Masculism or masculinism[a] may variously refer to ideologies and socio-political movements that seek to eliminate discrimination against men,[6][7] or increase adherence to or promotion of attributes regarded as typical of males.
[2] Sociologist Robert Menzies wrote in 2007 that both terms are common in men's rights and anti-feminist literature: "The intrepid virtual adventurer who boldly goes into these unabashedly mascul(in)ist spaces is quickly rewarded with a torrent of diatribes, invectives, atrocity tales, claims to entitlement, calls to arms, and prescriptions for change in the service of men, children, families, God, the past, the future, the nation, the planet, and all other things non-feminist.
[c][20] Masculinism, according to Brittan, maintains that there is "a fundamental difference" between men and women and rejects feminist arguments that male–female relationships are political constructs.
[19][1] The political scientist Georgia Duerst-Lahti distinguishes between masculism, which expresses the ethos of the early gender-egalitarian men's movement, and masculinism, which refers to the ideology of patriarchy.
[5] Sociologists Melissa Blais and Francis Dupuis-Déri describe masculism as a form of antifeminism;[21] they equate masculist and masculinist, attributing the former to author Warren Farrell.
[9] Sociologist Andreas Kemper describes masculism as a variation of masculinism whose goal is to oppose what its adherents see as female domination, making it fundamentally anti-feminist.
[31] Another of Farrell's concerns is that traditional assumptions of female innocence or sympathy for women, termed benevolent sexism, do lead to unequal penalties for women and men who commit similar crimes,[32]: 240–253 [independent source needed] to lack of sympathy for male victims in domestic violence cases when the perpetrator is female, and to dismissal of female-on-male sexual assault and sexual harassment cases.
[34] According to A Dictionary of Media and Communication (2011), "Masculists reject the idea of universal patriarchy, arguing that before feminism most men were as disempowered as most women.
[36][37] Scholar Miranda Pillay argues that the Mighty Men movement's appeal lies in its resistance to gender equality as incompatible with Christian values, and in raising patriarchy to a "hyper-normative status", beyond challenge by other claims to power.