You’re a brave man for saying this out loud, but you’ve done it in a sensitive way and I admire you for it. I also completely agree- people should be respectful of others regardless. I’m especially conscious of the anti-men thing now that I have a son. It really hit home for me the idea that society has always treated men as disposable, sending them to war and not letting them on the lifeboats. I don’t want people to treat him like that any more than I want them to treat my daughter like a sex object. It’s an important conversation to have, so thanks for initiating it.
Great post and arguments. The critical theory definition of "isms" is irksome and to me just serves as a way to shut down valid criticism.
I called out a female friend for her incessant man-hating awhile back and she said I suffered from internalized misogyny and stopped speaking to me for 7 entire years 🫠
One quibble: I don’t think saying Muslims are homophobic is similar to saying men are trash. Whether you’re a Muslim comes down to whether you believe certain things, and one of those things is generally that being gay is wrong and god doesn’t like it - sure some people will say they’re Muslims *but* … but it’s way more defensible imo to say Muslims and Christians are homophobic. Men are just men and this is not morally relevant since their being men is not determined by beliefs or actions.
Is it more defensible? Probably. I'm sure there are homophobic sections of the Qur'an, and obviously that stat I shared is legit insane.
However, a not insignificant number of Muslims in the western world aren't homophobic (I know many) so I still wouldn't say it's appropriate to say blanket statements like that. I would maybe say something like "Muslims are disproportionately homophobic", or "Islam is homophobic"
What if it’s directly opposed in the texts that the entire religion is based on, most Muslim nations make it illegal, and the vast majority of Muslims are explicitly homophobic? What if recognized Muslim leaders would not recognize your friends as Muslims? I think it’s obviously much easier to say something more specific like Catholics are homophobic-but generally the fact that this identity is about holding specific beliefs rather than just about how you were born makes it pretty significantly different.
Yes, I agree that the fact that it's a belief and not some circumstance around your birth that you can't change makes it different. It's not as though people just are Muslim and that's it, they can't change. Beliefs should allowed be criticised.
Whether or not it would be appropriate to say "Muslims are homophobic" would then depend on whether or not being homophobic is a necessary condition for being Muslim. If it really is the case that Liberal Muslims aren't real Muslims, and you have to oppose homosexuality in order to be considered Muslim - sure! It would not only be appropriate, it would be accurate to say "Muslims are homophobic".
I don't endorse saying it in ordinary life though because I think most people still consider Liberal Muslims Muslim, and they would think I'm generalising. I also don't know enough about the religion to know if Liberal Muslims are considered legitimate or not. I would instead be more specific about who I'm talking about, because the ambiguity is likely to cause unnecessary offense and hurt communication.
I don't endorse it either. It's tough because there isn't a central authority that decides who is Muslim or what makes you Muslim (as there is with Catholics). But I'm not sure that most *Muslims* would consider that sort of liberal Muslim who's totally pro LGBTQIA+ *a real Muslim*, and the ingroup judgement seems relevant to me *in the absence of definition that most Muslims would agree to* (I have no stats! but quite sure very, very few Muslims globally are the sort you're referring to)
I don’t think any good comes from arguing about who (women vs men) has it worse. Not the kind of arguing we’re doing in the US anyway. I think these arguments mostly come down to trying to shame a group of people just for existing.
I have to remind myself that people don’t choose their parents. It’s not right to mock someone just because they were born into a rich family. Or a political family. Or a famous family.
I think you’re on to something and I agree someone should really make a speech about it 😉
Well put Connor! It's never made sense to me that the broader strive for equality, inclusion, a better world, etc, should be built on the foundation of disrespect and tearing people down. At best, it's clumsy. At worst, all it does is contribute to polarisation and ostracisation, which ultimately contribute to the very issues we're trying to address. The changing attitudes of men in South Korea is a fascinating example of this at a macro level.
I agree, but aren’t you generalising somewhat when you say this is a problem with lefties? It’s probably more prevalent among lefties than righties, but not all lefties. Woke lefties might be more accurate, but then this illustrates how wokeism and leftism are two very different things and wokeism is actually opposed to actual leftism. The left is, or should be, about treating people equally.
I would make a different argument - there is always someone less privileged than the person speaking, and then can pull the same thing. If it is normalized for cis women to generalize men, then it is also normalized for trans people to generalize cis women as if they were all Rowling and so on. Privilege has many dimensions and almost everyone has at least one.
I appreciate your points, I really do. I don't think it's "right" for an individual woman to look at a man or group of men who have demonstrated that they are not like the ones who hate women, objectify women, assault women, and try to strip women of their civil rights through legislation that literally goes against the Constitutional Amendments. It's not right that women say they hate men to men who are demonstrably the anti-andrew-tates and fonald dumps of the world.
I'm going to go ahead with my thinking, "It's not right, but..." because it's not right—but—we are living in a society shaped by hundreds of years of patriarchal authority, while you are a man talking about the wrongness of women generally stating they hate men when less than one hundred years ago, women were not "allowed" to say they hated anything because they couldn't even have their own bank accounts, therefore they had to act amenable and subservient as a survival tactic.
You mention women's advantages in the form of things that were denied them for a large part of the past. Men die younger, they're less likely to go to university, less likely to get custody of their children. The average life expectancy of men compared to women in America is what? 88 compared to 82? What is the life expectancy of a woman in a violent relationship with a man? Women are most at risk of murder by violent men they know, and women are most at risk of being murdered by the violent men they know when they are trying to terminate such relationships. Women currently out-enroll men at institutions of higher education. Women were widely denied any educations, let alone college educations until the late 19th century. Women were widely ostracized by their own society for having children outside of marriage, and _women_ were ostracized when they were married and fled violent relationships with their children. The person running for the vice presidency of the united states said he wants to eradicate laws that allow no-fault divorce. He wants to take away women's rights to legally escape violent relationships because he believes it's better for children to stay in "intact" families even if that means the children witness and very likely experience such violence themselves.
You're offended by women saying a broad statement that can be substantiated by history doing horrible things to women. You don't hate women therefore you don't deserve to have a woman say to your face, "I hate all men." You don't "deserve" that. I'm quite sure you don't deserve that. Women don't deserve to live in a world that _still_ tells them in large ways and small ways every single day of their lives that they are lesser than men. You're a good man, you say you are, so I choose to believe that. But just because you're a good man, and just because the world has changed in a way that no longer blatantly denies women the same social and career opportunities as men, women are still subject to the possibility of being catcalled as they walk down the sidewalk. Women are still marginalized in many professional fields, women are now under threat, by men and by complicit fundamentalist women, to be _legally_ forced to carry unwanted or dangerous pregnancies to term, yet women, who statistically carry the greater burden of domestic duties regardless of their professional careers, are still not provided with federal family leave protections.
You say it's not "right" that women say they hate men. You, as a good man, tolerate such "antics" when a woman says that to you even though it makes you angry, because you "get" that as a man contradicting a woman in that way, you not only come across as "fragile", overbearing, mansplaining, but you sensitively let her have it so as not to "put a damper" on the mood.
Eight out of ten women are likely to self-report that they have experienced male hostility directed at themselves. I heard something like six out of ten women have experienced sexual assaults or rapes by men, many times by men they knew or were well acquainted with. There are some states that have banned even abortion from rape and incest. You know what that means? It's not two consenting adult siblings who banged without a condom. It means an underage girl was raped and impregnated by her brother or father or uncle or family friend. And now that she is impregnated, she has to go through not only the trauma of the sexual assault but the trauma of her body going through an extremely taxing, dangerous, biological process that will impact the rest of her life. Who is responsible not only for enacting such trauma, but creating and pushing laws that punish the victim in that way? Men. Because men are still largely in charge of all political bodies in America, too.
You are a good man who can sit in your good-manness comfortably knowing you are right, that _you_ don't deserve to have a woman tell you she hates all men, that she therefore hates you when you haven't done anything to her. And I say that you, personally, don't deserve it, but you are not one of the eight out of ten people who fear the opposite sex because past experiences have reinforced such fear. You are not the sex that has a staggeringly higher chance of being raped than being the rapist, even though _you_ are surely not a rapist.
So you see, it's not right for a woman to make a general blanket statement to an individual man that she hates you, but she still lives in a world that men created and where men dominate women.
Important things to think about. One thing I could've done a better job of illustrating is that while I think hurtful generalising is unjustified - I do UNDERSTAND it. Were I a woman, I'd probably find myself doing it too given the circumstances
Explain to me how insulting men to their faces helps with any of those problems, though. Somebody somewhere was hit by their boyfriend, therefore I should heap derision on my male coworkers? Women couldn’t own property in the past, therefore I should be rude to my friend’s date? Made it make sense. I’m sorry you live in a world that you think “tells you every single day of your life that you are lesser than men.” I have been female my whole life and never once felt that way.
If you're a woman in America, you're also being told every day that you're lesser than men. You don't hear it? You don't feel that way? That's really fantastic! Truly. But your personal experience and perceptions don't erase the misogyny that does exist. Misogyny is woven into American culture like apple pie and the Fourth of July, even if you personally believe you have not been impacted by it.
You said "explain to me how insulting men to their faces helps with any of those problems, though. Somebody somewhere was hit by their boyfriend, therefore I should heap derision on my male coworkers?" You're saying this like that is what I proposed. You're asking me to make sense of my words for you? There is nothing to explain. I agree that insulting men does not resolve the issue. What if I said, "Yes, because a man hits a woman somewhere, you _should_ heap derision on your male coworkers. That is exactly the way to resolve systemic violence of men against women." You would disagree with me.
I will say one more thing, momentarily, that I could have said previously. But I wasn't trying to write a dissertation to Connor. I was just wanting to make a point that it's as unhelpful to make a blanket complaint about women saying they hate men as it is that women feel compelled to say out loud that they hate men. The difference is that women are expressing themselves after millenia of forced subservience and silence while men are complaining from a reactive standpoint about their personhood, objecting, "I'm not to blame, I'm not a misogynist, _I_ love women!" while they have grown up and lived with all the advantages of the power imbalance that tips towards men. If you believe you haven't experienced this, good. But again, your experience does not negate the reality of it.
What I could have extrapolated myself is that when men hear women say, "I hate men", if they really love and support a woman, and respect all women, they could ask, "What specifically about men makes you hate them?"
And then...listen.
Recognize that when people scream aloud, it has become something they can no longer hold in. Men can recognize that while they are not personally responsible for women's woes, they live within a system that treats them preferentially, deferentially.
And if men truly want women to stop screaming "I hate men" maybe they can say, "I know. That's why I'm doing something about it. I'm only one person so I can't move the world but I vote for politicians who say they want to legislate for social equity. I vote for people who want to uphold no-fault divorces. I vote for people who believe that everyone is entitled to autonomy over their own bodies and that this is a First Amendment right."
A man could say, "That's why I donate to Planned Parenthood. I know that sometimes it is the only access that people have to gynecological and obstetrical care in a healthcare desert."
A man could say, "I get it. That's why I always ask my female colleagues for their opinions and ideas first. And I encourage female employees to amplify each other's voices."
A man could say, "Yes, I understand how abusive and violent men can be to women, that's why I voted for a District Attorney whose platform includes taking sexual assault cases to trial instead of always offering plea bargains."
A man could say, "You're right, I know there is a huge sub-culture of men who actually say out loud that they hate women, and that they're targeting men and boys as young as eleven or twelve years old, indoctrinating young people to the idea that it's ok to rape women and murder trans women. And I'm definitely not even a little ok with that myself. I know that andrew tate is scum and there is absolutely nothing about his rhetoric that I support or condone."
These are things men can say when women say they hate men. By saying such things, men are acknowledging that they understand that women are not simply "treated badly" by men, but that women are oppressed with systems that can only be changed when men also acknowledge where the oppression is rooted and contribute their efforts to changing it alongside women. This is true of financial inequity. This is true of all inequity around the world. Inequity is perpetuated systematically, and it is justified by saying "That's just the system" or altogether denying that there is a system that promotes inequity, blaming it on those who suffer from the inequity the most.
If you don't believe me, think about the general mentality Americans have about TANF and EBT programs—"welfare". Think about your opinion on welfare itself, who should have it, how should they spend it, how much should they get? How much is too much? When do families overstep the acceptance of welfare as charity and begin "taking advantage" of it? Where do these ideas and impositions on limits come from? Who decides? Maybe think about how you would like to be treated if you ever needed governmental assistance. Would you want to be treated with scorn? Would you want to be treated like the reason you need TANF and EBT is because you're stupid and lazy?
Think about the narrative America sells about wealth accumulation, the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps motto. Think about, or learn how legacy-wealth American families got their wealth.
Look at the bigger picture, the systemic reason why sometimes women exclaim hatred for men. It's all tied to the patriarchal systems. Instead of scolding them, we can figure out the underlying issues and become agents of change so women stop feeling like all they can do is impotently scream about it.
I'm a 57 year old woman, and I don't feel oppressed by men. I never have. It's tempting to succumb to a victim narrative; I saw things through this lens when I was a young woman, until I tired of it. It led me nowhere. I have not been held back professionally or personally by men. I am a nurse; we have traditionally been a female profession led by women.
Have individual men treated me badly? Yes! And so have individual women.
You spend a lot of time talking about abortion rights in one fashion or another. The Pro Life movement has plenty of women in it; it's usually about half women.
I just don't see the systemic oppression of women happening in the USA. The abortion restrictions do hurt women, but it's inaccurate to say it is a male led movement. It's not. It's a religious led movement of men and women.
You said "I just don't see the systemic oppression of women happening in the USA. The abortion restrictions do hurt women, but it's inaccurate to say it is a male led movement. It's not. It's a religious led movement of men and women.
No Fault Divorce isn't going anywhere."
Why is no fault divorce going anywhere? Are you voting to keep it? Are you voting for a political party that will support expanding or reforming the Supreme Court so they can't just judiciate it away like they did national abortion protection?
By your accounting, which is not accurate, abortion bans are religious movements. Which religions are leading this political movement? Which religions practice and preach equal power between men and women? Please tell me it is not those associated with the Roman Catholic Church, Baptists, Methodists, Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. (They are all patriarchal.)
Please tell me that the spokespeople who are spouting christofascist garbage are not all or mostly men.
Please tell me that the politicians trying to advance state abortion bans are not mostly men.
Please tell me that a politician who said "Females can't get pregnant when they're raped because their bodies naturally know to block the sperm" was not a man.
I'm glad you haven't felt oppressed by men in any way. That is really great. One less person the patriarchal authoritarian system did not harm. Your personal experience does not prove that systemic oppression does not exist. You concluded on your own a long time ago that patriarchal oppression doesn't exist or doesn't serve to be acknowledged. My intent wasn't to convince anyone, but simply to condense and make connections about patriarchy that maybe people didn't know already. And if you're trying to convince me I'm wrong or misguided, you won't.
Why? Because I didn't make up the fact that women—even privileged, wealthy, White women— were actually treated like chattel in historical Western patriarchal-centered culture, and for longer than women have not been treated like chattel.
I don't hold a victim mentality. I do hold a lens that you seem to perceive to be victimhood that I do not. You brought up the nursing field. Why is it a "traditional female profession" led by women?
I think the answer is that women were not allowed to be doctors. For a long time. Women becoming nurses was a way to show men that they could provide effective medical care despite being "the lesser" sex. Maybe if you hadn't grown up in this male-centered culture, you would have become a doctor without categorizing nursing as a "female profession." Maybe, there wouldn't be nurses versus doctors but some other non-hierarchical system that organized medical care providers based on their aptitudes.
I'm trying to point out that hierarchical systems in general are not a default way for an entire society to be. It is one way to be. In a hierarchical system, there are some people who benefit more from the system than others. They benefit as long as everyone buys in to it, that those not benefiting believe it is an incontrovertible way of being and not a system that can be changed to benefit everyone.
Nah. I don't need you to turn my reply to Connor, which was about systemic, cultivated violence against women by men, into a racist trope demonizing Black men.
I left the Left precisely because it's dominated by anti-egalitarians. But I do appreciate trying to shift the overton window on the Left to something less evil.
Gracefully said. I hope you are heard an empowered by those who are also tired of this treatment.
Feminism had good goals at the start: to keep women from being abused by spouses, to get us the right to own property and have financial control of our lives, for us to have the right to vote. We got that. However, increased rights didn't seem to come with increased responsibility. Blaming men abdicates responsibility.
Nuance is harder than absurdly simplistic, black-and-white thinking, especially as it often requires thinking, which is what I increasingly see across the spectrum. Just look at the current and historical pattern of the Right as a whole to label anything to the left of Genghis Khan as the dreaded Communism. It is also true that the Left especially the Neoliberal and/or Wokeist factions are much worse than everyone else.
(The current Democratic Party is **economically** a center right party. The social Identitarian insanity is a fabulous distraction from this reality. They just keep pushing the Overton Window each election cycle to the right, which is a process that I have been seeing for forty years.)
It is also a historical pattern, centuries of holier-than-thou-ism and purity politics, which is great for factions within movements to gain power and for the establishment to fracture, weaken, and usually, ultimately, destroy reform movements.
Yes but. I do think it’s important to point out that we live in a world where Afghanistan and Pakistan and how they currently treat women is a fact and it is a very scary thing to know about as a woman. Gender based violence against women is the most common violence against women - see the French case making headlines and there is NO such thing as gender based violence against men. Additionally, no high status politicians in the U.S. are saying or acting (by passing laws against them) as if they “hate men.” No CEOs. No one in professional contexts at all.
Finally, when I text my mom and sister “I hate everyone,” which I’ve done, at no point did they really think I hate my kids husband my friends them or even random strangers with any usual definition of the word hate. When I say I’m going to move to the forest and be a hermit, same. Exaggeration and humor are part of how we relieve tension and bond… the line is fuzzy on how close you need to be before saying something like “I hate men” is appropriate. And I think some women are misjudging it and misjudging how men are hearing and interpreting. I agree that at this particular time it’s probably just best to remove it from casual use outside of the most intimate convos, including generally feminist spaces.
Yeah I don't deny that women face more adversity on a global scale (that much is obvious). Also, were my friend to exaggerate her hatred of men for a joke, I would not be up in arms. I laugh at way too many bad things to not be able to take a joke aimed at me. This post is more aimed at sincere hurtful generalisations than jokes or nuanced criticisms of men
I think trying to be more specific about insults can soften the blow significantly, and prevent reflexive dismissals.
On the other hand, while sexism is the focal point here, there's an obvious line from this to partisan politics. I've called the current Republican party leadership Christian nationalists and opportunistic grifters, and now I'm wondering if that's really much better than condemning the party in general.
Something I've been saying lately, that could maybe stand to be more earnest and less sarcastic: Please take pity on those of us who weren't born with exactly correct beliefs, as we do our best to find the true path.
I agree with all of this and also think that these occasions of insult offer an opportunity for men to soften their attachment to their identity as men. In general I think a softer attachment to group identities is a healthier way to live.
Sorry but that doesn’t make any sense. If someone says “women are bad at math” and I know that I, a woman, am good at math, I have a number of possible reactions: “that person is engaging in lazy stereotypes,” or maybe even to question whether I am as good at math as I thought I was. But what would never, ever occur to me to do would be to think “well, since I’m good at math, I’m guess I’m just not really, completely, a true woman.” (Although if people are thinking this way these days, I guess that might help explain the uptick in transgenderism?)
You’re a brave man for saying this out loud, but you’ve done it in a sensitive way and I admire you for it. I also completely agree- people should be respectful of others regardless. I’m especially conscious of the anti-men thing now that I have a son. It really hit home for me the idea that society has always treated men as disposable, sending them to war and not letting them on the lifeboats. I don’t want people to treat him like that any more than I want them to treat my daughter like a sex object. It’s an important conversation to have, so thanks for initiating it.
Great post and arguments. The critical theory definition of "isms" is irksome and to me just serves as a way to shut down valid criticism.
I called out a female friend for her incessant man-hating awhile back and she said I suffered from internalized misogyny and stopped speaking to me for 7 entire years 🫠
Lol what a normal and totally not unhinged way to react
One quibble: I don’t think saying Muslims are homophobic is similar to saying men are trash. Whether you’re a Muslim comes down to whether you believe certain things, and one of those things is generally that being gay is wrong and god doesn’t like it - sure some people will say they’re Muslims *but* … but it’s way more defensible imo to say Muslims and Christians are homophobic. Men are just men and this is not morally relevant since their being men is not determined by beliefs or actions.
Is it more defensible? Probably. I'm sure there are homophobic sections of the Qur'an, and obviously that stat I shared is legit insane.
However, a not insignificant number of Muslims in the western world aren't homophobic (I know many) so I still wouldn't say it's appropriate to say blanket statements like that. I would maybe say something like "Muslims are disproportionately homophobic", or "Islam is homophobic"
What if it’s directly opposed in the texts that the entire religion is based on, most Muslim nations make it illegal, and the vast majority of Muslims are explicitly homophobic? What if recognized Muslim leaders would not recognize your friends as Muslims? I think it’s obviously much easier to say something more specific like Catholics are homophobic-but generally the fact that this identity is about holding specific beliefs rather than just about how you were born makes it pretty significantly different.
Yes, I agree that the fact that it's a belief and not some circumstance around your birth that you can't change makes it different. It's not as though people just are Muslim and that's it, they can't change. Beliefs should allowed be criticised.
Whether or not it would be appropriate to say "Muslims are homophobic" would then depend on whether or not being homophobic is a necessary condition for being Muslim. If it really is the case that Liberal Muslims aren't real Muslims, and you have to oppose homosexuality in order to be considered Muslim - sure! It would not only be appropriate, it would be accurate to say "Muslims are homophobic".
I don't endorse saying it in ordinary life though because I think most people still consider Liberal Muslims Muslim, and they would think I'm generalising. I also don't know enough about the religion to know if Liberal Muslims are considered legitimate or not. I would instead be more specific about who I'm talking about, because the ambiguity is likely to cause unnecessary offense and hurt communication.
I don't endorse it either. It's tough because there isn't a central authority that decides who is Muslim or what makes you Muslim (as there is with Catholics). But I'm not sure that most *Muslims* would consider that sort of liberal Muslim who's totally pro LGBTQIA+ *a real Muslim*, and the ingroup judgement seems relevant to me *in the absence of definition that most Muslims would agree to* (I have no stats! but quite sure very, very few Muslims globally are the sort you're referring to)
Globally, absolutely. With you there
I don’t think any good comes from arguing about who (women vs men) has it worse. Not the kind of arguing we’re doing in the US anyway. I think these arguments mostly come down to trying to shame a group of people just for existing.
I have to remind myself that people don’t choose their parents. It’s not right to mock someone just because they were born into a rich family. Or a political family. Or a famous family.
I think you’re on to something and I agree someone should really make a speech about it 😉
"How unreasonable is it to conclude that you hate men when you literally say that you hate men?"
See also, "defund the police doesn't really mean defund the police". Well, don't say "defund the police", then!
Well put Connor! It's never made sense to me that the broader strive for equality, inclusion, a better world, etc, should be built on the foundation of disrespect and tearing people down. At best, it's clumsy. At worst, all it does is contribute to polarisation and ostracisation, which ultimately contribute to the very issues we're trying to address. The changing attitudes of men in South Korea is a fascinating example of this at a macro level.
Thanks! I agree, the best way to move forward is with understanding and the sense that we're on the same team. Us versus the problem
For sure. I wrote about a similar topic here and essentially reached a similar conclusion about changing the lens through which we look at these topics: https://curiositymindset.substack.com/p/diversity-and-conflict
I agree, but aren’t you generalising somewhat when you say this is a problem with lefties? It’s probably more prevalent among lefties than righties, but not all lefties. Woke lefties might be more accurate, but then this illustrates how wokeism and leftism are two very different things and wokeism is actually opposed to actual leftism. The left is, or should be, about treating people equally.
Yeah not a bad point, should've been more specific. I do mean that
I would make a different argument - there is always someone less privileged than the person speaking, and then can pull the same thing. If it is normalized for cis women to generalize men, then it is also normalized for trans people to generalize cis women as if they were all Rowling and so on. Privilege has many dimensions and almost everyone has at least one.
I appreciate your points, I really do. I don't think it's "right" for an individual woman to look at a man or group of men who have demonstrated that they are not like the ones who hate women, objectify women, assault women, and try to strip women of their civil rights through legislation that literally goes against the Constitutional Amendments. It's not right that women say they hate men to men who are demonstrably the anti-andrew-tates and fonald dumps of the world.
I'm going to go ahead with my thinking, "It's not right, but..." because it's not right—but—we are living in a society shaped by hundreds of years of patriarchal authority, while you are a man talking about the wrongness of women generally stating they hate men when less than one hundred years ago, women were not "allowed" to say they hated anything because they couldn't even have their own bank accounts, therefore they had to act amenable and subservient as a survival tactic.
You mention women's advantages in the form of things that were denied them for a large part of the past. Men die younger, they're less likely to go to university, less likely to get custody of their children. The average life expectancy of men compared to women in America is what? 88 compared to 82? What is the life expectancy of a woman in a violent relationship with a man? Women are most at risk of murder by violent men they know, and women are most at risk of being murdered by the violent men they know when they are trying to terminate such relationships. Women currently out-enroll men at institutions of higher education. Women were widely denied any educations, let alone college educations until the late 19th century. Women were widely ostracized by their own society for having children outside of marriage, and _women_ were ostracized when they were married and fled violent relationships with their children. The person running for the vice presidency of the united states said he wants to eradicate laws that allow no-fault divorce. He wants to take away women's rights to legally escape violent relationships because he believes it's better for children to stay in "intact" families even if that means the children witness and very likely experience such violence themselves.
You're offended by women saying a broad statement that can be substantiated by history doing horrible things to women. You don't hate women therefore you don't deserve to have a woman say to your face, "I hate all men." You don't "deserve" that. I'm quite sure you don't deserve that. Women don't deserve to live in a world that _still_ tells them in large ways and small ways every single day of their lives that they are lesser than men. You're a good man, you say you are, so I choose to believe that. But just because you're a good man, and just because the world has changed in a way that no longer blatantly denies women the same social and career opportunities as men, women are still subject to the possibility of being catcalled as they walk down the sidewalk. Women are still marginalized in many professional fields, women are now under threat, by men and by complicit fundamentalist women, to be _legally_ forced to carry unwanted or dangerous pregnancies to term, yet women, who statistically carry the greater burden of domestic duties regardless of their professional careers, are still not provided with federal family leave protections.
You say it's not "right" that women say they hate men. You, as a good man, tolerate such "antics" when a woman says that to you even though it makes you angry, because you "get" that as a man contradicting a woman in that way, you not only come across as "fragile", overbearing, mansplaining, but you sensitively let her have it so as not to "put a damper" on the mood.
Eight out of ten women are likely to self-report that they have experienced male hostility directed at themselves. I heard something like six out of ten women have experienced sexual assaults or rapes by men, many times by men they knew or were well acquainted with. There are some states that have banned even abortion from rape and incest. You know what that means? It's not two consenting adult siblings who banged without a condom. It means an underage girl was raped and impregnated by her brother or father or uncle or family friend. And now that she is impregnated, she has to go through not only the trauma of the sexual assault but the trauma of her body going through an extremely taxing, dangerous, biological process that will impact the rest of her life. Who is responsible not only for enacting such trauma, but creating and pushing laws that punish the victim in that way? Men. Because men are still largely in charge of all political bodies in America, too.
You are a good man who can sit in your good-manness comfortably knowing you are right, that _you_ don't deserve to have a woman tell you she hates all men, that she therefore hates you when you haven't done anything to her. And I say that you, personally, don't deserve it, but you are not one of the eight out of ten people who fear the opposite sex because past experiences have reinforced such fear. You are not the sex that has a staggeringly higher chance of being raped than being the rapist, even though _you_ are surely not a rapist.
So you see, it's not right for a woman to make a general blanket statement to an individual man that she hates you, but she still lives in a world that men created and where men dominate women.
Important things to think about. One thing I could've done a better job of illustrating is that while I think hurtful generalising is unjustified - I do UNDERSTAND it. Were I a woman, I'd probably find myself doing it too given the circumstances
Explain to me how insulting men to their faces helps with any of those problems, though. Somebody somewhere was hit by their boyfriend, therefore I should heap derision on my male coworkers? Women couldn’t own property in the past, therefore I should be rude to my friend’s date? Made it make sense. I’m sorry you live in a world that you think “tells you every single day of your life that you are lesser than men.” I have been female my whole life and never once felt that way.
If you're a woman in America, you're also being told every day that you're lesser than men. You don't hear it? You don't feel that way? That's really fantastic! Truly. But your personal experience and perceptions don't erase the misogyny that does exist. Misogyny is woven into American culture like apple pie and the Fourth of July, even if you personally believe you have not been impacted by it.
You said "explain to me how insulting men to their faces helps with any of those problems, though. Somebody somewhere was hit by their boyfriend, therefore I should heap derision on my male coworkers?" You're saying this like that is what I proposed. You're asking me to make sense of my words for you? There is nothing to explain. I agree that insulting men does not resolve the issue. What if I said, "Yes, because a man hits a woman somewhere, you _should_ heap derision on your male coworkers. That is exactly the way to resolve systemic violence of men against women." You would disagree with me.
I will say one more thing, momentarily, that I could have said previously. But I wasn't trying to write a dissertation to Connor. I was just wanting to make a point that it's as unhelpful to make a blanket complaint about women saying they hate men as it is that women feel compelled to say out loud that they hate men. The difference is that women are expressing themselves after millenia of forced subservience and silence while men are complaining from a reactive standpoint about their personhood, objecting, "I'm not to blame, I'm not a misogynist, _I_ love women!" while they have grown up and lived with all the advantages of the power imbalance that tips towards men. If you believe you haven't experienced this, good. But again, your experience does not negate the reality of it.
What I could have extrapolated myself is that when men hear women say, "I hate men", if they really love and support a woman, and respect all women, they could ask, "What specifically about men makes you hate them?"
And then...listen.
Recognize that when people scream aloud, it has become something they can no longer hold in. Men can recognize that while they are not personally responsible for women's woes, they live within a system that treats them preferentially, deferentially.
And if men truly want women to stop screaming "I hate men" maybe they can say, "I know. That's why I'm doing something about it. I'm only one person so I can't move the world but I vote for politicians who say they want to legislate for social equity. I vote for people who want to uphold no-fault divorces. I vote for people who believe that everyone is entitled to autonomy over their own bodies and that this is a First Amendment right."
A man could say, "That's why I donate to Planned Parenthood. I know that sometimes it is the only access that people have to gynecological and obstetrical care in a healthcare desert."
A man could say, "I get it. That's why I always ask my female colleagues for their opinions and ideas first. And I encourage female employees to amplify each other's voices."
A man could say, "Yes, I understand how abusive and violent men can be to women, that's why I voted for a District Attorney whose platform includes taking sexual assault cases to trial instead of always offering plea bargains."
A man could say, "You're right, I know there is a huge sub-culture of men who actually say out loud that they hate women, and that they're targeting men and boys as young as eleven or twelve years old, indoctrinating young people to the idea that it's ok to rape women and murder trans women. And I'm definitely not even a little ok with that myself. I know that andrew tate is scum and there is absolutely nothing about his rhetoric that I support or condone."
These are things men can say when women say they hate men. By saying such things, men are acknowledging that they understand that women are not simply "treated badly" by men, but that women are oppressed with systems that can only be changed when men also acknowledge where the oppression is rooted and contribute their efforts to changing it alongside women. This is true of financial inequity. This is true of all inequity around the world. Inequity is perpetuated systematically, and it is justified by saying "That's just the system" or altogether denying that there is a system that promotes inequity, blaming it on those who suffer from the inequity the most.
If you don't believe me, think about the general mentality Americans have about TANF and EBT programs—"welfare". Think about your opinion on welfare itself, who should have it, how should they spend it, how much should they get? How much is too much? When do families overstep the acceptance of welfare as charity and begin "taking advantage" of it? Where do these ideas and impositions on limits come from? Who decides? Maybe think about how you would like to be treated if you ever needed governmental assistance. Would you want to be treated with scorn? Would you want to be treated like the reason you need TANF and EBT is because you're stupid and lazy?
Think about the narrative America sells about wealth accumulation, the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps motto. Think about, or learn how legacy-wealth American families got their wealth.
Look at the bigger picture, the systemic reason why sometimes women exclaim hatred for men. It's all tied to the patriarchal systems. Instead of scolding them, we can figure out the underlying issues and become agents of change so women stop feeling like all they can do is impotently scream about it.
I'm a 57 year old woman, and I don't feel oppressed by men. I never have. It's tempting to succumb to a victim narrative; I saw things through this lens when I was a young woman, until I tired of it. It led me nowhere. I have not been held back professionally or personally by men. I am a nurse; we have traditionally been a female profession led by women.
Have individual men treated me badly? Yes! And so have individual women.
You spend a lot of time talking about abortion rights in one fashion or another. The Pro Life movement has plenty of women in it; it's usually about half women.
I just don't see the systemic oppression of women happening in the USA. The abortion restrictions do hurt women, but it's inaccurate to say it is a male led movement. It's not. It's a religious led movement of men and women.
No Fault Divorce isn't going anywhere.
You said "I just don't see the systemic oppression of women happening in the USA. The abortion restrictions do hurt women, but it's inaccurate to say it is a male led movement. It's not. It's a religious led movement of men and women.
No Fault Divorce isn't going anywhere."
Why is no fault divorce going anywhere? Are you voting to keep it? Are you voting for a political party that will support expanding or reforming the Supreme Court so they can't just judiciate it away like they did national abortion protection?
By your accounting, which is not accurate, abortion bans are religious movements. Which religions are leading this political movement? Which religions practice and preach equal power between men and women? Please tell me it is not those associated with the Roman Catholic Church, Baptists, Methodists, Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. (They are all patriarchal.)
Please tell me that the spokespeople who are spouting christofascist garbage are not all or mostly men.
Please tell me that the politicians trying to advance state abortion bans are not mostly men.
Please tell me that a politician who said "Females can't get pregnant when they're raped because their bodies naturally know to block the sperm" was not a man.
I'm glad you haven't felt oppressed by men in any way. That is really great. One less person the patriarchal authoritarian system did not harm. Your personal experience does not prove that systemic oppression does not exist. You concluded on your own a long time ago that patriarchal oppression doesn't exist or doesn't serve to be acknowledged. My intent wasn't to convince anyone, but simply to condense and make connections about patriarchy that maybe people didn't know already. And if you're trying to convince me I'm wrong or misguided, you won't.
Why? Because I didn't make up the fact that women—even privileged, wealthy, White women— were actually treated like chattel in historical Western patriarchal-centered culture, and for longer than women have not been treated like chattel.
I don't hold a victim mentality. I do hold a lens that you seem to perceive to be victimhood that I do not. You brought up the nursing field. Why is it a "traditional female profession" led by women?
I think the answer is that women were not allowed to be doctors. For a long time. Women becoming nurses was a way to show men that they could provide effective medical care despite being "the lesser" sex. Maybe if you hadn't grown up in this male-centered culture, you would have become a doctor without categorizing nursing as a "female profession." Maybe, there wouldn't be nurses versus doctors but some other non-hierarchical system that organized medical care providers based on their aptitudes.
I'm trying to point out that hierarchical systems in general are not a default way for an entire society to be. It is one way to be. In a hierarchical system, there are some people who benefit more from the system than others. They benefit as long as everyone buys in to it, that those not benefiting believe it is an incontrovertible way of being and not a system that can be changed to benefit everyone.
Nah. I don't need you to turn my reply to Connor, which was about systemic, cultivated violence against women by men, into a racist trope demonizing Black men.
I left the Left precisely because it's dominated by anti-egalitarians. But I do appreciate trying to shift the overton window on the Left to something less evil.
Gracefully said. I hope you are heard an empowered by those who are also tired of this treatment.
Feminism had good goals at the start: to keep women from being abused by spouses, to get us the right to own property and have financial control of our lives, for us to have the right to vote. We got that. However, increased rights didn't seem to come with increased responsibility. Blaming men abdicates responsibility.
Thank you for this post.
Nuance is harder than absurdly simplistic, black-and-white thinking, especially as it often requires thinking, which is what I increasingly see across the spectrum. Just look at the current and historical pattern of the Right as a whole to label anything to the left of Genghis Khan as the dreaded Communism. It is also true that the Left especially the Neoliberal and/or Wokeist factions are much worse than everyone else.
(The current Democratic Party is **economically** a center right party. The social Identitarian insanity is a fabulous distraction from this reality. They just keep pushing the Overton Window each election cycle to the right, which is a process that I have been seeing for forty years.)
It is also a historical pattern, centuries of holier-than-thou-ism and purity politics, which is great for factions within movements to gain power and for the establishment to fracture, weaken, and usually, ultimately, destroy reform movements.
Yes but. I do think it’s important to point out that we live in a world where Afghanistan and Pakistan and how they currently treat women is a fact and it is a very scary thing to know about as a woman. Gender based violence against women is the most common violence against women - see the French case making headlines and there is NO such thing as gender based violence against men. Additionally, no high status politicians in the U.S. are saying or acting (by passing laws against them) as if they “hate men.” No CEOs. No one in professional contexts at all.
Finally, when I text my mom and sister “I hate everyone,” which I’ve done, at no point did they really think I hate my kids husband my friends them or even random strangers with any usual definition of the word hate. When I say I’m going to move to the forest and be a hermit, same. Exaggeration and humor are part of how we relieve tension and bond… the line is fuzzy on how close you need to be before saying something like “I hate men” is appropriate. And I think some women are misjudging it and misjudging how men are hearing and interpreting. I agree that at this particular time it’s probably just best to remove it from casual use outside of the most intimate convos, including generally feminist spaces.
Yeah I don't deny that women face more adversity on a global scale (that much is obvious). Also, were my friend to exaggerate her hatred of men for a joke, I would not be up in arms. I laugh at way too many bad things to not be able to take a joke aimed at me. This post is more aimed at sincere hurtful generalisations than jokes or nuanced criticisms of men
I think trying to be more specific about insults can soften the blow significantly, and prevent reflexive dismissals.
On the other hand, while sexism is the focal point here, there's an obvious line from this to partisan politics. I've called the current Republican party leadership Christian nationalists and opportunistic grifters, and now I'm wondering if that's really much better than condemning the party in general.
Something I've been saying lately, that could maybe stand to be more earnest and less sarcastic: Please take pity on those of us who weren't born with exactly correct beliefs, as we do our best to find the true path.
I agree with all of this and also think that these occasions of insult offer an opportunity for men to soften their attachment to their identity as men. In general I think a softer attachment to group identities is a healthier way to live.
Sorry but that doesn’t make any sense. If someone says “women are bad at math” and I know that I, a woman, am good at math, I have a number of possible reactions: “that person is engaging in lazy stereotypes,” or maybe even to question whether I am as good at math as I thought I was. But what would never, ever occur to me to do would be to think “well, since I’m good at math, I’m guess I’m just not really, completely, a true woman.” (Although if people are thinking this way these days, I guess that might help explain the uptick in transgenderism?)
That’s not how people work, though. People get naturally defensive when you insult their identities. And that defensiveness leads to worse outcomes
Nothing new under the sun.
From 1986:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1023569.Why_Men_Are_the_Way_They_Are