WHY I DISLIKE MEN

An essay by Carolina Spurny

I want to start off by saying, that this essay is not meant in any way to offend and hate on
men, this is just my attempt on showing why sometimes I dislike them. Not even I can say
that I hate men, because I am an 18-year-old straight woman that is sadly very often
infatuated by men.

With that said let's now turn our attention to the actual reasons I sometimes dislike men.
The first thing is the fact that we live in a man’s world. „Going back to the theory of Man the
Hunter, the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall. When it
comes to the other half of humanity, there is often nothing but silence. And these silences are
everywhere. Films, news, literature, science, city planning, economics, the stories we tell
ourselves about our past, present and future, are all marked – disfigured – by a female-
shaped “absent presence”. (Carolina Criado Perez, theguardian.com) Most of the things in the
world are invented for the comfort of men. For example, our whole lives are based on a 24-
hour routine, we are meant to go every day to work/school and have the same performance,
mood, and motivation. This is not a struggle for men, because their body works on a 24-hour
routine, but for us woman our body works on weekly cycles. Our hormones, mood and
abilities change every week. Every week we have predispositions for other things, one week
we are more creative, the other we have more energy and so it goes on. That means it’s hard
for us to give the same performance every day. Men often just need the night to restart
themselves, this doesn’t work for women. To give an illustration of what I’m talking about,
for example cars were designed for the man body. I didn’t even know this for a long time, but
car seats were designed for men and that means that we can never be so comfortable and
sitting in a car as men. But this isn’t just about comfort, it’s also about safety. As Carolina
Criado Perez, a British writer and journalist states in her article: “How women are put at risk
on the roads”, women have a 47% more likely chance to die in a car crash, because the car
seats were designed for the average man body.

Furthermore, it's essential to note, that our world is not as safe because of men. Men are
responsible for most of the crime in our world. Rape and sexual assault are mainly caused by
men. I personally as a girl can never really feel safe when I’m alone. Men will never
understand the fear and uncertainty woman feel when they are walking alone at night. I love
night walks, but I can never feel the whole experience of just enjoying the peace and quiet of
the night, because there is always a chance someone can attack or assault me. And I hate
this. I’m not saying they always feel safe when they are walking alone at night, they can also
be attacked and assaulted, but it’s not so common as for women. Men always mention that
not all men are like this that not all men are rapists and sexual assaulters. That may be true,
but that doesn’t change the fact that almost all women have had an experience with sexual
assault and that is in my opinion not okay. I’m not talking just about rape, I’m talking about
attempted rape, groping, comments about body parts, catcalls and so much more. It’s the
man that offers you to help you with your paper and hits or touches you without your
consent. It’s the man that is your boss and jokes about your long legs and that you should
wear shorter skirts, so he has something nice to look at. You just smile politely and change
the subject, because you want to keep the job you so hardly worked for. You think all of this
is normal because it has happened to every woman you know. You tell your parents, and
they say, “boys will be boys,” and that you’re too sensitive, you should probably learn to live
with it because this is normal. This is sadly the world we live in…

Having generally discussed these aspects, let's now explore an aspect of men that is for me
personally a very big reason why I dislike men…Their ego. The man-ego is a man's sense of
self-esteem or self-importance. Every person has an ego, some more and some less, but this
is not what I’m talking about. The man-ego is causing the behavior that I dislike the most. It
causes that men often tend to “mansplain”. “Mansplaining” is a way of explaining something
to women that men think they don’t understand by undermining their intelligence. I have
nothing against somebody trying to help and explain something to me, but I hate when
somebody does this in a condescending way. The worst case is, when the woman knows well
enough about what she’s doing, but they still must prove that they are “better” than her.
Some men just can’t accept that a woman can understand and do something better than
them. Another behavior that is caused by the man-ego is how easily they get offended. I’m
not saying women also don’t get offended easily, but when a woman overreacts and gets
offended, she is called dramatic and oversensitive. When a man overreacts and gets
offended, he often acts like a child that didn’t get exactly what he wanted and it’s then up to
the woman to apologize so he can calm down. For example, when a woman is not giving
enough personal space or wants to see a man too often, she is called needy and clingy and
must be careful how she acts, for the man to not get scared easily. When a man does the
same thing, and the woman doesn’t like it he accuses her of being cold and ungrateful and
takes offence. In most cases, this causes that women must “walk on tippytoes” around the
man until he calms down, but men never do this in exchange. I honestly don’t believe it’s fair.
I refuse to act like this around men just because they can’t handle their emotions and
reactions so well. I again want to mention, that this doesn’t fit every man, everyone is
different and acts differently, I’m just stating this based on my experience.

In essence, it can be concluded that I have my reasons for disliking men. There is to say, that
this is just my personal opinion, everyone is free to think what they want. Nonetheless,
women are also not perfect. Notably, there are a lot of things I do love about men and for
that reason I would not want to live in a world where they don’t exist. I am well aware that
this makes me a bit of a hypocrite, but I did mention that women are not perfect.