I Hate Men

by Pauline Harmange

Anger and violence are often conflated, though the two don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Anger at being treated as an inferior is not remotely comparable to the violence committed by the men who humiliate, rape and kill us, or even the violence committed by the men who ignore us, turn their backs on us and mock us. We have everything to gain by distancing ourselves from the limited role of the patient, gentle, almost passive woman, and insisting that men make the effort to become better people.

Misandry and misogyny cannot be compared, quite simply because the former exists only in reaction to the latter.

We misandrists stay in our lane. We might hate men, but at best we put up with them, frostily, because they’re everywhere and we don’t have any choice (incredible but true: it’s possible to hate someone without having an irrepressible urge to kill them). At worst we stop inviting them into our lives – or at least we make a drastic selection beforehand. Our misandry scares men, because it’s the sign that they’re going to have to start meriting our attention. Having relationships with men isn’t something we owe them, a duty, but, as in every balanced relationship, all the parties involved have to make an effort to treat one another with respect.

But the truth is there’s no good means of expressing anger if you’re a woman in a relationship with a man. If you weep as a way of articulating a kind of despair at a situation that seems dedicated to maintaining the status quo (which I have a tendency to do), you’re being too emotional, or unnecessarily dramatic. If you get angry and try to express more clearly what’s gone wrong and insist that things change, you’ll be accused of being aggressive and no one will listen to you any more, with that age-old argument: ‘I can’t hear you when you shout like that.’

For a while now my guiding wisdom in life has been Canadian writer Sarah Hagi’s Daily Prayer to Combat Impostor Syndrome: ‘God give me the confidence of a mediocre white dude’. Whenever I’m beset by doubt, I think about all the mediocre men[fn2] who’ve managed to make their mediocrity pass for competence, by that magical sleight of hand called arrogance.