The Wrong Way to Look at It
by Jonathan Penton

Over the past few months, two of my female friends have asked me if I'm a misogynist. Now, that's not the sort of question you normally ask unless you already know the answer. It's a bit like asking, "Are you racist?" The question is most commonly an accusation.

In both of these cases, however, the woman asked me if I'm a misogynist in a tone that implied she genuinely wanted to know. Both queries sounded a little like, "You're not a misogynist… are you?" Both times, from a woman who has known me for years.

Of course, some self-analysis was necessary. How had I been behaving to spark such questions? What had been causing me to behave in such a way? I'd been irritable over the past few months, but irritability is not normally confused with misogyny. I'm currently reading an Ed Wood biography, but I just started it and it really has only the most tangential connection with what I'm failing to talk about. Right, self-analysis.

I certainly think of myself as a misanthrope. It occurs to me that misanthropy and misogyny are seen as more separate than they should be. After all, misanthropy is the hatred of humanity and humanity's achievements, and women are very rarely seen as part of humanity. The misanthrope is also often confused with the curmudgeon, who holds all of humanity in contempt. But to be a misanthrope, and to truly hate people, one must be a misogynist, as surely as one must be a hate men, and as surely as one must hate oneself.

Let me back up to my friends. Like I say, both were women whom I've known for years. In one way or another, I love both of them, if for no other reason than they have friendship tenure. But I didn't have to analyze very deeply before I found that I rather hated them both. Inspired by discovery, I considered my other friends, male and female, and found that I rather hate them all. It's not that I bear them ill will, or that I don't love many of them. It's just that they're all a bunch of scheming, manipulative bastards. This seems appropriate. After all, I sought them out as friends.

When my mother's sister drinks soda, she lifts the glass to her mouth, takes a sip, then fully lowers the glass, then immediately lifts it back to her mouth, takes a sip, and once again lowers the glass, lift, sip, drop, lift, sip, drop, like some sort of mad soda waltz.

Of course, projection is a possibility, for I am the schemingest of all scheming, manipulative bastards. I also have very fuzzy boundaries, and tend to take on the qualities of those around me, making it even more difficult to figure out when I'm projecting my motivations on others. But no amount of self-depreciation will change the fact that my friends would shoot each other for the last doughnut in a heartbeat. Which is fine. Those are the sorts of people I choose to hang out with. I just hate them, for all the right reasons.

I began to analyze more acquaintances. Now, most people have friends who they find interesting, acquaintances who they find interesting but don't often see due to time or distance, and acquaintances who bore them, but with whom they stay on friendly terms, for one reason or another. I lack the third category of contact, because if someone bores me, I immediately tell them so and invite them to leave my presence. Fortunately, I am easily amused, especially when drunk, and know a number of people about whom I can study my feelings. Most of them consider me a scheming, manipulative bastard and eye me with great wariness, but I was talking about something in this paragraph, and my reputation had nothing to do with it.

I discovered that I hate pretty much everybody. It also occurs to me that curmudgeons believe themselves misanthropes. I can't talk about the difference enough. Curmudgeons hate groups of people; they hate society. They may hate specific races or sexes. Misanthropes hate the psychological makeup of the human animal. A misanthrope cannot reconcile him/herself to the natural pettiness and childishness of other human beings. Because people are unfailingly petty and childish at some point, a misanthrope always has the opportunity to learn to hate people as individuals. A curmudgeon hates a person less and less, the more the curmudgeon gets to know him or her. But a misanthrope hates a person for his or her true nature, and will hate his or her friends the most completely, and strangers not at all.

So I hate women. I hate the women I know, and the better I know them, the more I hate them. I hate them more deeply than the repressed or sexually frustrated ever could. I don't hate the women I haven't met yet, but I feel certain that I could learn to.

And I hate men too. But that sounds far less interesting.

Jonathan Penton is the overworked editor and publisher of Unlikely Stories. Check out his literary works at this site.