'We should have the right not to like men': the French writer at centre of literary storm

Thanks Floral you save my typing fingers I'm usually 'what Floral said'.

It’s not all about you Dave.

It's another example of most men being so totally unaware and oblivious to the realities of living inside a female body that they just blindly project their own experience of the world onto women and shrug and say "well it's the same for me, so I don't know what you're fussing about".

Again the gift of male socialisation: if it doesn't affect you personally, you don't have to think about it or notice it or do anything about it.

The gift of female socialisation: to have to think about and notice everyone for everything and prove you've thought of men/children first, before you're allowed to try to explain the reality of the other 50% of the human race. To the male half, who mostly shrug and say "well that's never affected me, so it doesn't happen."

Terra nullis. Women are just a blank space men project all over and define according to their own perceptions, and mostly aren't even aware they're doing it because it's so normal.

The fact is that male violence towards women runs the gamut of porn and prostitution through to murder, via all the abuses that daily make women question any choice she has to make (if I go this way at this time am I more, or less, likely to be attacked? Etc). It affects almost every interaction with a man on some level. It affects what we choose to do, how we express ourselves, how we live, practically on a cellular level.

Nobody’s saying men don’t experience fear or violence but don’t dare come on a women’s forum and try to draw a parallel with women’s experiences. You haven’t got any way of gauging how we grow up with our second class status at the hands of men. Go and read a few threads where women talk about growing up in a family with brothers, or how old they were when they first experienced predatory behaviour (it’s about 12 iirc) or how they’ve realised they’ve ended up doing all the childcare, elder care, and have no skills with which to earn money now. Male dominance isn’t just attack or rape or murder, it is everywhere, in everything.

'I'm sometimes scared that other men will be violent to me. That's why it's totally wrong for women to use words about men that hurt my feelings.'

Excuse my spellcheck errors

To state that you wouldn’t be permitted to say it about an ethnic group is true, because it’s not the whole ethnic group that is inflicting violence, sexual harassment, rape, financial and emotional abuse on women, it’s the men within those ethnic groups, including every single religion. Join the dotes. Women have every right to be pissed if at men. Even those that consider themselves good men, often stand by when they know one of their group, relatives, workmates, etc is behaving badly towards women. Even when they see it with their own eyes. Bad men get to continue being bad, because ‘good’ men ignore their behaviour.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”― Edmund Burke

That said, I do agree with the posters on the other thread saying you'd never get away with using this title with another group like ethnic groups.

2-3 women a week are not murdered by ‘ethnic groups’. They’re murdered by men.

You haven’t got a bloody clue, what MANY women go through at the hands of SOME men.

I believe men suffer the large majority of violence but can still see why women find us intimidating.

Who is inflicting the violence on men? You might want to think about that.

I'm sure I read that testosterone increases the fight or flight response so maybe that's why we feel less afraid.

You feel less afraid because you are more certain of defending yourself. Men are afraid women will mock them, women are afraid men will kill them. Big big difference.

There's an earlier thread about this hear www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4017883-French-Essay-I-Hate-Men-sales-soar-after-attempt-to-ban-it

I don’t hate men. I just haven’t encountered very many who are worth my time or attention. I don’t generally bother talking to them unless I’m being paid to, because so few of them seem to be prepared to listen to women. I think I need to read this book .

Persuasive argument has it's place, undoubtedly. But there is also a place for be unapologetically angry.

Yes, the book title is a bit goady. But it's not at all the same as just expressing an irrational hatred of a whole sex class . It's just a call for society to recognise the ways that men often attack women. And the impact this often has on women.

Sadly any nuance will be lost because most people see the title, roll their eyes, form a negative opinion along the lines of it 'expressing an irrational hatred of a whole sex class' and not buy it. The moment you have to explain a title like that you have rightly or wrongly lost your audience already.

I've seen a lot of men say the title is 'misandrist', but it's a common trope to accuse feminists of being 'man haters'. Reductress posted a satirical article years ago on the theme of how women can't discuss feminism without caveats about how much they loooovee men (reductress.com/post/im-a-feminist-but-i-love-men-and-want-to-fuck-them-and-just-listen-to-me-i-promise-im-not-even-mad/)

So this title hasn't just sprung out of the ether. It's a direct response to the accusation of 'man hating'. Incidentally, I also remember a few years ago that Facebook and Twitter were in uproar about the hashtag 'men are trash'. It's misandrist and MEAN, cried the men. But the hashtag was created by completely fed up South African feminists in response to a wave of kidnapping and murders of young women - the final straw was the rape and murder of a young feminist who was found burned to death in a field.
The message seems to be that men can treat women like shit, and will throw a hissy fit every time a woman expresses that she doesn't like men very much.

I hope it’s translated into English. I love the thought of it becoming a best seller.

(I’m definitely going to buy that book btw.)

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit and I think I probably do hate ‘Men’ whilst loving and liking some of them. But I do always fizzle inwardly with anger when they don’t (as the saying goes) check their privilege. And sometimes I tell them to get a grip and ask themselves how what they’ve just said looks like from a woman’s pov.

I’m nearly fifty and I’m just tired of them. I have excellent female friends and I often think if dh were to drop dead or bugger off with a younger model, I would be appropriately sad/livid/lost and then my life could be female centred and to hell with men.

I just think, they’ve had their chances to be better, they won’t do it, I haven’t got long left really, so...fuck em!

She’s French. They are passionate. Maybe it doesn’t translate well.

She raises many important points in the article.

Very few women hate men. They just want men to go away and stop harassing them. I really don’t think about men other than the ones I am related to.