Why Do Women Hate Men?
Because Men Hate Women
Content warning: homicide, child murder, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, rape
Something has broken in the female collective consciousness. Women’s good will may have finally run out.
It’s difficult to say when the unraveling began.
Perhaps in 1974, when women gained the legal right to hold a credit card in their own name—and with it, the ability to survive without a husband. Or in the decades that followed, when women entered the workforce in greater numbers but remained underpaid and underprotected. Or in 2015, when Bill Cosby, once known as “America’s Dad,” was arrested for drugging and sexually assaulting dozens of women. Or in 2016, when Donald Trump was elected despite openly boasting about sexual assault.
By 2017, that accumulated fury spilled into the Women’s March and seeded the #MeToo movement. For the first time, women spoke publicly about harm they had long been told to absorb quietly—and for a moment, they were believed. Men who had operated for decades without consequence were suddenly being named in public.
But the backlash was swift. #MeToo, people said, had gone too far. A counter-current formed: the rise of Andrew Tate and his cronies, the red-pill internet, and a cultural narrative of the “dispossessed man”—humiliated, abandoned, and betrayed by women’s progress and big mouths.
“Cancelled” men like Louie C.K. and Mark Halperin returned to work. And the man widely seen as a catalyst for the #MeToo reckoning—despite multiple allegations and a conviction of sexual abuse—was once again elected president.
A mixture of fury, resentment, and exhaustion has been building in many women ever since.
That pressure has intensified in the past two years, even in mainstream circles, since the release of the Epstein files. Children are harder to blame than women and watching so many pedophiles and their enablers walk free—with only one woman out of hundreds of powerful men held accountable—proved intolerable.
It came on the heels of the Pelicot case in France, where a man drugged his wife and invited strangers to assault her while she lay unconscious — hundreds of times, over years. The rarity of those men being held to account came with a palpable sense of relief among women everywhere. Maybe accountability really was possible.
But the hits keep coming.
The past few weeks seem to be the straw that has finally broke the camel's back — if the camel were a woman and the straw a series of terrifying acts that are becoming harder and harder to dismiss as aberrations.
On March 26, CNN reported on what a French lawmaker called an “online rape academy”—an investigation into Motherless.com. This “moral-free file host” as it referred to itself, hosted non-consensual “sleep content”: videos of sedated women being raped. Users coordinated through encrypted channels where rape instructions were given, sedation drugs sold, and assaults of unconscious wives and girlfriends livestreamed for paying viewers.
In mid-April, two U.S. congressmen—Eric Swalwell of California and Tony Gonzales of Texas—faced allegations of sexual misconduct, including rape in one case, and both resigned—a reminder that sexual predation is nonpartisan.
Around the same time, former Virginia Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax killed his wife before taking his own life, in their home where his teenaged children were hanging out. His son called 911. This came after his wife filed for divorce, following years of sexual assault allegations and public and private collapse.
On April 19, eight children ages 3 to 11 were slaughtered in Louisana. The shooter, Shamar Elkins, was the father of seven of the children and the uncle of the eighth. He also shot the mothers of those children—his wife, who had reportedly filed for divorce, and a former partner. Both survived.
On April 20, a 15-year-old girl declined to give a 14-year-old boy her number. He grabbed her, lifted her above his head and slammed her onto concrete, then stomped on her head while his friends filmed and cheered. His mother later defended him.
And these are only the ones I know about.
Not all men. (But almost all women)
Maybe the last few weeks were more brutal than usual. But in all likelihood it was a combination of heightened awareness and rage, the fame or sheer scale of some these incidents, alongside a press more willing to cover violence against women.
There were, of course, many many more “incidents” in April alone. Intimate partner violence remains one of the most common and dangerous threats to women’s safety. In the United States, three to four women are killed every day by a current or former partner—and for many women, the most dangerous place is their own home.
Recent FBI data shows rising domestic violence over five years, with over 11,000 murders, and women making up 75% of victims. The already terrible violence women face is getting worse.
And yet men continue to insist it’s not all men; that they are one of the good ones. Maybe so, but if you were handed ten cookies and told one contained poison, you wouldn’t debate the odds. You’d stop eating.
Women are pushing the plate away, and men need to stop insisting they’re being too picky, too angry, too dramatic.
When men say not all men, we hear you saying you bear no responsibility. But you do.
Neutrality is not the same as goodness.
Being “a good man” cannot mean only not being a violent man. It also means refusing silence around violence. It means speaking up when your friends cross lines. It means interrupting the casual cruelty of locker rooms, group chats, bro codes, and online spaces where humiliation of women is entertainment.
If you laugh at the joke, stay silent when a woman is made uncomfortable, excuse “a little” harassment, or interpret a woman’s clothing or drinking as partial explanation for her violation, you are not outside the problem.
You are part of the system that makes your daughter more vulnerable to serious harm from men she knows and trusts.
The title of this piece is provocative. Women do not hate men. Most, like me, love their fathers, partners, brothers, friends. The grief is not about male humanity. It is about male impunity.
We are not responding to men as individuals, but men as a system that too often protects bad men at the expense of women’s safety.
When men are not held to account, the message is clear: you can act out aggression, entitlement, humiliation, sexual power, and social dominance—and others will look away.
Don’t wait until your daughter is assaulted to say something.
Could the tide be shifting?
I don’t have hard data, but I think men are getting braver.
I am seeing more men speak up—calling out misogyny, challenging other men, listening when women point out blind spots.1 At first I thought it was just the algorithm feeding me what I wanted to see. But then I started noticing it elsewhere: in comments, private messages, and conversations around my work. I see more men reading, sharing, and engaging with ideas they may not have considered before.
I saw it recently in my husband who said, “We know men hurt women”—no qualifier—during a discussion with other parents about raising kids to have healthy relationships.
And I think it’s happening because more women are done.
Done being the emotional buffer. Done absorbing diminishment. Done being, over and over again, the collateral damage of male entitlement, rage, and indifference.
I see it in friends’ anger. In the growing number of articles, like this one in The Atlantic, pushing back against the myth that girls are doing so much better than boys. In the uptick in personal emails I receive after a post or in response to my book. And that book—about raising girls in a sexist culture—has suddenly begun selling again in a way I can’t fully explain.
Something is shifting.
I don’t want to be naïve. A significant minority of young men are being shaped by online cultures that normalize misogyny. And recent global research suggests that Gen Z men and women are more likely than older generations to believe wives should obey their husbands.
But maybe, just maybe, the tide is turning.
Women are furious—and more men are finally joining them.
Anyone else noticing men becoming more outspoken?
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