This rather vague phrase leads to tricky interpretation that's sometimes actively milked by the writers. Usually the assumption is that the character doesn't like machismo, or she has bad luck with men in her life, like her father or other relatives. That is, traits associated with men manifest into a dislike of men. This can pose a problem for any male lead trying to woo her, making it take much longer than suspected to win her over.
Generally, the author portrays the woman in question sympathetically, and vilifies whatever man drove her to hate the rest of his gender. Try and guess how sympathetically a man who Does Not Like Women would be portrayed. (In fact, a genderflipped version of this trope does exist, but works slightly differently — usually the man has 'no time' for love until the female lead arrives to save the day. This male version was popular in the past, but has declined in recent years for various reasons, partially because a male viewing women as 'frivolous' is likely to make him much more unsympathetic today, and partially because viewers are more likely to question his sexuality.) See Celibate Hero. (And, for younger male protagonists, Girls Have Cooties.)
Other times it's just lampshading to explain why a character isn't even seen with guys (not even offscreen), to entice shippers, or just to extend the possibilities of romantic entanglement you can put into a story. It's frequent that eventually one character comments on this and takes it in its most literal interpretation. Conversely, bifauxnen and 'mundane' lesbian characters never seem to use this trope.
Examples:
In most versions of Sailor Moon,
Rei Hino is usually completely uninterested in romance and men in general, a lot
of it coming from unresolved resentment of her
emotionally-distant father since he abandoned her Missing Mom
during her last days, as well as her unrequited love for her father's assistant
Kaidou who married another woman. Late in the manga, when the villains torment
her with this fact, she remembers that in her past life she had actually made an oath of
chastity to Princess Serenity and is able to fully accept this part of
herself.
Ironically, despite Rei being boy-crazy
in the animated series, there are actually more jokes at her expense about
'not liking men.'
In Maria-sama
Ga Miteru, Sachiko's dislike of men stems from snotty upperclass men and a
mostly uninterested fiancé. That she also goes to an all-girls school fills out
her cold but
intriguing personality and arguably works to Yumi's advantage - but this
played up to the point she can't even be around overly masculine men without
being distressed.
One of the DVD extras makes fun
of this, when the guys are allowed to do a version of the show's opening credits
until Sachiko arrives in a conniption fit and the girls scramble to change the
scenery.
Mrs. Janet Barch in Daria hated all men
due to horrible former marriage and ensuing divorce. She eventually ends up
involved with Mr. O'Neill, a male teacher who is shy, feminine,
and sensitive.
Webcomic example: Near the beginning of Avalon, Joe tells Ceilidh that the
unashamedly misandric Phoebe "really hates guys." Ceilidh shrugs this off until
he follows up that she "really
likes girls," which sets off an "is she or isn't
she" subplot that lasts throughout. (She is. In a Last Minute
Hookup that more or less defines Strangled
By The Red String, so is Ceilidh.)
The phrase itself isn't used in Suzumiya
Haruhi No Yuutsu, but it's made clear with visual examples that Haruhi not
only does not like men, she considers them to be entirely beneath her notice (to
the point that she's comfortable with changing clothes in front of them). Of
course, she makes an exception for the male protagonist in the end.
This
troper took it to be less of an issue with Men themselves and more of an
attitude that People were beneath her. Her treatment of the rest of the cast
illustrates this. By the end of the series the Male Protagonist is just the only
person she actually takes seriously, and therefore stops stripping in front
of...
Susan from El Goonish
Shive, after Susan found out that her father had an affair and her mother
justified it to her by claiming that men "can't help themselves". She eventually got over
it after spending some time as a guy via Gender
Bender.
Disgaea 2 inverts
this trope: Adell, the main character, "does not like girls" because of an
attempted childhood deal with a
succubus gone south that left his face with a pair
of Inigo Montoya-style scars and nearly killed him, giving him a rather
understandable and sympathetic reason for avoiding
them.
Dilara in The
Assassins Of Tamurin, due to being abused by the son of the foster family
she lived with before being taken in by Makina Seval. The Despotana eventually
uses this to manipulate her into "willingly" joining her Amazon
Brigade at Three Springs.
Akane Tendo from Ranma 1/2:
Being attacked by all of the boys at school every morning because they think they have to
defeat you to have a chance to date you can do this. After being chosen to
marry Ranma:
Nabiki: "Well... you hate boys, don't you?"
Kasumi: "So
you're in luck! He's half
girl!"
Hinako Aikawa, the lead female character in the manga Bitter
Virgin, is unsettled by being around men and flinches if one happens to
touch her — she is (at first) totally repelled by men due to the huge trauma of
having been constantly raped by her
stepfather and impregnated twice, even giving birth once and having to give
the child in adoption, all before high school. Ouch. (And guess who the lead
guy, Daisuke, has to fall for?)
Katchoo in Strangers In Paradise. Since she is also a lesbian this leads
her to be described as a rampant Straw
Feminist and bull dyke by unsympathetic characters. But since she was raped
by her stepfather as a teenager and received nothing but hassle from men you
can't really blame her.
This troper disagrees. Yes you can blame her. She is
an abusive jerkass and the line David spouts about 'at least it's your fists
beating me' has to be the most sickening portrayal of 'abuse as romance' that
this troper has ever seen. If she was a
male character, she would be cut
no slack by anyone.
Sakurako Tenmaru from Ai Kora is known
for being "stingy" toward men, stemming from an incident in middle school, where
her friends turned on her because all the boys fell for her, though through no
machinations on her part.
Dr. Luisa "Lu" Delgado from Strong Medicine. She
sometimes treats the men in her life (no matter if they're her love intrests or
not) real bad whether they're jerks or not, and that turns even worse after she's raped by a
colleague and becomes a whiny Straw
Feminist. Sure, she did have crappy experiences, but not all men (and rich
people ) are scum just because you say so, honey.
Galaxy Angel
Rune 's Apricot Sakuraba plays this trope in an unusual sense; she can
interact with men without difficulty, but if a man touches her, her
super-strength kicks in and she literally reflexively kicks the man's ass.
Beatrice and Katherine in Much Ado
About Nothing and The Taming
Of The Shrew are notorious man-haters. Although Beatrice is not so much a
"Man Hater" as a "Benedict Hater."
One of the initial defining traits of
Kate on Misfile is that
she can't stand to have any guy claim to be the best on any track she races.
She's raced and beat every man to make such a claim ever since her sister was
killed in a racing accident caused by chavanistic male drivers.
In Mahou Sensei
Negima, Nodoka seems to have mild case of androphobia (well exaggerated in the
anime), and an early manga bio states that she "dislikes men". However, this
seems to be do to the fact that she's extremely shy to begin with, and, being a
student at an all-girls school, has very limited experience with men. She seems
to be getting over it though, thanks to a massive crush on Negi.
Love Hina also
had this in the form of Motoko (at least early on, until she started falling for
Keitaro), and at one point she's mistaken for a lesbian by a disguised Kanako.
Who then proceeds to try and molest her.
Nao Yuuki
from Mai-Hime is a teen prostitute who uses her CHILD to rob and injure the men
who call her up for dates, taking advantage of their lust for her. She's been
doing so after a gang killed her father and left her mother (and more important
person) comatose.
Husky the fish-boy, from the manga +Anima is, admittedly,
only like thirteen years old, but he still doesn't care much for girls. Maybe
it's because he was forced to crossdress to make a meager living for longer than
he'd care to say, or maybe because of a rough experience with an all-girl gang
in one of the early chapters (where he lost his most prized possession), but
when the bat-girl Nana tried to join the group, he objected rather violently,
and said that he hates girls. He eventually softened up... a little. But he
still gives Nana grief for being "such a girl" despite being very, very girly
himself, and so feminine that he's frequently mistaken for a girl by women and
men alike.
Katherine, the titular shrew in Shakespeare's
Taming of the Shrew (and Kat in its update, 10 Things I Hate About You) is
sharp-tongued, bad-tempered, and bitchy to pretty much everyone, until she is
tamed by Petruchio (and his counterpart, Patrick Verona).
In Kiss Me Kate,
the character even gets a musical number called "I Hate Men".
Psycho Mantis
from Metal Gear
Solid does not like women. In his incarnation in The Last
Days Of Foxhound this dislike is flanderized
into describing all women as 'whorebags' and a violent reaction to being
approached by them — at one point he would rather fall to his death than let
Sniper Wolf pull him to safety.
Inverted in Fate Stay
Night with Issei, who is afraid of women, and thinks that one of the female
leads is pure evil.
Another inversion was Yamcha from the first Dragonball
episodes. Here it's not that he dislikes women, but is terrified of girls,
despite his wish to get a girlfriend. In fact, he wants the Dragonballs to get
over his phobia.
Survival
Of The Fittest's answer to this trope is Melina Frost. Heck, she founds a
group with the sole objective of wiping out the male competition on the island.
The portrayal isn't at all sympathetic: she comes across as a raging,
psychopathic misandrist. It's worth noting that some believe she is a Flanderization
of her handler, who while sane and not at all violent appears to be equally
misandristic, talking to the male members of the board as if they were dogs at
the very least.
Leo, a former Giant Mook who
underwent a psuedo Heel Face
Turn in the Western Shojo manga Miriam,
dislikes women so much he's practically enraged when one so much as talks to
him. Miriam constructs an elaborate imaginary backstory for him that, in her
mind, would excuse his behavior, which involves several groups of women (his
sisters, his female co-workers, his sisters-in-law, etc.) taking advantage of
him for his entire life. While her story is farfetched, his attempts at
explaining himself, which amount to "they're noisy, and if you deal with them,
they cry, and you still can't fight them..." suggest something along those lines
might've actually happened to him, even though he's never been married and
doesn't have any sisters.
Here's a male example for you: Peaceable Sherwood
of The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope. His uncle/guardian got him
enlisted as a soldier during the Revolutionary War (on the Brit side)
specifically because Peaceable "refused to marry the half-wit he had selected
for me." When his uncle pointed out that acting like a half-wit was the fashion
for young ladies of the time, Peaceable said he'd rather die single, and refused
to marry until he met a woman as intelligent as he was. In a Crowning
Moment Of Awesome, the sister of the soldier he's taken prisoner tricks him
into drinking sleeping drops (that he knows she has on her at the time because
(a) he saw them and (b) she even mentioned them in conversation!) because he
finds it all too easy to believe that a woman would be dumb enough to try to
pull that off. When he realizes what she's done after the drinking, he promptly
proposes marriage before passing out!
For whatever reason (an explanation or
even allusion to one has not yet materialized), Stunt from Dominic
Deegan really, really does not like women.
Miss Havisham from Great
Expectations. After getting jilted at the alter by a conman, she spent the
rest of her life in her wedding dress (to remind her of what had happened)
training her adopted daughter Estelle to hate men as well, inititially to
protect her from them, but subsequently with the intent of using her to break men's
hearts as revenge. Which is where Pip comes in...
The first Red Adept of
the Apprentice
Adept series. Stile uses this to cause an Engineered
Public Confession.
Red was so
widely misconstrued as a bad lesbian
stereotype that Piers Anthony deliberately introduced a sympathetic lesbian
character in a later volume. Which, in turn, made it look like he was just
covering his ass.
