I see misogyny as stemming from residual resentment against the power exercised by the mother, by resentment against women seen as potential sex-partners unwilling to be so, and simple and explicitly misogynist and masculinist ideologies. They play well together; in particular, simple bigotry makes it easy to see sexual unavailability as being motivated by malice or artifice, an avenue pre-widened by the desire not to see oneself as undesirable, itself bolstered by a strongly-held equation of desirability with personal worth. Similarly, simple bigotry makes a mother's rule over her son seem, as he ages, illegitimate, and more worthy of resentment than his father's. (An analogy: in the Jim Crow South, a three-year-old white boy was supposed to heed his black nurse-maid, but order her about at the age of ten or so, race by then trumping age as a determiner of legitimate authority.)

Misandry certainly exists for analogous or mirror-reversed reasons, but women both less often been in unambiguously superior positions and tend have been educated into the belief that feminine power were intended to be used for good reason…whereas for many nothing says 'masculine' as well as the exercise of power, and (as Orwell and others have noted) power were most easily demonstrated in its arbitrary and selfish use.

…and we need not have resort to conspiracy theory to see how this, like all unfair and arbitrary division, assists those with greater power in society. Many a man has salved the wounds of being under a boss' thumb by being a domestic tyrant, or a Proud White Man who at least has the n-gg-rs beneath him; every moment James Damore spent considering and complaining about supposèd unfairly favourable treatment of women at Google was a moment not spent considering how men and women both at Google might be better-off with a union backing them….

Fnord seems to have covered the bases. Maybe more than was needed...but, I'm not criticizing. If anyone is interested, I made some remarks on the other recent PT post on misogyny, so there is no sense in repeating them here---even though the context is slightly different.

If women are more oppressed than men in "developed" countries like the United States, wouldn't we expect there to be more misandry than misogyny, based on the oppressed naturally feeling more anger?

If women are more oppressed than men in "developed" countries like the United States, wouldn't we expect more women than men to be undergoing sex change operations, in order to join the group perceived as being more advantaged?

If women are more oppressed than men in "developed" countries like the United States, wouldn't we expect statistics in things such as life expectancy, education levels, incarceration rates, household assets, consumer purchasing power, etc., to reflect this?

Is it possible that we're paying too much attention to the power wielded by a relatively small number of men in high-profile positions in countries like the U.S., and not enough attention to less visible ways in which the average woman in such societies has more power and advantages than the average man?

Thoughtful assessment, FH. And probably more on point than many in the me-too camp might wish to admit. Women scorned are furious; women disrespected are livid; women who have been used by powerful men are ready to commit murder. Hoping not to sound too egg-headed, the history of power wielded by men is long and studded with pitfalls and pot holes (somewhat like my mid-west community, this time of year). Women are as mad as hell, and clearly, they are not going to take it anymore. This is a significant time, not only in these United States, but in the rest of the world. Having lived through several mini-epochs of social change and societal upheaval, I am worried about the 'course of human events'. One thing is most amazing to me: the more social turmoil I witness, the more resistance to change there appears to be---even when change is (or ought to be) viewed in a constructive way: the more there is push-back against egregious treatment and behaviors; the more those tend to push back against the threat of their elimination. We seem determined to maintain a 'state-of-quo', tied to traditional conservatism-if there is such a thing. Someone's grass is always greener. Out feet should be screaming in pain from all the times we have shot holes in them. Maybe men are just too bone headed to get it. I do not know...

Some of us would like to think we are rational, caring and sensible. That is difficult to sustain when so many others don't give a flip.At least we still have metaphor.

My take is that like racism, misogyny is a strategy to divide and subjugate (conquer), and that men suffer in their own way just as women suffer. This basic idea is illustrated well in the movie The Platform. When we fight for a bigger slice of the pie, we lose sight of the real problem. We're being pitted against one another instead of joining forces against the perpetrators.

The solution is simple. It's called quotas, and it's demonized by the privileged because it threatens their privilege. For example, requiring all corporate officers and boards of directors to be at least 40% women would go a long way toward gender equality in business.