The one about hating women

Hello there, you over-caffeinated mammal.

Monday mornings, amirite?

What do we hate more than Monday mornings? Exactly. Women.

And hey, what’s not to hate about the old balls and chains?

Well, I’m not really big on misogyny, to be honest. I get along great with women. I love them, and they tend to love me: the crazy guy full of crazy stories who projects a lot of confidence—or at least I suppose they think so—and who is also cute yet strong, tall, handsome, covered in freckles, and overall the most adorable, irresistible specimen of man since Achilles himself. (I’m absolutely sure they think this because, well, it’s me.)

Have you seen this meme?

Every time I see that screenshot, I crack up and laugh my ass off because it’s so deliciously absurd. And with it, we ride!

Last night, I had the privilege of witnessing a take on sexism from one of the worst people currently within my reach. Maybe someday I’ll get permission to reveal a couple of details about this... ahem, "person." In the meantime, let’s just say that if women everywhere knew he existed, there would probably be a public hexing campaign to off him, much like the one against Hitler before him. And it would be well deserved.

His take was basically that the sports ad Sydney Sweeney appeared in wasn’t sexualized by the industry. He was also "tired" of comments about how "she’s only called to pose naked" and... something else. Besides being awful, he isn’t terribly brilliant either. But it got me thinking: why do we hate women so much? And it’s definitely hate.

I’m not even entirely sure about the concept of the patriarchy. The world isn’t particularly kind to anyone. A quote commonly attributed to Kurt Cobain says it better:

"Nobody dies a virgin. Life fucks us all."

And society gives men a lot of vigorous fucking, but it seems indifferent to men while actively hating women. Let me explain.

Men—all of us—are expected to be some sort of heroes: immune to pain, emotionless, stoic, strong, hardworking, and the embodiment of a very difficult ideal: manly.

We must drive, protect, provide, and lead. We must always remain calm, and when the ship is sinking, we’re supposed to sink with it. Yes. Even if we’re not the captain.

We’re not allowed to fail, because then we’re failures. We need to be socially, financially, intellectually, and sexually successful just to fit in. "Kissless virgin" is treated as both an insult and a failure condition.

You crashed out because life was too hard? The best we can do is say nice things about you at your funeral. After you kill yourself.

Help? We can’t offer you help... What are you, gay? Tie the slipknot and jump, my friend. There is no help.

Ha. Help.

You’re a drone. You’re useful only as long as you can work, and if you fail to have children, well, there are billions of other drones out there.

Die already.

Loser.

Do you feel like a hero? No? Then out with you.

That mix—sexual needs plus sexual shame, high expectations with little room to advance, and the secret hope that, any day now, The Avengers or The Expendables are going to come by and recruit you to save the world (is it just me?)—is, to quote Lizzie McGuire, pop star, what dreams are made of.

But a significant number of men see those beautiful dreams die. And I don’t mean when they’re ancient and their personal weapon no longer shoots. I mean right out of the gate.

Hell, for a significant number of men, those promised possibilities were never real. And when you discover that what you hoped for isn’t within your reach—or, even worse, that it never really was—well, that grows into resentment, doesn’t it?

Who would have known that dating Hilary Duff wasn’t a possibility, right?

And that’s part of the problem. Because just as every man is expected to be built like fucking Stephen "Turbo" Toboz, have the emotional availability of fucking Fitzwilliam Darcy, and be as rich and talented as fucking Tony Stark, women are expected to be perfectly, unrealistically beautiful. Sexy yet chaste. Exciting yet docile. They must have the sexual skills of a porn star, the cooking acumen of a tradwife, and push out three children without retaining a single pound afterward.

And yes, yes, there are some women out there who look like someone unboxed a Barbie and let her run away. And hey, when one of those houris of paradise crosses your path, you can’t help but look, right? Nobody can avoid looking.

And this is where we get to the trap. You may think that extremely successful and handsome men or perfectly beautiful women live ideal lives and are perfectly happy, right?

Well... not exactly. Expectations never end, and we hate women and don’t care about men, remember?

Let’s stop beating around the bush and try to get to the bottom of why there is so much hatred for women.

Those horrible temptresses, amirite?

Have you seen the state of the world? It’s all Eve’s fault: that apple-loving, corrupting influence on poor, innocent Adam, who wanted nothing more than to obey. If he’d had a little bit of sense, he would have left her to her latest health fad, kicked her out of Eden, and gotten another rib removed.

Adam, you dumbass!

But this is as old as time, you say: women tempt, men can’t control themselves, and then bad things happen. Bad things like... civilization and... let me check my notes... science and, obviously, you, dear reader.

But there’s something we forget about Adam and Eve. Well, besides the fruit being referred to only as... well, a fruit. Definitely not an apple. Steve Jobs had nothing to do with this.

What kind of person thinks that Adam should have gotten rid of Eve after the sin?

A person who hates women.

I rest my case. I’ll wait for my Nobel Prize in Literature whenever you’re ready. We did it. Let’s wrap it up right here and—

What? You want me to elaborate?

Okay, okay...

Adam accepted the fucking fruit. He could have been a big boy and "just said no," but no: he went along with it and then blamed Eve—and God. The gall of this dude.

And hey, it’s good to know that we’re still so in touch with our roots because, damn it, I can’t go a week without hearing the "I was tempted by that woman" excuse.

AND THE DAMN THING WORKS.

ALL.

THE.

TIME.

But besides Adam inventing DARVO around day thirteen, there’s something else...

Eve was the only other person he knew. They were always together. They trusted each other.

Let’s ignore Eve’s feelings—and we have thousands of years of precedent for this—and say it clearly: Adam surely loved Eve. How could he not? If she was anything like any of her daughters, her eyes were beautiful, her skin was soft, and her hair was shiny and always smelled delicious.

And I would definitely list all her mental qualities... if we knew any of them.

But she was his partner. If one of them was damned, they both were, right?

Just like society closes the case when a man kills the woman he "loves" and then himself, and someone—most frequently an idiot—says something like:

"He did it because he loved her, and at least they are together. In the end, he couldn’t live without her."

What’s that? If Eve sins, get rid of her; if Adam sins, we’re all damned?

Sounds patriarchal.

But we can’t blame Adam and Eve for everything. Men are physically stronger than women, and in our hunter-gatherer days—if you name your kid Hunter and he becomes a vegetarian, do you rename him Gatherer?—protecting women and children became embedded in our social norms.

That saber-toothed tiger can have a hunter, but never a mother.

Then came history, with all the fighting we did throughout it, and with the fighting came the rapes.

So what’s a loving man to do for his wife and daughters when there’s a war going on? Care for them. Hide them. And, if necessary, kill them.

Not a violent killing—a mercy killing—because sexual violence reduces the value of a woman, and who wants that, right?

Her feelings? What are you, a hippie?

The relationship between sexual violence and combat is one we will leave for later—much later—because I like to joke when I write, and there is no joking about that. And it will probably never fully end.

But nonetheless, our world has advanced, and that means the risks have diversified. A Hun or a beautiful Viking stealing your girl away? Or, God forbid, a pirate? That doesn’t happen anymore.

But there are still random killings, sexual assaults, and muggings—and friends who like to make her smile and help her feel free.

What’s a modern man to do about all these new risks out there? Ignore them?

No. We reach the "I need to know where you are, who you’re with, and what you’re doing at all times because I love you and care about you" stage of societal development.

And hey, if you want to go deeper into this, go read my piece on obsession.

The overarching trend is this: women are loved as property and cared for as resources. And we’re about to have civilization-ending AI—or so they say.

Maybe it’s time for us to stop and love and respect each other as individuals. If I hear another troglodyte tell me, "I’m just taking care of my woman," I will need an antacid. To quote Jack Sparrow: "People aren’t cargo, mate."

But how do we get to that behavior? There’s another very important part of the whole "we collectively hate women" story. We can call this phenomenon: "You like women? That’s sooooooo gay!"

And it’s very interesting.

The first time you get that lovey-dovey look while staring at a woman is unforgettable. You look at her and suddenly start seeing her through the lens of hormones—and you like what you see.

I was, like, fucking nine the first time this happened. The first time "girls are beautiful" became a finished idea in my mind. The day I realized I liked women.

Then someone notices what’s going on, and you’re automatically shamed for it. And God forbid you become close friends with a girl—when you are both children, prepubescent children—but don’t call her your girlfriend. That also gets you shamed.

And you show an interest in girly stuff? You’re damaged, and you must be relentlessly bullied from that moment onward because your friend, who happened to be a girl, put a girly hair accessory in your hair for a moment and you both laughed.

And yes. This happened, deep in the mists of time—around 2001 or something. What am I, my fucking biographer?

They told me I was going to become gay, but it never happened. I am still the same man I have always been, and I still love girly stuff, women, and everything related to women. But, inexplicably, far too many men seem to like women on paper—as though it were their duty—but, in reality, just... hate them.

Think about this: what would have happened if your dad had found you with your sister while she was painting your nails, applying mascara, or putting some makeup on you? What happens if it’s your girlfriend doing it, and instead of your dad, it’s your friends who see you?

Masculinity is perceived kind of like water: it’s apparently valuable, it can be contaminated, and it can evaporate at a moment’s notice. If you let go of it, the next thing you know, you have a boyfriend.

I’m kind of seeing a pattern here, but I will survive it. Hehe.

I never understood that dichotomy. I like girly stuff because I like girls. I like car stuff because I like cars. So why am I required to know about brakes, exhaust pipes, engines, tires, and headlights, while knowing about makeup, women’s clothing, nail painting, or—heaven save us—menstruation and menstrual hygiene products is seen as gay and inferior?

And yes, yes, comparing girls to cars—what am I, Mötley Crüe? But the point stands.

Why? Because rejecting femininity when you love women makes no sense to me. And treating the whole of womanhood as inferior when it occupies our collective imagination a good chunk of the time is complete nonsense—unless this is exactly the reason.

Maybe some of that hatred of women comes from really—and I mean really—liking them and kind of hating that you like what you hate. Because, again, Eve and apples or something.

There’s something else we need to discuss before we get to a point where we can start to finish this piece, and it’s this: a lot of men secretly hope to find an opening in reality in which they get to punch a woman in the face because, to them, equality means "equal rights, equal fights."

And they foam at the mouth thinking about what they will do the moment—the second—a woman crosses the line into physical violence and they believe they can legally demolish her.

And yeah, see? We’ve come full circle. We have guys wanting to hit girls, which is a big no-no according to our upbringing, right?

We’ve come a long way, and hey, thanks for staying. Longest piece yet—yay! I hope everyone is equally offended. I want to thank my mom, my worst enemy, my MMA trainer, and, obviously, that anonymous man who helped me shape such a vivid mental image of a man who hates women.

He’s genuinely anonymous because I never seem to remember his name. But hey, police officers love him, and he loves them back. Good for him.

And—what? Not done yet?

Okay, okay... Put the axe down. I’ll finish.

I think most bad things come from good places—or, at least, from intentions that appear good in the eyes of the perpetrator—and that’s the problem.

There’s this unspoken expectation that women remain holy: the closer they are to you, the holier they must be. That’s why you’re expected to beat anyone who says something bad about your mom. It’s also one reason some men seek sex workers: they can’t have "fun" sex with their wives because that would mean desecrating them.

It makes a perverse kind of sense. Every twisted thing we’ve discussed in this piece—and many of the ones we haven’t—comes disguised as love, protection, purity, honor, tradition, equality, or some other good intention.

But what does all this have to do with Sydney Sweeney and her ad?

Well, for a society that hates women at least as much as it loves them, that ad is the equivalent of nuclear fire, in that it will burn very hot and then go away very fast. And hey, I’m neither defending nor attacking the thing. I doubt it will have any lasting impact on anyone’s life because that kind of content has always existed, and the line between the people who appreciate sports and women in sports as athletes and those who watch because they are too cheap to pay for porn is already drawn. I doubt we’ll see a lot of movement between aisles, and it’s Sydney’s right to do whatever ad she wants to do, but what’s interesting is how it clashes with everyone’s idea of what a woman must be.

A person who denies that the ad is sexualized or tries to claim that Sydney is not a sex symbol in high demand is really denying a basic yet apparently revolutionary truth: people like to look at naked people.

Hell, we like to look at people. Instagram is, like, 90% eye-candy girls who are perfectly made up all the time and just appear in your feed endlessly. You don’t need to follow them or anything; like misogyny, they just exist and let you know.

But we also tend to think that nakedness is kind of sacred. So, we want to see Sydney in all her naked glory, but when she gives us what we want in a well-produced ad that probably made her a lot of money, then we hate her because it’s bad for an adult to pose naked for the public that wants to see her naked and... we could go around all night and never understand it, so let’s give up.

Sexual desire for women can’t be inherently bad because it’s part of us. And everything done between consenting adults—with respect, honesty, mutual enjoyment, and concern for each other’s well-being—is fine by me and probably should be fine by you, because excessive sexual shame can breed violence, and hating women because you like women ruins the fun of life for everyone.

In the end, it can almost be summarized by saying that desire doesn’t translate into entitlement. And if someone feels, or used to feel, entitled to someone else, that disappointment brings a need for violence that "equal rights, equal fights" feeds on.

So, basically, you want to pose naked for others? Do it. You want to look at other consenting adults naked? By all means.

Sexuality is natural, and even if sexualized advertising is kind of crass and uncool and can make you look like the uncle who turns his pelvis around while giving a hug and always sweats copiously while doing it, it’s all fine as long as you get to enjoy it without violent afterthoughts, because the world doesn’t need any more violence, and our naked bodies were made to love and be loved.

Tuesday night, people. It’s not widely known, but alcohol works just the same. So go out, right now, find someone, and take turns looking at each other’s naked bodies or something. Discuss who has better jeans.

Peace.