WomensStuff

Sometimes misandry can perpetuate the patriarchal power structures that caused misogyny to proliferate. All of the harmful effects of misogyny that go far beyond "hurt feelings" are because of systemic oppression of women. I don't think that framing things as "misandry = not a big deal, but misogyny = very bad" is productive in dismantling that system.

Personally, I've found that my feminism has been vastly improved by better understanding the shape of men's oppression under patriarchy. Some would disagree with my use of the word "oppression" here, but I stand by it. Privilege is often a poison pill; Hegemonic masculinity is the sword of Damocles that hangs over men and threatens them: "get in line, or else". The oppression that men face is not the same as what women face, both in terms of the shape and the magnitude of force. Frankly though, I don't care.

For me, solidarity starts with seeing a person and their struggles, without comparing them to others — the validity of someone's personhood doesn't depend on other people's plight. Abstract words like "misogyny" or "misandry" can be useful for capturing phenomena that exist on a larger scale than the individual, but it's important to question whether we are using them in a way that's liberatory, or perpetuating the cycles of oppression that harm so many of us. The OP feels to me like it's the latter — I will never feel comfortable with this kind of comparison that implicitly diminishes the suffering of a large group of people. It's not that I disagree per se, but I don't like this rhetoric.

That being said, I don't know OP, or the context of this post. We're judging it as a piece of political rhetoric here, but maybe it wasn't intended that way. Maybe someone was just venting with friends. God knows I've been there. Hell, this community is a good example of how valuable it can be to have a space to escape to. Being part of a marginalised group often feels like you're having to be on the clock all the time that you're out in public, and I know how exhausting that is (especially as a visibly queer, visibly disabled woman).

For everything I said above, I have had times where I've said things like "ugh, all men are trash" when venting about how exhausting it is to be a woman. This is a good example of what I meant about making an earnest effort to see a person and their struggles: the subtext of the OP is "I am exhausted and annoyed at having to constantly explain misogyny to people who seem to only care about men's issues when there's an opportunity to speak over a woman". That is something that I can heavily relate to. Indeed, as someone who considers men's liberation to be an essential part of her feminism, it's frustrating as hell to try to platform men's issues and make that part of the conversation, only for there to be crickets. But that's just a case of transparent bad faith. I've unfortunately learned that the people who complain the loudest about misandry often aren't interested in having productive conversations. It's a damn shame, because I do think that misandry is a problem that should be addressed, and it needn't be an either/or kind of conversation.