SC
2 min readFeb 8, 2023

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Good grief. Do you need someone to mail you a dictionary or instructions on how to use Google and Wikipedia?

Go look up misogyny.
Go look up misandry.

Okay. Now. When we put the word institutionalized in front of both, that will change the meaning.

So go look up institutionalized misogyny and institutionalized misandry.

Getting the picture now?

The institutionalized biases men face WERE NOT CAUSED BY WOMEN. They are caused by the dominance hierarchy that is patriarchal that benefits and favors a few, wealthy mostly white men over everyone else.

That dominance hierarchy does not like the vast majority of men anymore than it does women other than in ways that it can exploit them. It never did.

But what it did, historically in some places and actively current in others, is place men in positions of primacy over women by law, by opportunity, by religion, by social constructs and mores, and by cultural traditions.

That doesn't mean those men were not also being exploited. Nor does it mean that gender is or was ever the only dividing category to keep us all fighting each other over scraps while those few men hogged all the wealth and resources.

And so as long as men define themselves and their worth by being everything a woman is not and by believing in the core of their being that anything labeled or described as masculine is better than anything labeled or described as feminine then it is both accurate and fair to say that all men are misogynistic. It is socially ingrained, institutionally reinforced, and those beliefs inform how you see and treat women as well as how you participate in the mechanisms of your own exploitation.

You cannot say the same about misandry. Misandry is individual and usually a byproduct of the .isogynistic nature of a patriarchal dominance hierarchy. It is not part of traditional culture, it is not part of religion, it is not socially acceptable without pushback, it is not widely socially accepted and it is not institutionally reinforced.

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