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? Does 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@gmail.com
Dr. Yair Koren Maimon yairma@gordon.ac.il