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Androcide is the systematic killing of men because of their sex. Androcide could occur during war or genocide. This may be due to the fact that male civilians are often targeted during warfare as a way to remove those considered to be potential combatants, and during genocide as a way to destroy the entire community.
The etymological root of the hybrid word is derived from a combination of the Greek prefix andro meaning "man" or boy, with the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing.
As military services will generally forcibly conscript men to fight in warfare this inevitably leads to massive male casualties. However this gender divide extents to non-combatants as well, with male non-combatants making up a majority of the casualties of mass killings in warfare. This practice often occurs because opposing males, fighting or otherwise, are seen as potential rivals and/or military threats. This can extend to underaged males as well, often with distinction as to their age. For example, during the Kosovo War, the Yugoslav forces under Slobodan Milošević were accused of massacring many male Albanians of "battle age" because they saw them as a threat.
Androcide may also be part of a larger genocide where perpetrators treat male and female victims differently. For example, during the Armenian genocide, elite men were publicly executed; average men and adolescent boys would then be killed en masse. The age distinction was sometimes males fifteen and older, but was generally males as young as twelve. The remaining the women, children, and in some cases spared elderly men in their communities were deported. Gendercide Watch, an independent human rights group, regards this as a gendercide against men. However, this gendered treatment of victims was not universal; in many locations women and girls were also subject to massacre.
Men's rights activists such as Paul Nathanson, author of Replacing Misandry: A Revolutionary History of Men, argue that the draft is a form of androcide. In many countries, only men are subjected to military conscription, which leaves them at greater risk of death during warfare compared to women. Worldwide, males constitute 79% of non-conflict homicides and the majority of direct conflict deaths.
Androcide has also been a feature of literature in ancient Greek mythology and in hypothetical situations wherein there is discord between the sexes.
With regards to plants, androcide may refer to efforts to direct pollination through emasculating certain crops.
In cannabis cultivation, male plants are culled once identified to prevent fertilisation of female plants due to the fact unfertilised female plants produce parthenocarpic fruits.
In the Ancient Greek myth of the Trojan War, accounts of which are largely legendary, the Greeks killed all the men and boys of Troy after conquering it. Even infants and the elderly were not spared; the Greeks wanted to prevent a future Trojan rebellion or uprising. The female Trojans were raped and enslaved rather than being killed.
In the Nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew (2:16–18) in which Herod the Great, king of Judea, orders the execution of all male children who are two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem, in an event commonly known as the Massacre of the Innocents. It is modelled by the story of Pharaoh's attempt to kill the Israelite children in the Book of Exodus, as told in an expanded version that was current in the first century CE. Most scholars find no support for the historicity of Matthew's account of this event.
without referring to the androcide of course that many societies have imposed at a later stage of the life cycle in the form of military conscription
2. That it is not an historical event is the general scholarly consensus. For an unconvincing defense of its historicity, R. T. France, "Herod and the Children of Bethlehem," NovT 21 (1979) 98-120. [...] First, it assumes the historicity of the Matthean Massacre even though most scholars find no support for its historicity.