Misandry

One of the reasons I am compelled to write this article on a topic that our society generally do not understand is the concept of misandry. Only a few Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) talk about it and fight against it. The concept of misandry is not clear to many MRAs as well. That is the reason we see many MRAs turn into feminists after a few months of activism.

As men are by nature protectors of weaker people, so it is by nature we men try to protect women, elderly and children. In this process, men end up in terming their own selves as criminals because, in order to save the weaker section, men have to fight against other men. So they end up terming other men (except themselves) as criminals and spread misandry. Since it is by nature men are protectors of weaker people, any man refusing to do so is termed as weak, a loser and is compared to women. Any man talking about women being criminals are termed weak and not accepted by society. That is the reason we only talk about respecting women, and forget that men too need respect. So men are denied justice, and men in failed marriages consider themselves as a total failure in life and end up in committing suicide (see the suicide graph below).

Men who protest against misandry in all forums are very often termed as chauvinists. Male chauvinism is a term used to describe men who think men are superior to women and even Wikipedia definition associates it with misogyny (hatred for women). So people who protest against misandry are very often termed as misogynist and chauvinists. For obvious reasons, no man would like to see himself in that position and scaring off all women around him.

Male Hatred and Me

The concept of misandry or male hatred was an alien concept to me until some time ago. I knew about this term for at least ten years, and I used to laugh about it. I used to think how cynical that person might be who has coined this term. I used to wonder that in a male-dominated society, which fool talks about male hatred? Even after one and half years of joining men’s rights in the country, I was not sure of this concept and I learned about it every other day from fellow MRAs. Today, I wonder how much self-hatred I have propagated all these years, and I hope some of these knowledgeable MRAs met me earlier.

One of the leading MRAs from Hyderabad illustrated this concept in a very nice way. He gave me this scenario – “Consider you are in a busy marketplace when a woman suddenly shouts for help. Someone has stolen her bag and is running away.” He asked me to describe the thief. As usual, like any normal man I described the thief as a needy man…etc.. He asked, why was that the thief couldn’t be a woman? I told him, that normally we don’t see women snatching bags or chains etc. He then asked, “Can a woman be that thief?” My answer was – “I can’t think of”. And the reason was I knew my mother and felt every woman was like my mother. I had no definite reasoning for that thinking. Then he said, we ourselves always think that a man is the criminal and hence spread misandry in different forms, mostly unknowingly. So when we see a woman is yelling and a man standing there, almost instantly we decide that the man is the criminal and need to be punished. If a woman cries, we think some man is behind her misery and she needs help and if a man cries we think he is a loser and needed to be taught a lesson. He explained the concept of prejudice against men in this way.

Since we all think this way and make a man criminal even before we hear him out, we propagate misandry and since we always have this preconceived notion that men are criminals, justice to men are denied. Law enforcing agencies, police, lawyers and judges are one of us and they also portray the same feeling. So when a woman accuses a man of any atrocity, the man becomes guilty even before a trial. This is the same misandry that led us to demand the death penalty in the Delhi gang-rape case even before they were pronounced guilty. Society had decided the accused was guilty simply based on media reports.

Protesting Misandry vs. Supporting Male Criminals

So the MRAs including me protest against misandry. We want to stop male hatred in this society in all possible ways. So when we protest against the demonstration after Delhi or Mumbai gang rape and criticize the protestors for creating misandry and prejudice against men, do we try to safeguard the rapists? Do we try to prove the rapists were right and society is unnecessarily making them criminals? Or we want to trivialize rape when we say 75% of rape cases are false etc?

NO, it is never true. We protest against the misandry created by these activities that have a snowballing effect in society. That forces us to believe that men are criminals in every situation. That hurts our male image of being a protector of our family. We consider ourselves (not being a rapist but still responsible for those rapes) as criminals and hence we see male celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan commenting that he is ‘ashamed to be a man’ after the infamous Delhi gang rape. It is because as a man himself he felt he has failed to provide a sense of security to his children. Have you ever seen any woman celebrity doing that when women file false cases or drive someone to commit suicide or cut her husband into pieces simply because of her adultery?

Misandry and Justice

We believe that every individual should have a right to defend him/herself before judged guilty and should be given a fair chance to present his side of the story. Many of us who were following the Delhi case from the beginning knew that the boy and girl chose an empty luxury bus as they wanted to get private on the bus. When the bus driver and helper protested they became abusive and hence a brawl and then assault of the two. We still don’t know the details of the brawl but that detailed incident should be left to the court to decide. But none of the people who protested vigorously for the death penalty seized India gate for a long time and killed a policeman on duty ever thought that our judicial system could deliver justice and instead delivered instant death penalty for the accused.

Does that mean, I am supporting the bus helper and driver in assaulting the couple? NO, I still think they should have asked them to get down from the bus and kept it that level. But, this incident also raises a question that did we become so independent that we can perform any act anywhere? Where is the meaning of civilization then? There are some private acts that we do inside four walls of our house, or hotel or someone’s house. When we bring those private acts to the public, it becomes an issue of public interest and can’t remain as private. If we respect our privacy only then others will respect the same. If we don’t do that, we should not expect others to respect our privacy.

When we make a rape case so big that we start projecting an entire city unsafe (and most media has to be blamed for that) we create huge misandry in the society. Media selectively choose rape and make them sensational just to gain some TRP. We propagate the feeling of insecurity, through sharing the news in different forums and discussing them in all forums. The same feeling of insecurity is used by feminists to pass different gender-biased extreme laws in the name of women empowerment. Read this and see how Delhi Gang Rape was used to amend some unrelated laws just to create a new form of legal terrorism. We need to remember in similar cases that one ‘Hyderabad Bomb Blast’ doesn’t make the entire city/country unsafe and we should refrain from creating a sense of frustration among the citizens. Today, thanks to all protests and candle marches due to the Delhi incident, women and anyone related to young women are so much afraid that they look at any stranger male with suspicion.

Misandry In Our Daily Life

I remember an incident that happened to me one month after the Delhi incident. I boarded an auto from my house when two women along with a man also came to board the same auto. In Hyderabad, women are given back seat whenever they arrive and any man occupying the same seat is asked to go to the front seat even though it is uncomfortable and the fare is same (preference is given to women in the name of equality). I was eating something and my both the hands were full and so I denied going to the front seat and instead suggested the two women might occupy the back seat and the man can take the front one. In this case, the man came to beat me (with abuses – ‘Saale ladki ke baaju baithega”) as if I had molested his woman companion. Obviously, I have asked him to get lost then but the point is we have started expecting so much respect for women that we already forgot they are living human beings. Forget about equal rights, it is only women rights we have today (reserved seats in buses, reserved compartments in trains, ladies special trains that run empty, ladies special busses and still we say women are deprived). Chivalry extended to women becomes a right for them and still, they cry for equality. Also when there is so much of false sense of respect created, people start creating their own definition of respect and start demanding funny things. [fyi..in Sweden recently feminists demanded men to urinate sitting and not standing like that is disrespectful to women and not equal rights. and hence in this feminist country, the toilets are redesigned. Also, men are not allowed to wear shorts and come to the workplace so they are wearing skirts. Don’t respect women so much that the feminists start demanding the same in India too].

Recently there was a hue and cry about some of Delhi Metro Rail footage of a couple being private in Metro Rail, being out in public domain. Women’s groups demanded punishment for CISF personnel who leaked those security footage stating those were private acts. The question to them is why are those private acts not performed in private? If someone chooses the metro railway for one’s private act how can she expect those to remain private at all?

Coming back to Nirbhaya incident, if we consider that the bus driver and helper should not have reacted, then what would have happened if the girl complained about rape in their bus later? Will the society or our judicial system ever pardon the bus employees for being ignorant of the fact that one crime was happening on their bus? So in either case, they were in trouble.

I am sure many of my feminist friends would say, it is her freedom that she can have any lovemaking act anywhere, anytime she wants. If we try to criticize that, we will be called as male chauvinists, oppressors or maybe the moral police. No man, except an MRA, would like those words. Does it mean, we as MRAs like them? NO. But we understand that when trying to go against the popular opinion, we will be termed criminals and if we bother and stop protesting against this male hatred, we will see a darker future. So, we continue our fight against misandry, against stereotyping men as criminals simply upon a media report or an allegation by women.

Promoting Male Hatred On Social Media

Similarly, there is another trend of using Facebook to demand justice. Your search for ‘justice’ on FB and you will find some page or the other created for a woman somewhere. In one such latest FB page where the creator demanded that her husband was having an affair with another girl and left the house and children. She has not only posted all details of her in-law’s house, address photos etc, but she has also levelled a whole lot of other unsupported allegation against him, too.

When I saw some of my friends sharing that page and asking everyone to be careful, I asked a girl about the merits of the case. She said she was sharing only because she knows the girl. I also came to know that a police complaint was raised but still they have created a page and wanted to make everyone aware of that man. That page got thousands of ‘likes’ instantly and men, women alike started sharing and expressing their concerns.

When I objected to the creation of misandry and said since the matter is already in court they should not create misandry and rather present her case details to the police, I was threatened with getting killed. All of them pounced on me saying my account being false and I was masquerading the criminals and am a criminal myself. Men/women alike started hurling abuses and many of them wanted to kill me openly. Of course, I did not cower from these threats and asked them to do so if they could. I wanted them to bring the police to my residence without any delay and I was determined to teach them a big lesson. Unfortunately, I am still waiting for the police to come and arrest me in this case. So, all the readers of this article know that next time you create/share such pages my/our eyes will be on you. If it is about anyone known to us we, will make sure people get punished appropriately for creating misandry or maligning someone’s image.

When I protested against this page, its content, and creation of prejudice against men, did I want to support the man? For argument sake let’s consider him to be guilty and all the content of the page to be true. Does that give one any right to make this information public, when it was with the court to decide? What about those thousands of people who liked, commented or shared the page? All those who considered this one-sided information to be true, without understanding the other side of the story were only spreading misandry in their own way. People who wanted to kill me actually wanted to kill a criminal, but their hatred of men was so much that they did not even realize what they were trying to do.

It is the same misandry that has shown us some women updating their FB status (after Delhi Gang Rape) as – “In India, most men are considered as rapists”. When I shared this on my FB profile, some of my mangina friends commented – “I know I am not a rapist and I know many of my friends are not and hence I don’t bother what she says”. this man did not understand that by this comment or this action he failed to understand the misandry and by not protesting the same he has only approved male hatred.

Consider the same status update by a man, saying “In India, most of the women are prostitutes”. What do you think would be the reaction of others?

After Mumbai Gangrape while everyone was protesting against rape and demanding strict punishment etc when I saw the picture of the building and came to know that it was a den of criminals, I commented to twitter that even being a man I wouldn’t have gone to that place for my security reasons. Feminists almost instantly started hurling abuses saying I wanted to blame the woman for being in an isolated place etc. instead of protesting against rape (see the conversations with such feminists 1 and 2 or 3. See how easily feminists use foul language when they can’t match logic.

When I said that she should not have gone to that place, did I want to support rape? NO, but it is only the misandry in other people’s mind that made them think that I wanted to blame the girl for being raped. So people asked me what would I do if it was my daughter? I have answered what I truly believed. Prevention is better than cure. Hence I would tell her to avoid all such places that are criminal infested. Even as a man I am not empowered enough to venture in all different places at any point of the day. Of course, I was termed as a coward by women and many offered me bangles. Then I asked them how would they face a similar situation in a criminal den? Then one of them proposed keeping a revolver. I wondered if I was talking to a common man who didn’t have access to the revolver and not of a criminal.

Similar way when Taslima Nasrin made a misandric comment on Twitter, I protested and she used foul language instead.

All these people who hurl abuses to people who talk differently, or want to see reason in every crime especially crimes against women are looked down upon today. Especially when someone talks in favour of men they are termed as criminals very easily.

One more incident that comes to my mind was a recent phenomenon of everyone sharing a video of a woman beating a man mercilessly on the street and many men also pouncing on the boy. The merits of the case were not clear to anybody but still, everyone (men/women alike) was sharing the same and commenting that women should be like that. This showed how easily we term a man as criminal and without knowing the extent of a crime one has committed we almost instantly deliver the harshest possible punishment to him. It is due to the internal misandry and our male personality as protector of women forces us to act like that. We forget all reasoning and act in haste. When we see/hear some crime we think of stopping the same as that could affect our own mother/sister and never bother to think if the crime and punishment are commensurate with each other.

Promoting Misandry is Denying Justice

So now you know why protesting against those rapes were not only limited to protesting against the particular crime but was also promoting misandry that eventually denies justice to men. Also when you look at the statistics of crimes against women, you will know how fake they are. But still, false accusers are not punished. Why? The reason we think women are so deprived that they are unable to prove their case. We do not consider that women too can be criminals and hence we ignore the need of punishing them for false complaints. This is the same misandry in us and the protector mindset that forces us to commit more suicide as we (men) always think that we (men) are to be blamed for all mishaps happening around us. So now you know when we protest against creating madness in the name of rape, we only want to say “please note that not 24K rapes reported every year are like Delhi or Mumbai. And please understand no state, no police can guarantee 100% security for its people. So, we need to be safe first. We need to take responsibility for our safety.” If I am going to a criminal den, I should be ready for an assault or even murder. Do you think that will be a men’s rights issue in India?

I am sure there are many who will still think that I am very weak, loser or maybe need help. Some others may think I am a male chauvinist who thinks men are superior to women. Then I would request them to please go back and start from the beginning and see if in any case, I have tried to prove my superiority. If you think you are strong enough, what do you think you will do as an innocent man when you are trapped by a woman? I have asked this question to many people who claimed they were strong and they have almost always given me a reply that they will commit murder. Yes, when you think of yourself as too powerful and in reality you can’t achieve anything, you need to resort to crime. But that is not what we want. We don’t want common men to turn into criminal right?

How to Stop Misandry

So that now you know that the concept of misandry is not funny, rather it is a reality today, you need to decide to stop spreading misandry in any form from today. But only being aware and not doing anything is not enough. Remember if we have so many gender-biased laws that are killing thousands of men every year and ruining so many families, we are denying justice to all those people. I am sure most of you will not agree with this weak logic, and hence I would request you to check the NCRB stats and read this to understand why we need gender-neutral laws.

Stop spreading misandry today. Demand for the punishment of criminal women and ensure justice in India.