I'll let SC and other women speak for themselves, but you didn't get it quite right for me because what I'm talking about is less about individual men and more about an androcentric culture (which fosters the more individual and personal disdain and hate I experience). It's much less that I don't know whether an individual man will try to grope me, spike my drink, follow me on a dark street, or marginalize me in some way, etc. It's that I live in a culture where most men don't truly understand that any woman has to think about and deal with those things as a matter of routine. There's constantly stuff in the news about institutionalized sexism in major companies, and yet most men don't seem to believe that's really actually a pervasive problem.

Women tell their stories, and other women chime in to say how the exact same thing happened to them, but most men find a way to dismiss this as over-reacting. A lot of men continually turn a blind eye to things that harm women and then complain that they shouldn't be held accountable because they personally didn't do anything. That feels to me like being despised. Their inaction is upholding a culture that harms me in every aspect of my life, and they don't seem to care about that at all.

Now, of course, some individual men do care about these things, but the culture of masculinity does not. In a recent story I wrote about how rape does not exist in some cultures, it was clear to me that this was because it is culturally unacceptable and considered unmanly there. Although we have laws against rape and nobody actually says it's a good thing, "In rape cultures, dominance and control over women become aspects of achieving and experiencing masculinity, and rape, while not condoned, becomes part of the culture at large." Western societies are rape cultures because in part, they are dominance based hierarchies. Even the Nordic countries have rape issues. So much so that Amnesty International did a study and report of it a few years back.

I need to write an actual story about this, but I've had a lifetime of experiences of being treated as less competent, less intelligent, less able to make decisions simply because I am a woman. Most other women I know have had the same. I think that part is slightly better for younger women, but they are still dealing with all the rest. Sexual objectification is a power move - it's reminding a woman that's all she's good for. And, we live in a culture that not only accepts but condones that as just how things are. If we didn't, it wouldn't be happening.

Despite some progress, men still wield the bulk of power in every aspect of our society. Most American made movies fail the Bechdel test - we rarely see anything where two women (who have names) talk to each other about anything other than a man. Even in movies that are ostensibly about women, men still typically have many more lines that women.

I'm not a side-kick, I'm not an attractive accessory. I'm a person and I live in culture that is still fighting very hard to not have to recognize that. That's why I feel hated.