The hashtag #NotAllMen is a feminist Internet meme.[1] 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,[2] 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.[3] 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.[4]
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, where a character muses:
Writing at The Awl, John Herrman lists additional uses of the phrase as far back as 1863.[6] 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."[7]
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."[3] Both the phrase and hashtag "#NotAllMen" have been used as a satire of defensive reactions by men.The first appearance of the meme in popular media was a satirical tweet by Shafiqah Hudson in 2013 that quickly went viral:
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.[8] 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 .[9]
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.[10]
See also: YesAllWomen.
#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.[11] In response to the "not all men" argument,[12] [13] [14] an anonymous Twitter user created the hashtag #YesAllWomen[15] 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.[16] [9] [17]
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.[18] [19] [20]