Sanctifying Misandry

In Sanctifying Misandry, Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson challenge an influential version of modern goddess religion, one that undermines sexual equality and promotes hatred in the form of misandry - the sexist counterpart of misogyny. To set the stage, the authors discuss two massively popular books - Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade - both of which rely on a feminist conspiracy theory of history. They then show how some goddess feminists and their academic supporters have turned what Christians know as the Fall of Man into the fall of men. In the beginning, according to three "documentary" films, our ancestors lived in an egalitarian paradise under the aegis of a benevolent great goddess. But men either rebelled or invaded, replacing the goddess with gods and establishing patriarchies that have oppressed women ever since. In the end, however, women will restore the goddess and therefore paradise as well. The book concludes with several case studies of modern goddess religion and its effects on mainstream religion. Young and Nathanson show that we can move beyond not only both gynocentrism and androcentrism but also both misandry and misogyny.