Feminists: Enemies of the Man-Haters

Feminists are often branded as man-haters. That's ridiculous. A contemporary feminist is the least likely of anyone I know to say something like, "All men are pigs!" Or, "Only a man could be so insensitive!" Why? This is because we dont' essentialize gender differences. Judith Butler and Bell Hooks and numerous others have helped us realize that gender is largely socially constructed. Men aren't necessarily born to be insensitive and obsessed with hockey, it could all be in how they are socialized by their families' and society's expectations.
The feminist women I know believe much of women's oppression is caused by the idea that gender-role stereotypes about women are our destiny. SOme women don't want to be mothers and are upset they are expected to have babylust at least by age 30. Some women like sports and can't stand the assertion that they are "tombodys" (ie. less than perfect women) for doing so. SOme women don't understand why they are expected to like shoes or be able to cook and clean when they have no talent for domesticity. We hate the rigidity of gender codes that are supposed to signal our sex. We realize no woman embodies all the stereotypes that inform our definitions of what is typically gendered female in this world, so why on earth would we expect men to? Feminists get that not all men are pigs. Not all men are violent. NOt all men are career-oriented. NOt all men like or are even good at sports. Not all men are bad dressers. We get that. We don't hate men, we hate the patriarchal structure that places a burden on men to be these things, to be aggressive and dominant and oppressive. We know it is a strain on you to have to be the primary breadwinners, the soldiers, the politicians, the global business leaders. We realize that this expectation that a man is less than a man unless he wants to conquer the world must hurt you as much as a society that constructs women as passive and subservient.
So men, when, as a feminist, I say I hate the patriarchy, it doesn't mean I hate you. I hate a societal construction that forces men to be dominant and women to be submissive but pretending that it is natural all men act one way and all women act another.