One of the downsides to being a gay woman is that it’s practically impossible to hold a critical opinion of male behaviour without someone pointing the finger at you and calling you a “man-hating lesbian.”
No matter how valid your criticism may be, you run the risk of being perceived as a cantankerous old crow who lives in a bat-riddled cave, grinds bones, hexes the patriarchy, and hosts tea parties with her shrunken head collection.
A straight friend of mine was delighted to tell me that a guy she recently went out with picked her up from her front door instead of texting her and telling her to come out to the car.
She was positively beaming and massively impressed by this gesture.
I was not.
“Oh come on, you man-hating lesbian”, she laughed.
While I know she said it in jest, it did get me thinking:
the bar is in hell.
does merely acknowledging this fact really make me a man-hating lesbian?
What does that even mean?
I think the idea of the “man-hating lesbian” is one that can be approached from a multitude of angles, but for the sake of keeping things concise, I’d like to address the two main driving forces behind this divisive and unflattering moniker.
However, before I delve into the whys and the wherefores, I think it’s important for us to really break this down.
What the heck is a “man-hating lesbian”?
At face value, a man-hating lesbian appears to be just that:
a lesbian who hates men.
And while I know for a fact that they exist, I don’t think that every lesbian who has been awarded this title actually fits the description. At least I don’t.
Sure, the lesbian part I’ve got down pat. Not to brag or anything.
But the man-hating part? Just because my friend considered extraordinary what I deemed as basic courtesy? Is coming to the door really worth a celebratory song and dance or is it time for me to start shopping for a starter cauldron?
One thing I will say is that pondering this particular topic did confirm something I should’ve known to be the case from the start.
Literally every gender-related conundrum seems to originate from one particular construct. One that never fails to rear its ugly head at the mere mention of womanhood or sexuality or even humanity, at this point.
It’s the very reason why a woman whose sexual identity is rooted in the literal absence of men is somehow believed to fixate on them enough to hate them.
And that, my friend, is:
The patriarchy. Quelle surprise.
Due to us living in an androcentric society that positions men at the heart of all significant operations, anything that exists in opposition to that — in this case, lesbianism — is viewed as a danger to its stability.
Of course, I should say that secure men don’t typically adopt this attitude. The idea of the lesbian is only threatening to a subset of men besieged by fragile masculinity.
Think about why you frequently hear lesbians referred to as “man-haters”, but never gay men referred to as “woman-haters”.
This is because men are socially dominant and women aren’t.
A gay man isn’t a threat to a woman’s social position because she isn’t at the top, so she isn’t at risk of being “dethroned” in any way due to not being the pick of the bunch.
Insecure men assume that the only reason lesbians would not be interested in them sexually is because they “hate” them — not simply because they are not attracted to them.
But, from my experience, this is a common misconception. Lesbians (at least the ones I know) don’t hate men. At least not in the violent, bra-burning way that is commonly assumed.
We simply don’t want them.
What’s love got to do with it?
I think this trope is also largely perpetuated by our social conditioning, especially when it comes to romantic relations between the sexes.
We’re conditioned to believe that women are more complex and seldom satisfied; that we require men to jump through flaming hoops to impress us and that those who do are the elusive few who possess an abundance of brawn and know-how — the recipe for the secret sauce, so to speak.
Men, on the other hand, are portrayed to be smooth-brained simpletons void of depth or dimension. Just give them food, shelter, and sex and they’re as happy as Larry.
Because of this, I think that straight women have a lot more tolerance and sympathy for men overall, especially when it comes to the pursuit of a relationship.
Since they don’t know what it’s like to court a woman personally, coupled with the belief that women are inherently tricky, there’s the automatic assumption that romancing a woman is difficult.
I, too, fell into that trap.
Before I started dating women, I assumed that a man’s role in the formation of a relationship was more demanding than a woman’s since he is usually the one who does the “heavy lifting” when it comes to getting a relationship off the ground — introductions, striking up a conversation, carrying said conversation well, moving things to the next level, wooing, pursuing, and a long et cetera.
But after having been in multiple long-term relationships with women, I can honestly say that it’s not that hard to:
date one
do it well
It’s really quite easy to pick up a bunch of flowers on your way home from work.
It’s not difficult to run her a candle-lit bubble bath when you know she’s had a hard day.
It’s easy to memorise her favourite breakfast and bring it to her in bed on a Sunday morning.
It’s not hard to plan a date you know she’s going to love.
As I mentioned in this article, women in lesbian relationships often take on domestic roles traditionally reserved for men, and we handle it just fine.
Heading the household, providing emotional support, childrearing… none of these things are inherently difficult to do.
Men just get away with acting as if they are because they’ve been allowed to weaponise their incompetence with straight women since time immemorial.
People chuckle when they see a father struggling to do his infant daughter’s pigtails, or when a boyfriend is tasked with washing the vegetables and he does so with dish soap. This is somehow endearing.
It’s often seen as “cute” when a woman sends her male partner to the supermarket with a list and he calls her 150 times because he can’t find anything.
Poor guy, he’s so silly.
The difference between how a lesbian sees this and how a straight woman sees this boils down to one major factor:
Attraction.
One of the main reasons we lesbians have a reputation for disliking men is because the behaviours that straight women typically find charming due to attraction are totally lost on us.
Without attraction, they are irritating, obnoxious, or just straight up inconvenient.
You’re telling me that this man eats this food on a daily basis and yet can’t locate it in a store specifically designed to present it to him?
You give him an itemised list with prepackaged foodstuffs on it, and he acts like you’ve asked him to go foraging for berries in the woods?
The attraction women feel towards men sort of spackles up the cracks and makes up for the incompetence or ineptitude that would otherwise piss a lesbian off.
We don’t have sexuality to thank for warping mediocrity into something more tolerable.
Thanks to the frightful “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” ideology, men and women are painted as being so radically different from one another that we come from two separate planets—to such a degree that we supposedly struggle to understand each other’s nuances here on Earth.
Women don’t expect their male partners to remember the small details that make them really happy. Why? Because, apparently, men’s brains aren’t wired that way.
If she likes frappuccinos and he brings her an iced tea, it’s like: gee, never mind, at least he tried. He gets a pass.
If you were to ask most men to recall 5 specific details from their wedding day, I bet they’d struggle. Whereas their wives could probably describe it vividly enough to make an absentee feel like they were there.
I believe that if you can get it wrong, you can also very much get it right.
You can write things down on your phone. You can keep a post-it note on the dashboard of your car. Heck, you can simply call her and ask.
There are straightforward ways to ensure that you always make your woman happy — if a lesbian can do it, why can’t a man?
So while it may seem like lesbians harbour hostility towards men, in reality, I think we just see through the commodification of their nonsense more easily. We don’t observe manhood through the rose-tinted glasses necessary to make it palatable.
Calling a person out on their misgivings can often read like derision, so it’s no surprise that insecure men get defensive when their subpar efforts are rejected by women who know how easy it is to do it properly.
However, to refer to this as some off-brand version of hatred is a futile means of soothing the bruises on a fragile ego.
Secure men understand that being a lesbian isn’t about hating men, it’s simply about not being sexually attracted to them.
The insecure ones will probably retreat to their safe places to lick their wounds.
But not before asking their wives or girlfriends where the first aid kit is, of course.
Thank you very much for reading! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below.
If you enjoyed this read and are feeling generous, please consider buying me a coffee as a token of your appreciation. I will send you positive vibes with every single sip. ☕🌸
© 2025 Natalie S. Ohio. All rights reserved.
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