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

Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young argue that since the 1990s men have been portrayed in popular culture as evil, inadequate, or honorary women, from Designing Women, Home Improvement, Oprah, and Cape Fear to Hallmark cards, comic strips, and the New York Times columns of Anna Quindlen. The first of a three-part series, Spreading Misandry offers an impressive critique of popular culture to identify a phenomenon that is just now being recognized as a serious cultural problem - misandry, the sexist counterpart of misogyny. Nathanson and Young urge us to rethink prevalent assumptions about men that result in profoundly disturbing stereotypes that foster contempt. Spreading Misandry breaks new ground by discussing misandry in moral terms rather than purely psychological or sociological ones and by criticizing not only ideological feminism but other ideologies on both the left and the right.