Men Who Hate Women

And the women who love them

There’s a certain kind of man who hates women. Sometimes they’re easy to spot because they shoot you in the face three times and call you a fucking bitch when they’re done. You might not spot them at first, because they’ll tolerate you if you’re the right kind of woman. The kind who knows her place.

But if you’re not properly impressed or intimidated — worse, if you are too relaxed, or make it clear you don’t respect the way they spend their time — or god forbid you laugh at them? Oh, you’ll find out real quick.

Or your wife will, but by then it will be too late.

Your dog won’t understand what happened because dogs are too good for this world.

Actual comment under my essay about Renee Nicole Good last week, from a man who hates women.

If you’re like me, you might have dated a man like this once or four times. They’re not always overtly violent, and when you’re young, sometimes you miss the signs. The first time they ask if that’s what you’re going to wear, or if you really think you should order dessert. The first time they flirt with someone in front of you, then roll their eyes and call you jealous if you say anything after. They’re chipping away at your self-worth, because they decide your worth, not you.

If you talk to a man at a party, though, you’ll hear about how disrespectful you are. How their friends were asking if you’re always so whorish.

They’re the kind of man who will say you embarrassed them at dinner because you talked too much, or you didn’t talk enough, or you said something inappropriate. When you’re young, you’ll replay the night in your mind, and wonder if you did take up too much space, or if you were too quiet, or if that thing you said was misunderstood.

Eventually they won’t come home on time and they won’t be at work and they won’t answer their cell, and when they do show up they’ll say they were with friends, or they were working, or they’ll be vague — but you’ll know. One night they won’t make excuses at all, they’ll say they aren’t up for another night of your craziness. Men like this tear you down slowly. They teach you what you’re going to tolerate. They learn where your weaknesses are, and twist the knife so you bleed just the right amount. Then, when you’re thinking you really have to leave so you don’t die inside, they show up with flowers.

Sometimes the abuse is emotional, sometimes it becomes physical — either way, these are the men who hate women. You meet them on public buses and in stairwells, they might be your high school teachers or professors, or that boss who massages your shoulders, because what are you going to do about it? You need the job. They’re the men who interrupt with, well, actually. They do not like women who do not immediately cede the mic and assume the all-knowing man has the answers.

My response. He just cursed at me in all caps again.

With all the horror it’s hard to keep up, but maybe you heard about the “dentist and his wife” in Ohio? They were found shot to death in their home, but their four-year-old and one-year-old were described as “unharmed” — though they were heard from outside the house, crying. I assure you those babies were not unharmed. Four is old enough to understand your parents are not responding, and are in fact, bleeding and hurt. Gone. One is old enough to feel that something is very, very wrong in your house, and to know that your sibling is in grave distress. People underestimate what children are feeling almost all the time.

I have to admit I couldn’t take it in properly, or maybe it was the babies crying and I was protecting my heart from this story, because there’s only so much any of us can take. I was aware this woman, Monique Tepe, was continually described as the “dentist’s wife” as if she had no identity outside of her marriage. Her husband, Spencer, was a wonderful man by all accounts. A loving husband and dad. They had a dog, too.

There was all this talk about how they’d moved into a neighborhood “in transition.” How it wasn’t a safe neighborhood, with lots of speculation about why they’d done that, and an undertone of what do you expect? The idea being, of course, that some undesirable person from this unsafe neighborhood broke in and shot them. I saw people online saying, “This is why you don’t let 12 million illegal aliens pour over your borders.” [Snide shrug/zero compassion]. Very Christian. Also, very racist. Things that go together like peanut butter and napalm.

Turns out it was just another angry white man with a gun. Monique’s ex-husband who “couldn’t let her go.” They were married in 2015, divorced in 2017, but only lived together for seven months. According to Monique’s brother, she was scared of her first husband — whose name I’m not sharing because I’m tired of these guys gaining any notoriety at all. She was so scared, she fled their home and their marriage abruptly. It has been nine years since their divorce. She moved on, remarried, had two children — and this man, a vascular surgeon, drove 400 miles and <allegedly> shot her and her husband in the early hours of the morning — and left their babies to find them.

Here is what one man who hates women decided to post under this conservative rag and its coverage of the tragedy. A rag I do not follow, but whose crap I see because fb is infested with this trash these days:

Yeah, really hilarious to slut-shame a dead woman based on nothing but your own projections.

Photo by Tycho Atsma on Unsplash

After I published my essay last week, which was largely about Renee and Becca Good, a lot of furious men who hate women came out to play on my business Facebook page, a place that used to be lovely, but is now not so lovely. The comments I’ve posted here are actual comments from my page. What changed? Zuck decided he was all in with the current occupant of the White House, a place that used to look stately and now looks like Temu Kremlin. MAGA men are all over fb as a result. That’s where they hang out (X, too, of course), along with the women who love them.

They were outraged that I, a woman, had the audacity to publish an essay expressing my thoughts on a page I built, because it turns out I am responsible for all the killing.

Me, and all of us radical left liberal scum spreading our rhetoric. It’s not the fact that ICE is kidnapping people off the streets, denying immigrants and U.S. citizens alike their right to due process, terrorizing neighborhoods, using excessive force, man-handling and zip-tying and beating up children, and oops, sometimes killing people who haven’t broken a single law…it’s the rhetoric! It’s the concerned citizens who are filming, trying to keep their neighbors safe. If we’d just stay home and take care of our kids and mind our own business, we wouldn’t get executed!

I tried.

Yeah. That was a woman. According to her, “Protesting does no good.”

Hey, just a real quick round-up of some of our most famous protesters:

JESUS CHRIST: Seems like a big one for people who claim to be Christian. So it’s weird because these folks really hate protesters. They hate them! Hard to know what to make of it. If you believe in Jesus, maybe figure out what you’re gonna do. Because dang, he did not stay home and mind his own business! I mean, according to the president’s favorite book that he loves so much he just can’t pick a favorite part, he was out there protesting religious hypocrisy, corruption, economic exploitation, social injustice, gender inequality. Yikes. Like, this administration and all the people who support it — but also identify as Christian — you’re gonna have to rethink your whole anti-DEI stance. Oh! Also, you’re going to have to stop with all the state-sanctioned murder, cuz like, that’s what happened to JESUS CHRIST up on the Cross. It’s a big problem you have, I leave it with you to solve, good luck.

Mahatma Gandhi: He pioneered nonviolent resistance to achieve independence from British rule. Why didn’t he stay home and mind his own damn business?

Nelson Mandela, woot, woot! Fought against apartheid and was willing to spend decades in prison before becoming South Africa’s first Black president. Guess where he did not stay? Say it with me now: At home, minding his own business.

Wanna keep it closer to home? No. Problem.

Susan B. Anthony: This crowd has to know her because she was minted on a dollar coin, and if there’s one god they bow to, it’s the dollar. Hey women supporting this administration, you like to vote, don’t you? Or do you think your husband should do the voting for your household? If you aren’t married, are you cool with your dad or brother voting for you, because that’s what Pete Kegseth’s favorite pastor is in favor of, along with a lot of other men you seem to support. Get ready to churn some butter I guess. While you’re there, churning away, and whispering to the camera for your beige instagram videos with your four kids lined up at your farmhouse table, be sure to let your daughters know why you think they deserve fewer rights than your sons.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He led the Civil Rights Movement. Let me help you with something. If your current beliefs would put you in opposition to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. if he were alive today, you are on the wrong side of history. This should be obvious. You know, if he had stayed home minding his own business, he wouldn’t have been assassinated and his kids would have grown up with their father. I wonder if the people on my page telling me Renee should have stayed home and thought about her kids, would have said the same thing about Dr. King if they were alive back then. I wonder if they would have white hoods in their closet. I wonder if maybe they might start to realize that getting out in the streets to protest when your government is not following the laws of the Constitution or when the laws of the Constitution need to be amended, is a very powerful way of thinking about your children and the kind of world they’re inheriting. Food for fucking thought.

Rosa Parks: Refused to give up her seat in the “white section” and head to the back of the bus. Do the should-have-stayed-at-home-minding-her-own-business people realize that was a deliberate act of civil disobedience? A nonviolent protest? Ms. Rosa Parks (Queen) was the secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and very much involved in the fight for racial justice and equality. Her arrest for refusing to follow the segregation laws set off the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by local Civil Rights leaders including MLK, Jr. Black people did not ride the public buses for a year, which caused incredible financial strain. That’s how the laws changed. Nonviolent protest is the bedrock of change in our country and always has been. You’d think all these “patriots” might know that, but it seems they are as unfamiliar with American History textbooks as they are with the Bible and Jesus Christ himself.

Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper from Mississippi who was severely beaten and jailed, fired from her job and evicted, all because she tried to register to vote. In 1964 she formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and faced the all-white delegation at the DNC. She gave testimony asking the question any of us could ask right now — Is this America? I can never watch this without crying.

Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Pauli Murray, Audre Lorde, Ella Baker.

John Lewis, who often shared the African proverb, “When you pray, move your feet.” As in, do something. As in, don’t stay home, pretending what happens to your neighbors isn’t your business.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of important protesters, but it’s a good one.

None of these people stayed home minding their own business, because this is our business. Protesting abuses of power and violations of the Constitution and murders of unarmed women committing nonviolent acts of civil disobedience is absolutely the best way I can love my children and think about them right now. If I stay home, they will inherit a country where the executive branch gets to decide who is a good person and who is a loathsome person, who gets to live and who can be shot in the face, who gets to have rights, and who can be taken violently from the streets without a warrant or a day in court — so you’re goddamned right I’ll be out there, and if you actually loved this country, you would be, too.

The ICE agent who shot Renee Nicole Good in the face three times and then called her a fucking bitch was not defending his life, he was defending his fragile ego. Two queer women, one friendly as pie and relaxed, the other not taking him seriously, also relaxed. He did not like that one bit. No one should die at the hands of a man who is far too emotional and should not be trusted with a gun.

There are a lot of men who hate women out there and a lot of women who love them — for reasons that astound and sadden me, and have to do with internalized misogyny and growing up in patriarchal waters that are making us all sick. But my lungs are clear of that poison, and as long as I’m breathing, I will be out there, being the kind of woman some men — and far too many women — hate. Funny thing is, I’ll be doing it with love for this country, my children, and all of my neighbors — alongside my friends.

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Friends, if you are aching for ways to help people in Minnesota, this post by Sarah at Yes & Yes has so many excellent, vetted links at the bottom. She is there on the ground. Sending you all so much love. Don’t give up, don’t give in, don’t be quiet.

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