Powers Decoded | Systems • Class • Truth

The “antiblack misandry” thesis collapses the moment you introduce sexuality. Black gay boys outperform straight Black boys despite greater marginalization, which means the mechanism is not hostility to boys—it’s something else entirely. The recent research on sexuality, race & educational outcomes completely shatters this thesis. Black gay high school boys outperform straight black boys while experiencing worse discrimination & mental health challenges in school than straight boys.  Antiblack misandry can’t explain this because the theory would have to incorporate heteronormativity/masculinity norms, not just “misandry.” Gay boys outperform straight boys & often close gender gaps. In some cases, gay boys match or even EXCEED the educational outcomes of straight girls, despite greater marginalization. Misandry can’t explain that, because the framework would imply gay boys would actually perform worse—they perform exceptionally well even amidst structural homophobia & mental health challenges.  Aside from this afro-androcentric and misogynoiristic erasure of black girls as also targeted racial victims of the school to prison pipeline and racist school practices, this is why believers in “antiblack misandry” or black male studies have to believe white boys & men are victims of “misandry” as well.  Every intra-racial gender disparity they point to is mirrored in some way across all or most other races—-with racism exacerbating it for non-whites. white, asian, black boys all perform worse than their same-race girl counterparts in school. In the same groups, the men are more incarcerated than women, & are murdered more than women.  Somehow, misandry only explains these BLACK intra-racial gender disparities in education, imprisonment, etc, but not the other intra-racial gender disparities. This is analytically incoherent in both social science & philosophy.  Across races, the gender gap persists, but within that gap sexuality reorganizes outcomes. Antiblack misandry can’t explain that, unless misandry overall can explain the same disparities among nonblacks.  If (straight) boys across all races are experiencing negative disparities in education, & schools are structurally antiblack, then black boys will be on the antiblack end of negative gendered disparities. Black feminists already taught us how to analyze compounded social locations.  What must also be taken into account is the feminization of literacy in the late 20th century, adolescent masculinities’ cultural (in)compatibility with “good student” conduct, and for black boys what Vershawn Ashanti calls the “sociolinguistics of racial performance” and its irreconcilable conflict between racial authenticity and white standards of conduct.  “Misandry” is being used to misname the consequences of patriarchal masculinity itself. If boys who deviate most from dominant masculinity outperform those who conform to it, then the problem is not hostility to boys——-its the structure of masculinity itself.