Misogyny is spoken of. It is studied, criticized, mobilized, and cited as grounds for institutional reform. Misandry, its supposed mirror image, is barely spoken of at all. And when a heterosexual man himself carries this feeling toward masculine culture, there is no vessel of language waiting to hold it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The experience of gay men being alienated from male-dominated culture has, over time, acquired language and theory. But the position of “a heterosexual man who desires women, yet is viscerally incompatible with men as a category, and with male culture itself” appears nowhere on the standard map of gender studies. It is not the inverse of misogyny critique, nor is it the gay man’s story. This is an attempt to write into that blank space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Men form packs across cultures. But look closely, and the logic differs from female intimacy. Bonds between women often take a face-to-face form \u2014 looking directly at the other, disclosing emotion. Bonds between men tend to take a side-by-side form: standing together, facing the same direction. A shared enemy, a shared goal, a shared prey, a shared rival \u2014 only once there is an external object does cohesion form around it. Evolutionary psychology calls this coalitional psychology. Two men do not become close because they are drawn to each other; they stand together in relation to a shared third party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What lies inside this structure is often not intimacy but a “confirmation of position.” Loud voices, horseplay, crude jokes, intimidating postures \u2014 these can be explained by a combination of deindividuation (the drop in self-monitoring that occurs when submerged in a group) and status displays common across primates. Crude subject matter functions less as content and more as a loyalty test: can you laugh at this together? When hierarchy is clear, the group remains stable even without deep mutual understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can understand this structure. I cannot feel it. I can observe it as an analytical object, but the motivation to participate in it was never present in me to begin with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is hardest to accept is the physical closeness taken for granted among men. An arm around the shoulder, a playful shove, bodies knocking together \u2014 these extend the logic of status display more than intimacy; they are closer to a contest of strength or a claim of ownership. In jock-culture environments, failing to participate in this can mean outright exclusion from the pack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This aversion is strongest toward unfamiliar men. On a packed train, even when a seat beside a woman is open, a man will come stand next to me instead, under the unspoken premise that “among men, no one needs to feel self-conscious.” This is not malice \u2014 the man may even believe he is being considerate. But it is precisely that premise \u2014 that men are naturally at ease with other men \u2014 crude and totalizing, that tramples the lived reality of those who fall outside it. Familiarity softens the intensity somewhat, but it is a difference of degree, not of kind; the underlying incompatibility does not disappear. The same resistance to being touched by a male hairdresser comes from the same stratum. Whether there is a relationship, or whether the touch is professionally legitimate, makes no difference to the feeling itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sociologist Raewyn Connell proposed the concept of “hegemonic masculinity”: once a society establishes which model of masculinity is “legitimate” \u2014 competitive, dominant, emotionally restrained \u2014 men who do not fit it are pushed into “subordinated masculinity.” Gay men have been the most frequently discussed case within this framework. But the category of a heterosexual man who simply does not fit masculine culture itself, independent of sexual orientation, has barely been named as an object of study at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This invisibility is not accidental. Prejudice and discrimination research has traditionally centered on prejudice flowing from those with power toward those without it. Within that frame, hostility from men toward masculine culture has no obvious place in a “top-down” power structure, and so is rarely recognized as a serious social problem or even as an interesting research subject. Misogyny has accumulated a thick body of theory because it has been historically bound up with legal, economic, and political inequality. Misandry \u2014 especially as felt by men themselves \u2014 has no corresponding history of institutional harm that has been told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This chain of discomfort ultimately converges on one place: resistance to monotheistic religions that hold up a male god.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the words of feminist theologian Mary Daly: if God is male, then the male becomes God. Yahweh, Allah, the Christian God as Heavenly Father \u2014 the traditional representations of God in monotheism have almost without exception been rendered in male pronouns and male attributes: king, father, ruler, judge. This is not mere metaphor. It is a mechanism that projects earthly male dominance onto the heavens and endorses it with absolute legitimacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If status display in a bar or a train car is already unbearable at ground level, it follows a certain logic that its cosmic-scale version \u2014 an all-powerful Father God, an authority that permits no defiance \u2014 would be unacceptable as well. Given that traditions exist with goddess worship or genderless conceptions of the divine (Hindu Shakti, ancient Mediterranean fertility goddesses, the genderless Tao of Taoism), the male-god model is not the only religious possibility; it is one historically selected form, reinforced alongside patriarchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Up to this point, the focus has been on status display within a pack. But the same mechanics surface even when a man is alone. The man who cracks open a can of ch\u016bhai and drinks it on a packed train. The man who blocks the doorway and doesn’t move as people try to board or get off. The man who sits with his legs spread wide across the seat. The man who leans his back against the handrail near the door, facing away from everyone. Women are not entirely absent from this list, but in lived experience it skews overwhelmingly male.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
None of this is explained by deindividuation, since there is no crowd to disappear into. Rather, even alone, the man prioritizes the range of his own body and belongings over the inconvenience to those around him. Sitting with legs spread wide has itself been discussed sociologically as a bodily claim of territory in public space. Leaning on the handrail, occupying the doorway \u2014 these too are expressions of the same carelessness, treating public space as an extension of private space, an individual-scale version of status display. What gets displayed toward others when men are in a pack leaks out, when alone, as a simple absence of consideration for others. The form differs, but the root is the same: the unexamined premise that one’s own body is entitled to occupy the space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Running through all these fragments \u2014 discomfort with the pack, aversion to physical contact, mismatched interests, resentment of social assumptions, resistance to a male god \u2014 is a single thread: a consistent rejection of masculinity whenever it takes the form of authority or dominance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether to call this misandry, or simply an incompatibility with masculine culture, is a matter of degree. What matters is that this experience does not fit cleanly into any existing category. It is not the mirror of misogyny critique, nor is it the alienation story of gay men. The position of “a heterosexual man, regardless of orientation, who is viscerally incompatible with what is coded as masculine behavior and physical distance” has almost no established form of language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is precisely why it is worth writing. An experience with no name continues to be treated as though it does not exist, for as long as it goes unspoken. This piece is an attempt to give that blank space its first outline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I. Standing in a Place with No Name Misogyny is spoken of. It is studied, criticized, mobilized, and cited as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":701,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699\/revisions\/701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}