I Didn’t Know There Is A Word For Women Who Hate Men
Perhaps, women aren't capable of hating
I've had women much more than I can count on one hand tell me quite bluntly that they hate men. And I'm not even talking about the whole covens, cartels, syndicates, and conglomerates of women online advertising their hatred for men like it's a fashion brand.
I don't blame them one bit. Most of them have cause to. The ones I know personally tell me their experiences and I'm often left nodding my head in empathy with their experiences and in agreement with their prejudices.
You can't (shouldn't in fact) tell a victim how to react to their affliction. Empathy, as good as it sounds, is never enough. No man can truly understand a situation he's never been in.
Usually, all I have to say is "Sorry about that."
What I have really lacked is the word to describe them.
Misandry (noun):
Dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against men (i.e. the male sex).
While something as mundane as not agreeing with a woman in an intellectual debate can qualify you for the "misogyny" label, misandry is very rarely mentioned. Or, am I that misinformed so much so that I learned of the word only last year?
And I have been a Scrabble Champion more than once. Nothing hurts the ego of a Scrabble buff more than discovering a common word that he isn't aware of.
The general apology for misandry is usually what a man did. The question therefore asks itself: what did a woman do that occasioned misogyny? To downplay misandry is to downplay misogyny, except we must accept the theory being pushed very subtly but being pushed still that women are incapable of hate or violence. That whatever a woman does, blame a man for it.
This theory technically defeats the struggle for equality. If you don't even own your actions, then what exactly do you own? It is, logically, a silent admittance of inferiority.
I agree with Chimamanda Adichie completely — we should all be feminists. Apart from a few Biological variations, men and women are essentially the same. Why would a sane person think that one is inferior to the other? Feminism benefits everyone. Indeed, the little success we have achieved with it is a mark of how far we’ve come as a civilized species.
But the failure of feminists to recognize this, to balance the scale instead opting to tip it, taking us right back the route where we are coming from, is a real concern.
While we struggle now to liberate the girl-child and attain full gender equality, we might have to go through the same process again twenty or thirty years from now to liberate the boy-child.
Violence against men is hailed as empowerment or casually dismissed, there's a widespread denial that men suffer domestic abuse, the boy-child is neglected, and man-hate isn't even recognized.
Feminists aren't speaking up for men and although in the basic sense of it, they should, I don't blame them.
In light of this, we need a movement that speaks for men. Not anti-feminism, nor male-chauvinism, and certainly not masculinism. But a movement that calls out misandry, tackles domestic violence against men and highlights the evil perpetrated by women.
It's not an "either-or" situation; hate against women and hate against men can be tackled simultaneously. The goal after all is to gradually do away with all kinds of hate and embrace a healthier, purer, and more socially democratic society.
