This is a hashtag that started trending in early 2014. The hashtag comes up in many of the articles I’m looking at that also discuss misandry. Many of them are in favor of this hashtag, using the line of thinking I described in my misandry overview. I thought I’d take a minute to do a deep dive on what this statement appears to mean.

First, why “kill?” I’ll compare to a number of options off the top of my head…”rape all men,” “castrate all men,” “sterilize all men,” “fuck all men,” “erase all men,” “ignore all men,” “cancel all men.” Of all of those, “kill” is the simplest and most complete dehumanization, and it allows for all of the others. If it’s ok to kill someone, it’s of course ok to…rape, castrate, sterilize, fuck, erase, ignore, cancel etc on the way to that. Also it doesn’t express that we merely want men to be gone; rather, that we want them gone after a definitive act of dehumanizing violence. We want them to be murdered, after which, of course, they’re no longer here. We don’t just want them to disappear, we’d like the murder to happen first.

This reminds me of the way many mga scenes work; AFTER the mga, the victim disappears. From this perspective, mga in media is often a symbolic representation of the #killallmen sentiment. We don’t just want this male character out of the way, we want them punished and dehumanized, THEN we want them out of the way.

This also reminds me of the recent rash of terrible TV shows…Obi Wan Kenobi and so forth…where we make a show ostensibly about a beloved male character, we abuse, humiliate, and emasculate that character, THEN we replace him with a female character. Many negative reviews of these shows ask “why didn’t these writers just make their own show with their own characters? Why did they have to ruin Obi Wan Kenobi/Hulk/etc?” But if they just made their own show, that wouldn’t be #killallmen. That would be #ignoreallmen or something else. If we made “Princess Leia, the early years,” we don’t really get to #killallmen Obi Wan Kenobi. It has to be a show called Obi Wan Kenobi, because #killallmen Obi Wan Kenobi isn’t a side agenda, it’s the whole point.

Why “all?” This is perhaps the most interesting word in the hashtag. What are other examples of “kill all?” The history of extreme racism and genocide is rich territory for these statements. It’s too hard and not worth it to tell the difference between these subhumans, better to bomb their entire territory into a parking lot and let God sort it out, that type of thing.

“All” is the sentiment expressed in by Lizzo in GRRRLS by the total anonymity of her victim; it doesn’t really matter which man they mutilate, any man will do to help her and her sisters bond.

The position that I’m going to call “humanist” is that we all have a humanity inside of us that transcends all of our immutable characteristics, and that humanity is of great value. We are to treat each other with respect to that humanity, and we are to assign blame, shame, and guilt, as much as possible, to behavior and individuals, rather than to immutable characteristics (skin color, sex, etc). Hatred towards those immutable characteristics hurts both the humanity of the hated and our common humanity.

“All” is the ultimate anti-humanist sentiment. All people of this skin color, or from that area, or of this religion, or with that kind of body are worthless and should be destroyed, or at least deeply suppressed. The humanist fights this association to the bitter end; poor neighborhoods in a particular part of the world are usually populated by a majority that shares some immutable or inherited characteristic, but that characteristic does not explain their poverty (and so on).

I would say it would be hard to find examples of “kill all” OUTSIDE of these most reprehensible and disgusting examples. My guess is that those who think the hashtag is clever would say the “all” means we need men to curtail the bad behavior of men, and they don’t; so they need the threat of #killallmen in order to be motivated into action. I believe most of the genocidal figures in history professed this same cleverness. My impression of history is that, from the beginning, tyrants and murderers have asserted that their atrocities might teach valuable lessons to the people they hate. This particular cleverness is neither clever nor novel.

There is another subtle meaning of “all” in the hashtag. One is embedded in the idea I describe above, that if men aren’t stopping other men, they are also the problem, and should be killed. To believe that, you would have to believe that the value of every man is very, very low. After all, if men are essentially worthless, it would make sense to kill them all if some of them are also annoying.

(on “annoying:” the articles I found that defend the use of the hashtag show examples along the lines of “this guy won’t stop asking for my phone number. #killallmen” or “I just had an argument with a guy about consent. #killallmen.” So the nature of the hashtag, total disregard for the value of any men, seems to fit it’s use; anything a man does that annoys a woman is justification for #killallmen)

What about “men?” It implies that, when a man does something that annoys a woman, it is because he is a man, and it is the essence of maleness. If a man is bad, it’s not because some people are bad, it’s because he is a man. If we follow that logic out a bit, it would mean that, in order for a man to be good, he would somehow have to stop being a man. It puts the focus in human interactions on this immutable characteristic, maleness.

This, again, is anti-humanist; the humanist position is that anyone, born any way, is of equal value and potential, at least if measured by some very large number of variables. We are to treat all humans as if they are of equal value, and let behavior modify that treatment, in proportion to the behavior, always erring on the side of faith in humanity, as well as humility regarding our own perceptions and egos. We are also to have a special allergy to assigning blame to immutable characteristics. Just because you see a woman do something stupid, foolish, or cruel doesn’t mean that women are stupid, foolish, or cruel. Same with men, same with different skin colors, sexual preferences, national and cultural backgrounds etc.

The men part is also interesting from a 2022 perspective (remember this hashtag started trending in 2014). I assume the hashtag is meant for straight men, not for gay men or trans men, but I don’t know that, and I wonder how those populations feel about the hashtag. Certainly the victims in almost all mga scenes are straight men, and often the assault is connected to the fact that they are straight. How do gay and trans men look at these scenes? How do they look at the hashtag? I have no information here…if any of my readers do, please share.

Part of what I find deeply disturbing about this hashtag and the articles I’ll review about misandry is about who is writing them and who they’re popular with. Popular support for ugly and homicidal prejudice has usually been among the poor and desperate. They are already afraid and in legitimate need, they are easy to lie to because they are uneducated, and they certainly don’t have the resources to combat atrocities even if they were inclined to. But #killallmen and articles endorsing “performative misandry” come from middle and upper class college educated people. They know history, they’ve read the rhetoric of terrible people, and they think it’s cute, fun and clever to do it themselves. They’re playing games with the darkest expressions of human contempt and cruelty, gleefully throwing that energy into the world, and I suppose they believe that, if there are any horrible consequences, those consequences will be for men…apparently ideally #allmen.