I am sure this will change as more fathers, particularly gay men, join the care and rearing of their children. During the child’s first year of life, the father is rarely the primary caregiver. Especially in the mental health field, when we examine a child’s early infancy, we focus on the mother, talking about the time and attention she devotes to nurturing her baby. Society reveres anything associated with “mother,” as in Mother Earth, Mother Nature, and the celibate, childless Mother Theresa. In addition to criticizing Eminem for expressing his anger at his mother and trying to pathologize it, why not analyze his mother’s possible misandry? When someone disparages his mother, why don’t we wonder if she is somehow at fault as well? We allow sons and daughters alike to criticize their fathers, and our discomfort over their negative talk is much less than the public outcry when the topic switches to “Mommy Dearest.” Somewhere they play a part in engendering this negativity. However, I think it’s time to examine what women do to men- especially mothers raising the boys who ultimately grow up to hate women. Perhaps because of the horrors of sexism, our culture had to go very far in one direction and only look at what men have done to women. In general, however, usually women hate men and men hate women. But little is out there that explains the concept fully.īoth misogyny and misandry are gender-neutral: Misogynists and misandrists can be either men or women. Some books-Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy, for one-use it in their titles, as do some articles. And to top it all, the word is a compound, combining the Greek words miso meaning “to hate” with andros, for man. Misandry was first used in 1946, three hundred years later. Even in Webster’s little to nothing can be found on misandry, the hatred of men! Misogyny was a known word in Latin and Greek and according to the OED, was first used in English in 1656. But what about his mother in real life? What kind of woman was she toward her children and her son?Ī misandrist (which my word processor cannot even find in its Spell Checker) is the respectable feminist equivalent for the word misogynist, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. By going against his mother, a man gets punished and called a misogynist who hates women.Ĭountless articles and interviews analyzed Eminem’s lyrics to “Cleaning out my Closet,” focusing on how his anger at his mother has become generalized to hate for all women. It is as though we are not allowed to talk about the bad only the good. In this society, it is taboo to speak ill of our mothers, so we either keep silent or get judged negatively for doing it. lyrics to Eminem’s “Cleaning Out My Closet (I’m Sorry, Mama)”Įminem went where no son has publicly gone before-or is allowed to go-in attacking his mother. I’m sorry mama! I never meant to hurt you! I never meant to make you cry but tonight I’m cleaning out my closet.