I compare misandry with homophobia a lot because it is useful to do so. I've been able to make sense of one through the other, and I want to put these experiences and conclusions into words.
While neither of them are fun, it has been my encounters with misandry that have left me with the most emotional harm to sort through. That may seem strange since I grew up in a conservative area and was raised in a fundamentalist Christian community. One would assume homophobia would be more prevalent in that environment. Yet misandry was even less controversial in my community than homophobia.
Many conservative Christian parents made an effort to prevent their kids being exposed to anything related to homosexuality because they did not want their kids to know about homosexuality. When their kids grew a little older and learned about homosexuality, some parents would scold their kids for using gay slurs they might have heard elsewhere, not just because they did not want their kids understanding anything about sexuality, but also because some did genuinely value being nice to others. When I was old enough, my Christian parents explained homosexuality was a sin, but that Jesus still died for homosexuals. For many Christians, the principle of "love the sinner" applied even to homosexuals. No such concession was ever made for men facing misandry in my culture, or any other culture that I was ever aware of in the west.
Christians around me would laugh at men being physically abused by their wives in sitcoms but change the channel immediately if a gay character showed up in order to protect their children from what they saw as harmful content, even if the gay character wasn't doing anything but just existing. The significance that gays had, even if it was negative, was more than the significance men had. Gay identity was dangerous, but male identity was just a joke. Gays were something while men were nothing.
When I was much younger, I had always felt some sense of shame and dread about being masculine. I didn't understand it then, but I do now. I had seen that it was men who were subjected to violence and abuse on TV, and it was considered funny. I had seen the books like "Are Men Necessary" on shelves. I had grown up around the "Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them" merchandise you could buy at the mall. I had a scar on my penis where my foreskin had been removed without my consent. Three decades later, broader society is only now stirring to question whether some or all of these things might be worth considering as serious issues, whereas our verdict on homophobia being a bad thing has been settled for decades.
Hate Is Hate
The fight for gay marriage rights in the US yielded a slogan that gained widespread popularity: "Love Is Love."
The message behind this slogan was that gay love was just as valid as heterosexual love and deserved the same respect. I also believe that "Hate Is Hate." That means misandry is just as wrong as misogyny and deserves the same condemnation.
If we are to deal with misandry for what it is, we have to unapologetically recognize that it is pure bigotry. It is not acceptable under any context. It has no merits. Because misandry has infected all our major institutions and is incubated and defended by feminism (much like homophobia is bolstered by religion) the fight against misandry is not an easy one.
Perpetrators of misandry attempt to justify their hate by creating a guilty association between men and the existence of problems that plague society. They say men are the cause of violence, war, rape, and so on. This is familiar to me from what I saw done to gays throughout my life.
Gays collectively have been blamed for things they did not collectively do. They were accused of wanting things they did not want, such as to "recruit" people's kids and turn them gay, wanting to destroy Christian society, wanting to molest children, wanting to force their "lifestyle" on others. Society has learned it was wrong to treat gay people this way. Today, anyone painting gays with such a broad brush is labeled a homophobe, and it doesn't even matter if some gays actually are child molesters or violent radicals. It is implicitly understood by most of western society that it is not acceptable to judge the entire group by what some do. Society has yet to reach that same conclusion for how it views and treats men.
Gays being a tiny minority and men being half the population might call into question the idea that we can deal with both forms of hatred the same way. As a gay person, I could always claim underdog status, but some might say I am unable to do that as a man. Since men are half the population, and they are perceived to be inherently privileged due to their sex, society is not always willing to hear men talk about their struggles and disadvantages. Their story does not have the "David versus Goliath" drama that the story of gay liberation has. But that does not mean the story of men's struggle is less valid. Society has tricked men into believing that problems which affect them because they are men are not as important as problems that affect women. Even if sometimes I still feel inside like the hate and discrimination I face as a man is less urgent than what I've experienced as a gay person, I do not allow myself to listen to those feelings.
For the men and boys reading this, no matter who you are, what you look like, or where you came from, the pain you experience when you're subjected to abuse because of your maleness is real and valid. There is never an excuse for hatred directed at a person's innate attributes. Do not allow yourself to be told otherwise. Tolerating hate does not help anyone. I lived through decriminalization of gay sex, legalization of gay marriage, and the extension of the Civil Rights Act to gay people, and at no point was it ever necessary for me as a gay person to abuse a heterosexual person in order to advance my interests. That would've made me more of an asshole than an activist. Any person justifying open hatred or dismissal of another person because of some "privilege" is being a villain.
You Can't Hide
Growing up, one of the things I heard so many homophobic people casually say was, "Why can't gays just keep it to themselves?" Homosexuality was seen as a threat to the family unit, to children, and to public morals. The gay community was ravaged by mental health problems, AIDS, and drugs. The problems gays faced, the homophobes said, were quite obviously self-inflicted and no sane person would want to normalize such dysfunction and self-destruction. The idea that gay people were struggling due to society's unwillingness to accommodate them was not viable for homophobes intent on casting homosexuality itself as the cause of the dysfunction.
Today, it is men's problems which we are told are self-inflicted both at the individual level and as a group. Men are told to stop whining and fix their own problems. Men are told that patriarchy is the cause of our systemic problems, and since patriarchy is built for men by men, our problems are self-inflicted. The idea that things have been done to us because we're men is not taken seriously. Dysfunction is a feature of masculinity according to the misandrist, as dysfunction is a feature of gayness according to the homophobe.
I tried to keep both my gayness and my masculinity to myself in the way that I thought I was supposed to. Both have been considered ominous signs by society that I am diseased or destructive. I can hide being gay if I choose, but I do not have that same advantage when it comes to being a man.
Masculinity is under constant scrutiny, being policed in a figurative and literal sense. Men have to be careful how they express masculinity so as not to make women feel unsafe or annoyed. Men have to be careful not to get the cops called on them by a woman who feels threatened or angry. Men have to be careful how they look at, talk to, sit near, ride on the elevator with, and talk about women. Men have to be careful to not even appear as though they aren't thinking about women's issues at all times. So many male advocates, like Richard Reeves, begin each conversation about men's issues with an apology for momentarily failing to center women's issues and a promise that men do not want to take anything away from women. I and so many other gay people had to offer similar apologies over the years for using oxygen to talk about ourselves and assure others that we did not want to take away their rights or harm their children in our pursuit of equality and respect. The group having to make constant apologies is usually not the aggressor, despite the accusations from those demanding the apology.
I've discussed misandry with men who've told me they soften or pitch their voices up a bit when speaking to women to appear less threatening, even when talking to women they know very well. Men have told me they try to take up as little space as possible to feel less imposing to women. They conceal their authentic male perspectives and thoughts around women to avoid causing offense. They tolerate hate and abuse to avoid accusations of weeping privileged "male tears." They avoid being alone with women because they see that as giving women too much power to say something happened when it did not. They are then mocked for their caution as though fearing false accusations is like believing the Earth is flat.
Is this really that different from me feeling pressured to suppress my gayness? I've stepped back from Christians' toddlers because I know some of those Christians have said homosexuals are akin to child molesters. I've remained silent while straight peers around me discussed sex because a gay man's experiences of sex might be offensive or gross to them. I've chosen to answer the question, "Do you have a girlfriend?" with a simple "no," rather than reveal that I am gay for fear of judgment.
It is absurd and offensive to pretend like demonizing one aspect of my identity (homosexuality) is bigotry while demonizing another (masculinity) is progressivism. I don't want to conceal or change either of those things to appease somebody else.
The truth is, no matter how hard you try, keeping it to yourself is still not good enough for the bigots. Gays had no choice but to keep it to themselves when it was a crime to be gay. When they disappeared deep into their secret gay clubs and gay bars, the outside world that wanted so badly for them to keep to themselves followed gay people into their sanctuaries to root them out and imprison them for the crime of being different behind closed doors.
Today, many men are attempting to retreat from a society that does not love them but still refuses to let them go, because letting them go would mean losing control of them. Men retreat into their own spaces and communities where they can be who they want without judgment, but women and feminists follow closely behind, more suspicious than ever that those problematic men have something to hide. Some men will try to change as much as they can to satisfy what is being required of them, but in doing so they are no longer themselves. They are a derivative work commissioned by their critics to fix what was seen as wrong with the original.
Feminist misandrists write articles about us men, infiltrate our spaces, and dissect our ideas and values like anthropologists studying a remote tribe. They scrutinize our posture. They scan every word for any undertone of defiance or danger. The feminists fear that misogyny always lurks just beneath the surface. Nothing is safe. The things that men are most attracted to become the things that are the most suspicious. Working out, sports, video games, porn... You never know where radicalization and misogyny will pop up next. The misandrist, like the homophobe, is vigilant in searching for danger and will imagine they see it just about everywhere.
Coming Out
When I came out as gay, it did not go over well with my family. There was some yelling and crying that happened that day. Not long after I came out, a book appeared in my parents' house about the process of turning a gay person into a straight person through the power of prayer and Bible study. The best part of all, the book proclaimed, was that gays would find much more happiness being straight.
The Christian homophobe wanting to "help" a gay person is like the feminist misandrist wanting to "help" a man. If you'd just give the bigot a chance to explain, they'd tell you that wanting to remake you into something they find more tolerable is as much for your benefit as theirs. Being so much smarter than you, the bigot knows what's best for you.
This message of "redemption" resonates with some to whom it is offered. There are gay people who have volunteered for conversion therapy because they believe it is wrong or undesirable to be gay. There are men who alienate themselves from masculinity because they believe it is "toxic" and dangerous. So much of this comes down to people wanting to be accepted and fit in. This calls for a reminder that there are some people in this world whose acceptance may not be worth having.
Christopher Hitchens once said, "Those who are determined to be offended will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt." I took this to heart in my youth and it helped liberate me from feeling like I had to hide parts of myself, even if getting over that pressure has been an ongoing process.
Few people know I am gay unless I tell them. When I came out, I chose to be very open about being gay. I hung a rainbow necklace of beads from my rearview mirror. I had a rainbow t-shirt I'd wear out in public. I argued gay rights proudly with anyone who would engage me on the subject. I'm sure I overdid it.
I was drawing attention to myself as a gay person during the 2000s in a conservative, Republican state when I could have just flown under the radar the entire time. Some friends and family expressed concern that it might not be safe for me to be openly gay. My attitude then was that if somebody wanted to stop me from being gay they better kill me. There was no other way I was going to cease being who I was. And that was the real reason I pinned that visible label on myself. I wanted to take away my own option to conceal who I was because life for me would not have been worth living as somebody else. I need to be gay on my own terms. I also need to be a man on my own terms. Visibility was what moved gay people forward in society, and I wanted to be visible.
Today, I believe that visibility is what will move men forward in their collective struggle against misandry. We are being targeted for being men and we cannot hide. As men subjected to misandry, what we hide is our love of our own maleness. We hide our belief that we are entitled to dignity, autonomy, and respect as men. We hide our toughness and we hide our weakness. We hide whatever we're told to hide by women and even other men who won't accept us as men if we don't meet certain expectations. Self-sacrifice has long been considered a virtue of masculinity, and the modern man is still sacrificing himself for others.
The closet is an awful place to be, men, and there are good reasons to come out of it. As gay people came out in greater and greater numbers, more people realized they already knew and loved a gay person. Would a person's friends and family stop loving them upon discovering they were gay? Some did. But if you can't love somebody for who they really are, you don't really love them. At the same time, allies started popping up where there may have been none had gays remained hidden. The parallel for men here is that if we aren't willing to stand up and say, "I am being mistreated because I am a man," the cultural narrative will never change, and our situation will not improve.
People in communities like this one are engaged in the important work of legitimizing men's issues. Western society gives more legitimacy to people twerking in the middle of the street to celebrate gayness than to a small group of men saying they believe men are important and worth protecting. Communities like this, if they refuse to go away, will continue to cultivate legitimacy. Yes, some people will make fun of us and dismiss us. They'll try to talk us out of believing our own experiences. They'll target us more. But some people will listen and understand. Some boy out there internalizing misandry right now will hear us and have a chance at loving himself that a lot of us got way too late because nobody let us know that our maleness was worth loving.