How do you deal with misandry while learning about feminism

griii2 · 2026-06-28T20:37:33+00:00

You don't have to be a red pill to criticize the evil of feminism.

We all here are against sexism anx for equal rights - for men and women. That is why we oppose feminism.

MelissaMiranti · 2026-06-28T20:48:27+00:00

I treat it like learning about any hate movement. They're going to say and think and do hateful things, and you have to recognize that it's a flaw with those people, not with whoever they're targeting. This goes extra if you're in the group they hate.

HiggsFieldgoal · 2026-06-28T20:52:57+00:00

There is no need to dignify bigotry.

Bigots are going to bigot.

Trying to adapt your behavior to evade what bigots might think of you is a losing battle.

I believe in equality. Feminism has nothing to do with equality.

Some feminists are fine, just as I’m sure many National Socialists were fine.

Sort of disinterested and saying “yeah, I’m pro equality, of course”, which is a fine point of view.

You need to pay a little closer attention to appreciate when the movement you support has drifted a little off of the stated mission, and feminism absolutely has.

If you look at it, it is not remotely about equality except if you presume “men and women are natural enemies, men have always hurt women since the dawn of time, and so now it’s time for payback”.

And I don’t accept that. I don’t think that’s true. I think 90% of “traditional gender roles”, can be explained by… the advent of birth control, baby formula, the Industrial Revolution, etc… not because “men always hated women”.

I do not see men and women as natural enemies. I reject the premise. “Call me crazy”, but I would say the actual character of men and women throughout history is that of love and cooperation.

Modern Feminism would staunchly disagree.

Nobleone11 · 2026-06-29T00:42:27+00:00

I quit learning about feminism the minute I'd unearthed the misandric, bigoted undercurrent they work so hard at covering up yet fail so miserably at keeping it under wraps.

Once I read The Declaration of Sentiments, particularly that horrifying accusation towards men is also when I accepted the fact that feminism isn't worth learning about anymore.

Considering that speech predates even the first wave is evidence enough of how the misandric undercurrent was not only invited in but never opposed, feminism is irredeemable no matter what the so-called "Good Feminists" tell me.

Zoya_The_Destroyah · 2026-06-28T22:45:09+00:00

You don’t need to be a feminist. Just be kind to people you meet and educate yourself on human rights issues, some of which will be directly tied to women’s rights. You absolutely should not tolerate misandry for the sake of learning about feminism.

Karmaze · 2026-06-28T21:10:18+00:00

I think the actual question is can you be feminist...in the steelman version of the term...while also rejecting feminist theory that by and large is overly reductive and certainly very much out of date at this point? This...isn't a question for us. To be honest. This by and large is a question for feminists who hold on to those concepts and theories. Will they actually allow people who, again by the steelman, agree with the goals but disagree with the details a respected seat at the table?

As it stands right now the answer to that question is hell no.

If you want to know why? My answer is that I strongly believe that raising questions about which men (and which women) have power and privilege opens up all sorts of questions about the role of status and social power in our society. Even the talk about "Billionaires" is an overly reductive distraction from the gap between the working class and the managerial class.

FangornsWhiskers · 2026-06-28T22:04:35+00:00

First of all, you need to separate the philosophy of feminism from the ideological movement of feminism. Most casual feminists might have read a book or two but are not well versed in the actual philosophy. The philosophy of feminism is incredibly broad and runs the gamut from advocating for true equality to post-modern anti-science woo. Some of it is inclusive of men and some is explicitly misandrist despite what modern feminists will claim. You can almost certainly find feminist scholarship that aligns with your views more or less and then find feminists who will denounce it as not real feminism.

I’m personally fine stating that I’m aligned with the stated goals (gender equality and elimination of enforced gender norms) but do not accept the philosophical baggage of the patriarchy as the uber power structure of society.

Mostly_Lurkin_ · 2026-06-29T07:09:41+00:00

Misandry doesn’t exist because institutional power is required for prejudice to count as a real ‘ism’ and men hold the institutional power.

lol! These mfers really do say some crazy shit.

Don’t be a feminist. You cannot really be one. You’re a man. You can be an ally. Just dont stab yourself or your fellow man in the back. Evaluate the vibes! If someone is dressing up misandry in feminism than call that shit out!

Don’t budge.

BigTruckSmallPP · 2026-06-29T04:06:30+00:00

Modern day feminism is misandry.

Heoomun · 2026-06-29T07:15:29+00:00

I grew up as a feminist (f) in a feminist household and I have since abandoned that label after transitioning (m). I internalised so much misandry I wanted to off myself, and I was told that even that was men's (and my own) fault. Feminism is inherently exclusive, the claim that it is equality is not what is built into the fabric of the definition, nor is it how people act in its favour. Whats hard for me is what people assume when I say im not a feminist - ive not abandoned equal rights for women just because i dont adhere to a label that almost killed me. I just realise now that the world is not so gendered black and white, good and evil, and ive always felt that somewhere deeply but the cognitive dissonance it caused trying to mental gymnastics my way around the demands of that label was mind bending. I still recognise where women have suffered and continue to suffer, I also recognise now where men have suffered and are vulnerable - truly vulnerable without all the turning it back around to be their own problem in order to shirk responsibility from half the population.

Mostly_Lurkin_ · 2026-06-29T07:09:52+00:00

Misandry doesn’t exist because institutional power is required for prejudice to count as a real ‘ism’ and men hold the institutional power.

lol! These mfers really do say some crazy shit.

Don’t be a feminist. You cannot really be one. You’re a man. You can be an ally. Just dont stab yourself or your fellow man in the back. Evaluate the vibes! If someone is dressing up misandry in feminism than call that shit out!

Don’t budge.

Training-Cook3507 · 2026-06-29T08:37:06+00:00

What are these feminist issues that we have to address? Because from what I see, other than security, women are the advantaged gender in first world countries now.

rump_truck · 2026-06-29T14:24:47+00:00

First, secure your own mask before you help others. You're not morally obligated to hurt yourself in the process of helping others. Feel free to take breaks as needed for the sake of your mental health.

Second, it helps me to humanize them. They are flawed human beings with one set of lived experiences. Everything else they know, or think they know, comes from speaking with, or reading books written by, other people. Both of those are lossy information transfer protocols, and filtered through biases. They're also doing their best to get by in a world that presents them with a complex array of incentives and pressures.

People make mistakes, it's on us to recognize those mistakes and not repeat them ourselves. The enemy is not the individuals struggling to get by, the enemy is the system influencing their decisions. Our goal must be to understand and change the incentives and pressures to influence better behavior.

Another strategy I find helpful is to taboo words to force myself to reexamine concepts from a different angle. An easy example of this is the common feminist perception that most men are "bad", while we know that there are a ton of "good" men out there. If you taboo the words good and bad, and add in "I perceive" instead of assuming omniscience, what they're really getting at is that they encounter a lot of men who don't respect women's boundaries, and we know that there are men who do respect women's boundaries. What happened is that women broadly told men to go away, the men who listen listened, the men who don't listen didn't listen, so women disproportionately experience the ones who didn't listen.

Spotting traps like those requires a sort of humility, a recognition that your perception is flawed and limited, so you know to look for things you missed. Feminists didn't maintain that humility, assumed that they were the objective experts on all things gender, and it blinded them to a fairly obvious reality.

Jacolai · 2026-06-29T17:03:32+00:00

I always prefer the term “Egalitarian” over “Feminist” because Feminist is already inherently gender biased towards women cuz of the “Fem” in Feminism. Egalitarian is a much easier and less loaded way to describe you want gender equality as it has less of a negative connotation as compared to feminism

AutoModerator · 2026-06-28T17:38:12+00:00

Thank you for posting to r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates. All new posts are held for manual review and may take up to 48 hours to be approved. Please don’t message the moderators, we’ll make sure to review your submission as soon as possible. If this is your first post, be sure to review our rules to ensure it meets our criteria.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Ok_Conversation_3815 · 2026-07-01T12:40:12+00:00

Just recognize that it's not about the movement, it's about the person. A misandrist will always find a way to be misandrist, and hiding behind the name feminism doesn't make it that person a feminist.
Educating yourself is ALWAYS good. It's good for yourself, for the people you care about, and for democracy in general, and the more you educate yourself about the movement, the more you will recognize who's talking understanding what they're saying, and who's talking just parroting some point they heard online for their own personal gain

Dizzy_Ad8555 · 2026-07-01T22:33:23+00:00

To a degree, you become hardened by exposure. I've put up with a particularly rotten feminist in my family for about 30 years. But as we all know, as a men, we just have to be quiet, take it and if we react..."we don't know how to treat a woman" or "you're a misogynist".

Out come the labels, there goes another job...there you are getting locked up because the police think you're going to start being violent and you're always "the problem" because you're a man.

Learning from within that crowd is impossible, anything you say will just be twisted against you, not usually from the ordinary types, but the nasty ones, the ones that can only ever always be correct and everything they say is gospel. Then it turns into 20 against 1, there's always the back-up and you will be hounded into submission with unrelenting force until A:) You can take no more and delete your account, this is usually hailed as a victory against "another misogynist" B:) Made to feel so small that replying is a pointless endeavor, any word you say at this point is just evidence of "the patriarchy" and you'll not get a word in edgeways.

Next thing you know, you're back around the other side of the circle and the cycle repeats itself, nothing is learned and all you get is a headache.

The advice being, don't bother with that approach, it doesn't work.

They've got to actually want to listen and get their attack dogs under control before any meaningful understanding can ever take place in that arena, i've tried on Xitter, Facebook, Bluesky and it is impossible now to engage with them on those grounds, its worse than a Sisyphean stone getting pushed up a mountain.

futuredebris · 2026-06-29T15:02:47+00:00

It helps me to remember that feminism is not a monolith. Like any movement, it is contested, up for grabs, constantly shifting. There are different feminisms, and different groups of feminists have for decades and currently still are arguing for and trying to shape society with their version of it.

Now, there is a mainstream version, which I like to think of as “corporate feminism” or “liberal feminism.” This is the version you’re talking about that tends to blame men for society’s problems. It channels women’s understandable anger and dissatisfaction about society toward men in general and our individual behaviors (“toxic masculinity”), rather than structural or systemic causes.

I believe that women are understandably angry because most people in our society should be angry. Rich and powerful people are screwing us over. They’re stealing from us every second. They’re hoarding more and more resources. They’re trying turn us against each other through sexism and racism. They’re stopping us from slowing down climate change.

And on top of all of that, women hold less power in society (though that is slowly changing). Men still dominate at the heights of the political and economic systems. Plus, many women experience sexual or physical violence in public and their intimate relationships with men.

It makes sense to me that many women would point their finger at men. Especially if corporate or liberal feminism, the most common form of feminism, is telling them to.

This sort of feminism is liberal because liberalism, as a political ideology, focuses on individual rather than collective rights, identities, and actions. Liberal feminism is focused on changing individual people’s thoughts and attitudes, and laws and policies that limit individual freedom. It doesn’t challenge the way our society is organized, capitalism, a relatively recent way of organizing a society.

That’s why some liberal feminists try to change men’s thoughts and attitudes by making fun of and shaming us. They think the problem is in our actions and minds. To solve society’s problems (which again only come from men) we need unlearn “toxic” our patriarchal ideas, change how we treat women, and “do the work.” Some even go so far as to say men are irredeemable, incapable of changing.

I think it’s worthwhile regardless to unlearn the myths about masculinity we’ve been taught by this society. My life has gotten way better by “doing the work.” Women tend to respect and like me more since I’m working on my trauma in therapy and learning how to communicate in a healthier way. I get to have more friends! I also think it’s necessary to to watch how we might unconsciously harm women and perpetuate a culture of sexual violence. If we want a better, more equal, safer society, we have to do our part.

But this is only part of “doing the work” because like liberalism in general, individual change doesn’t challenge the structures and systems that are causing society’s problems, including sexism.

I am not a liberal and don’t agree with liberalism, because I think the fundamental problem causing most of society’s problems is capitalism. I read Marx in my early 20s along with a bunch of friends who were organizing against big Wall Street banks during the Occupy Movement, and it blew my mind.

Marxism helped me understand why our society is the way it is. And it is the way it is—highly unequal—because capitalists exploit those of us who are forced to work for a living. The problem is wage labor and private property, which is a relatively new way of organizing a society (a few hundred years old). The problem is not how individual people think or one social identity (gender, race, etc.) ruling over others.

The other half of “the work” beyond working on ourselves is organizing with our fellow working people against the capitalist class. Unions striking. Community groups protesting against slumlords and real estate developers. Women protesting against limits to reproductive rights, which disproportionately restrain the freedom of working-class women. Neighbors banding together to protect other neighbors from the police and ICE. Working people voting out billionaire and corporate-funded politicians. Collective action.

Otherwise, we’re pointing the finger at each other (women against men, men against women) and not seeing that we have the same interests (a good-paying job, stable housing, meaningful work, ample free time, nourishing food, clean water, a safe community, etc.), and that the billionaires are the ones who are holding us all down.

There is a version of feminism that makes this argument, which is where I got it from. They call themselves socialist feminists or Marxist feminists. They are fewer in number than liberal feminists, but they are not into (and some are very against) blaming men or even patriarchy. They point the finger at capitalism, not individual men, even if they agree that capitalism does benefit men in some ways. They are the women I roll with and learn from.

When I see women hating on men online, I feel a slight twinge of hurt and shame. But then I remember that those women have probably been influenced by liberal feminism and likely (because of how common violence against women is) have been hurt directly by a man before (sexual assault or at least cat-called). They are understandably angry and looking for someone to blame, and so I’m able to not take it personally. I also think about my comrades, the feminists who are writing, talking on podcasts, and organizing right this second against capitalism, and I feel less alone.

I have advice for exposing yourself to this perspective, which is much harder to find than the right-wing, reactionary “manosphere” perspective dominant online—a perspective that ultimately hurts men in the long run. I recommend finding a political education, discussion, or reading group online or in your area. Find people to read (or watch videos about) Marxism together. Learn how capitalism works and who it benefits.

If it’s a leftist men’s group, even better, though those are really hard to find. Either way, find other men who can be mentors to talk about this stuff with. Also go to therapy if you aren’t already. Find a therapist who knows how to work with men. If you find one who really clicks with you, it will dramatically improve your life.

_HighJack_ · 2026-06-29T04:47:42+00:00

You remove yourself from learning environments that contain excessive misandry :P you’re clearly a good person who wants everyone to be treated equally and fairly, or you wouldn’t keep trying to learn when people keep discouraging you. You don’t deserve to be treated like the enemy. It doesn’t have to be that way! That’s just some of the loudest most mainstream spaces bc controversy generates interest which somehow transmutes into money and/or power.

Have you tried the purple pill debate subreddit? People tag themselves as red, blue, or purple mostly (though some people pick black or pink or use the opportunity to make drug jokes) and debate gender issues. It’s pretty well moderated so there’s never extremely intense misandry OR misogyny, though there is enough so that you can see where people stand. I’ve learned more from watching feminists and MRAs disagreeing with each other there and thinking about why they’re doing it, than I have trying to learn social theory from people who are biased towards seeing themselves as enlightened.

Books are also better teachers than randoms on the internet bc you can stop and digest if it starts getting out of hand; there’s no one to yell or insult you personally. To understand the roots of post-civil-rights era feminism, I’d recommend the book The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan. It was written in I believe 1964? There are a fair number of bioessentialist things in the book that I disagree with her interpretation of, from 2020s hindsight (hah), but it really helps illustrate why women were so desperate for equal rights and respect. It also is considered one of the seminal texts of modern feminism, so you should be able to see the roots of some of the problems.

To understand the ethos of intersectionality (that’s the really good kind of feminism imo) choose writings from modern feminist authors who are marginalized in other ways than just being female. They have the least incidence of demonizing other groups as inherently evil, and in my experience are happy to have positive interactions with respectful questions. So (sorry this sounds weird lol) you’re looking for Black people, queer people, indigenous folks, religious minorities, or really any kind of minority that’s used to dealing with plenty of shit from others. One of my favorite authors of any sort of all time is bell hooks; she’s crazy wise.

It’s either this or make yourself a girl persona account so you can learn without getting constant shit lol. Really lean into the acting and inhabit the character XD I’m a trans guy so I had the benefit of learning about it pre-transition when I didn’t seem threatening to much of anyone.

ETA sorry this is so freakin long; my ADHD meds are wearing off and this is a special interest of mine 😅

Title	How do you deal with misandry while learning about feminism
Author	ironredpizza
Upvotes	99
Comments	48
Date	June 28, 2026 5:38 PM UTC (1 month ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/1ui3hdw/how_do_you_deal_with_misandry_while_learning/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/how-do-you-deal-with-misandry-while-learning-about.1583832 https://theredarchive.com/post/1583832

Comments