Man-hate is now actively promoted in our culture. Regardless of what Naomi Wolf says, "power feminism" is not an improvement over "victim feminism."

I noticed the transition from victim feminism to power feminism sometime in the mid 1990s. During the reign of victim feminism, we were inundated with images of men committing acts of brutal violence against innocent, adorable females. All men were potential rapists and killers, ala Susan Brownmiller.

With the rise of power feminism, the violence has shifted to female-on-male violence, ala Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Men are beaten up, defeated, outsmarted, kicked in the balls, and killed by attractive empowered females. It’s generic "media feminism" which celebrates female-on-male violence and the ridicule of masculinity. Media feminism is dumbed-down misandry for the masses. The basic anti-male theme is repeated again and again as entertainment. It’s indoctrination for all, via slow hypnosis.

So, unless you're majoring in Women's Studies, forget about victim feminism or power feminism or difference feminism or dissident feminism or militant feminism or gender feminism or equity feminism or whatever feminism. However you qualify it, feminism will always be identified with the mistrust, emasculation, and minimization of men.

Television commercials are one of the biggest proponents. I saw Mary Chapin Carpenter in concert on Austin City Limits a couple years ago. I like her music, and yes, I think she should have a rock and roll band. Even if it is all male. But there’s one song she plays about how she’s upset by a coffee commercial from the 1960s, and how the husband is so impressed with the cup of coffee his wife made that he thinks he’ll "keep her."

How dare he judge his wife by a cup of coffee? I wonder if Mary Chapin Carpenter has seen any commercials in the last 20 years? If so she should be happy, because men portrayed in commercials now are all incapable idiots, and thank God for the women who keep them from screwing up. One ad in 2003 has the wife taking digital photos of food as a shopping list because her husband is apparently too dumb to read a written list. He’s a white guy, of course.

We’ve been so conditioned to be über-sensitive to anything that might offend women that it's become unimportant how white males are portrayed. For years we have been barraged with offensive anti-male content on TV. We’re dorks and cavemen. Homer Simpsons. We're routinely ridiculed as morons and very few people think it matters.

...Women are always kicking men's butts on TV and in movies, and girls love it, especially young girls. It’s empowerment. That’s strange, didn't I just read that violence is an expression of masculinity by us male oppressors? Some friends of mine have a 9-year-old girl, and she was ecstatic when telling me about how Xena beat up a bunch of men.

Why is that so healthy? Would it be good for young boys' confidence to see girls getting beat up by men half the time? There goes my role reversal kicking in again.

...TV and movies always portray men getting struck in the groin as hilarious. Gratuitous crotch violence has become mandatory in all action and comedy films. Ever since the spectacular crotch kick in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Hollywood can't give us enough. It's everywhere. I recently saw an online listing of more than 1500 films and TV shows that depict attacks on the male genitalia.

Why is it acceptable to show men in pain from various assaults on their sex organs? Its because this type of pain does not offend women. These same women are supposedly against violence. Violence against women, that is. Why do women enjoy images of men getting their testicles bitten and beaten?

Because men deserve it. All men, damn them. Because every man has hurt a woman emotionally, and since men are devoid of feelings the only way to make them really feel pain is physically. And what more appropriate place than right in the groin? Quick, everyone think happy thoughts. Oh yeah, to women those are happy thoughts.

While expressions of violence by women against men are presented in the media as something positive, violence against women is portrayed as the ultimate evil. Cute girls who are murdered or disappear get huge media coverage. Some I recall are; Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart, JonBenet Ramsey, Polly Klaas, Dru Sjodin, and Lori Hacking. Fox News has dedicated more than 100 entire shows to Laci Peterson. No such concern is displayed for men and boys who meet violent deaths.

...I don’t think commercials and movies actively encourage women to go out and slice off our penises or murder us. At least not generally. More likely is that women get the message again and again that men are opponents. That men deserve punishment. That pain inflicted by women upon men is good fun. That violence toward men is justified. That violence is a form of female empowerment.

The result is not so much an increase in female violence as a decline in respect for men. Our value as human beings is diminished. We must be demeaned. It’s done more with images than with actual violence. It’s media feminism as an assault weapon. It’s a daily bucket of gasoline on the fire.

Besides the assaults on male sex organs for fun, the casual killing of men, and the portrayal of all men as idiots, there are more subtle denigrations going on.

It’s common for TV to show capable and skilled men reporting to young and sexy women who are their superiors. These divas are the decision makers barking orders at docile men, who scramble to carry out every command. It’s retaliatory sexism in screenwriting. It's the result of writers exercising "power feminism," looking for every possible way to belittle and ridicule men. It’s pathology "light."

Women absorb these attitudes, then try to enter into relationships with us. The old feminists have slowly gotten their way. They are successfully harming men. Feminists have never caught on that damaging men will eventually damage women. Eventually has come to pass.

c. 2005 Thomas Ellis