Does Medium Need More Viewpoint Diversity on Gender?
Would a publication in which women writers express good will toward men and boys be a good idea?
A Tale of Two Hatreds
One day, a few years ago, I was talking about gender issues with a friend of mine. “Did you ever notice,” he asked, “that we have the word misogyny to denote anger at women, but we don’t have a word — except misandry, which no one knows or uses — for anger at men?”
“Yes, I have,” I answered. “Isn’t that something?”
“It sure is,” he responded. “It just proves that in this man’s world, being angry at men is simply not allowed.”
Surprised, I said, “Gosh, I came to an entirely different conclusion.”
“How could you possibly come to a different conclusion?” he asked. “It’s obvious.”
“Well,” I began, “what’s the word for crossing the street against a light or in the middle of a block?”
“That’s jaywalking,” he answered.
“And what’s the word for crossing the street at an intersection with a green light?”
“There isn’t any word for that. It’s just called crossing the street.”
“And so maybe,” I suggested, “the reason we have a word to spotlight anger at women is because we want to punish and discourage it, and the reason we don’t have a word for anger at men is because, like crossing the street with a green light, it has complete social sanction.”
My friend had no response — other than to insist that surely I must be wrong.
“Misandry [on Medium] is perfectly acceptable! (Apparently)”
That is the provocative title of a story by MediaVSReality that points out thirteen Medium stories conveying significant misandry.
Here are the thirteen stories MediaVSReality found.
Tags and Topics
With the MediaVSReality story in mind, it might be worth noting that a search on Medium for publications tagged with the word misogyny returned 16 hits. A search for misandry brought back one publication, which seemed to have little if anything to do with misandry.
Along the same lines, Medium has stories on 26 flavors of misogyny and 3.3K stories on that topic. By comparison, misandry has no variants and only 212 stories.
That’s not Medium’s fault. It’s a reflection of the lack of viewpoint diversity on gender issues among its readers.
But one thing Medium could easily change is to include Men’s Issues up-front, along with Women’s Issues, in the suggested topics new members might want to select.
A Medium Publication for Expressing Good Will Toward Men and Boys?
Male-friendly Media and its “A Seat at the Table for Men and Boys” Medium profile are taking the pulse of Medium readership to see if a new Medium publication in which women writers express Good Will Toward Men and Boys would be a good idea.
Please take a look at medium.com/gwtmab and let us know what you think.
Thanks. And huge thanks to MediaVSReality.
