Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men

667 Pages·2006·3.98 MB·English

by  Paul Nathanson

LEGALIZING MISANDRY
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Legalizing Misandry
From Public Shame to Systemic
Discrimination against Men
PAUL NATHANSON and
KATHERINE K. YOUNG
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2006
isbn-13: 978-0-7735-2862-8 isbn-10: 0-7735-2862-8
Legal deposit first quarter 2006
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to
Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sci-
ences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada
Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the
financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publish-
ing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Nathanson, Paul, 1947–
Legalizing misandry : from public shame to systematic discrimination
against men / Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young.
Includes index.
isbn-13: 978-0-7735-2862-8 isbn-10: 0-7735-2862-8
1. Misandry – Canada. 2. Misandry – United States. 3. Sex discrimi-
nation against men – Canada. 4. Sex discrimination against men –
United States. I. Young, Katherine K., 1944– II. Title.
hq1090.n367 2006 305.32′0971 c2005–902483–6
Typeset in 10/12Sabon with Frutiger display by True to Type
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction ix
part one men on trial:
the court of public opinion 1
1 Children v. Demons: The McMartin and Other Witch Hunts 3
2 Wives v. Abusers: The Bobbitt Affair 21
3 Workers v. Harassers: The Hill-Thomas Debate 31
4 Martyrs v. Murderers: The Montreal Massacre 53
part two rights on trial: money matters 79
5 Women’s Rights v. Human Rights: The Case of Entitlements 81
6 Maternal Rights v. Paternal Rights: The Case of Children 125
part three sex on trial:
from liberation to separation 157
7 Power v. Pleasure: The Case of Pornography/Prostitution 159
8 Separatists v. Integrationists: The Case of Sexual Harassment 193
9 Female Victims v. Male Victims: The Case of Violence
against Women 223
vi Contents
part four society on trial:
from classroom to legislature 267
10 Ideological Feminism v. Scholarship 269
11 Misandry v. Equality 309
appendices 327
1 Responding to Our Critics: Spreading Misandry Revisited 329
2 Birth of the Bogeyman: One Subtext of Modern Witch Hunts 340
3 Misleading the Public: Statistics Abuse 347
4 Silencing men: The Trouble with Political Correctness 365
5 Respectable Porn: The Debate over Romance Novels 373
6 Bargaining at Beijing: United Nations or United Women 391
7 Paved with Entitlements: The Road to Caste 403
8 Here Come the Feds: Studies of Affirmative Action and
Pay Equity 410
9 Dissing Dads: The Debate over Custody 415
10 Gynotopia: Feminism at Academic Conferences 439
11 AFront by Any Other Name: Ideology, Gender Studies,
and Women’s Studies 465
12 What’s Sauce for the Goose: Double Standards in a
Government Report 471
13 Take That! Comparative Victimology 478
Notes 493
Index 621
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the many people who helped make this book pos-
sible. Some responded to our requests for legal and statistical information:
Augustina J. Kposowa, Grant Brown, and Brian Jenkins. Christopher Gray
read several chapters and offered his comments. Jane Aiken has granted us
permission to publish some of her material. Nicolas Lambe and Tara
McPhail helped us with our legal citations. Our editor, Ron Curtis, read the
manuscript very carefully; he not only corrected typos but also provided
many worthwhile editorial suggestions. Finally we are grateful to the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council for its financial support.
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Introduction
One sure sign of danger at any time and in any place is a segment of the
population that society considers unworthy of attention. No wonder more
boys than girls face the future with apathy and drop out of school.1Worse,
far more young men than young women are committing suicide. Ditto for
old men and old women.2 Males are not faring well at all in a society that
is now focused explicitly on the needs and problems of females and is often
hostile to the very possibility that males might have any distinct needs and
problems of their own. Rapid social change and depression have been listed
as causes of these problems, but the question is why these factors affect
men, especially young men, much more than they do women.
These are complex problems, to be sure, and have more than one expla-
nation (as we will show in Transcending Misandry, the third volume of this
trilogy; the first volume, Spreading Misandry, was published in 2001).
Underlying many explanations, though, is a distinctly gynocentric world-
view. Being woman-centred, by definition, gynocentrism ignores the needs
and problems of men. (The irony is that it was originally adopted to cor-
rect the biases of an androcentric, or man-centred, worldview.) And
because gynocentrism now has both official status (in law) and quasi-offi-
cial status (in institutional policies), its bias has become deeply embedded
in public policy. That status has created and even institutionalized a new
double standard, one that favours women instead of men and that, in turn,
has created many additional problems: psychological, political, and –
above all – moral ones. It is hard to know precisely how these problems
affect boys and men personally, but it is worth noting that no large-scale
study has ever been done to find out. It would be folly to ignore the warn-
ing signs mentioned above, in our opinion, but that is precisely what has
been happening.
At least one bar association has seen fit to threaten male dissenters, con-
cluding a report on women with a stern warning. Men, it says, will try to