Just Smith.

How can it be discrimination against men if men made the laws? There is no systemic oppression of men in our society, since they effectively control it. If games are made by men, for men, why are men talking so much about how they are misandric?

It’s a common enough theme. Misandry can’t exist, because men control everything. 

Wrong.

That’s like saying that conscripted soldiers being sent into a battlefield which is certain death can’t feel hard done-by, because the people giving the orders are also soldiers. It commits the apex fallacy. Even if all powerful people were men, that wouldn’t mean that all men were powerful people. It assumes that men are one organism, one hive-mind, which always looks out for itself. If anything, our society encourages us to compete. 

It also assumes that misandry can’t be internalised. This is odd, because most of these people understand well that misogyny can be. If they didn’t, they’d have to actually listen when my female colleagues told them they were wrong. Thanks to internalised misogyny, though, they can still deploy the age old debating technique of shouting “sexist!” and running away.

Real female misogynists exist too, though. The sort of bloggers you’ll find on this site using terms like ‘real women’ and telling people how to be ladylike. That’s still misogyny, and we’re all comfortable with acknowledging that. If a very conservative, very traditionalist woman was in power, and suggested that a wife’s place was in the kitchen, that would still be misogyny. Men are no different. If a man has been brought up in a society which enforces certain gender roles on him, and then comes into power, he’s going to continue to enforce those gender roles. That doesn’t mean that those gender roles don’t hurt men, when you look at them from outside the system.

People will perpetuate these things whether they are good for them or not. The vast majority of our population has been perpetuating our gender binary since they were children, and our leaders are no exception. Women do it, even though the binary hurts women, and that misogyny is internalised. Men do it, even though the binary hurts men, and that misandry is internalised. Society evolved this binary, and thinks it is a good idea, because it helped us to survive. Groups enforcing the binary were therefore naturally selected, the next generation was more likely to enforce it, and here we are today. The binary, by the way, was not created and is not controlled by those in power. If you think that we see men as strong because men in power made it so, you have in backwards. These stereotypes are natural. If anything, men are only in power because we see them as strong. ‘Leader’ is just another role in the binary, and our leaders are just as much pawns of this system as we are. It goes deeper than a few men can control.

When a policeman unfairly profiles male targets, that’s internalised misandry. When a king sends all his male subjects to die in his name, that’s internalised misandry. When a teacher favours his female pupils, that’s internalised misandry. It’s not suddenly okay because a man is doing it, just as misogyny isn’t suddenly okay because a woman is doing it. It doesn’t stop it being a problem, and actually shows just how deep the problem goes.

Men don’t control the patriarchy, the patriarchy controls men. It likes to make them the workers, the fighters, the leaders, because that’s where it thinks men belong. It makes the workers and the fighters suffer and die, just to protect the women, who belong elsewhere. The patriarchy makes the leaders enact this suffering, but they perpetuate it as puppets - they do not control it. They didn’t invent sexism, or the binary. They just enforce it, as we all do in one way or another. They enforce it on women, they enforce it on non-binaries, and they enforce it on men. They internalise it. Yes; that is a thing. Remember it.