sites on the internet directed at women than any other group of people. Ok sometimes women are treated with more lenience than men in some countries when it comes to assault. But part of that comes from a sympathy for women as the underdog. It may not be right, but the advantage of having underdog status doesn't outweigh all the other crap we have to deal with. Just to point out, most women that are concerned about women's issues are not all angry man-haters. They almost always appreciate a man that treats them with dignity and respect. It's kind of like how aspies feel about NTs. We know perfectly well that NTs are not all exactly the same and that there are many polite and open minded ones. But living in an NT world with NT rules, often treated disrespectfully or even hated because we are not NTs can be very very frustrating. So what do we do? We have our rants and our jokes. "NTs are so horrible, we're so much better." It feels good, but even if we really meant it, come on, it's not like we won. Get real. It's still an NT (and man's) world.

I'm afraid to say anything either way because I don't want to get into trouble.