what misandry means to me
iām a misandrist. that means i hate men. iām not a cute misandrist. i donāt have a fridge magnet that says, āboys are stupid, throw rocks at them.ā my loathing cannot be contained by a fridge magnet.
i am not an equality feminist. i donāt believe that an asymmetrical world will be cured by polite obsequence to male-dominated systems. i am not a liberal humanist. i donāt believe that i need to stand up for men when theyāve been standing on top of everyone else.
misandry is not a political program; itās a stance. i donāt care whether hating men is a good or bad feminist strategy (and i care even less what men think about misandry). i donāt think i have a responsibility to change the world. i think i have a responsibility to survive.
imagine being born into a world where your experiences are not represented, where your work is undervalued, where your body is always open for comment, where your friends are routinely harassed and abused, and where this situation will literally be your reality for your entire life. if youāre a woman, you donāt have to imagine that world because you already live in it.
if youāre a man, you never have and never will live in that world. but try to imagine what it feels like. iāll tell you: when i think about the kind of world we live in, i feel simultaneously hopeless and infuriated and i oscillate so quickly between those two emotional extremes that i literally start to get dizzy.
being a woman in this world feels like getting buried alive. think about that. think about feeling that every day.
why do i have to answer the question āwhy do i hate men?ā when men donāt even stop to ask why they have always hated women. i have to answer the question because men canāt tolerate for one second the sort of contemptĀ theyāveĀ had for women for thousands of years.
why do i hate men? because life is short. my life is getting shorter by the day and i want to fill it with women. in this sinking ship of a world, i just want to enjoy a tiny little space, a room, if you will, of my own. i want that room to be full of women and free from ego, hierarchy, sexual advances, and violence. i hate men because i canāt even have that fucking room without them knocking on the walls. you have the entire fucking house. go play in it. find something else to do.
i hate men because itās not my job to fix masculinity; itās my job to heal from it and to be together with my sisters as we try to make it through a hostile world. and yet i am expected to patiently educate men on how not to be an asshole. hereās my only tip: stop spending so much time around men. theyāre assholes.
i hate men because men hate me and the burden to take the high road should not fall on my shoulders.
i am friends with some men, yes. usually these are men who have some experience of marginalization (whether via their race, class, gender identity, sexual identity, what have you) or who have gone through the self-interrogation and relational deprogramming necessary to build meaningful community with women. you donāt just get to read a book and youāre golden. you have to get fucking baptized in menstrual blood as far as iām concerned.
i hate menĀ doesnātĀ mean i hate you. it means i hate your position in this world. itĀ means iām not obligated to like you. it means i donāt have to talk to you if i donāt want to. it means i get to have my space and i donāt have to dance for you, smile at you, or soothe you. and you can put up with me being wary of you, canāt you, because the world has a fucking red carpet waiting for you wherever you go.
