Moi les hommes, je les déteste Quotes

“So now I’ve decided to privilege women, in the books I read, the films I watch, the culture I imbibe, and in my close friendships, so that men just aren’t that important any more. Instead I privilege this sisterhood, which is so supportive, which nourishes me – in my creativity, my radicalism, my thinking both about myself and about society – in so many areas of my life, where, I’ve finally realised, I have no need of men to shape the person I am.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“Only someone in a position of dominance can permit himself to be calm and reasonable in any circumstance, because he’s not the one who is suffering.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“What we want is for men to put their power and privilege to good use: by policing their male friends and acquaintances, for example, instead of explaining to women how to go about fighting their battles. We want men to know their place. Actually no, what we really want is for them to learn how to take up less space.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“The accusation of misandry is a mechanism for silencing women, a way of silencing the anger – sometimes violent but always legitimate – of the oppressed standing up to their oppressors. Taking offence at misandry, claiming it’s merely a form of sexism like any other, and no less unacceptable (as if sexism were genuinely reviled), is a bad-faith way of sweeping under the carpet the mechanisms that make sexist oppression a systemic phenomenon buoyed throughout history by culture and authority. It’s to allege that a woman who hates men is as dangerous as a man who hates women – and that there’s no rational justification for what she feels, be it dislike, distrust or disdain. Because, obviously, no man has ever hurt a woman in the whole course of human history. Or rather, no men have ever hurt any women.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“Misandry and misogyny cannot be compared, quite simply because the former exists only in reaction to the latter.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“Standards are very low for men, and far too high for women. Let’s reserve ourselves the right to be ugly, badly dressed, vulgar, mean, bad-tempered, untidy, exhausted, selfish, incompetent …”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“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.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“Given the way so many men manage to bulldoze their way through the world without remotely approaching perfection in any domain, perhaps it's time to give ourselves a break as well.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“Convincing a woman that she can only be fulfilled in a straight relationship is a way of pushing her into a corner. She no longer believes in herself. When women give themselves permission to live alone, to experience single life as a life like any other, with its shortcomings as well as its rewards, rather than as a punishment, they (re)discover that they don’t actually need a man, or at least not just any man, in their lives. They relish their autonomy and freedom. And when they do find a partner, it isn’t because they need one, it’s because they’ve met a person they genuinely want to commit to, with the intention of creating a relationship based on mutual fulfilment. Not because being single is a terrifying idea and Monsieur needs someone to wash his socks and organise his diary.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“We teach children from a very young age that not having a girlfriend or boyfriend is almost a problem – but happily, we also let them understand that there’s ‘still time’. But we never give them the option of not wanting one. With girls, it’s reinforced by an armada of clichés and conventions conveyed through the fairy stories they absorb, from the sleeping beauty waiting for a kiss from a prince to be brought back to life, to the lonesome wicked witch who devours other people’s children. Boys, meanwhile, grow up with a more nuanced vision, thanks to a fantasy world peopled by solitary heroes who achieve extraordinary things because of their superpowers. The message is fundamentally the same, but boys have more opportunities to develop different perspectives. They’re not so bound to this image of themselves trapped in a depressing and inert solitude. Their sense of self-worth is not conditioned by the fact of having a girlfriend or a wife. They’re encouraged to be actors in a turbulent life, to reach for their dreams, to give their all to reach the top of the mountain. Little girls, meanwhile, must wait for their Prince Charming to turn up.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“I use the word misandry to mean a negative feeling towards the entirety of the male sex. This negative feeling might be understood as a spectrum that ranges from simple suspicion to outright loathing, and is generally expressed by an impatience towards men and a rejection of their presence in women’s spaces. And when I say ‘the male sex’ I mean all the cis men who have been socialised as such, and who enjoy their male privilege without ever calling it into question, or not enough (yes, misandry is a demanding and elitist concept).”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“From now on I’ve decided that my priority is to commit to being a genuine ally to the women I know. I want them to feel safe in my company, to know that if they are ever the victim of any kind of sexual harassment or assault, I’ll always be there for them. I’ll always believe them, I’ll never for a moment doubt the truth of anything they tell me in confidence. I’ll never try to minimise what they’ve gone through, or impute any responsibility to them, even if – especially if – I know the attacker. I want to tell them they’ll never have reason to fear that I’ll find an excuse for him, or that I’ve set my heart on staying in touch with him. I refuse to be one of those people who thinks that domestic assault, for example, is a question of ‘perspective’, or a private matter between the two parties.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“Misandry is born out of and nourished by anger. Feminism is the interface between private anger, which belongs in the domestic space, and public anger; ‘the personal is political’, whether we’re talking about the gender pay gap or which person in a couple has remembered to put on the washing. Yet for a very long time, women’s anger struggled to express itself as feminist. The thing is, no one likes emotions spilling over, even less so when they’re from a woman, and so it took a long time to reclaim this anger. Now it’s begun to find its voice, and the taboos that have stifled it for centuries are being stripped away: people have started to write about it,[fn1] to reflect on its causes, to compare it to male anger. It exists.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“Ce n'est pas pour cracher dans la soupe, mais il faut être honnête: non, mon amoureux n'est pas parfait. Il ne me viole pas et ne me frappe pas, il fait la vaisselle, passe l'aspirateur et me traite avec le respect que je mérite. C'est ça, être parfait? Ou bien est-ce la moindre des choses? Les standards sont-ils tellement bas que les hommes peuvent s'en tirer à si bon compte?”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“Women need to be in a couple, for a single woman doesn’t have as much value in the eyes of the world as a woman who belongs to a man. We imagine single women who don’t have children to be selfish and bitter, while their sisters who are married and mothers have the freedom to bestow their generosity and natural kindness. A great deal of energy is deployed in persuading a woman that being in a relationship with a man is the most advantageous thing available to her – and much of the time she allows herself to be convinced, for the spectre of the crazy cat lady looms ominously over the life a single woman.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“Les modèles qu’on inculque sont nocifs dans les deux cas : ni la violence qu’on encourage chez les garçons ni la passivité qu’on impose aux filles ne sont des réponses appropriées, pour soi comme pour les autres, dans les situations d’injustice ou de conflit.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“Convincing a woman that she can only be fulfilled in a straight relationship is a way of pushing her into a corner. She no longer believes in herself.”
― Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men

“Expérimentons la joie de vivre par et pour nous-mêmes, et trouvons les bonnes raisons de nous engager dans une relation, en sortant du mécanisme automatique qui nous fait craindre d’être seules. Cultivons nos réseaux de relations non amoureuses solides, profondes et sincères, qui nous permettent d’être entourées et aimées sans être en couple. Apprenons nos limites, ce qui est acceptable à nos yeux et ce qui ne l’est pas, et apprenons à faire entendre ces limites.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“Je crois qu'il ne faut plus avoir peur de dire et de vivre nos misandries. Détester les hommes et tout ce qu'ils représentent est notre droit le plus strict. C'est aussi une fête. Qui aurait cru qu'il y aurait autant de joie dans la misandrie ? Cet état d'esprit ne nous rend pas aigries ni esseulées, contraire- ment à ce que la société patriarcale veut nous faire croire. Je crois que la détestation des hommes nous ouvre les portes de l'amour pour les femmes (et pour nous-mêmes) sous toutes les formes que cela peut prendre. Et qu'on a besoin de cet amour - de cette sororité pour nous libérer.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“Quand ils s'indignent de nos réunions féministes en non-mixité, ce qu'ils nous reprochent vraiment, c'est de nous regrouper en un corps politique où ils n'ont pas voix au chapitre. Ce n'est en effet pas tant qu'on se rassemble entre femmes qui les choque : quand ce sont des clubs de tricot, des associations de mères ou des réunions Tupperware, rien ne pourrait moins les intéresser. Ce qu'ils ne supportent pas, ce qui les effraie même, c'est qu'on s'organise, qu'on s'assemble et qu'on forme une masse politique d'où émergent des idées et des plans d'action. Et qu'on ne leur accorde aucune importance.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“Il paraît qu'avec toutes ces conneries féministes, #MeToo et tout ça, il est difficile d'être un homme de nos jours. Ils ne savent plus comment draguer, comment prendre l'ascenseur avec leurs collègues, comment faire des blagues... Qu'ont-ils encore le droit de dire et de faire ?

Tant d'angoisses existentielles pour lesquelles je n'arrive pas à ressentir beaucoup d'empathie. Tout le temps qu'ils passent à pleurnicher sur leur sort de pauvres mecs persécutés, ils esquivent habilement leur devoir: celui d'être un peu moins des purs produits du patriarcat.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“Schwesternschaft ist mir ein inneres Bedürfnis, denn um mich herum leben zahllose glänzende, begabte, engagierte, unglaublich tolle Frauen, die meine ganze Unterstützung und Liebe verdienen. Sie und Frauen im Allgemeinen sollen von meiner zwischenmenschlichen Energie profitieren, die Männer brauchen mich nicht, um sich anerkannt, in ihren Lebensentscheidungen unterstützt und in ihren Werten bestätigt zu fühlen. Außerdem beruhen weibliche Beziehungen oft auf einer selbstverständlich in Gegenseitigkeit.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“Unsere Misandrie macht den Männern Angst, weil sie ihnen signalisiert, dass sie sich unsere Ausfmerksamkeit erst verdienen müssen.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“If I like to highlight the correspondence between misandry and feminism, it's for the simple reason that it took me several years of moving in feminist circles to develop my dislike of men, to be comfortable with it, and to stop trying to hide it even in the company of my close male friends. It was, I think, the regular practice of feminism that allowed me to develop a basic level of assertiveness and self-confidence.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“J’ai compris que si, moi, je leur donnais beaucoup de place dans ma vie, je n’étais pas leur priorité.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“Si tant de mecs peuvent se frayer un chemin dans le monde sans approcher même de loin la perfection dans aucun domaine, il est peut-être temps de nous autoriser à lâcher du lest aussi.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“In Zukunft ist es für mich das Wichtigste, den Frauen in meiner Umgebung eine verlässliche Stütze zu sein. Sie sollen sich in meiner Gesellschaft in Sicherheit fühlen, sie sollen wissen, dass ich ihnen bei sexistischen Übergriffen immer beistehe. Ich werde ihnen glauben, ohne auch nur eine Sekunde am Wahrheitsgehalt ihrer Aussagen zu zweifeln. Ich werde nicht herunterspielen, was sie erlebt haben, oder ihnen die Verantwortung zuschieben.”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste

“Er vergewaltigt mich nicht und er schlägt mich nicht, er macht den Abwasch, betätigt den Staubsauger und behandelt mich mit dem gebührenden Respekt. Ist das schon perfekt? Oder nicht vielmehr eine Selbstverständlichkeit?”
― Pauline Harmange, Moi les hommes, je les déteste