MenAreGood
The Origins of Hatred
Part One
April 28, 2025
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The Origins of Hatred

Hatred feels like it’s everywhere these days. It’s erupting across countries, communities, and causes — whether it’s resentment toward Whites in South Africa, the relentless fury over Gaza, backlash against anything connected to Tesla, or the media’s obsessive vilification of Donald Trump. Politics, religion, race, climate, abortion — you name it, and someone’s ready to rage about it.

Sure, we’ve seen violent protests before — the Watts riots in ’65, the upheaval after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in ’68, the Rodney King riots in ’92. But those flashpoints were spread out over decades. Today? Violent protests feel constant, and the anger’s coming from every direction. These aren’t just crowds waving signs; we’re watching groups turn to chaos and destruction, convinced their cause matters so much that violence is not only justified — it’s necessary.

It’s alarming how casually some now treat violence as a political weapon. Smash a Tesla dealership? Fine. Call for the assassination of Elon Musk or Donald Trump? Some won’t even flinch.

And it’s left me wondering: Where does all this hatred come from? Why does it seem worse now? What sparks it — and what keeps it alive?

So, I asked ChatGPT. And what I found was fascinating. The first thing that came up? The evolutionary roots of hatred.

Here’s what it said:

Evolutionary

Origins of Hatred

From an evolutionary standpoint, emotions are not random but serve specific survival functions. Hatred, though often viewed as negative, has likely played a crucial role in human survival. It can be understood as an extreme form of in-group preference and out-group hostility—mechanisms that have historically helped human groups compete for resources and maintain social cohesion.

In-group preference and out-group hostility. Now that starts to connect the dots. In-group preference means you instinctively favor your own group — seeing it as essential to your identity, safety, and survival. Then comes out-group hostility, where anyone outside that circle isn’t just different, but a potential threat. ChatGPT went on:

1. Group Selection and Tribalism

One of the most widely accepted evolutionary explanations for hatred is that it emerged from early human tribalism. Our ancestors lived in small groups where cooperation among members was vital for survival. Those who exhibited strong loyalty to their group and hostility toward outsiders were more likely to protect their resources, defend against threats, and ensure the group's survival. This tendency remains evident today in nationalistic, religious, and ideological divisions.

2. Competition for Resources

Scarcity of resources often leads to intergroup conflict. Evolutionarily, groups that could effectively identify and eliminate threats to their survival had a greater chance of thriving. Hatred provided the psychological fuel for such conflicts, making it easier for individuals to dehumanize their enemies and act aggressively.

Aha! So it turns out the evolution of hatred is deeply rooted in competition between groups for resources. In early human history, survival wasn’t guaranteed — and if your group didn’t outcompete a rival, you might not make it. They could take your food, land, animals… or women.

And yes, there’s plenty of evidence suggesting one primal fear was that rival groups would raid camps and steal women. Why? Because women were valued for their reproductive ability. The more women a group had, the greater its chances of producing offspring and increasing its numbers. Too few, and the group was doomed.

As a result, men were prized for their fierceness — their willingness to fight, protect, and kill if necessary. Some research even suggests the more intruders a man killed, the more desirable he became as a mate within his group. (for details see David Geary’s Male Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences chap 8) Which might help explain why, even today, certain women are inexplicably drawn to violent men, including infamous serial killers behind bars.

What we’re seeing is that hatred didn’t appear out of thin air — it was born out of primal fears: not having enough food, water, shelter, or reproductive partners. And those fears naturally bred suspicion and hostility toward outsiders, who were seen as the problem.

And according to ChatGPT, there’s even more to this story…

3. Survival Mechanism Against Threats

Hatred may have also evolved as a defense mechanism against perceived threats. When early humans encountered dangerous rivals, predators, or hostile groups, a strong aversive reaction would have been advantageous. This ingrained mechanism still influences modern social dynamics, where perceived threats—whether economic, cultural, or political—can trigger deep-seated animosity.

It’s become clear that hatred first evolved as a response to perceived threats — from predators, rival groups, or anyone endangering essential resources and survival. But what about the personal, psychological side of hatred? Why do people harbor hatred even when their survival isn’t on the line?

That’s where the second part of ChatGPT’s explanation comes into play.

Psychological Creation of Hatred

While evolutionary factors set the foundation for hatred, psychological mechanisms shape its expression in individuals. Hatred is rarely innate; rather, it develops through experiences, learned behaviors, and cognitive processes.

1. Socialization and Cultural Influence

Children are not born with hatred; they learn it through socialization. Parents, peers, and societal norms play significant roles in shaping attitudes toward different groups. If a child grows up in an environment where a particular group is demonized, they are more likely to develop hatred toward that group. The media, political rhetoric, and historical narratives further reinforce these beliefs.

Children aren’t born with hatred. It sounds like an obvious statement, but it’s an important one. Hatred isn’t something that naturally exists in a baby or young child — it has to be introduced. For a child to feel hatred, something or someone has to plant that fearful seed.

2. Personal Trauma and Projection

Hatred can also arise from personal experiences. If an individual suffers harm at the hands of a particular person or group, they may generalize that negative experience to all members of that group. This process, known as projection, allows the individual to externalize their pain and blame others for their suffering.

3. Cognitive Biases and Stereotyping

Human cognition is prone to biases that reinforce hatred. The confirmation bias leads people to seek out information that supports their preexisting views, while the out-group homogeneity effect causes individuals to perceive members of an opposing group as more similar than they actually are. These cognitive distortions make it easier to sustain hatred over time.

Conclusion

So where does all this hatred come from? Strip it down, and you’ll find the same thing at its core every time: fear. Fear is the fuel. Without it, the hostility, the out-group aggression, the calls for destruction wouldn’t carry the same weight. It’s fear that ignites those ancient instincts and gives modern hatred its relentless, suffocating power.

And what does that tell us about today’s world? It tells us we’re living in a culture saturated with fear. If someone wanted to fracture a society, to turn one group against another, they wouldn’t need armies or violence at first. They’d just need to instill fear. Fear of losing resources, fear of losing status, fear of “the other.” Feed that fear with a steady stream of distrust, blame, and moral certainty — and you’ve got a society primed for conflict.

Sound familiar? It should.

We’re watching it unfold in real time. The media floods the public square with fear: threats to democracy, creeping totalitarianism, climate catastrophe, pandemic xxx, cultural collapse. But notice what’s absent — no one calls for patience, forgiveness, or mutual understanding. Very few tell both sides of any story. The message is clear: be afraid, stay angry, and pick a side.

And this strategy isn’t new. It’s been building for decades. One of the clearest, most persistent examples is how modern feminism — with the eager backing of media, academia, the judiciary, and legislative power — has relentlessly seeded fear, distrust, and blame into the minds of women and girls. Fear of men. Fear of oppression. Fear of being cheated. Fear of irrelevance. The result? A divided society where mutual respect erodes, and hatred becomes not only acceptable but fashionable — so long as it targets the approved enemy.

 

Understanding the evolutionary and psychological roots of hatred matters. But recognizing how fear is weaponized today is even more urgent. Because hatred isn’t some unstoppable force of nature. It’s a reaction. And like all reactions, it depends on what we choose to feed it.

In part two we will take a look at how feminism has spread fears that fostered the hatred of men.

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The Right Length to Reach the Floor: Why Being Offended Matters


At a White House Christmas party, President Abraham Lincoln was mingling with guests, exchanging laughter and good cheer. He came upon a group that included a woman known for her biting tongue. Looking at Lincoln’s tall frame, she quipped, “President Lincoln, don’t you find your legs are far too long?”

Without missing a beat, Lincoln smiled and replied, “No, madam, I have always found them jus the right length to reach the floor.”

The crowd laughed, the moment passed, and the party went on. But in that brief exchange, Lincoln showed something important: there are many ways to respond to offense—and one of the best is humor.


Being Offended Is Part of Growing Up

We tend to treat offense today as a kind of harm. But in truth, being offended is part of life—and even more, it’s part of maturity. Boys in particular seem to intuit this. Watch a group of young males and you’ll see it play out: teasing, poking, sarcasm, verbal sparring. It’s not (usually) meant to hurt—it’s meant to test.

And those tests serve a purpose.

When a boy is told he’s stupid, or too slow, or mocked for his hair or clothes, he learns to respond. He might crack a joke. He might sharpen his wit. He might challenge the premise with logic or brush it off with a shrug. What he’s doing is learning to handle adversity—on his feet and with others watching.

It’s practice for the world.


The Skills Boys Learn Through Being Offended

  • Humor – defusing tension, maintaining dignity

  • Repartee – learning to think and speak quickly

  • Logic – pointing out flaws in the jab

  • Grace – choosing to let it slide

  • Strength – not needing validation to hold his ground

These are not small things. They’re the building blocks of workplace confidence, relational resilience, and emotional independence.


The Cultural Shift: A World Where Offense Is Forbidden

But we now live in a time where being offended is treated as a kind of assault—especially if the offended belongs to a “protected group.” Entire institutions—from universities to HR departments—have adopted the idea that certain people must not be offended, and if they are, someone else must be punished.

But what happens when a group is shielded from offense?

They may never learn to develop the inner muscles that others do. They may never build the grace, wit, or confidence that comes from surviving discomfort. Like the body that withers in the absence of challenge, their maturity is stalled.

In the name of protection, we end up infantilizing them.


The Asymmetry of Offense

Let’s be honest: not everyone gets the same protection. Boys and men are fair game. So are Christians. So are people with dissenting views on political, medical, or cultural issues. These groups are expected—often required—to endure offense without complaint.

Meanwhile, others—especially women, certain minority groups, and favored ideological stances—are shielded from offense. The rules shift depending on who’s talking and who’s listening. But one thing is clear: there is a deep asymmetry in how offense is allowed and punished.

This disparity starts early.

Boys are more likely to be offended because they’re less protected. In fact, they often grow up in environments where ridicule, teasing, and verbal jousting are common—and not discouraged. In contrast, girls are more likely to be shielded from offense. Schools, parents, and media tend to be quicker to intervene when girls are targeted. The result? Boys get toughened. Girls get guarded.

Some call this compassion. But what if it’s something else? What if we’re unknowingly denying girls a chance to build the same emotional endurance we demand of boys?

This has serious implications.

Being offended, and learning how to respond constructively, builds the skill set necessary for leadership. Leaders must take criticism, navigate hostility, and remain calm under pressure. That doesn't come naturally—it comes from experience.

So if we raise boys to expect offense and learn to handle it—but raise girls to expect protection and institutional outrage on their behalf—we shouldn't be surprised if more boys grow into leaders. They’ve been trained for conflict, while girls may have been trained to avoid it.

And here’s the twist: when we limit offending women, we may also be limiting their capacity to lead.

This isn’t about discouraging kindness. It’s about understanding that discomfort is the engine of maturity. If we teach one group to handle offense and deny another that chance, we create a lopsided playing field—not by talent, but by tolerance.

We also send a subtle but damaging message: this group is strong enough to be offended, but that group isn’t. That’s not respect. That’s condescension.


“Offense becomes a weapon, not a wound.”

Traditionally, being offended was understood as a personal emotional response. Someone says something, you feel hurt, insulted, or challenged—it’s unpleasant, maybe painful. A wound. But it’s something you deal with, like Lincoln did, through humor, logic, or resilience.

But in today’s culture, offense is often treated not as an emotional experience, but as a moral accusation.

Now, when someone says, “I’m offended,” they’re not just saying, “That hurt my feelings.” They’re saying:
“You’ve done something wrong, and I now have the right to punish you.”

  • Careers are destroyed over tweets.

  • Public apologies are demanded for misstatements, jokes, or even factual claims.

  • Institutions overreact, fearing backlash—not because harm was caused, but because someone claimed harm was felt.

This turns offense into a strategic tool—a weapon to silence disagreement, gain status, or assert dominance. And here’s the deeper truth: this behavior often stems from an inability to respond maturely to the offending message. When someone lacks the internal tools—humor, logic, composure—they may externalize the discomfort instead. Rather than engaging the message, they attack the messenger.

The more ruthlessly someone wields this strategy, the more power they acquire in certain environments—media, academia, HR departments, online culture. And the more others scramble to appease them.

Society begins to bend not to the wise or the strong, but to the emotionally volatile. This doesn’t promote dignity or equality. It promotes fragility and fear.


Real Maturity: Offense and Reciprocity

True equality means that everyone has:

  • The right to offend

  • The duty to withstand offense

Lincoln didn’t file a complaint. He didn’t lecture the woman. He made a joke and moved on. That’s what strength looks like.


Conclusion: Offense as an Opportunity

When we forbid offense, we shut down an ancient and necessary process. Human beings grow not by being protected from all discomfort, but by facing it and finding a way through.

Let’s stop pretending that offense is violence. It’s not. It’s a signal, a chance, a test. And if we meet it well—like Lincoln did—we just might reach the floor with our dignity intact.

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Enjoy the creativity—and insight—of men!

First a tweet from Jim Nuzzo.

 

https://x.com/JamesLNuzzo/status/1940296998072226262

Next, a written response from Paul Nathanson that I saw on a mutual mailing list. I think it captures this woman’s ignorance of men and our present situation very well:



This article makes me angry. For many years, I have tried to foster inter-sexual dialogue, a project that seems like utopian science-fiction for the time being. With that in mind, I read the author’s discussion of one woman’s deceptive plea for men to “come back.”

Rachel Drucker claims to understand what drives men away from women. “I get it,” she says. But she clearly doesn’t. Otherwise, she’d be “interrogating” women instead of complaining about men. Listen, I’m a gay man. I’ve never played mating games with women and have no personal stake at all in the rules—old or new. But even as an outsider—or maybe for that very reason—I can see the depressing reality that’s becoming more and more obvious to straight men. It’s true that many men, at least in the most articulate and influential circles, are withdrawing from women. But that’s mainly because women have already withdrawn from men. And no one who reads the Times does so without being aware of its historical and cultural context. For half a century, these women have made it clear that they, as a class, consider men the inferiors of women at best and the evil oppressors of women at worst. In other words, they have indulged publicly in subtle condescension at best—this article being one example—and open contempt or revenge at worst. Consider an article, both famous and infamous, for the Washington Post. In it, Suzanna Danuta Walters openly abandons the most basic moral principle of all by asking, “Why Can’t We Hate Men?” (8 June 2018).

Okay, maybe many men are unaware of what’s going on. They’ve never actually read feminist denunciations of marriage as legalized prostitution, for instance, or as legalized rape. (According to feminist theorists such as Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, women are incapable of consenting to the sexual advances of men due to the “eroticization of power,” which supposedly makes women capable of sexual arousal only in the patriarchal context of submission to rape.) But most men are indeed aware by now that women have organized themselves politically as enemies of men, at least of those men who don’t convert to feminism (and not even those men deserve redemption according to the woke version of feminism). This hostility is as obvious in the relatively safe context of casual entertainment, moreover, as it is in the riskier contexts of friendships or “relationships” with women. Why would any reasonably healthy man be willing to put up with the lurking possibility of incessant complaining, relentless insinuating or implacable ranting? Enough already.

Explaining the current state of affairs is one thing, and recommending an alternative is something else. I’m not advocating the position of either Men Going Their Own Way (who have reasonable grounds for fearing entanglement with women despite the high cost to themselves) or the “incels” (who cannot attract women and therefore have unreasonable grounds for hostility toward women). I mention all this for two reasons. First, men and women are biologically programmed to unite not only for purely reproductive reasons but also for childrearing purposes. Because no society can endure the estrangement of men and women, reciprocity lies at the heart of any social contract. Second, human existence would be meaningless and unendurable without at least the hope of moving beyond cynicism toward altruism. Striving for reconciliation between any groups in conflict is also, therefore, a moral imperative.

Some women really do “get it” by now. Janice Fiamengo sure does, for example, and she’s not alone. Being explicitly anti-feminist, though, they have a long road ahead. I doubt that I’ll live long enough to see the dawn of genuine inter-sexual dialogue, but I’ll do anything that I can to join them in that effort.

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Thank you Paul and James! Men Are Good!

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July 03, 2025
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Presidential Message on National Men's Health Week, 2025

I’ve grown accustomed to hearing politicians talk about men’s health, usually focusing on the idea that men need to stop taking risks and start going to the doctor. The implication is that it’s somehow men’s fault that they’re at risk of dying early, and so on. Of course, this is what feminists often refer to as "blaming the victim."

That’s why I was so pleased to read Donald Trump’s message for National Men’s Health Week. He spoke candidly about the disadvantages men face and the ways in which men and masculinity have been targeted by a vicious campaign. It was a breath of fresh air.

No matter how you feel about Donald Trump, you have to give him credit for calling out the reality of men’s issues in today’s world. Below, I’ll paste the entire message for you to read. It’s a step in the right direction.

Link to the White House page https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/06/presidential-message-on-national-mens-health-week-2025/

For far too long, the health, happiness, and well-being of our Nation’s men have been neglected, contributing to a troubling reality: men in the United States have a life expectancy five years shorter than women. They visit healthcare providers less frequently and often delay critical care. Men tend to have their first heart attack an average of 10 years earlier than women.


This neglect has been compounded by a vicious campaign against masculinity. This war on manhood has left many American men in a state of loneliness, confusion, and emptiness, with devastating consequences: men in the United States are four times more likely to commit suicide and more than twice as likely to overdose than women.


This National Men’s Health Week, I make a solemn pledge to honor the men in America: we will always have your back—and we will never waver in our promise to embolden you to lead long, healthy, and safe lives.


Just last month, I proudly signed an Executive Order to deliver most-favored-nation pricing to American patients, improve access to quality medical care, and lower the price of medications. Together, with my Make America Healthy Again Commission, we are empowering men to prioritize their health and prolong their lives.


Under my leadership, we will relentlessly pursue a healthier future for the men of our nation. We will always lift you up rather than tear you down, and we will champion the voices, values, and wellness of hardworking American men across our country.

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