Men v Women: is antipathy the problem or is it just apathy?
Wading into a gunfight armed only with ocean metaphors
I’m going to wade into waters as wide as the Pacific and as deep as the Mariana Trench (and yeah, I did have google the Mariana Trench). There’s been a strong debate brewing on Medium. It started with a tired feminist’s hate of men. It escalated with a certain Penguin getting involved. Soon someone only known as SC was weighing and suddenly a small corner of the site was arguing about men hating women and women hating men.
Before I get started, I’m going to acknowledge three key things:
- I’m a very small fish (143 followers small, and possibly about to lose them all) and there’s a good chance I’m going to be intellectually gobbled up.
- I’m not up on the academic theory of feminism, I would define myself as a feminist, but I freely acknowledge I have huge gaping gaps in my knowledge.
- I was born female, if I identify as anything it is female, I’m straight, I’m white, I’m British. I share this as, although I’m not a massive fan of identity politics, I do think context is important.
I have, however, made a career based on helping people solve problems by asking the right questions. So here are my questions and my first attempts at answers.
What is hate?
Hate is a fuzzy definition. We tend to know when we feel it and we tend to know when we don’t feel it. But there is no agreed precise definition for it, and we can never be sure what I mean by hate is what you mean hate. In the same way my Mum thinks her car is blue whereas I’m certain it’s purple.
Herein lies a big problem.
For me, hate is antipathy plus rage. There’s a certain emotion that hate evokes, it’s powerful, it’s dark, if we’re not careful it will consume us.
Do I hate men?
No. I have a son, husband, dad, brother, blah, blah, blah. I don’t claim to understand their lived experience, but I definitely don’t hate all men.
Do I hate any men?
No, I don’t think I do. Two factors in this: I’m quite a cool calm human being – think Spock with pink sparkly Ugg boots; and I’ve had a fairly privileged life sheltered from the worst of misogyny.
Do I understand why some women do hate men?
Absolutely. I’ve never been raped, abused, abandoned, or beaten by a man. Unfortunately lots and lots of woman have had this happen to them.
I can understand why:
women who this has happened to;
or know someone this has happened to;
or fear this happening to them;
or are just so damn angry that this happens to women -
hate all men.
I suspect most women can understand this. I guess many men can understand this too.
Do I think there are men who hate me?
Not sure.
I’ve met men who certainly seemed to dislike me because I was a women. I’ve met even more who can’t get their head around me.
I have some very, very stereotypically feminine attributes. I’m a short blonde blue eyed female who loves pink and owns the aforementioned sparkly Ugg boots.
I also have some very stereotypically male attributes. I spent my school days kicking the asses of my male peers in both maths and science tests. I’d also kick their asses in French and English tests but they seemed less peeved about that.
Do I think there are men who hate women?
Again, I’m not entirely sure. Even the ones who say they hate women, don’t always seem to hate women. They seem to just want to control them, and control, even of the coercive variety isn’t necessarily hate.
I do think control is the main driving issue. Men like Andrew Tate are control freaks. Tate like Hitler before him (I reckon I’m safe to compare Tate to Hitler – there can’t be too many Tate defenders who hate Hitler) see the world as a pyramid. One at which, by some amazing luck, they happened to be at the top. They see women as lower down the pyramid than men, and because of their supposedly superiority, they feel they should be able to control the womenfolk.
Do all men want to control women?
I don’t think so. I’m married to a man who, if he did want to control me, would’ve given up along time ago. I know lots of men who don’t try to control women. Tate would probably call them betas, I call them functional human beings.
What could all men do to change the world?
Sounds like a big question, but the answer is very simple, in theory if not in practice.
Less apathy.
Men have more power than women at a societal level. This worms its way into all our lives. Very few men devote their lives to actively dissembling the additional power and status men are afforded.
I get it – to be fair I don’t always actively try and dissemble it either. I let the everyday sexism slide. Partly, because I’m socially conditioned, that people won’t like me, if I’m difficult, about everything, all the time: partly – because it’s exhausting.
There is of course a difference here. I’m being disadvantaged by my own apathy, whereas men are advantaged by their own apathy, as we collude in maintaining the status quo.
Thank you Argumentative Penguin for starting this debate. I’ve not got all the answers but I hope I’m trying to ask some of the right questions.
