Wouldn’t you know it, the day after I defend her as not being a man hater, she writes a long article, Maybe I Do Hate Men.
Go ahead. Have a laugh. I know I did. Laughed myself into a choking fit that worried the dog, cause you know I was thinking of you. 😉
Read the article though. I responded to a comment within, another woman who found her article problematic in the same way you will.
Truly, I get where Shannon is coming from and I’ve been where she’s at, geographically in that subculture and situationally.
Still, hate is not the right word, nowhere close, even that secondary definition. I don’t think we’ve stumbled upon the right phrasing yet.
Maybe ambivalent indifference. Maybe casual ambivalence.
Which doesn’t put women in the same headspace as men in that sense.
I don’t count this feeling women like Shannon and me have as misandry though. It’s too pointed for that. I just …don’t want to have anything to do with them on a personal level anymore, but I don’t hate them. Hate requires emotional investment. Men are highly invested in denigrating and putting down women. Their masculinity is defined as being particularly anti feminine where anything labeled feminine is considered less than, undesirable, and unwanted. And sometimes immoral.
Conversely, in no way does bashing men increase your femininity status or act as a performance of gender. Criticizing dynamics around performative masculinity that harms you or others is not bashing men. It is not, in effect an equitable comparison. Charges of misandry are equivalent to charges of reverse racism. It’s not the same as individual and situational biases.
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I want and need the opposite of that emotional investment. I don’t want to date, I don’t want to hear from people who think my life is incomplete without a man, I don’t want to hear their woes, their outbursts, their braggadocio. I don’t want to clean up their messes or hear how it wasn’t their fault. I don’t want to be expected to sooth their rage or preserve everyone else from it by bearing the brunt of it myself. I don’t want to always be the one to compromise or sacrifice for the good of the family. I don’t want my fun time with the kid to be sugar detox time because he wants to buy their affection. I don’t want my schedule to be thrown off to cover for his impulsiveness and disregard. I don’t to be put in the position of covering up his indifference to spare my child’s feelings. It sucks. All of it just sucks so bad. It’s no way to live life. I’m exhausted from it and bored with it. Mostly, I just want to be left alone.
Men who feel this way and live their lives this way get high fives for being smart enough to stay in a bachelor’s life. They’re celebrated.
Women are admonished that they’re cheating their children. Pitied for being alone or reprimanded for stepping out of line. Constantly harassed by single men looking for a maid or a babysitter to watch the children they had with their ex on their visitation weekends.
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That said, Shannon is in a place of trying to divorce herself from harmful cultural mores she was raised with and doing so publicly. Ballsy, and getting a lot of online hate for it. It’s part of a journey, not the sum of it. In time, I hope she shifts to more of a problem solving stance than an explanatory one. But she’s not ready for that yet, she lacks the perspective that comes from distance; coming out the other side. I also hope she examines how women continue to contribute to this culture too, and works on pieces toward ending that cycle. Nicole Chardenet focuses more on women’s contribution to patriarchy. She’s got some truly blistering pieces. She could grow more into pieces from a problem solving perspective too, maybe she will rather than only screaming into the void that women need to grow some labia.
