I'm starting to hate men

Just seen this. Have a life, OP, so im not going to read 22 pages but maybe 30 years of anti-male propaganda without any balancing media comment has coloured your attitude.

Hello Mamaka -

One thing I've done to keep a more balanced outlook is to limit the amount of reading online about topics that I know will be fought with irritating misogynist comments or arguments.

For instance, I'm very concerned about sexual assault, but reading about it online is just fruitlessly enraging, so I avoid those topics and instead donate to a local SA group. That way I'm not just raising my blood pressure for no reason, and someone is genuinely being helped in the real world.

Another good cause is donating to funds for elderly people to support their ailing pets or other causes that directly impact people IRL in a positive way even if they aren't specifically for women. For me, this type of activity acts as a counterweight for all the stress of living in such a male dominated world that overlooks or exploits the elderly and vulnerable.

Others have talked about cognitive dissonance and I think it's a good description. All our lives we are policed with the implication that men are dangerous, but then we are shamed if we say we hate or fear them. I understand hating men, I hated men vocally for years, but now I try to say "dislike" because people don't respond well to the word hate. It's a hassle to self-edit, but so often in life we must adapt to lessen the amount of crap we have to take for choosing words other don't like.

Any woman who has been married for a long time has to go through the shedding of our socialization and take men (or at least our husbands) as they are or choose not to be around men. I have had a lot of success with my own husband in getting him to see where he is dense, but at other times his lack of awareness of women's perspectives is staggering. Some days I feel very positive about our relationship, other days I want to scream, "You never get it anyways why bother communicating!!!"

So, I think the best way to mitigate the stress of dealing with male culture is to do what you can personally in our own life to stand up for yourself and teach your son good manners and boundaries. From what you have said it sounds like you are shaking off that socialization more and being yourself and it's making your husband fussy. Keep it up and he will probably respect you more for standing your ground in the future. In my opinion, it's better to be authentic and disliked than inauthentic and praised anyways.

Coming to feminism later is like someone switching the light on, but even as a woman it is still difficult to shake off complicity and ingrained behaviours and attitudes.

There's no doubt it is also used by some - who really are very definitely not allies - as a way to ingratiate/a pick-up technique.

I use feminist ally for preference but don't have a particular issue either way. The "this is what a feminist looks like" t shirts worn by men and women were good.

Sorry - there was a post in between - my post about raising a son as a feminist was saying I agree with the idea it is difficult for adult men to be feminists but perhaps it is different raising a son as a feminist from a young age.

Yes, I agree with that - I think it might be different raising a male child as a feminist though...?

Like you I have a son, I raise him to be a positive decent person to show respect for the world, humanity and society and life.
I hate his father... Another story, but I keep positive about everything as I don't want to extinguish the joy in my child .
Keep everything positive - we are raising our sons to be husbands and fathers .
Nxt yr my son leaves sch for the big world I hope I have done a good job. X

Buffy's points are exactly what I have seen before, and why I think that men cannot, or rather should not call themselves feminists.

I believe some may say adult men can become "feminist allies" and others feel that adult men can legitimately call themselves feminists; either way I personally think a son can be raised to be a feminist.

How can the OP bring her son up to be a feminist? Men can't be feminists, can they?

Miffer - yes, sorry, I got what you were saying and it made me think of how things have been for me at work since I tried to stop padding out what I was saying so much and getting directly to the point because, as you say, there's overconfidence from some male partners who are just saying stuff that's blindingly obvious and not achieving anything (in my head I'm doing the 'c'mon wind it along' motion with my finger) but I find I have to nod along and listen to it without interjection and then reply with 'that's very interesting', 'good points', 'blah, blah, blah' then 'I wonder if perhaps we should be possibly looking at' etc. before getting my (more pertinent) point across i.e. - "ok, sure, but the real issue is clearly..."

I'm trying to change that a bit but it doesn't go down so well when I do, even though it's clearly moved the meeting on more quickly and gets to the heart of the issue. There are two other men in the group who 'cut to the chase' and it never seems to cause the same flicker of tension in the room when they do. Maybe the difference is that I am both the only female and the youngest person.

What's your issue with feminism. AD?

And regarding your bad boy schtick - I think I just threw up in my mouth.

Try looking for a decent man who isn't a replacement for your father.

My wife's father was a bit of a nightmare in all sorts of ways (but great with me because, as a military officer, I was all his hopes and dreams come true) and it has taken a few years of supportive marriage to break her out of her cycle and make her realise that many (at least some) men are actually quite decent.

The problem is that we tend not to be the loudest, most showy, most preening, less likely to be attractive in a 'bad boy' way, and are less likely to chase you!

And, in stead of bringing your son up to be a feminist' as you put it, why not bring him up to be an 'equalatist'?

Haha thanks Rea I especially like the last one.

The experience I had was different from that though. For instance, the woman who spoke wasn't met with hostility. In fact that was one of the parts of the meeting were we got some proper debate and answers (full disclosure it was my friend).

Mamaka I think your right. It was the same thing. It wasn't the lack of confidence of the women, or it certainly wasn't on my part. It was more the over confidence of the men. They were so sure their point was worth listening to even though they were basically repeating each other or being told by the chair that there point was irrelevant to the topic at hand.

It's funny Miffer - don't know if this has been posted before but I've definitely been working on editing out the amount of 'feminine padding' I put around things when I actually do have something relevant to say:

thecooperreview.com/non-threatening-leadership-strategies-for-women/

Guess what? It really doesn't go down as well when I directly offer opinions/make requests as it does when the male partners do (even if I don't quite shed ALL of the sanitary protection I usually offer with my 'bloody difficult' opinions)

Mamaka

This thread goes to show that even if you hadn't used the word "hate", some people might've assumed it anyway!
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2694930-How-to-raise-boys-when-you-have-a-negative-opinion-of-men?watched=1&msgid=62576670#62576670

Talking about hating men.

Recently I decided to pop along to some more mainstream political meetings. At the first one I would say women were 1 in 4 of the 50ish people present. When the floor was opened only one woman spoke (out of about 20 people). I didn't speak because I had nothing to say that was relevant to the topic. I noticed the that most of the men didn't either. They repeated, they banged their own personal drum or they made comments that were so obvious they were entirely pointless ("Hey everyone I think the Pope is Catholic!"- In a room full of church going Catholics). I saw this pattern repeated at at all other meetings I attended.

The conclusion I came to was thus - Men don't seem to give a fuck if what they are saying is meaningless and irrelevant they think everybody should listen to them. Women will only speak if they have something relevant to say. I am very politically savvy, I speak in front of hostile groups of people at work regularly. I wasn't stopped from speaking by the men in a "can't get a word in edgeways" way. They didn't railroad me. I just had nothing to add at the start and by the end they had managed to drag the subject into such inane self evident rambling I certainly had nothing more to add.

Which is why I'm baffled by MGTOW's motives. You want to go your own way, not have relationships with women? That's fine, no probs.

You want women to beg you to reconsider, which seems sometimes to be the motivation ? Nope.

hear hear Basil. So what if we do, as long as all we do about it is go off away from you, it's just a rational response to the treatment so many of us have received at the hands of men.

I posted this on the other man hating thread and someone said I should have posted it here. So here it is:

What do men do when they hate women? They cat call us, they threaten us, they inflict violence on us, they rape us, they murder us. What do women who hate men do? They ignore them. So fucking fuckity what? Go away and solve men's hatred of women and then I'll have another think about feminists who hate men.