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"Tomcats: You can't live with 'em, and you can't throw them down a well and drown 'em. There really ought to be a law."
Francine, Samurai Pizza Cats
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This rather vague phrase leads to tricky interpretation that's sometimes actively milked by the writers usually of romance fiction. Usually the assumption is that the character doesn't like machismo, or she has bad luck with men in her life, like her father or other relatives. That is, traits associated with men manifest into a dislike of men as a whole. This can pose a problem for any male lead trying to woo her, meaning it takes much longer than suspected to win her over. As with all dislike tropes, the degree to which a particular character Does Not Like Men varies, from simple dislike to outright hatred.

Generally, the author portrays the woman in question sympathetically, and vilifies whatever man drove her to hate the rest of his gender. The Spear Counterpart likewise is most commonly seen in romance fiction, where the male hero has had some bad past experience with women (either his mother or a faithless lover) and blames the entire gender — until the heroine comes along to change his worldview. Outside of a romance, an adult male who does not like women can be painted as a complete villain. Only little boys are allowed to believe that Girls Have Cooties.

Other times it's just lampshading to explain why a character isn't even seen with guys (not even offscreen), to entice shippers, or just to extend the possibilities of romantic entanglement you can put into a story. It's frequent that eventually one character comments on this and takes it in its most literal interpretation. Conversely, Bifauxnen and 'mundane' lesbian characters never seem to use this trope.

Compare Celibate Hero, Licensed Sexist and Straw Feminist.

Examples of Does Not Like Men include:


Anime and Manga[]

  • In Harem Series, unwanted or not, you are pretty much guaranteed that one of the supporting characters will be a lesbian with the hots for one of the haremettes, usually the female lead, and will frequently display a rather venomous tongue towards the male lead. Only very rarely do they experience Character Development or get a Backstory of any sort besides switching their behaviour to I Want My Beloved to Be Happy and becoming slightly more tolerant towards the relationship between the object of her affection and the male lead.
  • In the manga version of Sailor Moon, Rei Hino is usually completely uninterested in romance and men in general, a lot of it coming from unresolved resentment of her emotionally distant politician father since he abandoned Rei's Ill Girl of a Missing Mom in a clinic during Mrs. Hino's last days, as well as her unrequited love for her father's assistant Kaidou who married another woman, despite her love for him, and decided to go into politics despite stating he disliked it for all the problems it caused for Rei's family. Late in the manga, when the villains torment her with this fact (by then, she'd mellowed out in regards to her opinions on men and actually resents that she can't get close to one), Rei remembers that in her past life she had actually made an oath of chastity to Princess Serenity and is able to fully accept this part of herself.
    • Amusingly, nearly every other adaptation of the story ignores that convoluted explanation as part of the adaptation, especially the famous anime series where Rei is explicitly fond of flashy boys. None of this ever changes her apparent dislike though, so there are actually more jokes at her expense about 'not liking men.'
    • The live action version is much the same as the manga version though Kaidou isn't mentioned. A small reference to the side story he features in (Casablanca Memories) appears though in the form of a gift from Rei's father to her. (Casablanca lillies and a white dress)
    • One rather comic one-shot for Sailor Moon had the various girls in town being brainwashed by a Sailor Moon impersonator to completely abandon men. Chibi Moon argues on behalf of the male gender and discovers that the impersonator is actually a girl named Shojuki who had been banished from her lover Kengyu, only able to see him once a year. She became certain that he was deliberately flooding a river that keeps them apart so that they can't have their annual meetings because he's cheating on her (this is mostly told to her by two witches who are using her for an energy-draining scheme). Shojuki's fears are put to rest when Kengyu shows up and assures her that he still loves her.
    • It is even mentioned in the anime that Haruka doesn't like men. Michiru teasingly clarifies that she doesn't like men who are popular with girls.
  • In Mariasama ga Miteru, Sachiko's dislike of men stems from snotty society men and a mutually uninterested early fiancé. This is played up to the comedic point she can't even be around overly masculine men without being distressed.
    • In the anime, it is said to be the result of both her grandfather and her father keeping mistresses.
    • One of the DVD extras makes fun of this, when the neighboring boys' school is allowed to do a version of the show's opening credits until Sachiko arrives in a conniption fit and the girls scramble to change the scenery.
    • Kanako is also the same way. If anything, her fear of men is even worse than Sachiko's.
  • Akane Tendo from Ranma One Half: Being attacked by all of the boys at school every morning because they think they have to defeat you to have a chance to date you can do this. After being chosen to marry Ranma:
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 Nabiki: "Well... you hate boys, don't you?"

Kasumi: "So you're in luck! He's half girl!"

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    • Though this seems to only apply to boys not men as she's okay with Genma and Tofu.
    • She's also fairly nice to Ryoga.
  • A more extreme version is Asuka Mizunokoji from Urusei Yatsura, who has a phobia of men based on the fact that she was kept isolated from men until she turned 16 to keep her pure. As luck would have it, her handmaids explained the concept of males very badly, and the first one she ever encountered was major-league pervert Ataru Moroboshi. Go figure.
  • Hiro from Wa Ga Na Wa Umishi is a rather unconvincing example. It comes out later that she hates men due to her abusive father, but prior to that revelation she's been getting along extremely well with the other guys on her team. I guess it should be qualified that she hates 'some' men.
  • Hinako Aikawa, the lead female character in the manga Bitter Virgin, is unsettled by being around men and flinches if one happens to touch her — she is (at first) totally repelled by men, due to the huge trauma of having been constantly raped by her stepfather and impregnated twice, even giving birth once and having to give the child in adoption, all before high school. Ouch. (And guess who the lead guy, Suwa Daisuke, has to fall for?)
  • Sakurako Tenmaku from Ai Kora is known for being "stingy" toward men, stemming from an incident in middle school, where her friends turned on her because all the boys fell for her, though through no machinations on her part.
    • On top of that, the only boy she really was interested in tried to rape her... Or so she thought. He only came on to her physically, to which she freaked out and ran. Admittedly, he was rather forceful, but when the boy in question gets re-introduced, he turns out to be an okay guy and explains the misunderstanding.
    • She also didn't like girls at first, but eventually got over it.
  • Galaxy Angel Rune's Apricot Sakuraba plays this trope in an unusual sense; she can interact with men without difficulty, but if a man touches her, her super-strength kicks in and she literally reflexively kicks the man's ass.
  • In Mahou Sensei Negima, Nodoka seems to have a mild case of androphobia (greatly exaggerated in the anime), and an early manga bio states that she "dislikes men". However, this seems to be due to the fact that she's extremely shy to begin with, and, being a student at an all-girls school, has very limited experience with men. She seems to be getting over it though, thanks to a massive crush on Negi.
  • Love Hina also had this in the form of Motoko (at least early on, until she started falling for Keitaro), and at one point she's mistaken for a lesbian by a disguised Kanako. Who then proceeds molest her.
    • To a lesser extent, the other girls at the inn (with the notable exceptions of Shinobu and Mutsumi, and to a lesser extent Kanako) also were of this trope, since they frequently and immediately assume that Keitaru, their landlord, is a pervert and often beat him up even if the reason he got beaten up he was completely innocent of (which is pretty much ALL the time).
  • Nao Yuuki from the Mai-HiME anime poses as a teen prostitute engaging in Enjo Kosai who uses her CHILD to rob and injure the men who call her up for dates, taking advantage of their lust for her while never actually letting them touch her. She's been doing so after a gang killed her father and left her mother (and more important person) comatose.
  • Hisui of Tsukihime does not react positively when a male touches her, it's originally explained as her being germophobic. But in reality it's because after seeing her sister reduced to a broken shell after years of sexual abuse, she swears never to let a man touch her until Kohaku returns to normal. Naturally, Shiki quickly becomes an exception.
  • Yasuna of Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl has a hard time around men. It extends to the point she can't even see the face of a male clearly. This is most clearly seen in a sketch of her classmates she made, in which the girls' faces are fully drawn while the guys' don't go beyond basic lines. Pre-Gender Bender Hazumu, though, stands out as having some detail. This is partially due to the fact Yasuna accidentally mistook him for a girl when he was still a "he" and was able to see him.
    • Oddly, though, we still can't see male Hazumu's face, and in fact do not through the entire series.
      • Yasuna has never been able to see men in the manga (not ever her own father!), thus not learning to like them. In the anime she just disliked them and began to not see any correctly.
  • Kanako, the protagonist of Maria Holic, does not like men to the point of breaking out in hives when she comes in contact with them. To alleviate this problem, she goes to an all-girls' school. As chance would have it, her ideal girl is in fact a crossdressing boy.
  • Eva from Karneval thinks that they suck. Cute, soft girls are her thing.
  • Kureha of After School Nightmare REALLY does not like men. This affects her dream state as she takes the form of her wearing a raincoat and stabbing everyone with umbrellas, since she was brutally raped during a storm when walking home from school alone. Her mother not picking her up because the father was beating her and getting yelled at because Kureha was now 'spoiled goods' didn't help. Her reason for becoming friends with Mashiro in the first place was specifically because of how he was half boy/half girl. She does eventually get along with some guys.
    • What's screwed up about the premise here is that the main character's hermaphroditism is described as 'lower half female, upper half male,' which since the top halves of children's bodies betray nothing of their sex means he should have been taken for a normal girl until puberty. But he was raised as a boy instead. Bizarre.
      • This is explained in the last volume: All the characters are really souls waiting to be born. Mashiro is actually a pair of male and female twins, competing to determine which of them will survive birth.
  • In the Mai-Otome manga, Erstin Ho gets severe panic attacks around men, partially because she's also madly in love with fellow classmate Nina Wang. Awkward situations abound when the princess they've been designated to help protect (and who shares a dorm room with them) is actually a boy in disguise.
  • Kira of the series Mars has this reputation at school and at one point even states outright that she hates men due to being raped by her stepfather.
  • Usio of Shinshi Doumei Cross.
  • Azuma Hazuki of Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito doesn't seem to like anyone very much (except Hatsumi, whom she melts into a shivering puddle of yuri around), but it can be inferred she has a particular distaste for men. On the other hand, when the only men you interact with are a perverted cockatiel, a dimension-warping madman, a few assorted spies, a demonic ninja, and someone trying to steal your love interest, that's no real surprise.
  • Mahiru Inami of Working has a deep-seated fear of men, believing they will attack her, though she seems alright around Souta. Except for the fact that she reacts to him like she does any man — with a punch to the face or gut.
    • This is eventually revealed to be because her father did not want her to ever get close to another man, so he told her many bad stories about them and improved her physical strength by putting weights in her handbag so she would have the strength to fight them off.
  • Gender-flipped by Keima of The World God Only Knows. He prefers the fictional women in his galge and doesn't even acknowledge the existence of real girls. Then a ditzy demon of hell recruits him to exorcise spirits... by capturing the hearts of the real girls they've hidden inside with his gaming skills. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Invoked in The Day of Revolution after Kei (now Megumi) returns to school to explain why she is now hiding from her former best friends.
  • Kaguyahime: Maggey and Mayu. Both definitely think men are dicks.
  • The Movie version of Trigun features Amelia, an Action Girl who breaks out in hives whenever men touch her.
  • Paife from The Third the Girl With The Blue Eye openly despises men, which makes her hate Iks and feel drawn to Honoka quite a bit.
  • Yayoi, from Mouse, was straight-out Androphobic. She would panic at even eye-contact with a man, until her BFF made her face the fact that she's a Submissive (think "Gimp"), and was literally waiting for the right male personality to dominate her.
  • In Kaichou wa Maid-sama!, Title character and Student Council President Misaki Ayuzawa is seen as this, despite that she has a job as a maid, due to her flamboyant attitude towards the men and pro-female advocacy. The reason she became this is because her father abandoned her and her family and disappeared due to tremendous debt.
  • Arashiko Yuno from MM!! is similar to Mahiru in her actions, but not necessarily motivation. If a guy touches her, her reaction is a punch. Or a series of punches. Taro's a masochist, so he can take it.
  • Mina Hazuki from Darker Than Black is a Contractor who can turn anything into a Laser Blade, and her renumeration for that power is to French kiss men, which she really doesn't like because she's a lesbian. She's not really as bad as most examples here since the most she usually does is keep her distance and "wash out the taste" by Frenching her team's normal person, Yoko.
  • A male example occurs in the manga Usotsuki Lily. En Shinohara is male, and loves girls, but absolutely hates men. It's to the point that he'll attack his own reflection out of pure reflex. His coping mechanism for this: Cross-dressing.
  • Mayu Tsukimura from Goshuushou Sama Ninomiya Kun suffers from androphobia due to her uncontrollable ability as a Succubus to attract the opposite sex. However, her androphobia does not act up when it comes to the protagonist Shungo Ninomiya.
  • Kaede, head of student ethics of Seitokai Yakuindomo came to the show's formerly all-girl school due to her androphobia (The source of which really isn't explained). It's so bad she refuses to patrol the floor the first years are on. While she is at first quite bitter over the fact that the school went co-ed, she later starts working hard to get over her fear of men.
    • Unlike most examples on the page, Kaede's situation is played entirely for laughs, and when Hata asks her how many men have wronged her in her life, she claims no such things ever happened to her.
  • Soi Fon from Bleach seems to dislike men. Given her outspoken distaste for Urahara, her abuse and blatant irritability towards her lieutenant Omaeda, and the fact that the only person in the universe that she isn't unpleasant towards is a woman, she may very well be uninterested in them.
  • Mariko Shinobu of Oniisama e... really, really distrusts and dislikes men. Blame it on her parents's... really screwed-up relationship and later divorce.
  • The protagonist of Houou Gakuen Misoragumi is a Butch Lesbian who Does Not Like Men.. Which is bad new since her mom sent her to an All-Boys school full of Bishonen boys, to see if she would become straight (or at least Bisexual).
  • Clarissa, Rahzel's best friend in Dazzle, doesn't like men at all. Meeting Baroqueheat was enough to send her into shock.
  • Justified in Berserk after Casca was horrifically raped by Griffith, her former leader and idol turned demon lord, an experience that reduced her mind to that of a small child. She reacted very badly when her lover Guts tried to touch her when they awoke days after the Eclipse.
  • In the anime version of THE iDOLM@STER Yukiho is terrified of any men, including the Producer.
    • Inverted with Makoto who wants more male fans.
  • Played with Yanagin of Daily Lives of High School Boys— while she claims boys are pathetic puddles of mess, she can actually get along well with her male classmates as well as Karasawa, not to mention that she was one of the kids assembled to fight the "Archdemon" with intent to avenge Karasawa's terrible wound.

Comic Books[]

  • Man Killer from the Marvel Universe. Has no problems working with men who don't lie to her, but she still doesn't like them.
    • One notable exception: she once took a job tending bar in an establishment frequented by Erik Josten, and seemed to enjoy talking with him during his visits.
  • Y: The Last Man. Victoria, leader of the Daughters of the Amazon, is an unsympathetic version of this trope, presumably because she is 'balanced' by every other female character (as just about every man on Earth has died, that's a lot of characters).
  • This is the general attitude of the inhabitants of the alternate reality Femizonia in the Marvel Universe.
  • Katchoo in Strangers in Paradise is not a big fan of the male gender, springing from her childhood of abuse and adolesence as a prostitute/sex slave. Since she also appears to be a lesbian this leads her to be described as a rampant Straw Feminist and bull dyke by unsympathetic characters in the series, even though she herself (And others) point out that she is not actually gay, she is just only interested in Francine.
  • Depending on the Writer, the Amazons from Wonder Woman can be like this, especially if they're being written as Straw Feminists. Wonder Woman isn't usually portrayed as such (apart from Frank Miller's work of genius All-Star Batman), although some origin stories have her disliking men up until she actually meets one.
  • The Zamarons were essentially Amazons in Space! in the Silver Age and Carol Ferris's growing contempt for men is what drew the Zamarons to her, transforming her into Star Sapphire, one of Green Lantern's deadliest foes. They eventually evolved into an Amazon Brigade of powerful female warriors, similar to the Green Lantern Corps. Wonder Woman even became a deputy member during the Blackest Night crossover. It is stated that men can become Star Sapphires, but most are not worthy.
  • Although Belle from Disney's Beauty and the Beast doesn't seem to mind men too much in the original film, certain Expanded Universe stuff, namely the New Adventures of Disney's Beauty and the Beast (a prequel series depicting Beast and Belle in the time before the events of the film), depicts Belle as of this trope, as in the story arc Bothered, she ends up telling her father she'd rather read King Arthur's Court instead of playing with the other children while derogatorily referring to them as "childish roughnecks" who can't even spell the word "gallant", and even implicitly compared men to pigs as Maurice noted. Similarly, a WDW pin depicted Belle with a sour expression and a speech bubble that said "Men are such beasts!"

Film[]

  • Yoko in Love Exposure. Kurt Cobain and Jesus are the only exceptions.
  • The title character in Marnie by Alfred Hitchcock embodies this due to experiences she had as a child.


Literature[]

  • Dilara in The Assassins of Tamurin, due to being abused by the son of the foster family she lived with before being taken in by Makina Seval. The Despotana eventually uses this to manipulate her into "willingly" joining her Amazon Brigade at Three Springs.
  • Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. After getting jilted at the altar by a conman, she spent the rest of her life in her wedding dress (to remind her of what had happened) training her adopted daughter Estelle to hate men as well, initially to protect her from them, but subsequently with the intent of using her to break men's hearts as revenge. Which is where Pip comes in...
  • The first Red Adept of the Apprentice Adept series. Stile uses this to trigger a Villainous Breakdown. Red was so widely misconstrued as a bad lesbian stereotype that Piers Anthony deliberately introduced a sympathetic lesbian character in a later volume, since most of his readers know to give him the benefit of the doubt (or correct him) when he shows his Cloudcuckoolander side.
  • In The Wheel of Time, the mission of the Red Ajah, a group within the most prominent society of female magic-users (channelers) in the setting, is to hunt down and "sever" male channelers from their power to prevent them from going insane and wrecking havoc. However, most Reds have extended this to massive antipathy toward all men, far above and beyond the "battle of the sexes" business that permeates the setting. A strict unwritten rule in the Red Ajah bans its members from bonding Warders like the other Ajahs; one Red was even beaten for suggesting it.
  • The Lensmen universe offers the Lyranians, joyless matriarchs who breed their men as sperm donors only, then kill them. They also show a lethal antipathy to all males of all other species anywhere (they're telepaths with the power of mind-murder), and strike a bargain with the devil i.e. the Boskonians in an attempt to eliminate their need for males entirely. Kim Kinnison, one of the few males they respect (because he saves their arses big-time at least twice), "would rather have touched a Borovan slime-lizard" than have physical contact with them, and it's largely left to the sole female Lensman, Clarrissa MacDougall to carry out any Galactic Patrol missions there.
  • Percy Jackson and The Olympians:
    • Circe believes that all men are pigs, and considering her powers, and the work in which she originally appeared, you can pretty much see where she's going with that (though she currently uses guinea pigs instead for convenience's sake). She also believes that women are so oppressed that they can only achieve power through magic.
    • The Hunters of Artemis are heroic versions of this. They all have a strong dislike for guys (and have sworn off any romantic relationships with them). Unlike Circe, though, they don't go out of their way to harm guys. (Which isn't very reassuring for guys, considering that Greek deities like Artemis are infamous for Disproportionate Retribution. Artemis claims to have turned guys into jackalopes and other animals just for stumbling upon their camp.)
  • Kamikaze Girls. In the book and the movie, both Ichiko and Momoko have discomfort around men in varying quantities. Momoko doesn't like talking to, interacting with, or being friendly with men that are either familiar or unfamiliar to her. The sole exception of her androphobia is Akinori Isobe of her beloved Baby, The Stars Shine Bright.For the most part, she considers them disgusting. Ichiko doesn't appear to have a problem interacting with them (albeit in an often hostile manner), but she hates being touched by them. She even freaks out when Ryuji touches her hand to show her how to properly play pachinko.
  • Bridget Jones. Played for laughs, since nearly all of the female characters in the books spend a great deal of time discussing how totally evil men are, violently and at length. Though, they refer to this as feminism, which is totally the same thing.
  • In the Anne of Green Gables series, we have Miss Cornelia, who has a severe disdain for men. She deems them "clannish", and her catch phrase is "Isn't that just like a man?" and never in a positive light. She shocks everyone by eventually getting married.
  • Quite a few of Catherine Anderson's heroines either fear or hate anything human with a Y chromosome due to at least one trauma involving a man in their past. Naturally it's the hero who convinces her otherwise by showering her with love and protecting her from her demons.


Live Action TV[]

  • Dr. Luisa Mercedes "Lu" Delgado from Strong Medicine. She often treats the men in her life (no matter if they're her love interests or not) real bad whether they're jerks or not, and that turns even worse after she's raped by a colleague and becomes a borderline Straw Feminist.
  • Emma Kennedy, Stacie's Suspiciously Similar Substitute in season 5 of Hustle, tells Mickey she doesn't date, due to some bad experiences with men. Which doesn't stop there being a Will They or Won't They? by the end of that episode.
  • The part about this being more sympathetic than men who hate women was brutally deconstructed in an episode of Law and Order. A clearly sociopathic eleven-year-old girl (Doctor Skoda, the on-hand criminal psychologist, describes her as "a serial killer that you caught before she really got going") gets off on torturing and murdering boys younger than she is. The judge lets her off easy anyway because of this trope and the episode ends with the girl very creepily staring at another boy, clearly imagining torturing and murdering him.
  • Played with in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. A lesbian rights (not gay rights, but lesbian rights) activist is initially this trope in all its hateful, bitchy glory. Later on we find that this is partially to cover for her being secretly bisexual. She gets a lot better once accepting her attraction to men and women.
  • Chima Simone in Big Brother obviously did not like men the least bit. She not only refused to align herself with the men (Except for MAYBE Jessie. Kevin she would have tossed under the bus at first opportunity despite being gay) and frequently badmouthed the male contestants. Especially Russell, who she called a terrorist because of his Lebanese descent. (Meaning it was practically racism, had he not been an Acceptable Target in many different ways) She was just bad on many ways on top of being a stereotypical Straw Feminist.
  • On an episode of The Avengers entitled "How to Succeed...At Murder!", a group of man-hating and power-hungry secretaries form a secret collective to murder their bosses (after confusing them to utter uselessness with impossible filing systems that only the secretary/the soon-to-be boss lady can understand) and take over as the executives of their respective companies, as part of a female world domination plot. Their mantra? "RUINATION TO ALL MEN!"
  • Anya on Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, or at least claims to be, this trope. Her relationship with Xander, a known male, tones down this behavior quite quickly. She still fits during her times as a vengeance demon, though.
Cquote1

 D'Hoffryn: Help wronged women punish evil men.

Anya: Vengeance.

D'Hoffryn: But only to those who deserve it.

Anya: They all deserve it.

D'Hoffryn: That's where I was going with that, yeah.

Cquote2


Music[]

  • Beyonce has been accused of this, since the majority of her songs, both solo and in Destiny's Child are about kicking a no-good man to the curb.
  • Ma Rainey, known as "The Mother of the Blues," in a number of her songs, especially "Prove It On Me Blues":
Cquote1

  "Went out last night with a crowd of my friends / They must’ve been women, ‘cause I don’t like no men."

Cquote2


Mythology[]

  • Artemis really Does Not Like Men. As in, the idea of meeting a man (non-sexually) repels her. There were other virgin goddesses in Classical Myth, most notably Athena and Hestia, but none quite so extreme as this (Athena in fact has several male favourites like Odysseus making her a straight forward aversion.)
    • Depending on the myth, this is very variable. She was, after all, either very close friends or even in love with Orion, the mighty hunter, though that didn't end well. Also, Artemis was very close with her twin brother, Apollo, and she was also Daddy's Girl. (Possibly competing with Athena for that honor.)
    • Actually, most of the time you come across one of these characters in Greek mythology she will either be under Artemis' protection or Aphrodite will help some enterprising young hero teach her otherwise.
    • The Amazons are a whole race of misandrists.


Theater[]

  • Beatrice and Katherine, in Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew respectively, are notorious man-haters. Although Beatrice is not so much a "Man Hater" as a "Benedick Hater."
    • Katherine, the titular shrew in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew (and Kat in its update, 10 Things I Hate About You) is sharp-tongued, bad-tempered, and bitchy to pretty much everyone, until she is tamed by Petruchio (and his counterpart, Patrick Verona).
      • In Kiss Me Kate, the character even gets a musical number called "I Hate Men".
      • Of course, how much Katherine hates men depends on the adaptation. The play itself implies that Katherine is actually a bit jealous of Bianca for having so many suitors, at one point accusing her father of favoring Bianca by having her marry first (and tying Bianca up and whipping her for not choosing a favorite suitor). In the Richard Burton adaptation, this is reinforced by having Katherine roll in a bale of cotton while happily laughing after Petruchio shows interest in her.
  • Apparently Kathy in Vanities, after Gary leaves her.


Newspaper Comics[]

  • A set of Bloom County strips had Opus being stuck on a blind date with a woman named Alf Mushpie, who personified this trope. At one point she goes on about how big, hairy and testosterone-laden men are, but then says that Opus is OK, because he's nothing like that..


Video Games[]

  • In Baldur's Gate, Shar-Teel is one of the NPCs you can get on your team--but if you, the protagonist, are male, she insists on fighting a male from your party in combat and will only join if he defeats her. She had a horrible childhood, including slavery and rape, as noted by her backstory--but on the other hand, the game makes no bones about it and describes her attitude as Chaotic Evil.
  • In Morrowind, there's a female mage lord who is described as disliking men, though nobody knows why. She rules over an all female town, and if you're playing as a male, it's harder to get her cooperation for the game's main quest. If you're male, you have to hurl yourself on the ground and beg, or just kill her; if you're female, she immediately agrees to help you, makes approving comments about the Nerevarine being a woman and gives you some powerful summoning scrolls.
  • Dallas Wyatt from Valkyria Chronicles developed androphobia as a result of growing up attending an all-girls school before joining Gallia's Squad 7 as an engineer. This translates to a fighting penalty in-game (in the form of the "Man Hater" trait), where her stats will go way down when paired up with male squadmates. Conversely, she has a strong attraction to girls (especially heroine Alicia Melchiott), so pairing Dallas with female soldiers will cause her to start fighting better in order to impress them.
  • The first official English Fire Emblem game had Florina, the adorable Pegasus Knight who is incredibly shy around men. Hilariously, the one male character she can have a paired ending with is the Hot-Blooded Hector.
    • Ellen in The Binding Blade is said to be scared of men in a support conversation with Zeiss, who claims it took her a long time just to be able to speak to him.
    • Heather in Radiant Dawn thinks men are bothersome, getting annoyed at Brom during their recruitment dialogue and wishing she could beat the shit out of Ludveck. (Though in the latter case she's hardly the only one who would gladly put their boot up his ass.)
    • Subverted with Lon'qu in Awakening, who is incredibly uncomfortable around woman to the point where Basilio lampshades it when he first introduces him. It turns out it's not that he dislikes or is afraid of women as a gender, but is traumatized over the death of his First Love, who sacrificed her life to protect him from bandits. He's afraid of getting close to other women in the event history repeats itself. He can work through this via supports and marriage with one of the first-generation girls, though, and if he's the father of one of the second-generation girls.
    • A rare sympathetic Gender Flip of this trope is Sylvain José Gautier from Three Houses. While he's known to flirt and sleep with lots of women, he refuses to form a deeper connection with a woman thanks to many of them turning out to be Gold Diggers who only like him for his status as a Crest-bearer and not himself.
  • It's not that Saber doesn't like men. It's just that as far as she's concerned, she's also basically a guy. And she can't be a male lesbian!
  • Dr. Strangelove from Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker is a rather interesting case. She is rather open to her hatred of Males, and yet after Snake defeats Zeke, Strangelove hints that she might have an attraction to Huey right then and there when he asked if she despised him, and a briefing file in regards to her interactions to Huey even had her making a rather contradictory statement that Snake noted (she said she would like Huey better if he acted more like a man and actually stood up for himself rather than be dependent on everything, and yet later she states that her most important reason for hating Huey is because he IS a man.), as well as the fact that, unbiased opinion or not, Snake noted that her listing of his positive credentials indicated at least some praise for Huey.
  • Helena of Cute Knight Kingdom says that she doesn't hate men, she's just never met one that was interesting. She's not completely averse to the idea of a good man, but given the game, it's not likely to turn out that way.


Web Comics[]

  • Near the beginning of Avalon, Joe tells Ceilidh that the unashamedly misandric Phoebe "really hates guys." Ceilidh shrugs this off until he follows up that she "really likes girls," which sets off an "is she or isn't she" subplot that lasts throughout. (Not only is she, she's the one who gets Ceilidh.)
  • Susan from El Goonish Shive discovered her father's infidelity at a very young age and was subsequently raised in a broken home by her deeply embittered mother. She eventually realizes (with a little help from a Gender Bender) that people make their own choices and "they're all like that" may have been serving as a backhanded way of excusing her father's behavior.
    • Susan seemed fairly open to befriending men. Before she accepts the opportunity to turn herself into a man, she writes in her journal that she's at odds between her father's behavior (which she was raised being told by her mother that was normal for men) and the knowledge that Elliot and Tedd were decent people in their own ways.
  • One of the initial defining traits of Kate on Misfile is that she can't stand to have any guy claim to be the best on any track she races. She's raced and beat every man to make such a claim ever since her sister was killed in a racing accident caused by chauvinistic male drivers.
  • In Sluggy Freelance, Gwynn tends to be like this. She's turned the Groin Attack into an art form and puts jerk guys into headlocks as a conditioned response. In fact, this trope is the one thing both her good side and her evil side can agree on.
  • Yuki appears to be like this in Ménage à 3. Admittedly she has some good reason to dislike Gary personally, but even before he got handcuffed to her she responded with attempted violence to something he was doing which was technically her fault. (She had knocked him to the floor and accidentally ended up straddling his head, and her response was to accuse him of "violating me with his nasty nasal boy parts".)
    • After seeing his drawings and discovering that he liked the non tentacle-rape-hentai manga of her father, she became MUCH more friendly... Though she's only just stopped referring to him as "Violator-san".
    • According to Zii, "Yuki isn't a lesbian! She just doesn't have sex with men!" It turns out that the reason she's so repelled by men is her father drew hentai comics for a living and was less than thorough about keeping them away from her in her childhood, and by "less than thorough" we mean to the extent that he used her plushies as paperweights for his comic pages and took her to see a live-action adaptation of his work when he couldn't find a babysitter. Apparently this happened so often that the mere sight of a penis, even a cartoon one, causes her to imagine Naughty Tentacles sprouting from the guy's body.
    • Additionally, apparently one of the main characters in the tentacle-rape-hentai is a young girl named ... Yuki.
  • Lisa Vangough of Venus Envy. "I don't understand. Violence against men ALWAYS cheers me up!"
  • Uranus (or 'Ana' for short) from Star Guys.
  • Summer in Slipshine's Moon Over June is a man-hating lesbian. Her disgust with men developed when she was a child growing up with Middle Child Syndrome in a family with three older brothers and three younger brothers.
    • To put this in a better perspective she started hating men because she found her brothers incredibly immature. When they were kids. And she was around 7.


Web Original[]

  • Subverted in Ilivais X. Despite having been raped numerous times with her inverted pleasure/pain perception condition, Iriana doesn't actively hate her male teammates, even with having a decently good reason and a sociopathic streak. Rather, she takes the safer and more tame route and simply reroutes her uncontrollable desires towards other women.
  • Survival of the Fittest's answer to this trope is Melina Frost. Heck, she founds a group with the sole objective of wiping out the male competition on the island. The portrayal isn't at all sympathetic: she comes across as a raging, psychopathic misandrist. Which, well, she is.
    • Another great example of this trope comes from Version 1 SOTF spin-off "The Program" character Chanel Mortimer, who grew up without a father and as such, never gained the ability to maintain friendships or trust the male figures or people in her life.
  • Hippolyta of the Whateley Universe. She's a six foot tall Hot Amazon who can bench-press over eight tons (which is a lot in the Whateley scheme of mutants). Her usual reaction to being admired by fellow high school students is to beat the snot out of them. Her backstory makes her attitude a heck of a lot more understandable; it would be pretty hard to go through what she's been through and feel comfortable with guys.
  • Missy from The War Comms takes this trope to an unhealthy extreme.
  • The Nostalgia Chick is a bitter misandrist. Played for laughs and not treated sympathetically because even though she has issues, she's a hypocrite, she treats the guys in her life like crap and one of the main reasons for it is that she has an unrequited obsession with Todd in the Shadows.


Western Animation[]

  • Mrs. Janet Barch in Daria hated all men (including the male students, like Mack and Kevin, and especially the history teacher, Mr. DeMartino) thanks to an abusive marriage and the messy divorce that followed. Despite her misandry, she soon found a place in her heart (and in her pants) for Timothy O'Neill (the shy, sensitive English teacher) and ropes him in a Pitbull Dates Puppy relationship that soon turned into Pitbull Marries Puppy as of the series finale movie, "Is It College Yet?".
  • Numbuh 86 from Codename: Kids Next Door absolutely hates boys. Apparently she thinks that girls are much smarter than them, to the point that her favorite member of the Decommissioning Squad is Numbuh 91, because she's female.
    • As time goes on, she seems to lessen this and is generally a bitch to both boys and girls equally.
    • Amusingly, she also had a Toy Ship with Numbuh Nineteenth-Century, who comes off as a bit of a Straw Misogynist after being unfrozen.
  • From the Justice League, a brief villainess Aresia the Amazon had a bitter grudge against men in general and was determined to purge the whole world of men. She managed to stir up a disease to kill every single male in the planet and she nearly succeeded, infecting the males of the Justice League and leaving Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl to deal with her.
    • Even after she's told by the Amazon chief that, after the boat she was on was destroyed, the ship's captain found her clinging to the wreckage and swam her to the nearest island, then died of a heart attack. Sadly, she wasn't told this...the chief didn't feel it was important. Of course, she only seems effected by the revelation for a second or two.
  • Used by Histeria! to describe Sappho (whom The World's Oldest Woman described as being "not into men," though given what Sappho was known for, this could be Getting Crap Past the Radar). Pretty much typical for the series.


Real Life[]

  • Truth in Television: I'm sure we've all run into at least one woman who's gotten disillusioned with men due to one too many bad experiences with them, as well as at least one Spear Counterpart disillusioned with women.
    • Sadly, sometimes this is a product of traumatic events.
    • There are also men who don't like men, although it's less common than women who don't like men.
  • There's a condition called "Androphobia," which is "an intense, irrational, fear of men"
  • There is also misandry, which is an intense hatred for men.
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