“You Just Hate Men”

No, dude, I just hate patriarchy

If you’re a vocal woman on social media, you’ve had this accusation flung at you at some point. OK, not trad wives; they’ve got you right where they want you. You’re all good.

Sometimes, you’ll hear the word “misandry” instead, ignoring the fact that misandry doesn’t have the teeth misogyny does, on account of women not wielding much societal power. So, while misandry may exist, it doesn’t impact men in the same way. A new study about the misandry myth adds:

“…the stereotype that feminists are man-haters is clearly used as a political weapon against the movement. … A key factor in the continued derision of feminism is the widely endorsed stereotype that feminists are man-haters.”

Both “man-hater” and “misandry” are yet more attempts to silence women since they’re rarely accompanied by the reason we supposedly hate men.

It typically goes something like:

Woman — “We need to look at the sexualisation of women in the workplace.”

Incel/troll/misogynist — “Oh, here we go again. You just hate men.”

Women — “We need to make sure that victims of rape aren’t investigated more than the alleged rapists.”

Incel/troll/misogynist — “Innocent until proven guilty. You just hate men.”

Okaaay.

And if you point out that you have a husband, son, father, or brother and that you actually like men, they pull up the ONE quote they can find from a feminist who does hate men. Ironically, these are the same men who yell #NotAllMen even though they lump all feminists together as man-haters.

What’s the difference between men and patriarchy?

Without turning this into an academic thesis, what’s the difference? How can I hate one and not the other?

“Patriarchy”, or “patriarchal”, is the way we describe most modern societies. The power is held by men as a collective, even though some men insist otherwise. A quick search of “Do men hold the power?” produces a Reddit conversation in which we see, “They don’t. I have no more power than a woman has. We have equal voting rights and can equally pursue politics if we want.”

Of course, women can now vote, but a closer look reveals we’re neither represented nor “governing.”

• Of the four largest parties in the UK’s parliament, the current Conservative government has the lowest proportion of women MPs, at just 25%.
• In his February 2023 reshuffle, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak increased the proportion of women in his cabinet from 22% to 25%. The cabinet has never had gender parity. The closest was under Gordon Brown in 2008, where 10 of the 28 ministers (36%) were women.
• In the USA, at the start of the 118th Congress in 2023, 25 women were serving in the U.S. Senate (25%), and 124 women were voting members in the House of Representatives (28% of the chamber’s voting membership). Women held 29.9% of state senate seats and 33.7% of state house or assembly seats. (Quick reminder that women currently comprise more than 50% of the population.)
• Data from UN Women’s “Women in Politics: 2023” map show that women are underrepresented at all levels of decision-making worldwide and that achieving gender parity in political life is far off. Globally, less than one in four Cabinet Ministers is a woman (22.8 per cent).

Technically, yes, women can “pursue politics”, but there are barriers that make it far more difficult for us. In the UK, it wasn’t until 2019 that proxy voting was introduced to allow parents of newborns or newly adopted children to vote without being physically present.

Women’s political success still depends on “softer” issues such as “likeability”. In her 2021 book Persist, US presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren wrote,

“Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, and I all had better campaign win-loss records than any of the leading men. But the question was never whether a man could be elected. Despite our stronger records, it was always, “Can a woman win?”

We question women’s likeability and potential lack of appeal to voters in a way that rarely happens for men. (Remember Trump’s attempt at “serious politician” face or Bernie Sanders’ grumpy uncle persona? Now imagine a woman trying that.) This focus on image rather than political beliefs and goals is detrimental to women’s candidacies, and it often requires us to win over campaign donors as well as voters. We give men the benefit of the doubt when it comes to character. How often do women win because they’re “the lesser of two evils”?

Dispatches from Denial World

Meanwhile, back in denial world, some men claim they don’t benefit from the patriarchy. To that, I loosely quote author and Associate Professor Kate Manne in a recent podcast interview with Dr Charlotte Proudman, “Men may not all benefit from the patriarchy, but they aren’t oppressed by it.”

I also remind men of the relative freedom they have. Have we ever seen posters advising them to walk in pairs after 9 pm? How often are men groped and harassed on public transport? These issues impact how, where and when women can go to work. Ditto for online harassment: women in politics face threats that severely restrict their actions and affect their mental well-being in a way that men don’t experience.

Anyway, it’s just fact that men run most societies:

• According to the World Economic Forum, “one of the most important sources of inequality between men and women is women’s underrepresentation in the labour market. … Globally, considering population-weighted averages, almost 80% of men aged 15–64 are in the labour force versus only 52.6% of women of the same age group.” (These statistics are from 2019 and don’t take into account the impact of COVID-19.)
• The UN’s Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI) “quantifies biases against women, capturing people’s attitudes on women’s roles along four key dimensions: political, educational, economic and physical integrity”. The 2023 report found no countries with gender equality in the 91 it studied. Depressingly, it also found almost 90% of men and women hold some bias against females.
• Under-representation exists even in gender-balanced or female-dominated areas like education. As the UK’s Keele University reported in 2021:

“While the teaching force is largely composed of women — both nationally and internationally — there exists a concerning underrepresentation of women in its leadership positions. Imbalance persists across the board, from salary and benefits to recruitment and promotion.”

If only I could manifest a little harder

As well as the patriarchy set-up itself, what I, and a lot of other women, hate is the message from Reddit-guy that it’s all there for us if we just manifest a little harder. Really? Why on earth would feminists fight this hard if we didn’t want it? The 2023 Women in the Workplace report debunked a few myths about women’s workplace experiences and career advancement and found that women are, in fact, “highly ambitious.”

Our lack of advancement is neither an ambition nor a confidence issue. Author Tara Sophia Mohr asked over a thousand men and women, “If you decided not to apply for a job because you didn’t meet all the qualifications, why didn’t you apply?” She found only about 10% of women and 12% of men cited a lack of confidence, and the main reason for both demographics was the recognition that they didn’t meet the recruitment criteria and didn’t want to waste their time and energy.

There are many reasons why women don’t dominate in leadership and other key positions. Is it any wonder so many of us hate this system?

Depressingly, the study also found almost 90% of men and women hold some bias against females.

Fun fact, though: the misandry study cited above showed that feminists don’t hate men any more than non-feminists do. Most of the feminists I read and converse with recognise the patriarchy’s negative impact on men as well as women. In fact, the study lists many instances where feminists have supported and achieved gains for men and explains that — “In general, feminists have resisted, challenged, and rejected traditional notions of gender difference, seeing them as mythical justifications of gender inequality.” In other words, feminists fight for men not to have to be tough guys and to be able to take on less traditional roles and jobs.

So no, I don’t hate men, although some of you are getting on my nerves. Come on guys, we need you to stand up to sexism and misogyny when you witness them. Not being “that guy” is the bare minimum and it’s not helping us. Rolling your eyes when we point out yet another example of everyday sexism is dismissive. It may be tiresome to listen to it, but imagine living it?

I don’t hate men, although I’m not sure it matters either way. As writer Jessica Valenti said in 2015, “Besides, when women hate men, we hurt their feelings. When men hate women, they kill us.” She added that claims of misandry are “based on the idea that merely insulting men is similar to the life-threatening misogyny women face worldwide.” Something to think about.

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