As I see it
Men might think that they love women, but I suspect that what men like most about women, is to possess them, control them, display them as prize trophies, and to have sex with them - this pertains to the heterosexual man.
In general, to a heterosexual man or youth, a woman who he is attracted and who is also excited by him, has the ability to make his heart flutters, as she stimulates his very being, even without touching him. This can be attributed to 'raw sexual appeal', or to notions of 'romantic love; something to which it appears that all or most women - especially those whose freedom to choose their mate has not been denied them by their cultural and social mores - desire fall in love with her perceived prince charming.
There is no doubt that the sight of a man whom she loves, can equally excites the heart of a woman, and even causes her to want to 'possess' him. Yet, it seems that the definition of and reasons why a woman would want to possess a man is probably quite different from why a man would want to possess a woman. The type kinds of possession are probably comparatively different both in kind and degree.
It seems to me that men wants and do possess women as a sign or manifestation of power and status. It has been said that women have been equipped by the evolutionary process to choose the 'fittest' males, in order to ensure the specie's survival. In the case of men, it could be argued that they are, in evolutionary and tribal terms, have tended towards mating with women who were both fit and capable of providing them with the many sons they would have wanted to protect the tribe and fight their perennial wars.
With the socio-political and economic evolution of society, man and women no longer consciously choose - where they are allowed to do so - their partners based on their presumed ability to have and rear children to protect and ensure the survival of the specie and/or tribe or nation. Except for the less enlightened and the more traditionalist societies, romantic love and the sexual attraction are probably the dominant drivers in the relationship between men and women. In the more orthodox or traditional and less socially advanced societies, the family unit remains the foundation of society, and, along with it, there is greater abuse and exploitation of women.
As surprising as it might seem, in the more traditionalistic societies, those where religious and cultural customs and rituals still hold strong, women, probably even more than men and children, are arguably being comoditised. The men use religion and cultural norms to determine the value of their women, what they can and cannot do and how they have to do it. We see this happening in Latin and South America, Africa, the West Indies, India, Pakistan, the Middle East, et al.
In order to enable their men to have the detestable pleasure of inflicting massive pain on their women after the marry them, some Muslim countries practise female genital mutilation on their children. This is probably the starkest example of men hating women and wanting to abuse and dominate them.
It seems to me that, whereas any man in any society is capable of having a mutually loving and equal relationship with a woman, at a religious, culturally and societal level, men, as a specie, hate, disrespect and oppress women. They appear to have a pathological or primitive need to treat their women as chattel and someone to cater for their own sexual pleasures.
Women have probably assisted the male specie in hating and oppressing, by continuing to perform the roles which men have ascribed to them. Thus a mother is able to wittingly or unwittingly rear her sons to become the oppressors of their sisters and other women. Thus it is women who torture their own and other women's daughters, by 'cutting them', and it is women who are more afraid of not being 'cut', in case they are unable to get a husband and made to feel ashamed for being 'different', by not being 'cut.'
Of course, we should not be too hard on or blame women for not liking or hating themselves. After all, considering the wretched life which millions of women have to live all over the world, is it any wonder that they should hate themselves?
Does a slave loves being a slave?
It is men who cause women to hate themselves, because of their persistent oppression of women, and it is time for men to remove the yoke of oppression from their women. Except where Catholicism still has sway, the post-religious countries have made substantial progress in this respect.
Unfortunately, in the predominantly Muslim countries, the repression of women is continuing on a societal scale.
It might be the case that men hate women because they are no more that socialized predators, and have established a social system which allows them to systematically and 'normatively' exploits women. The shackles have been loosened, if not removed in most of the more enlightened 'Judeo-Christian' countries, but remained firmly in place in many of the traditionalistic and orthodox Islamic and non-Christian countries.
The struggles continues.
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