Robert John Downey Jr.

Robert Downey Jr, 2014.

Robert John Downey Jr. (born April 4, 1965) is an American actor. His career has been characterized by critical and popular success in his youth, followed by a period of substance abuse and legal troubles, before a resurgence of commercial success later in his career. In 2008, Downey was named by Time magazine among the 100 most influential people in the world, and from 2013 to 2015, he was listed by Forbes as Hollywood's highest-paid actor.

At the age of five, he made his acting debut in his father Robert Downey Sr.'s film Pound in 1970. He subsequently worked with the Brat Pack in the teen films Weird Science (1985) and Less than Zero (1987). In 1992, Downey portrayed the title character in the biopic Chaplin, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and won a BAFTA Award. Following a stint at the Corcoran Substance Abuse Treatment Facility on drug charges, he joined the TV series Ally McBeal, for which he won a Golden Globe Award. He was fired from the show in the wake of drug charges in 2000 and 2001. He stayed in a court-ordered drug treatment program and has maintained his sobriety since 2003.

Initially, completion bond companies would not insure Downey, until Mel Gibson paid the insurance bond for the 2003 film The Singing Detective. He went on to star in the black comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), the thriller Zodiac (2007), and the action comedy Tropic Thunder (2008); for the latter, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Downey gained global recognition for starring as Tony Stark/Iron Man in ten films within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with Iron Man (2008), and leading up to Avengers: Endgame (2019). He has also played the title character in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes (2009), which earned him his second Golden Globe, and its sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011).

In July 2023, while working on the movie Oppenheimer Downey stated:

"Men start wars and the entire planet should be a matriarchy. But I’ve never changed position on that. This [the movie] was just a triple confirmation."

This stands in contrast to research on female leaders which indicates that they are more like to start and continue wars than male leaders.

Misandry

Misandry is the hatred of, pathological aversion to, or prejudice against men. The first recorded use of the term dates from the 19th century. At the present time misandry is widespread in Western society but may be in decline.

These days it seems you don't need to look far to see negativity focused at men. What is often known as casual misandry permeates western civilisation where many men and women commonly make negative statements about men without apparently regarding this as a problem or being challenged by anyone else present. This problem has steadily deteriorated and we have now reached the point that books with titles such as Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide and The End of Men can be published without significant objection from the wider community.

Negative and inaccurate portrayals of men and boys have permeated mainstream media and online knowledge repositories such as Wikipedia, where the bias is particularly evident. Wikipedia editors routinely write negative commentaries about men and Wikipedia admins protect those commentaries while censoring counter-narratives that might show less biased, more accurate information. This practice is reinforced by feminist editing gangs who congregate in regular 'edit-a-thons' with the sole purpose of increasing feminist ideology within Wikipedia articles, and to censor male-positive discourse and research on men. In a nutshell those in control of Wikipedia have succeeded in deplatforming much reliable information about men and boys.