Product Code Database
The hashtag #NotAllMen is a feminist Internet meme.
A shortening of the phrase " not all men are like that", sometimes abbreviated " NAMALT", it is a satirical parody of arguments used to deflect attention away from men in discussions of sexual assault, the gender pay gap, (2025). 9781502657466, Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC. ISBN 9781502657466 and other feminist issues.
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". Zimmerman also highlights a use of the phrase dating to 1985 in Joanna Russ's novel On Strike Against God, where a character muses:
Writing at The Awl, John Herrman lists additional uses of the phrase as far back as 1863. 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."
The following year, the phrase was added to an image of the Kool-Aid man crashing through a wall, 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, 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. The comic was retweeted and tens of thousands of times, and shared by celebrities including Wil Wheaton, Paul F. Tompkins, Matt Fraction, and John Scalzi.
Other #NotAllMen-related memes include references to Aquaman, Adventure Time, and .
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.
|
|
