English

Noun

masculism ‎(plural masculisms)

1. Advocacy of men's rights.
   • 1927, Harper's Magazine, volume 153:

     […] proposing the development of a counter corrective movement to be called "Masculism" — lady, I thank thee for that word! — a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Men.

     […]

     In his plea for masculism John Macy defies the champions of present-day feminism.

   • 1994 July, Young, Cathy, “Man Troubles”, in Reason:

     Unfortunately, masculism also has a tendency to adopt the less constructive traits and tactics of modern feminism, including polarizing rhetoric, exaggerated claims of victimization as the basis of political demands, and the tailoring of facts to fit ideology.

   • 1994, Robinson, Doug, No Less a Man: Masculist Art in a Feminist Age, Bowling Green: Popular Press, ISBN 9780879726386, OL 1441012M, page 23:

     I assume, in other words, that a healthy feminism will be promasculist, just as a healthy masculism will be profeminist.

2. Support for patriarchy / male domination of women; opposition to equality for women; anti-feminism.
   • 1971, Davis, Elizabeth Gould, The First Sex, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, ch. 22:

     The ages of masculism are now drawing to a close. Their dying days are lit up by a final flare of universal violence and despair such as the world has seldom before seen.

   • 1983, Sheila Ruth, quoted in Judith Evans (1986), Feminism and Political Theory , ISBN 0803997051, page 70:

     Fascism, fully revealed, is the extreme, exquisite expression of masculism, of patriarchy, and thus the natural enemy of feminism, its quintessential opposite.

   • 2003, Punishment and Social Control, second edition (Thomas G. Blomberg, Stanley Cohen, ISBN 0202307018), page 125:

     As Brittan (1989:4) has succinctly put it, "the ideology that justifies and naturalizes male domination" is "masculism." And masculism is already antisocial because masculism as an ideology universalizes "man" as the "maker" of history.

   • 2009, Judith A. Allen, The feminism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: sexualities, histories, progressivism, page 152:

     Titling a 1914 public lecture series at New York's Astor Hotel, “Studies in Masculism,” she complained that the printer objected to the word and attempted to change it.

     Despite an unfriendly press, she specially targeted "masculist" authors and purveyors of negative views of women.

3. Sexism in favor of men.
   • 1980 February, Ruth, Sheila, Issues in Feminism: A First Course in Women's Studies, Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 9780395286913, OL 7465927M, page 7:

     Masculism, the form of sexism practiced in our culture, has many facets, and we shall explore them in Chapter 2. Here we need only say that masculism is in part the mistaking of male perspectives, beliefs, attitudes, standards, values, and perceptions for all human perceptions.

   • 1997 June 25, Persram, Nalini, “In my father's house are many mansions”, in Black British Feminism: A Reader, ISBN 9780415152884, OL 7484411M, page 213:

     It often takes a crisis of some sort to initiate the difficult but empowering feminist process of renegotiating the masculisms that dominate the discourses of origin, authenticity and belonging in a way that transforms margins into frontiers, lack into (ad)vantage.

   • 2001, Belich, James, Paradise Reforged: A History of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the Year 2000, University of Hawaii Press, ISBN 9780824825423, OL 8161673M, page 508:

     Residual masculism remained quite powerful, and does so to this day. At school, boys continue to command more playground space and teacher attention than do girls.

Quotations

For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:masculism.

Synonyms

• androcentrism
• patriarchalism

Translations

See also

• feminism
• feminist
• masculinism
• masculinist
• masculist

References