Are women hated because we are weak?

[CrazyToast]

I'm sure there's been a thread about this before but I am wondering again- why do we hate women?

Straight men hate women.
Women often seem to hate women.
Transwomen often seem to hate women.
Gay men often often seem to hate women.

Why? What is it about us which is so detestable?

Is it because we are seen as weak due to femininity? Our reliance on men? That we have not contributed as much to society as men allegedly?

Is because women can have children and men can't?

Is it because straight men want sex with us so much and we control that?

Some of it is done for power of course: it's interesting how closely sex and power are linked. But, it is or was my experience, and MeToo showed that I'm not the only one.

There was a thread on here the other week about prostitution, a guy was explaining how only men suffer from involuntary celibacy. When I explained how prostitution was a result of male entitlement and asked about women who could not find a sexual partner he could not believe such a person existed.

Our society is massively over-sexualised: but sex sells. It's a guaranteed tactic. Porn exists, and mostly for men rather than women. Prostitution similarly. I am surprised I'm having to point out the amount of sex drive there is out there from men for women. I do think that social disapproval of any other form of emotional expression for men is part of it, as is the expression of power, but neglecting a plain and simple sex overdrive for men is neglecting evolution and biology.

I think you are missing my point. You seem to explain these things as stemming from a massive imbalance in desire between the sexes. I think this view is dangerous, it makes us the gatekeepers again. I think the real source is male entitlement.

Because men go on and on at us until we agree to have kids

Eh? That seems to be the opposite of my experience.
Even on MN you can find hundreds of threads of women wanting their men to agree to a baby.
On male dominated forums you can find hundreds of threads from men about their partners nagging and pressuring them for babies.

It might be 'dangerous', but it might be the view of men. Certainly they feel entitled to any of their whims. Regarding the question of who pressures who for kids, my experience is that my dh wanted them more than I did. I can well believe it's not normal: men usually don't want the consequences, although they're usually worse for women. Women around the world usually have fewer children when they're given the chance through birth control though.

Hmm. There is a lot of 'men want' and 'men do' going on in this thread. I find that such sweeping generalisations are rarely helpful. If we want men to value and respect us as individuals with autonomy rather than a faceless mass of 'women' or 'feminists' that are all the same, surely we should extend that courtesy to them? Be the change you want to see and all that?

@FestiveNut we are talking about men as a class , I thought that was fairly obvious?

Men as a class of what?

'Class based analysis' - prejudice with academic rationalisation.

1. I'm pretty sure that doesn't work when your 'class' is half of the population.
2. Rationalise it all you want, it's still prejudice.
3. I still believe it's ultimately unhelpful and does not inspire respect for feminists, or help our cause.

There is a lot of 'men want' and 'men do' going on in this thread.

Quite

It’s the sort of casual generalisations backed up with half arsed anecdotes and cod psychology that you find on MRA sites. Throw in some tin foil hat paranoia this thread makes for a fairly unedifying read.

Yes there are generalisations between the sexes. Generalisations like 'women have periods' and 'women give birth'. Men have always thrown plenty of generalisations about women around in the past: it's the basis of our historical marginalisation. Which has occurred to 'women' as a class. If men don't like it then they should not have been dishing it out for millennia, and no it won't stop just because it isn't convenient to men right now.

Because men go on and on at us until we agree to have kids.

Um, ok....

And your way of stopping them doing this is to do the same thing right back? Two wrongs don't make a right.

Yes there are generalisations between the sexes. Generalisations like 'women have periods' and 'women give birth'

Those aren't generalisations- they are statements of fact. You demonstrate the absurdity of class analysis by using them. All women , barring a tiny few born without a womb, menstruate. All humans who give birth are women.

I wrote part of my thesis on this. Essentially, women have power. We can be certain our children are ours, men evolutionarily aren't certain (paternity tests are relatively new) and men hate that. Keep the women, creators of life, certain of progeny, down and you have control. Jesus? A male god? ... all a way of trying to displace the mothers of earth and humanity.

Aka women have certainty and men are permanently unsure of their children

TheWiseWomansFear

I have heard this theory before. I suppose that pretty much all the theories are generally depressing. You get the MRA interpretation which is that women are as a consequence naturally duplicitous and that they will seek out a good provider tricking him into carrying another man's child.

One feminist argument is that this the source of men's desire to control women.

I prefer to think that love and trust are the evolved counter balance. When a woman loves a man they don't want (well I'm sure there are exceptions) to have sex with anyone else, especially not at the beginning which is the bit where the most sex is likely happening. Love and trusting interpersonal relationships enable many advantages so maybe that's the reason they exist?

Of course the misogynistic idea is that fundamentally women are not trustworthy in the same way men are, that women are naturally cunning. This insecurity must come from somewhere I agree.

I don’t think it’s jealousy as such, in the same way that I don’t think women have penis envy. I think it’s more a realisation that they can’t have total control over women and subsequent anger over that. I do think so much of this is subconscious though. I don’t think men go around thinking they hate women at all. It comes out when they get angry with a woman- their wife, gf, boss whatever. Then they find a degree of rage that this person is a woman so it makes them ‘stepping out of line’ even worse.

I wonder how most of the posters on this thread would react to a bloke making spurious claims about 'how women think'? 🤔

that happens all the time. When women are killing men at the same rate that men kill women, maybe it will make sense for them to discuss it.

that happens all the time. When women are killing men at the same rate that men kill women, maybe it will make sense for them to discuss it.

That's a rather odd justification for making wildly absurd statements like 'women have children because men pester them and they give in.'

Did you know that women have babies because it's a convenient way to escape the workplace whilst being paid (and often supported by a man)?

One thing to point out is that Evolutionary Biology would predict multiple different "sexual strategies" (to use lingo often horribly misappropirated by men's right's activitsts) could be successful.

That is to say, there may be a minority of men who were successful at passing their genes on through coercive control of women's reproduction. And there may be some men who use a "pump and dump" strategy and just try to impregnate as many women as possible. And on the other side, there may also be a minority of women who seek to find a "good genes" male for sex and a male who can provide direct benefits / wealth for longer term partnership.

However, monogamy, overall, is in fact the more common strategy among humans - and it is derived relative to the other great apes. Approximately 30% of couples experience at least one instance of cheating. This is actually extremely low when you think about it in evolutionary terms! How likely is it that a pregnancy would result from this? These strategies are therefore going to be quite insignificant when you look at the grand scheme of darwinian fitness. Perhaps they persist because they do work, occasionally. And unfortunately they bring with them all kinds of garbage.

Monogamy, in evolutionary terms, is a strategy that often goes hand in hand with improved cooperation between all individuals in the species, and with a need for bi (or group) parental care. Interestingly if you compare humans to the other great apes, our reproductive interests are far more aligned then they were in the past. Both males and females need to find and retain a high quality, productive partner if they want to reproduce successfully. Jealousy of our partners, love, dopamine, etc all exist to maintain these long term bonds, which are quite rare in the rest of the animal kingdom.