Review of Joanna Russ’s “The New Misandry”
Joanna Russ’s “The New Misandry-Man hating in 1972” advocates strategic resistance to male supremacy, not random expression of antagonistic emotions towards men
Part of the patriarchal process of anti-progress, which works through the ongoing administration of hate, division, and segregation, is to project out all of its own ugly attributes, actions, and attitudes onto the people (primarily women) whom it seeks to harm. Thus the female people who are being subjected to hatred and various forms of oppression at the hands of men are silenced and suppressed further through accusations that they, the victims of male supremacy, are actually the perpetrators of various crimes against men due to the underlying or obvious presence of a sustained hatred towards male people. Although many subversive radical feminists have articulated this reality in various meaningful and creative ways, Joanna Russ offers a particularly astute elucidation and refutation of theories regarding women hating men as problematic modes of interaction which are both harmful and irrational. In this article, I deconstruct Russ’s discourse regarding “misandry” in her essay “The New Misandry.” My deconstruction reveals that the contextual meaning of the term “misandry”–which is female resistance to male oppression–can and should displace normative understandings of male hatred as women randomly, unstrategically expressing antagonistic emotions towards men who, for the most part, are not actively harming them or engaging in activities that warrant apoplectic retaliation.
Russ’s piece opens with the question of whether it is acceptable to hate men. Following this introduction, Russ argues that, in light of misogyny’s existence and efficacy, misandry is an acceptable and appropriate cognitive and emotive modality to adopt. It is important to note that although the term “misandry” refers to hatred of men, Russ’s definition and application of the word is more directly related to the process of oppressed people (in this case, women) resisting the tactics and systems of their oppressors (in this case, men). Thus Russ’s use of the term misandry, and her assertion that it is an acceptable ideological slant for women to adopt, is not confluent with understandings of male hatred which involve simply lashing out at or avoiding men as a result of feelings of bitterness, anger, or jealousy towards men. Rather, Russ’s implementation of the word is predicated on an acute awareness of the role that male supremacy plays in oppressing women and she argues that, rather than accepting the system of patriarchal humiliation which seeks to trivialize and dehumanize female people, female people should resist their subordination and attempt to gain power. This configuration of Russ’s argument is important to articulate because, due to the prevalence and cultural normativity of patriarchal thought, efforts towards radical resistance to systems of domination are consistently mischaracterized, articulated inaccurately, and suppressed so that there is little to no room for thoughtful, intense discourse regarding the need to examine the implications of misogyny and subsequently strategize against its import and impact. That this reality is prevalent becomes evident when, in attempting to engage individuals in discourse regarding women’s rights, many people respond “Oh, those feminists just hate men.” This type of response oftentimes obscures dialogue regarding why women might “hate” men and what “hate” actually is. In her own thoughtful discourse on the topic, Russ asserts that “I think we ought to decide that man-hating is not only respectable but honorable. To be a misandrist a woman needs considerable ingenuity, originality, and resilience.” She argues that man-hating is respectable and honorable in light of the fact that women are constantly dealing with the misogynistic efforts of men; these efforts include but are not limited to men responding to the reality of rape with laughter, belittling them, and asserting that, when a woman is hurt by a man, it is her fault because she somehow provoked it.
In delineating a plethora of problematic behaviors that misogynists engage in, Russ continually discusses the variegated and oftentimes highly ineffective and reactionary responses that women adopt in attempting to deal with their ongoing belittlement, objectification, and negation. In addressing the idea that some women can and do take meaningful action which challenges misogyny, Russ argues that “It is the unconventional, truthful, sensitive, intelligent, original woman who can get out from under that tyranny and see clearly that to be discriminated against, patronized, belittled, frustrated, limited, treated without respect, and taught that one is not important are hardly breeding grounds for Love.” In other words, “man-hating” is actually the process of refusing to accept misogynistic acts of men. The refusals can become evident through practices such as avoiding, confronting, or otherwise rejecting the patriarchal tyranny and its promise that women will receive love for obeying its edicts of female subordination and suppression. Furthermore, the process of man-hating, Russ says, is imperative because it precludes the onset of self-deprecation. In making this claim, she argues “I find hating others morally preferable to hating oneself; it gives the human race a backbone. It is the first of all the biological virtues, self-preservation, and it takes more bravery than you might think.” Rephrased, the brand of “misandry” Russ advocates is simply the rejection of misogyny as a tenable modality for male-female relations. This understanding may precipitate understanding of Russ’s response to the question of why this “man-hating” modality is so dreadful. It is so, she argues, “Because it is easier for everybody, male and female, to demand saintly purity of the oppressed than to tee off on the oppressor.” This statement carries with it both explicit and implicit import. Her response to why man-hating is loathed by members of society unequivocally conveys that it is viewed with dread because it is less problematic to demand that oppressed people go along with the systems that oppress them than to insist that oppressors modify their behavior. Additionally, Russ’s assertion reiterates a claim that both feminists and (some) non-feminists have been asserting for decades: although male supremacy is a system of domination designed by men to ensure their well-being at the expense of women, it functions effectively because both male and female people participate in its maintenance and proliferation. (This is part of the reason that we can witness unconscionable responses to the reality of men raping women such as “If she hadn’t been out late and drinking, this wouldn’t have happened.” In this case, the woman is required to hold a higher standard of morality (saintly purity) and the culpability of the male rapist is obscured, ignored, or only obliquely acknowledged.) And although not articulated explicitly, Russ’s assertion regarding male and female hesitation to make men with power angry alludes to the disquieting reality that many people are willing to witness the perpetuation of inequality due to cowardice and unwillingness to grapple with the cognitive, somatic, and spatial upheavals that speaking to power might entail.
If one still questions whether Russ’s definition of “man-hating” is confluent with apoplectic rage which reflects utter, uncalled for, and ineffective disregard for and hatred towards men, consider the following assessment which she makes regarding the power relations that exist between men and women (and, by implication, between any set of individuals in which one person operates as the hurter and the other party exists as the hurtee):
“Let us get several things clear: hurting people makes them angry, anger turns
to hate when the anger is chronic and accompanied by helplessness, and although
you can bully or shame people into not showing their anger, the only way to stop
the anger is to stop the hurt. The cure for hate is power — not power to hurt the
hurter, but power to make the hurter stop.”
In this configuration of oppressive operations and their undesirable outcomes, Russ explicates a patriarchal process in which men hurt women, hurt women become angry, and the anger evolves into wrath when the victim is faced with her helplessness. The process can involve women suppressing their anger, but the suppression will not catalyze the onset of obliteration. Rather, we can infer, the oppressed will stew quietly. In order to actually end the presence and proliferation of negative emotions toward men, one would need to be able to stop male people from hurting female people, not actively seek out opportunities for the oppressed to harm the hurter. Harming the hurter constitutes what I perceive to be the prototypical, normative conception of what misandry is; it involves women actually seeking to ridicule, humiliate, and demean men. (It also implicitly implies that the women who engage in these hurting activities are not doing it for a noble political cause, but rather have a mere personal grievance with a man who may have hurt them through a process like unfaithfulness in marriage.) The prototypical let-the-harmed-hurt-the-hurter configuration that operates as an ostensibly normative understanding of misandry is not what Russ advocates. Rather, she writes towards recognition of the putative truth that the ultimate aim of the negative cognitive and emotive disposition that women have towards men is not harming male people, but rather engaging in political and personal processes which entail the acquisition of a form of power which ends the oppressor’s ability to cause harm. Many meaningful things are being said by Russ here, and I perceive one of the most important to be her (rightful) attachment to the idea that the ideal form of power–real power–involves possessing the ability to end oppression. (This concept implies that the forms of power which many women say they have are actually more accurately identified as pseudo-powers given their inefficacy in ending male harms such as pornography, prostitution, and pedophilia.)
When radical feminists write, read, and gather together to strategize against male supremacy and the plethora of atrocities that its existence engenders, they should be cognizant of the role that patriarchal reversals play in obfuscating the reality that men continue to dominate women in a wide range of psychologically and somatically enervating ways. In context of Russ’s piece, radical feminists must become aware that the accusation of misandry amongst women who are actively working against male tyranny works to obfuscate the prevalence and pervasiveness of misogyny. Patriarchal reversals operate when males, and women who operate in alignment with them, accuse female people of committing a moral, social, or bodily crime when it is actually male people who do so. In the case of Russ’s juxtaposition of misandry and misogyny, the culpability of men becomes glaringly evident. It is not women that “hate” men through ongoing and active refusal to tolerate and internalize their misogynistic efforts; rather, it is men who demonstrate their hatred of women through various processes, including the author’s reference to the rape of female people catalyzing laughter. In recognizing these realities, it might behoove radical feminists to categorize the term “misandry” as a misnomer and reframe discourse regarding whether women hate men into conversations regarding why female people experience so much hatred from their male counterparts.
Review by Jocelyn Crawley
Jocelyn Crawley is a radical feminist who places primacy on analyzing and exploring rape and sexual assault as key aspects of male supremacy.
She also wrote a review of the book, “Missoula” by Jon Krakauer.
Works Cited
Ortega, Tony. “The New Misandry: Man-Hating in 1972.” The Village Voice, 11 May 2017.