Misandry Is Fashionable: Why Ignoring Facts About Men Harms All of Society

A deep dive into the scientific data showing the essential value of men, the gender equality paradox, and how misandric narratives ignore evidence to everyone's detriment.

In an era dominated by polarized narratives, viral hashtags, and slogans tirelessly repeated across social media, misandry — prejudice or systematic aversion against men as a group — has shifted from a marginal bias to an almost fashionable stance in certain academic, media, and activist circles. Painting men as innate oppressors, inherently toxic, or socially dispensable has become a rhetorical strategy that guarantees easy applause.

However, when we examine reality with intellectual honesty and empirical data, a far more nuanced, complex, and responsible picture emerges: the vast majority of men are necessary, virtuous, and absolutely fundamental to the healthy, stable, and prosperous functioning of any society. This article does not deny the existence of real problems, such as domestic violence or antisocial behaviors committed by some men, but seeks to contextualize them appropriately, avoiding dangerous generalizations that, in the end, harm men, women, and especially children.

This article is a supplement with greater scientific evidence (peer-reviewed) based on the author’s original thread: https://twitter-thread.com/t/2051297031260414093

Men Are More Capable of Greatness and Essential to Society

Many men find purpose and deep direction in timeless ideals such as romance — understood not merely as a literary genre, but as a vision of life that emphasizes courage, protection, loyalty, honor, and the willingness to overcome great challenges for something greater than themselves (Wahring IV, Simpson JA, Van Lange PAM. Romantic Relationships Matter More to Men than to Women. Behav Brain Sci. 2024).

Parallelly, Stoicism offers a practical set of tools for emotional resilience, self-discipline, personal responsibility, and control in the face of adversity — qualities that have historically enabled men to build civilizations, explore frontiers, and protect families (Koğar Yılmaz, E., Gök, A. (2021). A Meta-Analysis Study on Gender Differences in Psychological Resilience Levels.).

One of the most impactful roles of masculinity is active fatherhood. The scientific evidence in this area is robust and consistent. Meta-analyses show that paternal involvement is positively associated with children’s socio-emotional, cognitive, and behavioral development. Engaged fathers reduce behavioral problems, juvenile delinquency, and criminality, while increasing academic performance, emotional stability, self-esteem, and social competence (Harris et al.). Children with involved fathers are more likely to develop emotional self-regulation, empathy, and healthy relationships. Longitudinal studies also indicate that paternal presence is correlated with lower risk of obesity, mental health problems, and engagement in risky behaviors during adolescence. In summary, fathers are not optional — they exert a unique and complementary influence to that of mothers (Sarkadi A, Kristiansson R, Oberklaid F, Bremberg S. Fathers’ involvement and children’s developmental outcomes: a systematic review of longitudinal studies).

Sexual Objectification: An Inconvenient Female Reality

It is a well-established fact in the scientific literature that women, on average, experience higher levels of sexual objectification than men, and that heterosexual men perpetrate more objectification directed at women. However, stopping the analysis at this point generates a distorted view. Women objectify other women (for example, through appearance judgments, comparisons, or endorsement of beauty standards), and some studies observe cycles in which victimization can predict perpetration (stronger in men). More importantly, there is the phenomenon of self-objectification, when a person internalizes the external gaze and begins to evaluate themselves primarily by their physical and sexual attractiveness, while attempting to repress male sexual desires through discourses such as “all men are potential rapists” — even when the person using such rhetoric wears inappropriate clothing and highly sexualized behavior.

A meta-analysis published in 2025, covering 78 studies, 74,216 participants from 16 countries, found a consistent and moderate gender difference (d = 0.35), with women reporting significantly more self-objectification than men. The largest disparities appear in measures of body surveillance.¹

The Gender Equality Paradox: Freedom Amplifies Differences

One of the most counterintuitive and uncomfortable findings for dominant narratives is the Gender-Equality Paradox. The more egalitarian, prosperous, and free a society (measured by indices of access to education, health, legal rights, and economic opportunities), the larger certain psychological, behavioral, and preference differences between men and women tend to become. In the cited meta-analysis, researchers observed that gender differences in self-objectification are even larger precisely in countries with greater gender equality.¹ This pattern repeats in other domains, such as occupational preferences and personality traits, being especially pronounced in Scandinavian societies, often cited as models of equality (Stoet & Geary).²

This suggests that when external constraints diminish and people gain greater freedom of choice, average preferences and traits influenced by biological, evolutionary, and psychological factors manifest more clearly — rather than disappearing. “Women around the world are more likely than men to view themselves as sexual objects, and these differences are larger in more gender-equal nations.”¹

Ignoring or distorting this data is not a neutral stance. It serves as ideological fuel for contemporary misandry. Discourses that take the worst behavior of a minority of men and turn it into a collective condemnation of the male sex commit a dangerous metonymic fallacy: taking the part (the abuser, the criminal) for the whole.

Women Speak and Men Listen: Men Are Not as Threatening as Preached

Social psychologist Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic documented in 1994 the famous “Women-Are-Wonderful Effect.” In multiple studies, both men and women associate more positive traits — warmth, empathy, kindness, morality — with women than with men. Curiously, this positive bias is usually more pronounced among women themselves.³

This narrative asymmetry creates an unbalanced cultural environment: harsh and generalizing criticisms of men are often celebrated as courageous or necessary, while equivalent criticisms of women are quickly labeled misogynistic. This reinforces the predictable feeling among many men that: women speak; men listen — and often bear the weight of this asymmetry alone.

When the dominant culture portrays men as a structural problem or a collective threat, negative effects spread throughout society. School systems increasingly hostile to the energy, competitiveness, and typical learning style of many boys contribute to the male lag at various educational levels. Men are significantly more reluctant to seek psychological help, which helps explain why male suicide rates are about four times higher than female rates in many Western countries.⁴

Discourses that devalue or treat the father figure as secondary or optional directly harm children’s development. Men still dominate the most dangerous professions (construction, mining, armed forces, fishing), contributing disproportionately to workplace deaths and to the protection of society.

Men and women differ in relevant statistical averages — differences that do not imply superiority or inferiority, but complementarity. Ignoring this reality in the name of forced equality of outcomes generates frustration, resentment, ineffective policies, and, paradoxically, more inequality of well-being.

Misandry does not sustainably empower women. It does not solve the concrete problems many women face (safety, work-family balance, reproductive health) and, at the same time, alienates, demotivates, and dehumanizes half the population. A truly mature and resilient society recognizes that men and women are equally valuable, differently constituted, and deeply interdependent. Valuing responsible fatherhood, practical Stoicism, classic masculine virtue (courage, resilience, provision), and honest dialogue based on data is neither regressive nor toxic. It is, quite simply, civilizational.

We urgently need to replace simplistic ideological narratives with narratives that integrate the complexity of human reality. Men are not disposable villains. They are, in their overwhelming majority, builders, protectors, innovators, and fathers who deserve to be seen as essential allies — not as enemies to be reeducated or silenced.

Live long and prosper… With data, virtue, responsibility, and mutual respect. 🖖

Additional Recommended References

• Harris et al. — Meta-analysis on paternal involvement and socio-emotional development.
• Zhang, J. et al. (2021). Meta-analysis on father involvement and problem behaviour.
• Allen & Daly — Review on the effects of paternal involvement.
• Falk & Hermle — Studies on the Gender-Equality Paradox in occupational preferences.