The dangerous pleasure of hating men

I have Netflix, and in particular the series Maid, to thank for the startling discovery of how easy it is to slide into a form of man-hating — not a righteous feminist rage, but a sort of dopey, palliative, unthinking misandry.

Maid was released last month, and it’s already one of the stand-out Netflix successes of 2021. (It was announced last week that it’s set to take over Queen’s Gambit as the most-watched Netflix miniseries.) The show is catnip for women, and after several late nights, letting one episode tip into another, I can see why. It’s based on the real-life memoir of a woman in the US who fled an abusive boyfriend and supported herself and her small daughter by working as a cleaner. It stars Andie MacDowell’s daughter Margaret Qualley, with Andie herself as the destructive, bipolar (but still hot) mum.

Maid is well-written and well-acted, but the secret of its success lies somewhere quite different. The distinctive thing about it is that every male character is an absolute horror. I mean: every single one. There’s the abusive babyfather who swings between violence and remorse; the maid’s own father, another wife-beater; and a slew of shifty, venal stepdads. The bit-part men are shockers too: uncaring landlords, supercilious doctors. Even the men we never meet but merely hear discussed are abusive. The only male initially appearing decent is a chap called Nate who saves our heroine from homelessness. But then he boots her out again because she won’t sleep with him. (‘Classic toxic knight-saviour,’ according to social media.)

Maid is ‘hard to watch but it’s important,’ said the reviews. Well, that’s straight untrue. Maid is frighteningly easy to watch, which is why it’s so popular, but also why it’s pernicious.