Japke-d. explains why she sometimes hates men. And then what helps

Last week, after my theater show, a woman came up to me and looked at me with sad eyes and said: “I am often so very angry with men!”

Phew. I thought. Welcome to the club.

Marco Borsato, Lisa’s murder, sexism at work. But also those damn periods. The stomach ache. That you have to squeeze children out of your body. That you have to work ten times harder to be taken as seriously as men. But you still earn 10 to 15 percent less.

And when you finally get some more rest, you get another hormonal renovation. As if you have to take swimming lessons again to be able to move on to the next pool. “Women have it so much harder than men!” she said. “How am I supposed to deal with that? Sometimes I can’t handle it anymore!”

Phew.

Try to imagine it the other way around. That a man would say: ‘I’m so angry with women!’ The house would be too small, and rightly so. But honestly? So I hear this more often. Women who say they hate men. And even more honest? I sometimes think so myself. Don’t tell anyone.

Just last week. Then, after a lecture, I was confronted by a former senior partner of a law firm. Who was dead seriously preaching that women (all women, right) “are incapacitated for three days a month due to their menstruation.”

Wait. Whut!?

At such a moment I really think: ‘all men are assholes’. But usually it drops again. After fifteen minutes. And I think: this hatred obviously makes no sense. Sure, some men give me a hard time sometimes with their misplaced patriarchy, but most other men are just a lot of fun. And great.

Like that other guy. The day after the crying bush with its menstrual story again. That man came up to me and got emotional. About his daughters, and all those other women in the world. How he is ashamed of all those men who make women’s lives miserable. That helps enormously.

Old woman

becoming also helps. Because then you will slowly be bothered less and less, as an old woman. But also because you see things more broadly. Because men have it hard too. The social pressure that you always have to perform and be the breadwinner. That as a father you are ignored on the schoolyard. That you have to know exactly how to deal with women, even though you were never taught that.

A friend said: “Men are taught not to cry, but to be ‘a man’. That they are not to be soft, ‘but to be a man’. They are taught that they can be anything, except chicks. What do you think they think about women after that?”

Also realize that men really cannot empathize with what women experience, because they never experience it themselves. Many men think that you are a woman once or twice a year. They have no idea that this is a continuous stream, from the coffee machine to your mailbox, especially if you stick your beautiful head above the parapet.

how bad things are sometimes done by men, instead of getting angry. Not because you have to, but because it works. Yes, it can sometimes drive you crazy, the patience you have to muster, but otherwise they close down. Stay. Calm. Giving compliments. They ‘go very well with that’, said a friend. And if that doesn’t work, bring in another guy who already gets it. Then they listen immediately!

Scary men

And remember: men are also afraid of scary men, right? Just like us. We expect men to be strong and to call other men out on their sexist behavior, but that is of course just as scary for them as it is for us, maybe even scarier! Because they are then seen as ‘traitors’.

But the best tip I have for man haters is: make sure you get guy friends! Real. Just as it is also very good for men to have women as friends.

Sure, it’s nice to talk to your friends every now and then.all men are trash-memes’. But if, as a woman, you quietly eat a pasta with a few men, and I know, I feel like Job Cohen right now, but that’s how it is: then you understand each other. Then you hear what they are struggling with. What is expected of them. What they dare not say. What they are doing wrong. What they try. And sometimes they also think: ‘I want to do better, but I don’t know how’. What I also mean: surround yourself with the good men.

There are plenty.

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