Is feminism all about man hating?

[PedanticPanda]

When feminism is brought up around my DP and my other friends they all say the same thing,

I agree with feminists who want equal rights for men and women, but not feminists who hate men and want women to be treated better than men.

Do these feminists actually exist? I assumed that feminism was all about equal rights etc, I thought all the man hating was a stereotype but wasn't actually true, but, most people I know seem to think this is the idea of the majority and it's the minority of feminists who want equal rights.

Been around here long ?

Only if you do it properly.

Well, I'm a feminist and I don't hate men. I even married one and made two more

I don't think I've ever met a feminist who wanted to be treated 'better' than men just for being a woman. I don't hate men either, my DP is wonderful and I enjoy being around men who are good company.

Nope, feminism isn't about man hating. Perhaps a very small minority of feminists do hate men, and choose to talk in feminist terms rather than personal ones. But they are a very small minority.

Most of the time it's really just about having an alternative viewpoint to the one that says 'But you have to do [insert something stupid], cos you're a GURL innit.'

Some men find that inconveniences them, because (for example) they are no longer being waited on hand and foot and told they're marvellous even when they behave like thoughtless boors. It tends to be this kind of man that whines on about feminism being 'man hating'. Substitute 'inconvenient to me, blah whine' when you hear this. Thankfully though such men are (in my world at least) a minority.

No. Feminists like that only exist in the imagination of misogynists.

What Manatee just said. Exactly that.

Feminism is perceived as being man-hating by men who interpret any criticism of previaling social structures and cultural attitudes and their impact on women as an attack on them personally. Whether this is because they are in fact sexist pigs who like to discrimiante against and persecute women or whether they are merely insanely paranoid I don't know. but either way, i think their point of view can safely be disregarded by sensible people, which is mainly the type you will meet here.

Cocks are a rising issue, Whatmeworry?

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.

You started it with [insert something stupid] :o

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

OK, fair enough.

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.