Men are not so mad, bad or sad that they can’t make choices, and they are not so infantile or helpless that they can’t be answerable for those choices.
"After making statements like this, I’m supposed to launch into a #NotAllMen qualifier to prove I am not a man-hating witch-crone ... "
NO. YOU'RE. NOT!
Men have a genius for inventing excuses. The slovenly media aid and abet without a sliver of shame.
Men who perpetrate these horrendous crimes are also *not* monsters, as if it's a separate, non-human species which behaves in these ways. Stop monsterfying male human actions. Men have choices. Men act on those choices.
As for the bleating #notallmen flock: shut the fuck up and LISTEN to what women are saying.
My ex husband used the SMH’s coverage of Bettina Arndt’s “woman need to get in the canoe and paddle” arguments to coerce me into sex. Her work enabled marital rape. I hope she reads this too.
She was actually called “an apologist for rape” coercing and guilt tripping women into having sex whether they felt like it or not.
The fact that coercion is rape doesn’t seem to trouble her at all. Newsflash Bettina, not fighting him off does not mean “consensual”. It means fear or exhaustion or both.
And there’s no turning back for her. She’s built her entire career on making excuses for men’s awful behaviour, including blaming women for it. She has indeed promoted rape in marriage.
And as a result she has a rabid following of men who hate and blame women for everything that’s going wrong in their lives, including that their relationships fail.
She is single-handedly helping these men to continue to ruin their lives, and harm their entire families.
Yes. I recently read one of Bettina Arndts articles in response to it being harrowingly dissected by Bitchy History. It seems many of her supporters are also women . . . .
Oh God, I’d forgotten (how could I) that she even made excuses for the murder of Hannah Clarke and her three beautiful angels, saying that we should be open minded because maybe Rowan Baxter had been “driven too far”. The bastard burned them alive.
And her “Fake Rape Crisis Tour” of university campuses, putting the view that victims were liars.
They have a problem of not caring at all. Not bothering to examine why that's a problem. Despite explanations from those affected, they still insist there is no problem. Worse, they turn it around saying we are the problem for pointing it out. For "ruining" everything.
This is so on point, and it needs to be said. Brilliant.
And some male behaviour goes beyond being opportunistic - some deliberately degrade and erode a woman’s (read former/current intimate partner’s) capacity to resist.
This is persistent behaviour over a long period of time. This is calculated. Carefully kept within the bounds of plausible deniability. All socially sanctioned by other men.
One of the things I've noticed over the years is that understanding why a man behaves the way he does and holding him accountable for that behaviour are not mutually exclusive.
In fact, I think confusing explanation with excuse has probably done enormous damage.
I've spent much of my life trying to understand insecure male behaviour, my own primarily, having been raised by an alcoholic and highly abusive father in the pure patriarchy culture of 1970s northern England. Not because I believe any of it should be excused, quite the opposite in fact.
Understanding it simply makes it easier to recognise, challenge and stop tolerating. Ultimately, if we understood the root of the damage it also makes it more possible to heal...and that benefits everyone just as the patriarchy damages almost everyone.
The reasons matter because we can hold people accountable and it's the accountability that matters more.
100%! Bravo for tying it to the factual data and saying it outload. I have always known it but lacked the confidence to say it outload. I am hetroexhausted with logic of men.
As has often been quoted, men are lucky that women aren't looking for vengeance, that we're only looking for respect and equality. I myself could not honestly say that I'm not looking for revenge because I fucking well am. Just don't quite know how to get it without blowing up my life. So you know what? I'll just keep thinking my evil thoughts and writing my man-hating stuff. Their words, not mine.
I'd be totally comfortable with rapists having their dicks surgically removed and the word rapist tattooed across their faces. As far as I'm concerned, if you can't be a responsible owner of a penis, you don't deserve to have one.
Excellent, Jane. Loved the "good woman proof of life" bit -- and the cash register analogy. Great analogy and spot on. Thank you for saying what needed to be said.
"What if all that violence, objectification and contempt got so exhausting and damaging that women stopped trying to understand, cajole and persuade men, and just hated them instead? What if women were as socialized to rage and violence as men?"
The novel posited such a world, but the reason that in the end I didn't buy into the story is that women, once they were equipped naturally at birth with a special power over men, used it to hurt men.
We see over and over again that women have the power to hurt men but don't wield it. I have this fantasy that in response to deep fake revenge, p***, women will start making deep fake videos of men experiencing erectile dysfunction. But I know that won't happen, because women are raised to be, at the lowest bar, decent to others.
(My dictation inserted the asterisks... Apparently Google fears the word that rhymes with corn!)
I agree with your central point that men who commit violence, abuse, harassment, stalking, or sexual assault are responsible for their actions. Explanations should not become excuses, and accountability matters.
Where I struggle with the article is the framing.
As someone with a sociology background, I worry that "men are the problem" risks collapsing a complex social phenomenon into a single category. It seems to move quickly from specific perpetrators to men as a group, and from individual acts of violence to broader questions of masculinity, participation, and social responsibility.
My concern is not that we should be more sympathetic to perpetrators. Rather, it is that understanding causation is not the same thing as excusing behaviour. If we stop asking why some men become violent, misogynistic, radicalized, or controlling because we fear those explanations might sound like excuses, we also limit our ability to prevent those outcomes.
I am also uncertain about the strategic value of this framing. If the goal is social change, history suggests that movements often require support from people who benefit, at least in some ways, from the systems being criticized. Broad statements such as "men are the problem" may feel morally satisfying, but they can also alienate potential allies who might otherwise be receptive to the larger argument.
To me, the more interesting question is whether the problem is men themselves, or the social, cultural, and institutional structures that shape behaviour and distribute power. Those are not necessarily the same thing.
I'd be interested in hearing how you distinguish between holding individuals accountable and analysing the larger systems that produce those patterns in the first place.
If this piece is aimed at the violence of men, then it is well placed. However, it feels aimed at all men. Much use of absolute verbiage.
I don’t think most men commit violent acts mentioned in this article, much less all. The ones that do, yes, put them away. I always said if I ever ran for public office, penalizing sexual crimes heavier would be first on my list.
I think one clear solution is more fathers. They mitigate misuse of aggression. Aggression is natural in males. But it’s like fire— tamed, it’s beautiful and warm. Set loose with no boundaries it will destroy everything in its path.
Fathers teach boys how to tame such aggression. While it is true certain aspects of prosocial behavior should be expected, human nature simply doesn’t work that way. And if fathers don’t teach boys, they become maladapted young men with no boundary on their human-nature desires.
So in a sense, I may agree that men are the problem. Fathers need to teach boys. And that’s something I’ll champion any day of the week.
The article is explicitly not focused on male violence, it's focused on male contempt, with violence being the most obvious example. She claims all men engage in contemptuous behaviors toward women.
Your comment is an example of what she's talking about. You say her article is about the wrong thing, tell her she shouldn't speak in absolutes (even though the title is "Men Are the Problem"), and then tell her the solution is more fathers, when she says fathers are the ones who teach men to mistreat women.
So you've ignored her message to women ("stop making excuses for men") and have now centered the taming of men's beautiful fiery aggression (romanticizing the male urge to punch and rape women) as the solution.
I think that is a little circular, because you're putting forth a definition of "the problem" that contradicts the author's premise. Who is "the problem" behind the January 6th insurrection, MAGA, or only the people who actually entered the Capitol building?
I believe Gilmore is arguing that men should be thought of as a system, and that the system as a whole hates women. When a single man beats a woman, you don't just say his fists were the problem. And so, in her view, your accusation of bigotry may as well come from a rapist's left eyebrow.
The insistence on being seen as an individual (when it benefits you) is part of the accountability dodging she is calling out. You can simply refuse to think systemically, but her whole point is that life as a woman is death by a thousand cuts, so even if you don't feel like you are doing harm, her experience is that you are--specifically with comments like this one.
The problem is it’s not even close to the majority reality. There is no system. Systems are made up of individuals. And to place blame on all individuals for the transgressions of a minority is ultimately nihilistic, unfair, inaccurate, and gets no one anywhere.
There are violent men. And men are more violent than women. Very true. This does not say one thing about most men. Yet she targets all men.
Yes, men are capable of great danger. Good fathers who teach boys wisdom on when to use such danger and when not to, along with how to properly treat women, are the single best antidote to violence against women.
When to use it: protect women and children from attackers
When not to: assert physical dominance on anyone, including women and children.
Neither I nor the author made any claim that most men are violent. If your response to the article is that you refuse to think of men as a system, and instead must divvy up men into good men and bad men, then you are simply not engaging with the text. That is your choice, but you are doing the exact thing she complains about men doing.
Also, even your explanation for how men can be good revolves around protecting women from "attackers," ie, violent men. Do you see why women don't want to be the prop in this inner and outer war men wage with themselves about whether to rape or protect women?
I can see how they “wouldn’t want to.” I do. But I also know reality. Human nature is what it is. My desire is for more men to be the man the moment demands. There will always be violent people. Men and women. I wish for there to be more men ready to protect and defend.
The very first sentence of my first comment said, “if this is aimed at violent men, then it is placed well.” I stand by that. I don’t abhor her stance. It just felt like a mass accusation, rather than a call to stand up to these degenerates who possess no moral code. Your comments seem to support the sentiment of mass accusation.
There is nothing inherently wrong with being male. There is nothing wrong with being inherently aggressive. There is nothing wrong with masculinity. What each individual does with all of that determines their place in society.
The notion that most men are given to punching and raping is absurdity at its finest. It’s nowhere near critical thinking. The idea that most fathers “teach men to mistreat women” is yet another emotional rage-bait with no substance.
I don’t typically engage with obvious misnomers or lies. Just presenting ideas and hoping they inspire.
2. You take the piece to be about "violence of men."
3. You write: "Aggression is natural in males. But it’s like fire— tamed, it’s beautiful and warm."
4. I point out that this romanticizes the violence under discussion, centering male psychology in the process.
5. Now you are saying men are not "given to" violence. I am referencing the same beautiful, warm fire of which you said, "set loose with no boundaries it will destroy everything in its path." I am assuming that includes women.
"After making statements like this, I’m supposed to launch into a #NotAllMen qualifier to prove I am not a man-hating witch-crone ... "
NO. YOU'RE. NOT!
Men have a genius for inventing excuses. The slovenly media aid and abet without a sliver of shame.
Men who perpetrate these horrendous crimes are also *not* monsters, as if it's a separate, non-human species which behaves in these ways. Stop monsterfying male human actions. Men have choices. Men act on those choices.
As for the bleating #notallmen flock: shut the fuck up and LISTEN to what women are saying.
This has to end.
I really like this level or articulated rage on a man.
I hope Bettina Arndt reads this. She’s been a sycophantic apologist for men’s appalling behaviour, including rape, for decades.
The men who follow her are … predictable.
My ex husband used the SMH’s coverage of Bettina Arndt’s “woman need to get in the canoe and paddle” arguments to coerce me into sex. Her work enabled marital rape. I hope she reads this too.
She was actually called “an apologist for rape” coercing and guilt tripping women into having sex whether they felt like it or not.
The fact that coercion is rape doesn’t seem to trouble her at all. Newsflash Bettina, not fighting him off does not mean “consensual”. It means fear or exhaustion or both.
And there’s no turning back for her. She’s built her entire career on making excuses for men’s awful behaviour, including blaming women for it. She has indeed promoted rape in marriage.
And as a result she has a rabid following of men who hate and blame women for everything that’s going wrong in their lives, including that their relationships fail.
She is single-handedly helping these men to continue to ruin their lives, and harm their entire families.
Yes. I recently read one of Bettina Arndts articles in response to it being harrowingly dissected by Bitchy History. It seems many of her supporters are also women . . . .
Oh God, I’d forgotten (how could I) that she even made excuses for the murder of Hannah Clarke and her three beautiful angels, saying that we should be open minded because maybe Rowan Baxter had been “driven too far”. The bastard burned them alive.
And her “Fake Rape Crisis Tour” of university campuses, putting the view that victims were liars.
What a disgusting POS.
They have a problem of not caring at all. Not bothering to examine why that's a problem. Despite explanations from those affected, they still insist there is no problem. Worse, they turn it around saying we are the problem for pointing it out. For "ruining" everything.
This is so on point, and it needs to be said. Brilliant.
And some male behaviour goes beyond being opportunistic - some deliberately degrade and erode a woman’s (read former/current intimate partner’s) capacity to resist.
This is persistent behaviour over a long period of time. This is calculated. Carefully kept within the bounds of plausible deniability. All socially sanctioned by other men.
Exactly!
Love this - I’ve missed your writing. And your AI declaration is perfection.
Thank you!!
Really profound article, thank you for this.
One of the things I've noticed over the years is that understanding why a man behaves the way he does and holding him accountable for that behaviour are not mutually exclusive.
In fact, I think confusing explanation with excuse has probably done enormous damage.
I've spent much of my life trying to understand insecure male behaviour, my own primarily, having been raised by an alcoholic and highly abusive father in the pure patriarchy culture of 1970s northern England. Not because I believe any of it should be excused, quite the opposite in fact.
Understanding it simply makes it easier to recognise, challenge and stop tolerating. Ultimately, if we understood the root of the damage it also makes it more possible to heal...and that benefits everyone just as the patriarchy damages almost everyone.
The reasons matter because we can hold people accountable and it's the accountability that matters more.
100%! Bravo for tying it to the factual data and saying it outload. I have always known it but lacked the confidence to say it outload. I am hetroexhausted with logic of men.
💯⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Just signed up on Substack - long time reader and lover of your thinking. Agree with musings and rationale...in fact, could not agree with you more!
Thank you Mark. Much appreciated
As has often been quoted, men are lucky that women aren't looking for vengeance, that we're only looking for respect and equality. I myself could not honestly say that I'm not looking for revenge because I fucking well am. Just don't quite know how to get it without blowing up my life. So you know what? I'll just keep thinking my evil thoughts and writing my man-hating stuff. Their words, not mine.
Power to your arm Michelle
I'd be totally comfortable with rapists having their dicks surgically removed and the word rapist tattooed across their faces. As far as I'm concerned, if you can't be a responsible owner of a penis, you don't deserve to have one.
Settle for respect and equality? Yeah, nah. I agree Michele, why should we?
Great to see you so on form 'work-wise' Jane how are you health -wise?
I’m doing well, thanks Deb.
Excellent, Jane. Loved the "good woman proof of life" bit -- and the cash register analogy. Great analogy and spot on. Thank you for saying what needed to be said.
How I loathe the “one of the good ones” trope. It makes me physically ill when anyone says it.
Have you read the book, The Power?
"What if all that violence, objectification and contempt got so exhausting and damaging that women stopped trying to understand, cajole and persuade men, and just hated them instead? What if women were as socialized to rage and violence as men?"
The novel posited such a world, but the reason that in the end I didn't buy into the story is that women, once they were equipped naturally at birth with a special power over men, used it to hurt men.
We see over and over again that women have the power to hurt men but don't wield it. I have this fantasy that in response to deep fake revenge, p***, women will start making deep fake videos of men experiencing erectile dysfunction. But I know that won't happen, because women are raised to be, at the lowest bar, decent to others.
(My dictation inserted the asterisks... Apparently Google fears the word that rhymes with corn!)
Great insight.
I agree with your central point that men who commit violence, abuse, harassment, stalking, or sexual assault are responsible for their actions. Explanations should not become excuses, and accountability matters.
Where I struggle with the article is the framing.
As someone with a sociology background, I worry that "men are the problem" risks collapsing a complex social phenomenon into a single category. It seems to move quickly from specific perpetrators to men as a group, and from individual acts of violence to broader questions of masculinity, participation, and social responsibility.
My concern is not that we should be more sympathetic to perpetrators. Rather, it is that understanding causation is not the same thing as excusing behaviour. If we stop asking why some men become violent, misogynistic, radicalized, or controlling because we fear those explanations might sound like excuses, we also limit our ability to prevent those outcomes.
I am also uncertain about the strategic value of this framing. If the goal is social change, history suggests that movements often require support from people who benefit, at least in some ways, from the systems being criticized. Broad statements such as "men are the problem" may feel morally satisfying, but they can also alienate potential allies who might otherwise be receptive to the larger argument.
To me, the more interesting question is whether the problem is men themselves, or the social, cultural, and institutional structures that shape behaviour and distribute power. Those are not necessarily the same thing.
I'd be interested in hearing how you distinguish between holding individuals accountable and analysing the larger systems that produce those patterns in the first place.
If this piece is aimed at the violence of men, then it is well placed. However, it feels aimed at all men. Much use of absolute verbiage.
I don’t think most men commit violent acts mentioned in this article, much less all. The ones that do, yes, put them away. I always said if I ever ran for public office, penalizing sexual crimes heavier would be first on my list.
I think one clear solution is more fathers. They mitigate misuse of aggression. Aggression is natural in males. But it’s like fire— tamed, it’s beautiful and warm. Set loose with no boundaries it will destroy everything in its path.
Fathers teach boys how to tame such aggression. While it is true certain aspects of prosocial behavior should be expected, human nature simply doesn’t work that way. And if fathers don’t teach boys, they become maladapted young men with no boundary on their human-nature desires.
So in a sense, I may agree that men are the problem. Fathers need to teach boys. And that’s something I’ll champion any day of the week.
"If this piece is aimed at the violence of men"
The article is explicitly not focused on male violence, it's focused on male contempt, with violence being the most obvious example. She claims all men engage in contemptuous behaviors toward women.
Your comment is an example of what she's talking about. You say her article is about the wrong thing, tell her she shouldn't speak in absolutes (even though the title is "Men Are the Problem"), and then tell her the solution is more fathers, when she says fathers are the ones who teach men to mistreat women.
So you've ignored her message to women ("stop making excuses for men") and have now centered the taming of men's beautiful fiery aggression (romanticizing the male urge to punch and rape women) as the solution.
Well, Men, as a group, aren’t the problem, and it’s bigoted to say we are.
I think that is a little circular, because you're putting forth a definition of "the problem" that contradicts the author's premise. Who is "the problem" behind the January 6th insurrection, MAGA, or only the people who actually entered the Capitol building?
I believe Gilmore is arguing that men should be thought of as a system, and that the system as a whole hates women. When a single man beats a woman, you don't just say his fists were the problem. And so, in her view, your accusation of bigotry may as well come from a rapist's left eyebrow.
The insistence on being seen as an individual (when it benefits you) is part of the accountability dodging she is calling out. You can simply refuse to think systemically, but her whole point is that life as a woman is death by a thousand cuts, so even if you don't feel like you are doing harm, her experience is that you are--specifically with comments like this one.
The problem is it’s not even close to the majority reality. There is no system. Systems are made up of individuals. And to place blame on all individuals for the transgressions of a minority is ultimately nihilistic, unfair, inaccurate, and gets no one anywhere.
There are violent men. And men are more violent than women. Very true. This does not say one thing about most men. Yet she targets all men.
Yes, men are capable of great danger. Good fathers who teach boys wisdom on when to use such danger and when not to, along with how to properly treat women, are the single best antidote to violence against women.
When to use it: protect women and children from attackers
When not to: assert physical dominance on anyone, including women and children.
Neither I nor the author made any claim that most men are violent. If your response to the article is that you refuse to think of men as a system, and instead must divvy up men into good men and bad men, then you are simply not engaging with the text. That is your choice, but you are doing the exact thing she complains about men doing.
Also, even your explanation for how men can be good revolves around protecting women from "attackers," ie, violent men. Do you see why women don't want to be the prop in this inner and outer war men wage with themselves about whether to rape or protect women?
I can see how they “wouldn’t want to.” I do. But I also know reality. Human nature is what it is. My desire is for more men to be the man the moment demands. There will always be violent people. Men and women. I wish for there to be more men ready to protect and defend.
The very first sentence of my first comment said, “if this is aimed at violent men, then it is placed well.” I stand by that. I don’t abhor her stance. It just felt like a mass accusation, rather than a call to stand up to these degenerates who possess no moral code. Your comments seem to support the sentiment of mass accusation.
There is nothing inherently wrong with being male. There is nothing wrong with being inherently aggressive. There is nothing wrong with masculinity. What each individual does with all of that determines their place in society.
The notion that most men are given to punching and raping is absurdity at its finest. It’s nowhere near critical thinking. The idea that most fathers “teach men to mistreat women” is yet another emotional rage-bait with no substance.
I don’t typically engage with obvious misnomers or lies. Just presenting ideas and hoping they inspire.
1. Author talks about punching and raping.
2. You take the piece to be about "violence of men."
3. You write: "Aggression is natural in males. But it’s like fire— tamed, it’s beautiful and warm."
4. I point out that this romanticizes the violence under discussion, centering male psychology in the process.
5. Now you are saying men are not "given to" violence. I am referencing the same beautiful, warm fire of which you said, "set loose with no boundaries it will destroy everything in its path." I am assuming that includes women.
i love your AI disclaimer too ✊🏽
Sharing this far and wide because everyone I know needs to read this and think!
Great post 🙏
Oh dear. Very depressing!!! Cheer up!