Love me or hate me,

Both are in my favour,

If you love me I’ll always be in your heart,

If you hate me, I’ll always be in your mind.

— Shakespeare

There really is a thin line between love and hate, with both at times merging, conflating, bonding until they are indecipherable. Well, maybe hate is a strong word, for it conjures up scenes of violence, evil and diabolical behaviour. But at least there is a strong resentment that many women have towards men.

“I just can’t stand your presence, can’t even bear to watch you eat.”

Not all women, mark you, and not towards all men, but deep down in the bowels of their subconscious many women harbour a dislike, a resentment, a muted hatred of men that often affects their relationship.

It was esteemed psychologist Sigmund Freud who postulated that most of men’s psychological problems stemmed from their early relationship and interaction with their mothers. So perhaps, just perhaps, women’s hatred of men stemmed from their interaction or lack of it with their fathers.

Well, maybe some do, but my research unearthed much more than that. In many cases it’s a deep-rooted envy that women have towards men that foments this subtle hatred. Now, before you get your knickers in a twist, there is a famous theory of penis envy that was postulated by not only Freud, but also French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. “Supposed envy of the male’s possession of a penis to account for some aspects of female behaviour, notably the castration complex.”

The two words that sprang out at me were “castration complex”. Ouch! Was that the inspiration for the feminist movement back in the 60s and now the Me Too Movement? Those women really expressed their overt hatred for men.

We’ll see what that’s all about, why women hate men, right after these responses to ‘The perfect gentleman’.

Hi Tony,

I guess you could say that gentlemen were chivalrous. My Cambridge dictionary defines chivalry as very polite, honest, and kind behaviour, especially by men towards women. While I continue to be chivalrous towards women in today’s society, not so much with men, because they don’t recognise chivalry or just plain common courtesy. The great boxer, ‘Gentleman Jim Corbett’ in the late 1800s was devastating in the ring, but was chivalrous with the ladies. He was no pushover.

Gordon

Tony,

The perfect gentleman died long ago, only to be replaced with the brutish thug who seems to capture the hearts and minds of both men and women. We live in an era where convicted criminals are glorified, some even honoured, while decent, hard-working, honest, moral people get no recognition. A very eminent person here once said, ‘The man who plays by the rules is the man who gets shafted.’ Well, the modern gentleman gets that shaft shoved where the sun don’t shine, so he better pull it out and start swinging. The perfect gentleman is extinct.

‘Lord’ Nelson

Have you ever wondered why women are always cursing men, berating them, nagging them, belittling them, always on their case,? Well, I’m not saying that it happens in every single relationship, far from it, but certainly often enough, especially now when women have a louder voice, to warrant taking note of it.

You won’t hear men going around cursing women, but surely you will hear the cacophonous chattering of women chastising men.

“He’s so worthless, has no ambition.”

“He drinks and smokes too much.”

“He’s so lazy, lives on the couch watching sports and does nothing around the house.”

“All he wants is sex all the time, even when I’m tired.”

Now, try to give me examples of men cursing women. You’d have to think long and hard to find one, well, maybe with the exception of, “She always refusing me sex.” But apart from that, the lashing litany let loose from the lips of women is legendary.

Granted, some men deserve the cursing, but most don’t, and still get the berating. Why is this so? Well, let’s go back to what Freud said about penis envy where women resent the fact that men have a penis and they don’t.

A penis wields power, it’s like a sword, a scimitar, a hammer that exudes strength, even more when it’s of considerable size. Women wish that they had that, and because they don’t, there is a deep subconscious envy.

Their equivalent organ does not exude such awesome power and in fact a weak man is referred to as a p….y. whereas a strong man is said to have a powerful phallus and a great pair of gonads.

“He certainly had the balls to stand up to his boss like that.”

In contrast, “What a weak cowardly p…y that man is, mek him wife treat him suh.”

So, deep down this penis envy foments a resentment and hatred that many women have towards men. To compound this, that object of their envy and hatred is then thrust upon them, sometimes against their wishes. I have asked a few women and they actually admit to it, while others vehemently deny it and say that I’m chatting rubbish. The irony is, what the women possess has far more power than the penis, and many men have fallen prey to it.

But psychosis goes so deep that we often aren’t even aware of why we do certain things. What many women will admit to is their impression that men seem to have life so easy compared to them, and can do almost anything and get away with it. Most of the women polled said that a woman’s life is infinitely more difficult than a man’s, and deep down they resent men for that.

“I watched my mother bring us up almost single-handedly, while my worthless father drank rum.”

That exposure to a worthless man, her father, impacted negatively on her psyche and she grew up with a resentment/hatred towards men, albeit subconsciously. When it comes to child-rearing though, that’s where the hatred manifests itself. A man can impregnate a woman then simply walk away, leaving her with the lifelong task of raising that child all by herself.

That builds up a deep, searing resentment and is a feeling that is often transferred to any other man that she gets involved with. Deep in her mind she thinks that all men are the same, so all it takes is a trigger to bring that hatred to a flashpoint.

“You’re all alike! After you get what you want, you just leave.”

Abandonment issues are real.

Then there is sex. Many women actually resent men for their ability to have sex whenever and wherever they please. A man can hop from bed to bed with a slew of different women and still be accepted by society.

Not so for the woman, who has to keep her sexual desires under wraps and certainly not act out her thoughts. Women have told me that the would love to have had a taste of a variety of men when they were younger, or even now, but social mores forbid that. Girls really can’t do what the guys do and still be a lady. “I hated it when my brother could have all those sexual experiences and I couldn’t.”

Women were encouraged to “save themselves for marriage” and many hated that. That word hate keeps on popping up in the conversation. Because of this, many women now use sex as their means of revenge. There has to be a reason that so many wives deny their husbands sex, and it’s quite possible that’s one of them.

She knows that he enjoys sex, so by denying him it’s her way of expressing her hate, albeit subtly. Remember what I said about which organ is more powerful? Well, see it deh. How come you never hear of a husband depriving his wife of sex, how come? If the penis is so powerful, how come some men can’t use it to their advantage?

Can you imagine him saying to her, “No sex for you tonight, I have a headache.” Her response would most likely be, “Thank God for that.”

Women hate men because, in their mind, they think that everything bad only happens to them. There’s the ‘monthly curse’, the pain of pregnancy, the agony of childbirth, the crosses of raising the pickney, then the arid landscape of menopause.

“You men have no such experience, and I hate that.”

But in spite of all this resentment, dislike, envy and hate that women have towards men, they still get involved with them. Why? Remember what they said about the thin line between love and hate? Those two passions are so powerful that they often have an irresistible, magnetic pull that women cannot resist.

“I know how he is and I can’t stand his dutty ways, but I can’t resist him.”

What a conundrum, what a dilemma, what a prekeh. Still, with all that being said, between Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and myself, it’s better to be loved or hated, but the worst of all is indifference.

More time.

seido1yard@gmail.com

Footnote: Sometimes it’s the little things in life that have a great impact on you. Readers always interact with me about my column, which I enjoy, but what’s amazing is how far back readers will go, talking about columns that I don’t even remember. Some even save them. Recently one e-mailed me asking about a column titled ‘Auction block’ that I wrote many years ago. He said that he had the newspaper copy but couldn’t find it. Here’s what he expressed, “It was a brilliant satirical piece basked in the most clever humoured style, one of your best pieces to date. It applied then and now and will outlive you with the reality message of the calamity facing ageing women.”

Thanks brother, made my day.