Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture

by Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young

Book Overview

Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young argue that men have routinely been portrayed as evil, inadequate, or as honorary women in popular culture since the 1990s. These stereotypes are profoundly... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0773530991
• ISBN13: 9780773530997
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Length: 392 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A Much-Needed Book

This excellent book presents convincing evidence of the pervasiveness of misandry (contempt for men) in popular culture. Written in a very scholarly manner and carefully documented, it analyzes numerous movies, cartoons and tv shows to prove this point. The reader is clearly shown how men are ridiculed and insulted in virtually every advertisement, cartoon and movie by individuals (male and female) who feel duty-bound to put men down at every opportunity. Some readers wonder why so few men complain about this kind of treatment. The reason is clear. Western culture has a double standard whereby women may complain endlessly, but men must keep their mouths shut. It is not macho for a man to complain. Thus if a man dares to complain about misandry, he is likely to be reviled as a whimp, a whiner or a male chauvinist pig. Faced with such vilification, is it any wonder that men are reluctant to speak out? They know full well that they will never be taken seriously. While some of the misandry emanates from men, much of it comes from feminists as well. All this and more is addressed in this well-written book. It should be required reading for all social science students.

A fascinating and eye-opening book

In this fascinating book, authors Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young look at the pervasiveness of misadry (hatred and belittling of men) in American popular culture. Throughout the book, the authors give a great many examples of blatant misandry, and then carefully put them into context within the feminist worldview. The final chapter is, though, the crowning glory of this book, examining what ideology is, and how modern feminism is an ideology and what that means for ourselves and our future.This is a fascinating and eye-opening book. I do believe that anyone who even casually watches television or movies is aware of a prevalent misandry, but the authors of this book go a long way towards putting the phenomenon in context, showing why it is being done and by whom. If you are interested in the course that American culture is taking, and why, then I highly recommend this book to you.

Read it for your sons and grandsons!

This book is absolutely enlightening! Just about any man who is honest with himself already realizes that male bashing is an allowable pastime within out pop culture. Not long ago, I walked into my front room to find my son upset at his favorite cable cartoon channels. He told me glumly that every man on there was stupid or incompetent or evil. I sat down with him, and sure enough, he was right. The big stupid guy looking for a date, but the women all physically assaulted him. The superhero girls saving the stupid city mayor (who has a smart and capable female assistant who really runs the city). The girl crime fighter, with a comic sidekick boy, who repeatedly needs rescuing. Yep, it's so blatant that a 12 year old could see it!But how deep is this? Did my son merely fixate on a few anomalous exceptions? This book goes to great length to show just how widespread misandrous (anti-men) expressions have become in our culture, and how we got here. Don't read this book for yourself, read it for your sons and grandsons. There's something insidious going on here, and if you care for the young men who will inherit this country, then you need to get alarmed at the world that is being made for them.

About Time

Finally, a lucid, beautifully written book which takes seriously the politically inconvenient but dead true fact that current Western culture is awash in misandry. Type 'misandry' on your Word program and it will tell you that there is no such word. If Nathanson and Young's book gets anything like the readership it deserves, 'misandry' won't be a non-word much longer.The thinking on display in 'Spreading Misandry' is so clear, so apt, so free of cant, that even the most militant ideological feminist ought to be able to read it with something approaching delight. And so singular and distinct is the authorial voice in the book that one can only gasp in admiration that it was in fact written by two authors. Moreover, since one of them is a man, the other a woman, readers can have real hope that the spread of misandry can be stopped by men AND women acting together for the sake of that old friend of humankind 'the common good'.

Dynamite!!

(...) this book (in spite of a few small flaws) is perhaps the best thing dealing with men's issues to come down the pike in the last couple of years. And that includes Warren Farrell's last two books, the first of which, "Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say", deals with much the same topic (though it's nevertheless distinct in its particulars). The critique Nathanson & Young offer up is absolutely devastating and one can only hope that it opens up an entirely new field of badly needed criticism because, as extensive as the book is, it barely touches the surface when one stops to think about it. For example, the immensely popular "Frazier" TV show isn't even mentioned, and Seinfeld only appears in a footnote -- so there's much material yet to be mined, especially at the rate the garbage is being produced for dozens of channels.One weak spot I noticed was the tendency to analyze works from the early 90's rather than more recent offerings. I got the impression much of the material had sat on the shelf for a long time and it made me wonder why this was, so it would have been nice to have had some explanation of this, perhaps in the preface. Because of the ephemeral nature of "hits", I wasn't sure that I'd even heard of some of the films they go into great depths on. This was only a minor drawback, but I did wonder why, if they were going back in time some, they ignored, for example, the mid-80's (`85?) Best (sic) Picture "Out of Africa", which seemed a prime example of many of their themes (which also touch on race), while perhaps trying too hard to make their case on one or two other films. No matter, I'm being picky. No book as impassioned as this could be absolutely perfect. They successfully make it impossible for anyone who reads this book -- even someone already somewhat sensitive to the central idea -- to ever look at popular media quite the same way again, which is exactly what they intended. Even if their exact theory as to *why* all this is going on might be subject to some more debate IMO, the overwhelming evidence they present is more than reason enough to read the book. I know I'll be re-reading sections of my copy for a long time to come in order to fully absorb all the important ideas here.