The hashtag #NotAllMen is a feminist Internet meme. [1] [2] A shortening of the phrase "not all men are like that", sometimes abbreviated "NAMALT", [3] [4] it is a satirical parody of arguments used to deflect attention away from men [5] in discussions of sexual assault, the gender pay gap, [6] and other feminist issues.
The phrase "not all men are like that" has been in use online since the mid-2000s as a general defense of men. [4] It was used as a catchphrase among men's rights activists (MRAs) in response to online discussions of misogyny or sexual abuse which they saw as blaming all men as perpetrators. [3]
Jess Zimmerman writes that before 2013, "not all men" was absent from discussions of popular derailment tactics used in response to feminist discourse; in its place were phrases such as "'what about the men?' and 'patriarchy hurts men too'—pleas for inclusion, not for exemption". [5] Zimmerman also highlights a use of the phrase dating to 1985 in Joanna Russ's novel On Strike Against God, [5] where a character muses:
…that not all men make more money than all women, only most; that not all men are rapists, only some; that not all men are promiscuous killers, only some; that not all men control Congress, the Presidency, the police, the army, industry, agriculture, law, science, medicine, architecture, and local government, only some. [5] [7]
Writing at The Awl , John Herrman lists additional uses of the phrase as far back as 1863. [4] [8] In Charles Dickens' 1836 novel The Pickwick Papers , the character Miss Wardle says, "Men are such deceivers", to which another character replies, "They are, they are [...] but not all men." [9] [ non-primary source needed ]
Kelsey McKinney writes at Vox that the phrase "not all men" has been "reappropriated by feminists and turned into a meme meant to parody its pervasiveness and bad faith." [4] Both the phrase and hashtag "#NotAllMen" have been used as a satire of defensive reactions by men. [3] The first appearance of the meme in popular media was a satirical tweet by Shafiqah Hudson in 2013 that quickly went viral: [4]
ME: Men and boys are socially instructed to not listen to us. They are taught to interrupt us when we– RANDOM MAN: Excuse me. Not ALL men." [4] [10]
The following year, the phrase was added to an image of the Kool-Aid man crashing through a wall, [4] [5] a Tumblr page featured images in which a speech bubble with the phrase "not all men" was added to images from movies such as the shark from Jaws and the chestburster from Alien , [5] and artist Matt Lubchansky created a webcomic with the character "Not-All-Man", in which the "defender of the defended" and "voice for the voiceful" breaks through a glass window to interrupt a pink-haired woman complaining about men. [5] [11] The comic was retweeted and reblogged tens of thousands of times, and shared by celebrities including Wil Wheaton, Paul F. Tompkins, Matt Fraction, and John Scalzi. [5]
Other #NotAllMen-related memes include references to Aquaman, Adventure Time , and Magic: The Gathering . [2]
A 2024 study published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications analyzed comments on Reddit and Twitter and found a transformative use of the hashtag #NotAllMen, finding that there were women and men supporters of both perpetrators and victims of gender-based violence. Many men in social media call out sexism, violence and discrimination, a fact that many feminist women value because their aim is to join as many people as possible in the fight to end all gender violence. [12]
#NotAllMen was already a Twitter hashtag before the 2014 Isla Vista killings, but it gained additional traction after the event, because of the hatred against women expressed by the killer. [13] In response to the "not all men" argument, [14] [15] [16] an anonymous Twitter user created the hashtag #YesAllWomen [17] to express that all women are affected by sexism and misogyny. This newly created hashtag was used by women to share their experiences of sexual discrimination and attacks on social media. [18] [2] [19]
After reports of a mass molestation occurring at India's Bengaluru New Year's Eve celebration in 2017, #NotAllMen began trending on Twitter. This drew an angry reaction from women, with many Indian feminists and women strongly criticizing the hashtag while responding with their own hashtag #YesAllWomen. [20] [21] [22]