Defining ‘masculism’ is made difficult by the fact that the term has been used by very few people, and by hardly any philosophers. In its most general meaning, the word ‘ feminism ’ refers to promotion of the interests or rights of women, and a reasonable definition of ‘masculism’ would have it refer to promoting the interests or rights of men. (This is very different, it must be noted, from promoting attributes of womanliness or manliness, as they might be construed, which could be labelled femininism and masculinism.) Thus defined, the two parallel terms are too vague to be very useful. A more precise definition of both would be something on this order: ‘the belief that women/men have been systematically discriminated against, and that discrimination should be eliminated’. Evidently, such a definition for ‘feminism’ is commonly understood, and among the few who apply the term ‘masculist’ to themselves, such is also their intent. Of course, under these meanings there is no necessary conflict between them, and in fact some are happy to call themselves both feminists and masculists. Much more often, the belief that one sex currently faces a much greater threat from discrimination would lead to accepting one label and rejecting the other.
However one understands these particular terms, there is today a small movement of ‘men's rights’ activists. Their fundamental claim is that very serious discrimination is currently being committed against individual males on account of their sex. These activists fall roughly into two categories, traditionalist and liberal–progressive. The traditionalists hold that inherited gender roles, though ‘discriminatory’ in the neutral sense of treating the sexes differently, have been more or less fair and just to both, because, they believe, the disadvantages faced by males and females have been comparable (at least in this culture, in this century) and because the traditional sex roles represent more or less the optimal division of benefits and burdens, the best arrangement for children and for society as a whole. What sets ‘men's rights’ traditionalists apart from traditionalists in general is their belief that contemporary feminism is not only bad for society but seriously unjust to men as well.
In sharp contrast—and in spite of attempts by many to label all talk of men's rights as reactionary, a ‘backlash’—progressive men's rights activists regard the traditional differential treatment as seriously unfair to members of both sexes. Inherited gender roles and stereotypes are not just burdensome to both men and women, they say, but unjust to both, and must be eliminated. (Unlike traditionalists, they have no need to pronounce the roles equally burdensome, and tend to treat the two sets of injustices as incommensurable.) Progressive masculists have thus welcomed many feminist efforts toward societal change, adding, however, that feminism addresses only half the problem. Furthermore, they maintain that many feminist efforts ostensibly aimed at ending sexism are actually increasing sexism against men. This has been especially true, they say, in the 1980s and 1990s, as mainstream feminism has left its inclusivist roots in favour of separatist efforts based on an extreme oppressor– oppressed picture of relationships between the sexes.
Thus, both forms of contemporary masculism promote equality between men and women as its adherents envision it. Of course, whether they are mistaken about what moral equality would consist in, or even at some level dishonest about that being their goal, is another matter—as it also is for feminists. This leads us to the extremist versions of masculism and feminism, those that promote some degree of male or female supremacy, and are generally based on belief in the inferiority of the other sex. Many contemporary feminists consider men to be morally and even intellectually inferior, by virtue of being raised in an oppressor class, or even by nature. And of course the long history of male domination since hunter-gatherer times has generally included doctrines of the intellectual inferiority, and, although the record is mixed, sometimes moral inferiority of women. Nicholas Davidson discusses an extreme brand of masculism and masculinism which he dubs ‘virism’. In its world-view, he says, What ails society is ‘effeminacy’. The improvement of society requires that the influence of female values be decreased and the influence of male values increased…. Contemporary virists perceive themselves to be fighting a last-ditch action against a neutered or feminized society, of which feminism is merely one recent expression…. [In movies such as] Rambo and Commando, the world has gone soft. The protagonists struggle to avert dangers caused by society's loss of the masculine principle. Davidson sees precise similarities between extremist masculism and extremist feminism, remarking that ‘the parallel association of Hellenic virism with a cult of [male] homosexuality and modern feminism with a cult of lesbianism is not accidental’.
However that may be, most men's and women's rights activists profess belief in equality , different though their visions of it may be. Indeed, they do not divide strictly along gender lines. Besides feminist (or ‘pro-feminist’) men, there are many women—some embracing the label ‘feminist’, some rejecting it, and many ambivalent about it—who actively advocate men's rights. Such groups as the Women's Freedom Network (mostly libertarians) and the Women's International Network (liberal) in the USA have been established largely to oppose the harms they see contemporary mainstream feminism as doing to both sexes. Traditionalist women's groups such as Eagle Forum (USA) and REAL Women (Canada) also often speak out against discrimination toward men, or at least against the recent varieties promoted by feminists.
Space is not available here to describe adequately (much less to argue for and against) the standard men's rights issues. They include discrimination against fathers in child custody cases (in terms of numbers of activists, this is the largest issue); discrimination against men in the criminal law, military conscription, and various other societal institutions; contemporary discrimination against men in employment, insurance and pensions, and other economic matters; and many others. (See Farrell , The Myth of Male Power, and Thomas , Not Guilty, for representative treatments of men's rights issues.)
The above discussion describes masculism as a set of political beliefs, not as philosophy in any abstract sense. Apart from advocacy (genuine, not just alleged) of male supremacy, however, there arguably is no masculist philosophy. Consider the traditionalist belief that if nature were allowed to take its course, men would fill most of the leaderships roles (see Goldberg , Why Men Rule) and women fill the nurturing roles. The belief is better described as a general philosophy of human nature than as one centred on males and maleness. And liberal advocates for men's rights typically describe their philosophy as egalitarian rather than as either male-or female-orientated. By the same reasoning, however, apart from brands of feminism embracing genetic female superiority, there is no genuine feminist philosophy, or at least none with unique relevance to females or femaleness. The perfectly justified desire to open up to women the opportunities, which only men (a small minority of men) have had in the past, to engage in formal philosophy, had led, this writer would judge, to the wishful beliefs that (a) past philosophy, in virtue of having been written by individual males, is somehow specifically male or masculist in its nature, and that (b) there is a distinct type of philosophy that is specifically female in its nature. All the post-Gilligan talk about women's ‘special ways of seeing’ notwithstanding, as this liberal masculist–feminist writer views the evidence, ‘ feminist epistemology ’ and its like is a grand illusion.
