By Sarah Murnane
A phrase I often hear, both in reality and online, is that women “hate men”. A friend of mine recently had her heart not-so-slightly broken, and declared that she in fact hated all members of the male species. Another close companion, a lesbian, also regularly expresses her distain for the opposite sex. Of course, these lovely people being my friends, I know that their sentiments are not entirely true and used primarily for hyperbole.
We are all friends with many wonderful men, as the majority of women are. I in fact am dating a wonderful man. Yet while we all know my friends are joking and are lighthearted in their commentary, one cannot help but notice there is an undertone to these expressions. Some women do believe that nearly all men are inherently different than woman, and that this is unfixable. Men are out to upset us, and to make our lives worse. This philosophy can be observed on the other side of the gender binary as well.
Stick around on the internet long enough, and eventually you will find a video of a man ‘giving advice’ to other men that all women are really narcissistic, self interested, maniacs that only care about your money and looks. Who could argue with that? This gender war begs the question, are the opposite sex the enemy and should they be treated as such? Are we as a society too trusting that the opposite sex have the capacity to fully understand our emotions, feelings and pursuits.
To answer this we must engage with the origins of the “hating all men” movement of feminism. While this particular phrase swept the internet in the early 2010s, it can be traced back to strains of the 1980s radical feminist movement. In essence this argument posits that women learn to desire a particular submission from their inferior social position. At it’s core it is a monkey see monkey do debate. Catherine MacKinnon, a prominent 1980s radical feminist stated that ‘male’ and ‘female’ are not natural categories, but are socially constructed through the violence and exploitation inflicted between the genders.
She states “male and female are created through the erotization of dominance and submission”. Or as she put more crudely “Man fucks woman; subject verb object”. Some modern feminists who made it big on the internet echoed these arguments. Woman have to hate men, because they are viewed as the oppressor. Men will ultimately always harm you and therefore we should hate them regardless of individual cases. In this way, the ‘woman’ and ‘man’ is comparable to the ‘bourgeoise’ and ‘proletariat’. You are born into something, you see no other way out, so you submit. The revolution is to revolt against your oppressor, which in this case is men.
Here is where this argument ultimately fails for me; I am not a fan of anatomical destiny at the best of times, but especially not in this case. To subscribe to the idea that I must hate all men, that they are an enemy; I have to first accept that there is some inherent difference between the man and woman. Whether that difference is biological or socially produced, I accept that based on my socialisation the roles that men and women fulfil in society are predetermined, and that I have no choice in it. More importantly, I have to accept that I am scared of them, that my autonomy is no longer important in my decision making.
That the man is the ‘predator’ and we are the ‘prey’. To hate all men purely based on the fact that they are biologically male, is to accept that because I am biologically a woman that I fulfil a specific stereotype also. In essence, I am hesitant to accept that men have as much social power over woman as to encourage us to completely reject the opposite sex. My anatomy did not predestine me to any specific goal, in the same way I do not believe a man’s did. This argument takes away individual choice. My general nature is to rebel whenever someone tells me that I have to conform to a particular worldview. This may seem overtly philosophical, but I beg you to ask the question, why do you hate all men? Is it really that you hate them all, or just the small annoying few?