I don't know fully when when patriarchy was or why it was established. I do know that there was a time when humanity lived and died by the sword such that the survival of any group depended on the ability to fight and win battles. Men were relied upon for these battles. Why? Because they were expendable. Procreation wouldn't happen fast enough for repopulation if few women are available. One man can repopulate a group of 100 women (reason birth control should have been designed for men not women) but a single woman will die if she has 100 men as mates.
When patriarchy was being established as a social system I don't think anyone was smart enough to know its consequences will affect men and women adversely as we have seen today. I will give a few instances of things that started off as good but over time became horrible.
During the era of industrialization, humanity needed power so imagine the joy when crude oil became a thing. Humanity became so reliant on this substance and created so much value with it. Today, climate change is upon us. If anyone knew this 200 years ago we may not be here today. When China started the one child policy it wanted to control its population and made the mistake of allowing men design policies for that. Women weren't consulted. Of all the gains one child policy had today it has been seen as a disaster seeing that China has millions of men who can't find women to marry because the women are not just available. It will take years to correct this. Nigeria needs to study this. If you want a one child policy for population control patriarchy has to be dismantled so that men and women have equal status
That way, parents won't prefer male children to female children. In China, the patriarchal one child policy for population control is affecting men badly. Women have become more valuable than men in China today.
Misogyny and misandry are bias or hate incidents that are bad for everyone and none should be justified. Because of patriarchy, the abuse, pressure and hate men face are grossly underreported. Many men prefer to suffer in silence because patriarchy demands they show 'strength'. I do not know how we came to the conclusion that muscle is equal to strength and must be attributed to men. Women carry their unborn baby for 9 months. Men with pot bellies can tell you how hard that is. While men run sprints, women do marathons. Why are they considered weak?
A bias incident or hate incident is an act of hostility motivated by racism, religious intolerance, or other prejudice. A bias incident is different from a hate crime in that it does not necessarily involve criminal activity. Misogyny and Misandry are bias incidents.
You can't promote one over the other without making yourself look like a hateful person. Hate is hate and to fight hate with hate is like fighting fire with fure which will bring more fire. No one wants that.
That no man can say he has not been affected by misandry doesn't mean it's not happening now or won't happen tomorrow. Misogyny has been established as a bias incident but calls are mounting to establish it as a hate crime on the same level with racism, antisemitism, homophobia etc. A UK report in 2019 revealed that gender hate incidents were at least as common as any hate crime recorded by police. There were 67,000 such incidents last year, with 57,000 of them targeted at women, according to figures from the Crime Survey of England and Wales.
Promoting misandry as a response to misogyny is simply saying we need 47,000 more incidents of misandry to match the 57,000 cases of misogyny. Our mothers, sisters, wives, aunties, cousins, nieces are affected. It will be our fathers, brothers, uncles, nephews too.
Above all humanity suffers.
We cannot cure hate by being hateful and this doesn't mean we should love those that hate us.
Advocacy and Activism are different things. Feminism as advocacy will achieve more than misandry as activism.
MISOGYNY IS BAD!!!
Nnaemeka Udoka
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