[Commlist] CFP: Man-Hating in Cinema, Literature, Media, and Society

CALL FOR PAPERS:


Man-Hating in Cinema, Literature, Media, and Society


Editors

Gilad Padva, scholar in cinema, culture, men's studies, and queer theory

Yair Koren Maimon, Chair of the Department of Literature, Gordon 
Academic College

When a legitimate and crucial criticism of patriarchy is transformed 
into a bigoted, ruthless misandry/man-hating? When resistance to 
androcentric systems that focus on men's interests stimulates 
gynocentric attitudes that disrespect, misrepresent, and diminish men's 
human dignity? How does resistance to the objectification of women's 
bodies involve mocking and grotesque representations of men's bodies 
and, particularly, their genitalia? What are the (counter)cultural 
implications of commercialization and voracious consumption of male 
bodies? How and why has the phallus been delegitimized, demonized, 
criminalized, and associated with dreadful fascism? Is the tension 
between lesbians and gay men synonymous with the tension between men and 
women in the heteronormative world? /Man-Hating in Cinema, Literature, 
Media, and Society /initially inquires how popular screens, arts, 
animations, mass communications, fiction and nonfiction books and 
communities mediate and negotiate those intriguing, provocative, and 
uncomfortable questions.

Across both canonical and popular literary forms, media, and cinemas, 
one can identify an implied author's worldview reflecting misandry, 
whether overtly or implicitly expressed. Typically, these cultural 
products misperceive masculinity as a source of violence, alienation, or 
moral decay. In some instances, they materialize an exclusively female 
world in which men are marginalized, persecuted, absent, or annihilated.

Recently, however, controversial feminist publications have radicalized 
the intricate relationship between resistance and fanaticism, activism 
and intolerance, anger and violence, enthusiasm and brutality, protest 
and reactionary discrimination.//However, /Man-Hating in Cinema, 
Literature, Media, and Society/ presupposes that a sincere, critical, 
unbiased, and pragmatic discussion of popularized misandry aligns with 
inclusivity, multiculturalism, egalitarianism, and the promotion of a 
multivocal, multigendered, and antipatriarchal agenda.

We invite chapters that examine representations of misandry/man-hating 
from diverse cultural, cinematic, literary, communicational, and social 
perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds.

Potential topics include:

- Hatred of male bodies, phallophobia, and castration fantasies on 
screen, e.g., /Marnie /(USA 1964), /Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom 
/(Italy 1975), /Bram Stoker's Dracula /(USA 1992), /Teeth /(USA  2007), 
/Dangerous /(India 2022), and /Deadloch /(TV series) (Amazon Prime 
Video, 2023-present).

- "Rape-revenge" portrayals of cis- and trans- women's vigilantism and 
savagery, e.g., /Myra // Breckinridge/(1970), /Death Game/ (USA 1977), 
/I Spit on Your Grave/ (USA 1978), and /I Spit on Your// Grave: Deja 
Vu/(USA 2019), and sensational docu-dramatizations of women who 
amputated their husbands' penis.

- Misandry as transphobia: discriminatory images of m2f and, 
particularly, f2m transgender people inside and outside feminist 
movements and mainstream cultures.

- Screening and fictionalizing misandric criticism of cissexual male 
bodies in the age of a multigendered society.

- The aestheticization of misandry in political resistance, activism, 
and shaming, including abusive caricatures of male politicians' genitals 
and impotence.

- Screening, fictionalizing, and documenting misandry and its 
mythologies, cults, occults, and rituals, from the Greek Sirens and 
Amazons, and the Jewish semen-stealing Lilith, to some contemporary 
all-female paganisms.

- Misandry and its discontents in the New Queer Cinema & TV, e.g., 
/Bound /(USA 1996), /Isle of Lesbos///(USA 1997), /The Misandrists 
/(Germany 2017), and, arguably,/The L Word /(Showtime, 2004-2009).

- Misandry vs. misogyny in drag (kings/queens) performances, carnivals, 
circuses, musicals, stand-up comedies, fringe theatre, and freak shows.

- Women molesting young boys and male preteens in films like /The Perks 
of Being a Wallflower/(USA 2012), /May December/(USA 2023), and the TV 
series /American Gigolo /(Showtime, 2022).

- Women sexually harass, exploit, and abuse men in films like 
/Disclosure/(USA 1994) and /Horrible //Bosses /(USA 2011).

- Misandry and its horrors: misandric homophobia, misandric 
lesbophobia/butchophobia, misandric heterophobia, misandric matriarchy, 
misandric racism, and misandric monstrosity.

- Featuring misandry as a patriarchal illusion and a manifestation of 
paranoia in the age of excessive political correctness.

- Eroticized misandry in straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and 
transgender pornographies, particularly the/femdom/phenomenon and 
insatiable power bottoms.

- Misandric objectification and commercialization of the male physique 
in advertisements, fashion, porn, and sex toys.

- The role of misandry in coming-of-age memoirs, sex (mis)education, 
bullying, and ex-gay/conversion therapy.

Abstracts of 400 words and five references, alongside the author's short 
bio (200 words), to be submitted by October 10, 2025.

Accepted chapters of approx. 6,000 - 7,000 words to be submitted by 
April 15, 2026.

Direct queries and submissions to:

Dr. Gilad Padva (giladpadva /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(giladpadva /at/ gmail.com)>

Dr. Yair Koren Maimon (yairma /at/ gordon.ac.il) <mailto:(yairma /at/ gordon.ac.il)>

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