Man-haters. A man’s guide for dealing with them

Let’s potentially suspend your reality for a minute and say you are a nice guy. You don’t talk shit about anybody, exit out of negative topics when you can, and generally try to be a friendly and decent man. At work, you get along with everyone as you treat them with respect, and you get it in return. There’s this one person though that just doesn’t like you.

Despite your best efforts, this person doesn’t care to engage with you. She only interacts with you when she has to. You are bothered by this because you are a nice guy and everybody else seems to notice and appreciate that except this one person.

Eventually, you grant her distance and leave it alone. Then, you start to notice that she is back-offish with some of the other people at work. And upon closer notice, other than the somewhat feminine gay guy she’s friendly with, all the other people she treats with indifference is men. After talking to a couple of other people close to you at work about her, you confirm it. She’s a man hater!

I have to admit that, as a man, it’s entirely annoying having to defend the male gender to some angry and toxic woman. Over the years, I have engaged more than a few times with women who are able to justify openly expressing their man hatred both in person and on social media.

Recently, I had a man hater tell me(and anyone else who read it) how much better muslim men treated their women than American men do. Now it will never be my intention to discuss religion or politics, but to this statement, I have to call “utter bullshit”!

This American woman hated men so much, that she chose to adhere to  a culture so fundamentally different in how women are treated, and not at all for the better in most ways.  Their was no sense in me defending the American man over the muslim man in terms of how they treated women, but I was quite curious as to how she could arrive at such an opinion. She, not to my surprise, was not willing to share her reasoning but her vicious tone told me enough. I guess for some, gender equality is not a good thing. To each her own.

WHY SOME WOMEN HATE MEN

Regardless of how it has been lately, I don’t think it’s an epidemic or anything, but there are man-haters everywhere. They are in the workplace, at the gym, at parties, at yoga, sporting events, kid activities, grocery stores, bars, and church. Basically, man-haters can be present anywhere. A lot of women hate men. Here are some reasons why:

1. A man sexually abused them in the past – Guys can be real assholes! A lot of them. I have now and have had a big number of women as friends, and because of my personality, many have told me horrible stories of what some male had done to them when they were young. It’s sickening to me to know how many women have been sexually abused by my fellow men. The accepted statistic on this says that one of every three women were sexually abused at some point in their lives. Based on my personal observation, I’d say that the number may even be higher.

I try to be an understanding person, but as a male who grew up with the same sexual desires as every other boy and continued into manhood with it, I never even came close to stepping over the line sexually with a female. Regardless of how drunk or high I was, and regardless of how teased I might have been, it was always very clear in if I could proceed sexually or not with a woman.

If you are a guy reading this and have done something like this in your past, you know it was wrong now, and you knew it was wrong then. Hopefully, you feel really bad about it, and you don’t do that kind of shit anymore. I’ve had two girlfriends of mine tell me that they got an apology some years later from their assailant.

If this kind of thing pisses a man like me off, imagine what it does to some female victims. Their anger is quite justified.

2. A man emotionally abused them – This is a term with a really broad spectrum. It’s easier for men to have an understanding of this excuse for some women to hate men because women emotionally abuse men too. I know women want this to be exclusive only to them, but guys know better as so many of us were abused by women in this way.

I was emotionally abused by a woman and must admit that it made me hate women for a period in my life. Luckily for me, I found a way to get over it, but some let it affect them for the rest of their lives. The way men emotionally abuse women is different, but the negative results are just as intense. I have no judgment for women hating men for this. I can’t be that much of a hypocrite. It would be nice though for everybody, if some of them can let it go a little sooner than they do.

3. They were lied to, cheated on, and stolen from a man – The game of love is a tough one. There’s as much war with it as there is peace. The things we do to each other can be incredibly mean, selfish, and uncaring. Again, this isn’t an abuse that only flows from men to women. I am a believer that this type of abuse flows equally for men and women. Simple math backs me up on this.

Almost every guy I have known has hated women for at least some period of time, for one or all of these three reasons. So, it’s easily understandable for some women to hate men for this.

4. They are lesbians – Yea, I went there. Before the claws come out, let me say that the vast majority of lesbians don’t hate men. I also have to say that I have known and been friends with a fair amount of female homosexuals, and my opinion is that some of them hate men. And they hate them primarily because they are lesbian. Being a thinker, I asked myself, “why do I think a lesbian would hate men”? One reason is simple. Lesbians don’t need men. A heterosexual woman attaches certain wants and needs to men, so they are forced to put up with male bullshit. They have no choice. It is what they are attracted to. Lesbians aren’t burdened with that, so they see men’s bullshit in an unbiased form. I have a couple of other reasons, but I don’t feel I can explain them without seeming like I’m being disrespectful. So, I’ll just leave it at this.

HOW TO DEAL WITH A MAN HATER

So much of life isn’t fair. And it isn’t fair for someone to hate you just because you have a penis. It’s a fact of our lives though, and in the world of fucked up things, this isn’t too bad. Depending on your personality however, you can do some things to make it better when interacting with a man hater.

1. Have understanding – The easiest way to deal with someone who doesn’t like you for no reason is to say, “well, fuck them then”. I think there are situations where that is the way to go, but not usually. I think it makes for a better man to have an understanding of someone’s pain. Hating people not as individuals but because they are in a descriptive block means they are feeling some form of pain. Having understanding for someone’s pain is an across the board improvement in dealing with them.

2. Be your better self – I’m not saying that you have to act differently around this person just because you know she’s a man hater. That would be some mild form of “walking on eggshells,” and I fucking hate having to do that with someone. You may be drawn to act worse just because you know of her dislike as in a, “well, she doesn’t like me anyway, so I don’t give a shit then” attitude. Let the hate issue be hers only. You don’t need or want to feed into that. Keep the personality flaw hers only by acting well around her. Don’t match her level of blind judgment.

3. Stay non-toxic and ignore any of her negativity – I learned from martial arts that pain lessens when you can disperse it. Emotional pain is no different. Don’t allow her to distribute any of her hate for men to you. Be your better self, in spite of her, if that’s what it takes.

4. Consider that she might only be a temporary man hater – She may only be a boyfriend away from not hating men anymore. Don’t give her a permanent label. She may be able to pull herself out of this, and could become a really good friend one day. Act accordingly. It’s all about understanding. Being the better person is not always the way to go. Sometimes, you have to call people on their bullshit and tell them to fuck off, and that’ll feel good for five minutes. But, if you can take the high road, you will instead benefit from it for a long, long time.