“Meninism” — it sounds a lot like Nemo in “Finding Nemo” (2003) trying to pronounce “anemone” and failing. Cute and innocuous, right? Not quite. Meninism is an anti-feminism movement that’s old news, but has blown up on social media recently, gaining followers with its unapologetic misogynistic message.
What began as a good-natured joke has increasingly been used by men as a hashtag to condemn feminists and complain about imagined inequalities — and yes , they are imagined. Some highlights include men complaining about being sexually objectified in the movie “Magic Mike” (2012) — as if women haven’t been continually sexualized and objectified for centuries — and expounding on the unfairness of the friendzone, an invented concept that perpetuates the idea that women owe men sex. Most disturbingly, these so-called meninists have weighed in on the abortion debate with “Plan C” — domestic violence that results in a miscarriage.
It’s not the first time anti-feminists have threatened physical harm — many men threatened female reporters asking for equal representation during the infamous Gamergate. Gamergate began with attacks on game developer Zoe Quinn’s sex life, which escalated to death threats and harassment. The attacks spread as anti-feminists targeted other women in the industry, harassing them via Twitter and sending threats of sexual and physical abuse. These anti-feminists attacked women in gaming with the explicit goal of destroying their lives. When Gamergate ended, many hoped that this behavior would end with it. It didn’t, and now internet anti-feminism has reappeared, united under another name.
Perhaps the most dangerous trend of this meninist movement is the use of rape as a punch line. A recently published tweet, for example, featured three cups: an optimist’s cup that was half full, a pessimist’s cup that was half empty and a feminist’s cup that was “being raped.” The official Meninist Twitter, which was the source of that tweet, has over 612 thousand followers — that’s 612 thousand Twitter users who are following an account against equality and making light of rape. These people seem to believe that feminists simply “cry rape” and that’s it not a real and systemic issue — which it is.
These meninists actively paint a picture of feminists as hysterical, over-emotional women running around conjuring imagined slights and inventing rapes. I can assure you that this caricature is false. Feminists are rational people — both men and women — who believe in equality and try to illuminate and rectify real discrimination in our world.
At the core of the meninist movement is willful ignorance. I remember posting to my Tumblr blog about how infuriating I find the use of “play like a girl” as an insult. I cited some of the difficulties many female pro athletes face as examples — low attendance, low pay and awful working conditions not on par with those of their male counterparts. Then a man, whose own Tumblr consisted only of anti-feminist and meninist posts, dismissed my assertions as lies and deceits.
That is the saddest part of the meninist movement — that so many people can repeatedly turn a blind eye toward discrimination. It’s discouraging that so few people know or care that FIFA used cheaper, artificial turf for the women’s cup when they never spare any expense to get real grass for the men. This resulted in a well-grounded discrimination suit because many of those women walked out with their skin torn up from the turf thanks to FIFA’s value judgments. They decided women, their bodies and their athletic skills are worth less than men’s. Women are reduced to second-class athletes who aren’t worth real grass. Preventing easily avoidable injuries doesn’t seem to be a concern for FIFA — not women’s injuries, at least. Yet, very few people know that these types of sexist “business decisions” take place on a regular basis, and so female athletes are denied the benefits and privileges that male athletes enjoy.
Meninism is an attempt to discredit a movement for equality, an attempt to bury all evidence of discrimination. Simply put it’s one huge straw-man argument. Meninism invents a caricature of feminists that it then attacks so that it never has to face the real problem — the harmful effects of the gender inequality that it helps to perpetuate.
