Call me a manhating dyke if you want to. It only exposes your discontent with patriarchy.
On the history of misandry, reclaiming slurs, and bearing the brunt of your unhappiness.
The first time I was called a dyke was in the tenth grade.
It was during morning study hall, held in the high school cafeteria. My friends and I sat around a booth-style table, gossiping instead of actually studying. A classmate of mine, a boy who was peripherally part of my friend group, was doodling on the wrapping paper he’d used as a cover for his textbook.
He drew an arrow pointing at me, chuckling to himself as he scribbled the word guinea at its base. Then he drew stick figures, named for me and my then-girlfriend, with a heading that said dykes. Proud, he showed it to the other boys at the table, who had a good laugh at the artistic rendering, despite it being at my expense.
Neither of these words had been hurled at me before, but I knew what they meant.
The bell rang. My favorite class that year—biology—was next. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something inside of me had cracked. I went to the guidance office instead and, crying, asked to speak to a counselor.
Later that night, when, looking for comfort, I’d admitted to my mother what had happened, she told me that’s what I should expect if I want to be so vocal about my sexual identity.
Recently, I got into an argument with a female friend of mine about whether or not cis men should be given the benefit of the doubt when they’re accused of abuse. It came up because two of her closest confidantes are men who fit that description, and I expressed my concern that she was, perhaps, ignoring glaring red flags.
“I would defend them to the death,” she told me.
“I know you would,” I responded, exasperated from years of similar conversations.
“I believe their sides of the story,” she argued. “And you can’t pass judgment on them without hearing their experiences.”
Heatedly, I disagreed—”I don’t want to hear it”—and hung up the phone.
Ping!
Ping! Ping!
She texted me in succession. “Of course you would never believe that a cis man could be falsely accused. I know the whole thing,” she said – “the whole thing” being my politics around the dangers of men and values of decentering them, specifically as a lesbian woman.
We haven’t spoken since. (1)
But when I brought the conflict up to a staunchly anti-patriarchal genderqueer friend of mine, I asked earnestly, “Why do I feel like she called me a dyke?”
Feminism is in a concerning place. But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
Ideology can only swerve so far away from the mainstream before it forms a circle. An oroboros eating its own tail, we eventually find ourselves back at the beginning. And at this moment in time, we have somehow reached the disturbing conclusion that feminism—a movement that has grown to encompass the destruction of all power structures, often with an entry point of gender oppression—should focus on men.
It’s true that power structures are harmful to everyone, even those at the top of the hierarchy. White supremacy, for example, has been deeply damaging to white people’s sense of identity. In the designation of a racial superiority, various ethnic groups have clambered to be included. And assimilation into an all-encompassing category of “whiteness” has lost us languages, spiritual practices, a sense of community belonging, and even our own ancestral names.
Similarly, cisheteronormativity is harmful to straight people. Tearing away their autonomy and authenticity, cisheteronormativity forces inflexible relational structures, many of which are ultimately unnatural: the institution of marriage, the nuclear family system, and compulsory monogamy, to name a few.
Men are absolutely harmed by patriarchy. It pushes them into rigid gender roles, an understanding of masculinity that is predicated on violence and domination, and teaches a hatred of femininity and queerness that asks them to kill a part of their own souls.
And we’re seeing the effects: In a contemporary society where women and other marginalized genders have more economic freedom, and therefore overall independence, cisgender men are no longer sought out for access to safety and security in the same way. Indeed, as it’s been said many times, this is arguably the first time in history where men need to be actively desired to find a life partner. And what partners want is emotional intelligence, vulnerability, domestic equality, sexual sensitivity, and communication skills – the exact domains that patriarchy has taught men to eschew in pursuit of an idealized masculinity.
Cue the so-called Male Loneliness Epidemic.
I roll my eyes at how this idea is presented (Male Consequences Epidemic, maybe?), but it is, in fact, a problem. But it’s a problem that patriarchy itself created, the solution to which is still divesting from that system – the main goal of feminism in the first place.
To ask feminism to reconsider itself—to shift its focus to the oppressor class—to get caught up in but what about—in order to be more palatable and attractive to that group—to help them so that they don’t hurt us—is patriarchy in action.
Take a TikTok that recently came across my feed, in which a man, confident that his idea is sound, explains that healing the Male Loneliness Epidemic is a feminist pursuit that women should take up because: “Do you know what happens when men get lonely? Their isolation turns into aggression. And guess who that’s taken out on.”
Forgive me if I think that this casual causal understanding of gender-based violence is more concerning than men struggling with being single.
And forgive me if I’m knowledgable enough to understand that this very goal—to distract from feminism and reprioritize men—is, and always has been, a purposeful conservative false equivalency.
The word misandry (the root of misandrist) dates back to at least 1885, and was formed specifically as an analogy to the concept of misogyny.
That is, the word misandry was invented during the first wave of feminism specifically to oppose the concept of misogyny. Its goal, from inception, was to draw a line between the two, to suggest their equivalence.
Of course, misandry cannot exist the same way that misogyny does. The former can only ever be interpersonal in a patriarchal society; the latter is institutional.
While we often use the words stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, and oppression interchangeably, they’re actually different concepts with different material impacts that build on one another in severity:
A stereotype is an oversimplified, generalized, often negative belief about a group of people (for example, that Jewish people are greedy or that Black people are criminal)
A prejudice is a preconceived, unjustified attitude toward a group of people and the individuals that make up said group, that can lead to rigid beliefs about and hostile feelings toward those people (for example, anti-Semitism or anti-Blackness)
Discrimination is action taken based on prejudice; it is prejudicial treatment of a group of people and the individuals that make up said group, that has a material impact (such as in hiring practices or through bullying and harassment)
Oppression is when discrimination is normalized in systems and institutions with the severe material impact of limiting human rights, freedoms, and opportunities to the benefit of the ruling class (for example, wage gaps and police brutality)
Using this formula, misandry might look like this: Men lack emotional intelligence (stereotype); ergo, I dislike talking to them (prejudice); therefore, I will not date them (discrimination).
Alternatively, it might look like this: Men are more likely to be violent (stereotype); ergo, I don’t trust them as a whole (prejudice); therefore, I don’t give them the benefit of the doubt when women accuse them of abuse (discrimination).
However, despite my personal convictions, because we live in a patriarchal society, cisgender men are still the most desired group in the dating pool, and they rarely face social consequences for accusations of abuse. Men are not negatively materially impacted by my—or any given woman’s—distrust of them on a large scale. Instead, the only possible impact that they face is consequences for their behavior.
Meanwhile, an estimated 83,000 women and girls are murdered globally every year, most often by an intimate partner or family member.
Misandry simply does not reach as deep as misogyny does.
“It’s disturbing that culture seems to be swinging back around to the idea that ‘man-hating’ is a shameful thing,” my friend, a brilliant writer and gender theorist, wrote to me in text.
It was a drizzling day in Boston, and I was walking from my car to my favorite restaurant in Kenmore Square. There was a Red Sox game that afternoon, so I parked further down Bay State Road than I’d wanted to, but I used this time to explore why I felt like being implied a misandrist felt similar to being called a dyke.
“This feels like part of the backlash to feminism we’re living in now,” my friend mused. “The challenges to patriarchy over the past two decades are being course corrected. And that seems very much related to increasing homophobia and transphobia everywhere.”
“It’s making me think about how the reason why lesbianism is so threatening to patriarchy is because it’s a culture of women who have made lives without any need or desire for men,” I wrote, explaining that men lash out by calling women dykes, manhaters, and misandrists specifically because they’re reckoning with their lack of importance. “But then if you’re a woman who values, centers, or prioritizes men, lesbianism threatens you, too, because it calls into question the validity of what you think of as access to safety.”
That is to say, if patriarchy demeans women and obstructs our autonomy, then it absolutely demonizes lesbians for daring to live—and thrive—outside of the narrative entirely.
No wonder “manhating” is so often followed up with “lesbian.”
Can you be anything worse in cisheteropatriarchy?
In sociology, social norms are divided into four categories, based on how strictly they’re enforced: folkways (everyday customs and routines), mores (tied to a society’s values and morals), taboos (forbidden by social conscience), and laws (formally enforced).
To keep norms intact, we depend on what sociologists call sanctions: rewards for following the rules and punishments for breaking them. We tend to be conscious of how sanctions work on a formal level: We can get a promotion or fired. We can be let out of prison early for good behavior or have our parole denied. But we’re less aware of informal sanctions, the small ways that we’re socialized to reward and punish one another in a form of social control.
Weddings and baby showers are fantastic examples: While we don’t actively think of them this way, they are, indeed, social rewards for following the rules set forth by cisheteronormativity. As we move through institutions and systems, like marriage and the nuclear family, as we’re expected to, we’re celebrated. Meanwhile, people (especially women) who don’t choose this path are degraded as spinsters and crazy cat ladies, picked on and guilted at family gatherings, and derided as selfish.
Smaller examples of sanctions include dirty looks and short conflicts, like when someone cuts in line at the post office. It’s our way of saying, “We are a society, and this is how we function.”
Name-calling, expressed displeasure, and active challenging can be other ways that we let someone know not only that we don’t like how they’re behaving, but that it would make us much more comfortable if they would fall in line.
When my high school acquaintance snickered as he colored in the word dyke on his book cover, or when my female friend implied that I was less compassionate for being a manhater, they were implicitly demonstrating that I had gone too far against the status quo – and that my open expression of these supposed radical ideas were deserving of social punishment.
My last long-term relationship, with a trans masculine non-binary person, started just six months before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the United States. With not much left to do in a cramped major metropolitan area, we took up taking day trips and weekend excursions to various countrysides in late 2020. We stayed in a secluded cabin outside of Shenandoah National Park. We celebrated our first anniversary at a certified dark sky in rural Pennsylvania.
On one of these day trips—a quick jaunt to Lancaster, a small town in the middle of Pennsylvania’s Amish Country—we stood outside one of our favorite stores, owned by a Renaissance-inspired electroformer, when suddenly a truck of young men sped by.
“Faggot!” they yelled.
Stunned, our eyes widened at one another. We’d both been harassed before. And yet, it remains shocking to have the peace of your day violently interrupted. It’s painful—scary—every time.
But this isn’t a problem specific to Small Town America.
Once, this same partner and I were walking down Walnut Street in Center City, Philadelphia, when a stranger pulled back and then spat on my boyfriend, mumbling anti-trans sentiments as we sped up to get away.
Of course, these instances had more to do with my partner and his transness, another form of social “deviance” that is punished in ways ranging from slurs to laws prohibiting healthcare. But it echoed other experiences I’ve had over the course of my life with anti-queer street harassment.
I had a girlfriend while living in another major city—this time, Atlanta, Georgia—and we were frequently the targets of harassment: from staring to jeering to being threatened with corrective rape, also known as dyke breaking.
To exist outside of the social order—to refuse to comply with the demands of cisheteropatriarchy—is to absorb the discontent of all those who are being swindled by it.
One of my favorite definitions of queer theory comes from academic Jay Stewart: “Queer theory and politics necessarily celebrate transgression in the form of visible difference from norms. These ‘norms’ are then exposed to be norms, not natures or inevitabilities. Gender and sexual identities are seen, in much of this work, to be demonstrably defiant definitions and configurations” (emphasis mine).
That is to say, queer theory explores how social norms are constructed, and therefore can be opted out of. Of course, abstaining from participation in social norms is considered deviant—and in some contexts, even sinful—but what is counterculture if not rebellion?
Recently, I’ve chosen to take on “dyke” as an identity. “Queer” has slowly lost its political meaning, as folks who are assimilated into cisheteronormative culture have taken on the identity as a catch-all. As such, while it remains a part of my identity, it no longer describes the separatism that made it attractive to me in the first place. “Dyke,” though, confers specific meaning that makes people uncomfortable in a way that feels necessary: It’s unapologetic in its statement against cisheteropatriarchal norms. It is, in its own way, communicating, if not “manhating,” then at least male irrelevance.
Many individuals within marginalized communities have chosen to reclaim slurs to breathe new definition into them. The most controversial example of this (at least to white folks) is the use of the N word in Black communities. The queer community has taken back, among other slurs, fag(got) and queer itself. Women use misogynistic slurs like bitch and slut as terms of endearment. In so many ways, we’ve reformed language to work for us.
Maybe, at this point, manhater and misandrist are the same. Maybe they’re derogatory words that we can reclaim as queer, feminist resistance. Maybe I really don’t give a fuck if you see me as a dyke or a manhater because those words, those ideas, aren’t offensive to me. In so many ways, they’ve actually saved my life.
Because what are you really saying when you call me such a slur? That you’re uncomfortable with how I move through the world? That you feel challenged that the norm you’ve held onto so tightly is being exposed as a fraud?
Babe, that’s the whole point.
In 1992, televangelist Pat Robertson claimed that the “feminist agenda…is not about equal rights for women.” Rather, he explained, that feminism “is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.”
If that’s what you mean by dyke, by misandrist, by manhater, then sign me the fuck up. (2)
(1) There is, of course, more to this story. I chose to use only the part that was relevant to this essay.
(2) Not the part about killing children though. What the fuck?