Why Culture Loves to Hate Men | FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

In this episode of Friday Field Notes, Ryan Michler tackles the cultural double standard between misogyny and misandry. While modern discourse frequently condemns the hatred of women, systemic contempt toward men - misandry - is often ignored or dismissed as simple individual preference. Ryan breaks down the etymology of these terms and addresses critical disparities facing men today, including family court bias, false accusations, workforce declines, and the alarming male suicide rate. Moving beyond victimhood narratives, he distinguishes raw masculinity from true manliness, demonstrating how masculine traits are not inherently toxic but require proper direction. Tune in to understand why society must evaluate both sides of the aisle to cultivate genuine accountability, strength, and human flourishing. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 - Defining Misogyny vs. Misandry 02:26 - The Double Standard in Cultural Discourse 04:46 - Etymology and the Power of Words 09:40 - Custody Bias and Courtroom Discouragement 10:45 - The Impact of False Accusations 12:01 - Labor Force Declines and Biological Aptitude 14:30 - The Male Suicide Epidemic and Empathy Gaps 15:45 - Rejecting the Victimhood Scoreboard 18:56 - Masculinity vs. Manliness: Harnessing Raw Power 23:18 - Stop Neutering Young Men 25:21 - Taking Sovereignty Over Your Worth Battle Planners: Pick yours up today! https://store.orderofman.com/products/order-of-man-annual-battle-planner Order Ryan's new book, The Masculinity Manifesto https://www.amazon.com/Masculinity-Manifesto-Establishes-Influence-Credibility/dp/1684513316/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1665048672&sr=8-1. For more information on the Iron Council brotherhood https://orderofman.link/iron-council. Want maximum health, wealth, relationships, and abundance in your life? Sign up for our free course, 30 Days to Battle Ready https://orderofman.link/battle-ready-0

• 0:00Speaker 00

  How can you be a gentle man if you're not capable of being a violent man? Of course you can't. If you say to your boys, "Hey, you need to stop being so competitive." Well, then you're disincentivizing innovation and growth and progress. You're just basically neutering them. And then the same women who want to neuter those men will say, "Huh, where have all the real men gone?" You neutered the real men. And you did it because there was a bunch of screeching feminists who told you that that was the right thing to do. Let's talk about the distinction today between two terms that are very important for us to know. One is misogyny.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  That's a word that lives in every modern day cultural ideological conversation. And the other, which is misandry, which is one that you don't often hear about. In fact, there might be many of you who don't even know what that word means. It's important that we talk about the distinction between phrases, words. Words actually have meaning. I had a conversation just last, I was gonna say a conversation, a debate, we'll call it, and that's saying it graciously, on social media with a gentleman who wanted to chastise me because I didn't use the proper language of the Lindsay Clancy trial.

• 1:23Speaker 00

  And I said that she had pled not guilty by reason of insanity. And he was quick to inform me that either she did not plead that, she pleaded not guilty, or if I remember correctly, and I think by the state of Massachusetts, they define it as not guilty by reason of not criminally responsible. And he was very quick to chastise me and use that verbiage. And we went back and forth a little bit, and I think he was, if I do say so myself, a little intellectually outclassed. But he had said that words have meaning, definitions are important. And I said, "That's absolutely true. Can you define what is a woman?" He either could not, or chose not to define that word for me.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  I think there's an ideological component of this where people want to co-opt words and make them mean something that they're not. And frankly, I'm just not interested in that. I actually want to have real discussions, which means that we need to have real definitions of the words that we're using. So let's break down these two terms. We have misogyny, which everybody has heard of, the hatred of women. And then we have misandry, which is alternatively the hatred of women. Now, before I get into the discussion today, I want to let you know that I don't affiliate with either side. I'm not a man who hates women as a class.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  In fact, I love many women because of the value that they add to my life. And I go on a case by case basis. I don't largely attribute certain characteristics to women. Certain characteristics I do, the same way I would attribute certain characteristics to men, we'll talk about that. But I don't take one bad example, or one bad apple, and apply it broadly against all women. But that is not true of men. In the same post that I had made last week, there was plenty of women who were there to inform me how horrible men are. Men are pigs, men are violent, men are this, men are that.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  And more than willing to categorize all men through their assumption of the behavior of one. So let's, let's talk about these actual words and maybe come at this from an intellectual perspective, instead of just screeching at each other and, and making ad hominem attacks and not having some sort of intelligent discussion. So let's talk about misogyny. And then alternatively, let's talk about misandry. Now, you can hear that both of them have the same, same root word with, which is miss or misos in Greek.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  And that word means, or misos means hatred. So hatred, hostility, hate towards a group or a certain people. But misos means hate. Now misogyny will pair with the root word, dain, meaning woman. That's where the word gynecologist comes from. So that means woman. So misogyny means hatred of women. Alternatively, and this is the one you don't ever hear about, is misandry. That pairs with the root word, andros, which means man.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  It's the same as android, or andrology, or androgen, which is basically a collection of the hormones that determine a man's biological makeup. So these actually have meanings, believe it or not. Words have meanings. Shocker, right? And that's why we might have something like androgynous. So you combine man, andros, misogynist, or excuse me, androgynous, with dain, which means woman. And that means that it's neither, or it's both, man and woman. And if it's both things, then it's neither fully man nor woman. That's why we would use that word.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  So it's really important that we actually look at the etymology of words, because this is what helps us discuss conversations intelligently. Okay, but the real question at this is, why does a man who says, for example, "I feel hated simply for being a man," sound absurd to people, while the reverse doesn't sound true for most people?

• 6:04Speaker 00

  I, I, I think that if a woman were to say that she feels hated as a class, or she feels hated systematically, or systemically, as people might say, that that's not really true. It's really more for women, state of being versus men, it's something ingrained into our culture at this point. Okay, and I think that's really, really important when we're talking about misogyny or misandry.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  Okay, where misogyny reflects this structural power, for example, patriarchy, and you'll hear that all the time, like the patriarchy is horrible, they're violent, they're oppressive, the systematic oppression of certain classes like women. Everything around hating men, the conversation is all built around this structural, external power, working in congruity to dismiss other racial classes and, and women. While misandry gets dismissed as just an individual attitude. So if a woman says, "Well, I hate men," society would say, "Yeah, I get that.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  I understand that." Or, "Yeah, you have every right to believe that because you've been subjected either personally or categorically by men." But it's also systematic, and that's what we fail to overlook. I mean, take a look at the feminist movement and the attitudes towards the way that feminism has moved our culture from believing that men are great and do good things, and they also have the power to do horrible things. And the same is true of women. Again, in this Lindsay Clancy case, I can't tell you how often I heard comments, and this thing has gone somewhat viral, the post that I made, where women had made the claim that men are far more likely to kill their children than women are.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Well, that's just categorically false, and I'll tell you why. If you factor into the equation, and I believe this is murder, taking the life of a baby who is still in the womb, then that is 100%. Millions upon millions upon millions of babies have been murdered by women. So you can't really just say that men kill more babies than women do, because it's just not true. And again, I'm not trying to pit men and women against each other. I'm just trying to bring the honest reality of the conversation, which I think far too few people are willing to have. So again, misogyny, the hatred of, of women, for example, is often framed as systematic.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  And misandry is just personal. It's personally reactive. It's not backed by any history. It's not backed by any, at least in the doctrine of popular culture, the common narrative, it's not backed by any data that would support that. But that framing really deserves some scrutiny, rather than something that we just automatically accept. Okay, the structural powers at play are a real force, I'll acknowledge that. And the experiences of contempt towards certain individuals are real, but they aren't the same measurement.

• 9:34Speaker 00

  And conflating those two erases the real harm. And there's a male experience that all of us know of as men that need to be brought to the forefront of the conversation. And so I pulled up some statistics and I want you to check this out as I go through this. So number one, there's the custody bias. Okay. Fathers who actually fight for custody win joint or even sole custody roughly just under 70% of the time. Okay. So that's a problem is that 70% of the time, we either win, excuse me, let me rephrase that.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  We lose joint custody 50 to 70% of the time. Okay. What that means is that 50 to 70% of the time, women will either achieve joint or sole custody of their children. Okay. But the problem, part of the problem here, and I want to be really honest about this is that fewer than 4% of men even attempt to fight for their children. Now, we can debate about what that is. Fatherhood abandonment, I would say is probably a real issue. And I would also say just a byproduct of feeling like the odds are stacked against us. And the reality is, and the data shows that it is, it is. Okay.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  But the real story isn't just courtroom bias alone. It's that discouragement before the fight even starts. Like, we feel like we're outmatched. And if you feel like you're outmatched, many men aren't even going to engage in the fight. Okay. Now you have this other scenario, false accusation, and there's a stigma behind this. Now credible research says and puts false reports at roughly just under 10%, which I think is, is small in number, 10%. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's devastating in impact. It's devastating that 10% of the men, if we're using this data, are falsely accused

• 11:47Speaker 00

  of violent and sexual crime because it puts a whole stigma around men. And it also puts a stigma around, from men's perspective, women. So the real victims don't get heard because there's 10% of women just randomly making shit up so they can avoid the consequences of their own poor decision-making process. Okay. The low frequency, like I said, 10%, doesn't erase the reputational damage, the psychological toll on the men who happen to be victims of false allegations. Okay. And then the next thing you have is you have workplace disposability.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  The male labor force participation dropped from roughly 77% in 1976 to just under 67% today. Now you might say, well, what's wrong with that? That's a good thing. More women are on the workforce. And I would say, you know, if a woman wants to make that choice, all the power to her. But if she's neglecting the opportunity to stay at home and raise her children, or economic circumstances don't allow that to be the case, or we're losing jobs in sectors where men are predominantly responsible for those jobs.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  So you might say, building, firefighting, law enforcement, military, these are all, and there's plenty more, all historically male-dominated industries. If those continue to decline, and I don't really care what you feel about this, the reality is, is that men are more suited to do certain jobs and women are more suited to do others. Jordan Peterson often represents and references studies that suggest that men are naturally more object-driven, meaning we're more interested in things, where women are more interested in people.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  So it's no surprise to me that, for example, roughly 70-plus% of schoolteachers are women. Why? Because they're more interested in people versus you take STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math, and it's predominantly driven by men because we're more driven to be interested in things as opposed to people. So if that continues to go the way it goes, we cannot continue to pretend that men and women are the same, or we're just as aptitude in certain aspects of life than others. And it's going to become a real problem. Okay.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Now, if you want to take one other scenario that I think is probably loosely tied, it's this culture where I wouldn't say promotes necessarily, but doesn't really address the male suicide epidemic. Study after study shows that four times more often than women, men kill themselves. 80% of all suicides are male-driven. And that might not be directly related to the stigma of hatred towards men, but the stigma of valuing women's health over men's health.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  The Lindsay Clancy case is a perfect example of this. You know, where you have a woman who allegedly, I have to say that, murdered her children, and all reports indicate that she did. There's an outpouring of growth and support and encouragement and love towards the woman who's suffering from postpartum. But if you take other men, and women will often cite these cases where men are responsible for killing their children, there's not nearly the same level of empathy, let's say, towards the men who might be suffering from their own sense of mental illness. And why is that? Well, misogyny versus misandry.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Men are just hated in society more than women are. It's just the reality of it. And I think it's important that we talk about it. Now, I want to be careful of this competing victimhood trap because I refuse to let any hatred go unnamed just because it's maybe more institutionally or societally clean and tidy and organized. Okay. This isn't about crowning men the new oppressed class. That's what these fucking losers who are red pill and incels do. They whine about how women are the enemy and women are out to get them. And I never met a man in my life who I admired, who painted himself into the victimhood corner. Okay.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  That's not what I'm trying to do. What I'm trying to do is show you that men and women, again, are not at odds with each other. We're actually very complementary. And it's so important that we discuss this. So no, women are not the enemy. Now, there are some feminine ideological perspective that I would say is very problematic, the same way as I might say that about a man's ideology and perspective, not broadly, but there might be specific cases of that. Okay. I'm refusing to do this scoreboard mentality that extreme feminists do and the red pill incels do.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  You know, where suffering only counts if it's structurally organized and structurally certified. Okay. Naming misandry because nobody talks about it doesn't necessarily cancel out misogyny. Both actually exist, and that's the point of the conversation that I'm having with you today. Both exist. And one doesn't need to exist to disqualify the other. Two things can exist at once. But I think there's a real root of this, and I've talked about this for a long time. And I'm surprised that more men who advocate and fight and work with men aren't talking about this.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  But there's a difference between masculinity and manliness. Okay. Misandry as contempt for the raw material that, you know, refined builds providers and protectors and strong men and territorial men, and maybe even competitive men, isn't a problem. Okay. Masculinity itself is raw. It's amoral. It's neither good nor bad. People say, well, masculinity is righteous. No, it isn't. Neither is femininity, by the way. Okay. What's righteous is proper and virtuous application of the raw material.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  I would never say, for example, that metal is bad.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  But if I made a knife and I went on a killing rampage in London with my metal knife, we would all say that's an inappropriate use of the raw material. If, on the other hand, I took the same metal and I had a firearm and I neutralized the terrorist, murdering villainous scum that was just stabbing and slashing at people with my pistol, we might all say that that's a proper use or a virtuous and righteous use of the material itself. So masculinity is the same way. Femininity is the same way. And I'll explain both.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  Masculinity, if used improperly, could create sexual deviance. It could create unnecessarily violence. It could create subjugation. I'm not willing to admit that that stuff doesn't exist, but I'm saying if we take those same core set of characteristics and apply them righteously, then we have productive outcomes for society. The alternative is true for women. What might that look like? Well, I think women are naturally more empathetic and kind, but if her empathy comes at the expense of a victim's rights, for example, then that's not an appropriate use of her

• 20:23Speaker 00

  feelings, of her care of people. Okay? If she's hamstringing her children because she's swaddling them and bubble wrapping them because she doesn't want to be that them to be exposed to the hardships of life, we would all say she's a helicopter parent, or she's crippling her children, or she's enabling her children. That's what women do. Not specifically necessarily, but broadly because they're more inclined to do it. Now, if she takes the same nurturing, guiding, loving characteristics into a relationship

• 21:03Speaker 00

  with her children, then she raises kind, empathetic, thoughtful, considerate adults. And that's a beautiful use of her femininity. So it's nothing to do with the raw material and everything to do with how we're using it. But the problem is with men, we often get targeted as a source of contempt for our masculinity, but I never heard anybody complain about a police officer or a firefighter knocking down a door and dragging a person or a family out of a burning building. But it's the same set of characteristics that might be used to kick down a door and

• 21:47Speaker 00

  violate a family. It's not, it's not the raw material. It's what we do with it. So we can call out bad behavior for what it is, but I'm not going to get into the subject of toxic masculinity if we aren't also willing to have the conversation of toxic femininity. Okay? Manliness, however, or counter-womanliness, is masculinity that's disciplined towards purpose, towards service, towards love and caring and guidance towards other people. Okay?

• 22:29Speaker 00

  It's what gets lost when the raw force is just shamed outright. Oh, men shouldn't be competitive. And then you raise docile men. Men shouldn't be territorial. And then you lose the protective component. Men shouldn't be physically strong. And then you lose the capability component. It's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But have you ever heard anybody say, when, again, a firefighter is kicking down a door or a man is pulling somebody out of a burning vehicle or subduing a threat, that a woman says, "Oh, toxic masculinity." No, she says it's healthy.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  Well, ironically enough, it's the same raw material expressed differently. Okay? Arate is a term you may have heard of. That means excellence. It requires that raw material. It requires a little bit of rough edges. You gotta, kind of gotta be a hard ass. I think it was John Wayne who said, "In order to be a gentleman, you have to be a man first." How can you be a gentle man if you're not capable of being a violent man? Of course you can't. Okay? Contempt for the material makes that refinement harder for every man trying to rise and every society to do well. If you say to your boys, "Hey, you need to stop being so competitive," well, then you're

• 23:56Speaker 00

  disincentivizing innovation and growth and progress. Nobody complains the fact that we've been able to build incredible technology and solve some of the world's most difficult problems and keep our communities safe. Nobody ever complains about that. But if you want to tell a boy that, "Hey, you shouldn't be so competitive," you're just basically neutering him. And then the same women who want to neuter those men will say, "Huh, where have all the real men gone? You neutered the real men. You neutered the potential they had. And you did it because there was a bunch of screeching feminists who told you that that was the right thing to do."

• 24:41Speaker 00

  And that's misandry. And we need to start having more conversations about that. Again, if you're a man listening to this or a woman listening to this, I want you to know I don't hate women. And, and I don't think women ought to hate men. I think we ought to hate certain behavior. I'm repulsed by this, this overly entitled, overly soft, overly even empathetic culture that we've built at the expense of human innovation and growth and progress and flourishing. As much as I'm repulsed by a man who decides to molest a child or take advantage of and

• 25:23Speaker 00

  maybe even physically or sexually abuse a woman, I'm just as repulsed by that behavior. But I don't think men are the enemy, and I don't think women are the enemy. I think the behavior is. And I know when many people talk about toxic masculinity, they're saying, "Yeah, Ryan, you're proving the point." I know, I know what you mean. So then if we're going to talk about that, then I think it's important that we also talk about toxic femininity or misandry. Let's give equal weight to the conversation on both sides of the aisle so we can actually have real conversations, not to pit each other against each other, but to bring each other together against poor behavior from women and against poor behavior from men.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  That's the only way we rise, but we're not going to villainize the building blocks of men and the building blocks of women. So guys, I'm going to leave you with this. I want you to stop justifying your own existence. Not only is it okay, it's a moral imperative that you step into your masculinity and apply it correctly, which then makes it manly. You start owning your worth regardless of the cultural mood. When some woman complains and gripes and moans or even screeches at you about how horrible you are as a man and down with the patriarchy and you're so oppressive and it's a tyranny

• 26:52Speaker 00

  and it's a systematic problem, fight against that. Not aggressively, maybe aggressively, but not unnecessarily, not violently, but use those characteristics and skills that you have. Fight aggressively against that. Use your words. Become educated in this. Show what it really means to be a man who's harnessed his masculinity in something productive and righteous manliness. Guys, sovereignty means that you don't outsource your sense of self-worth to whichever way the cultural discourse is blowing that week or that month or those, that four-year political cycle. I call it the doctrine of popular culture.

• 27:37Speaker 00

  Do not be swayed by that. Maintain your course. Be a man. Embrace your masculinity. Use it properly. So my challenge for you this week, as I, as I leave things here, is that you name wherever you felt this. Where have you felt like you haven't been able to express yourself as a man? For example, competitiveness. When has somebody told you, "Oh, you're so intense. You're too competitive." No, you're not. Maybe you're just right. Maybe you're expressing it inappropriately, but maybe you're just right. Or you're too aggressive. Or you're, you're, you're too black and white. It's another thing people will say. Maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe it's a good thing.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Just needs a little bit of challenging and harnessing and channeling into the appropriate spaces, the appropriate action, and then get to building. Guys, I hope that helps. There's a big difference here. Culture readily accepts the idea of misogyny, not so much with misandry. And if you're going to talk about one, you need to talk about the other or don't talk about either. But those are your two choices in my mind. I hope that helps. If you guys have thoughts, insights, ideas, questions, disagreements, we can do all of it. Drop a comment on YouTube in the comments below at youtube.com/OrderOfMan.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  And let's keep some of these conversations going because they, these conversations need to take place and they're ones that society is just not having. All right, guys, make sure you check out the Iron Council. Our exclusive brotherhood is now open for enrollment. We'd love to see you in there. You can go to OrderOfMan.com/IronCouncil. That is a core group of men who are having conversations like this and rallying behind each other and believing and edifying and uplifting each other. Again, check it out at OrderOfMan.com/IronCouncil. Guys, we'll be back next week for our interview. Until then, go out there, take action and become the man you are meant to be.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be? We invite you to join the order at OrderOfMan.com.