This, this, this! Of course it's not all men but it's FAR too many men and the ones that do it are the ones who need to pick on someone they perceive as weaker than themselves in the social pecking order.
To answer the OP, I don't think they hate us, I think hold us in contempt is more accurate a lot of the time. I just had an interesting conversation with Chat GPT (I know, I know) where I wondered if the way men treat women is the same way the "guards" treated the "prisoners" in the Stanford Prison Experiment, and found the response really interesting (pasted below but in a nutshell it's because of social norms that men treat women so badly and that women just have to take it - now I'm off to chat further about how I can challenge these norms and teach my son to do the same):
The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is often brought up precisely because it seems to show how social roles, power, and norms can unlock behaviour that many people would otherwise find shocking. Your instinct to connect it to gendered behaviour is a thoughtful one—and many sociologists and psychologists have made similar links (with important caveats).
The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971): what actually happened
Philip Zimbardo recruited psychologically healthy male students and randomly assigned them to be “guards” or “prisoners” in a mock prison in a university basement.
What unfolded was not just rule-enforcement, but rapid escalation:
- Guards began humiliating prisoners: verbal abuse, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, arbitrary punishments.
- Prisoners became anxious, passive, depressed; some had emotional breakdowns.
- No one explicitly told the guards to be cruel. They were given authority, uniforms, and permission.
The experiment was stopped after
6 days.
Zimbardo’s conclusion
People don’t need to be inherently cruel.
Situations + power + role expectations can be enough.
Important modern criticisms (these matter)
Today, SPE is heavily criticised:
- Demand characteristics
- Guards were subtly encouraged to be “tough”. Some later said they were acting how they thought guards were meant to act.
- Lack of scientific rigour
- No control group, poor documentation, researcher interference.
- Not everyone behaved badly
- Some guards resisted cruelty, which weakens “inevitability” claims.
So:
👉 SPE doesn’t prove
people inevitably become abusive.
👉 It
does illustrate how
social permission and power can normalise harm.
Connecting this to men’s behaviour toward women
Your example—street harassment, groping, shouting abuse—is sadly common and
highly asymmetric. That asymmetry is crucial.
This isn’t about men being “naturally” cruel. It’s about
power, norms, and consequences.
- Social permission and role expectations
Many men grow up absorbing messages like:
- Male assertiveness = confidence
- Female discomfort = trivial
- Sexualised attention = compliment
- Male dominance = normal
This is a
role, not an instruction—much like the guards weren’t told to abuse prisoners, but understood what the role
allowed.
When behaviour is:
- rarely challenged,
- laughed off,
- minimised (“boys will be boys”),
it becomes
normative, not deviant.
- Power imbalance matters
In SPE:
- Guards knew prisoners couldn’t fight back.
In street harassment:
- Men usually know women are physically smaller, socially conditioned to avoid confrontation, and unlikely to retaliate violently.
Power doesn’t require intent to harm—it only requires
confidence there will be no serious consequence.
That confidence is unevenly distributed by gender.
- Deindividuation and entitlement
Uniforms in SPE reduced individuality.
In public harassment, something similar happens:
- Women are reduced to bodies, categories, or symbols.
- The harasser doesn’t see a person, but a role: “woman in public space”.
This makes contempt easier. You don’t feel empathy for a role.
- Why women rarely do this in reverse
Not because women are morally superior—but because:
- Women are socialised to avoid imposing, not dominate.
- Women face real risks if they act aggressively.
- Women receive stronger social sanctions for sexual assertiveness or public aggression.
So the same behaviour is not equally
permitted.
A key insight from modern psychology
Cruelty often doesn’t arise from hatred.
It arises from
normalisation.
When a group is treated as less powerful, less credible, or less deserving of respect, mistreatment can feel ordinary—even justified.
That’s the uncomfortable overlap between SPE and gendered harassment.
One important difference
There’s also resistance.
Just as some guards refused to be cruel:
- Many men actively reject these norms.
- Norms can change—but only when behaviour is clearly named as unacceptable.