Man Hater

When Leandra Medine began Man Repeller, she worried that there would be a conflict of interest if she were to reveal that she was marrying a man. How could she be a man repeller if she did not repel every single man in New York City? What if her style repelled men at large, but there was a man in her life who loved her for that style, not in spite of it?

This is a concept that many are missing when it comes to being a certified Man Hater. Even as I type those words, my Spell Check is trying to delete the word “man”. It is fine, and maybe even humorous, to be a hater. It is unappealing, unsavory, and unpopular to say you are a man hater.

The main uneasiness that many women may feel in describing themselves in this way is that there is a man or two in their life that they love. They feel hypocritical identifying themself as someone who hates men for the very same reasons we roll our eyes at men justifying that they like women. My dad is a man, I am dating a man, I like my brother. Just as those reasons are flimsy and cheap justifications for loving women, they are not substantive arguments for loving or even liking men.

As a society, we need to begin accepting that duality is possible and even probable. You can marry a man who is truly good, but still recognize that men are the #1 perpetrators of violence against women. In fact, we expect women in heterosexual relationships to accept that duality on a daily basis. You may marry a man and spend most of your time with them, but intimate partner violence will always statistically be the #1 threat to your life. Though you may love a man more than anyone in the world, one in five women will be beaten or raped by a man. The world currently expects you to not only like your #1 predator, but love them and live among them.

I am someone who is married to a man that I love and know to be a good person. Looking at the world around me, however, I think it is still incomprehensible to me that we are not allowed to say that we hate men as a species. An analogy I like to consider is that of rabbits and coyotes. Coyotes are the biggest predators of rabbits, much like men are the biggest predators of women. Not every coyote is going to hunt every rabbit and there are coyotes who never in their life do so. However, we would never expect rabbits to advocate for the rights of coyotes, nor share a home and a life with one. We expect that from women every day.

What I propose is a general acceptance that women should hate men as a general species in our current landscape because they are a predator of women as a whole. In order to continue society, men must be forced to adapt and change as a species. Until that occurs, every woman should feel the right to declare herself a man-hater as an uncontroversial statement.