Is feminism all about man hating?

I can confidently explain that feminism is certainly not driven by man hatred

I think that some extreme ideas may be driven by man hatred, or are at least pushed hardest to their limits by women who hate men (I'm thinking of Seperatist ideas here for eg).

IMO the Radical Feminist analysis tends to attract more of these sort of extremists than other schools of thought.

But as noted above, these extremists are a small %

(I think that point about hating women more is apt. And don't mention transgender... :o )

MrGin, wasn't the Gandhi comment accompanied by an example of Gandhi sleeping next to naked young virgins to test himself?

OP, no, feminism is not about man-hating. Without feminism, women would not have the vote, the right to keep working once married, maternity rights, equal pay (ish), control of fertility )... None of this is man-hating!

There are women out there who certainly give the impression of hating men. The tend to believe Julie Bindel is the gospel for feminism. I certainly have issues as a women with women telling me having sex with DH is negative towards feminism and sex is patriarchal support. That aspect of feminism seems very man hating to me.

I've met a couple of self-described feminists who did hate men. But after spending time in their company it was quite apparent that they hated women too, possibly more than they hated men. Some people are just very misanthropic.

Similarly, every man I've met who believed all feminists hated him did seem to be the type who resented women not being at their beck and call, and all bought into the idea of some hard-faced career woman who was determined to drive them out of the workplace. However, these were all older men (late 40s upwards) and they had similar fears and prejudices about younger men taking what they felt was rightfully theirs.

Agree, Edgar. Social conditioning has us all in its thrall

DH is a feminist though one with some cognitive dissonance.

so am i come to that.

believing 'women are equal and should be treated as such' makes you a feminist...practicing it down to the small details of life is the difficult bit.

She said I could be an 'equalist' if wanted to be though as long as I shut up and listened.

Men can't be feminists. Someone on MN told me that very firmly.

Personally I think that some men are caught in a patriarchal / hierarchical / sub-dom way of thinking where someone has to either win or lose, and illogically conclude that if feminists don't want women to be underneath they must want them to be on top.

That is SO true!

I've never met a feminist who hated men, although it is a depressingly common assumption.

I'm married to a man who is a feminist. And in fact I like him so much that I have now bred two tiny weeny male feminists to go with him.

So yes, you can totally hate the patriarchy without hating men. And yes, I agree that a lot of the sexist crap about "men can't see dirt / men can't help themselves" etc cuts both ways - it is demeaning to both women and men. My husband is a rational, intelligent human being - why would I have made a life and had children with someone who was just an irrational bag of hormonally-driven lust, fury and incompetence? I'm not an idiot and neither is he.

Having said that, I do think that being a feminist makes me much less likely to put up with shit from men . As many of them have discovered.

OK, fair enough.

Lets remember, most women dont even call themselves feminists but it is true that a very small but usually very very vocal minority of women who do call themselves feminists do hate men. Unfortunately, this very very vocal minority actually undermines what feminism is about and gives amunition to those men that oppose feminism and in some cases actually hate women.

The vast majority of women get along perfectly well with men and all of them want to be treated fairly, decently and respectfully in all aspects of their life.

It is a bit baffling how the negative stereotype has taken hold. You don't see any feminists walking into a university, lining the men up and shooting them.

I was once patronised by an obnoxious man who told me that feminists hated men, then went on to say that the problem with feminists is that they want to be just like men. Go figure.

Personally I think that some men are caught in a patriarchal / hierarchical / sub-dom way of thinking where someone has to either win or lose, and illogically conclude that if feminists don't want women to be underneath they must want them to be on top.

Plus some people have just bought into the media hype and the backlash that accompanies any feminist wave. Look at the caricatures of the suffragettes and all they wanted was the piddling vote.

There are very few women of any political persuasion who hate men, and there are very few men who hate women. But they do exist on both sides.

Feminists don't hate men. If any thing we expect better from men than women who identify as non feminists. It's women who say they aren't feminists who think that men 'can't help themselves' when faced with a woman they find attractive or are incapable of looking after children or seeing mess or dirt. To me these women seem to have a lower opinion of men than feminists do.

Feminists rightly critique cultures of masculinity that view women as lesser beings but that isn't about hating men it is about expecting them to behave like decent human beings.

The problem is, as said earlier, that some men take any refusal to treat them as superior beings or to challenge male entitlement as a sign of hating men because their sense of entitlement is so strong they can't accept any challenge.

I think a small percentage of feminists are driven by a hatred of men. I can't prove that of course but it does seem to be so. Most are driven by a desire to make the world a better place. If we look around it's not hard to see how the world could and should be a better place for women, more so in developing countries though IMO. When I see things like events in Tahir square it makes me ashamed to be a man. Of course a lot of shit happens in this country as well but I think women are at least free to make a lot of choices here not available to women in some other countries.

You started it with [insert something stupid] :o

That's not what feminism is. And it is funny that the number of men who hate women (as evidenced by abuse, rape, murder, terrible sexism) is not the pressing social issue it ought to be, but the far smaller and less influential number of women who apparently have issues with men concerns people so much!
I think this operates on 2 levels, OP: on one, it is just a 'shut up' mechanism to stop the spread of feminist thinking. On another, it reveals the anxiety men have (often unconsciously) as a privileged group when confronted with a political/philosophical movement that has as its objective the removal of their privilege.
It isn't the only example of privileged people thinking that the promotion of equality (so they have to be treated the same as everyone else, not better) is akin to being persecuted: you get some of this with the 'political correctness gone mad' brigade who resent being unable to behave in racist ways, or people of one social class complaining about measures designed to make educational institutions or profressions more inclusive.

Cocks are a rising issue, Whatmeworry?