Despite the fact that it seems both counterintuitive and contradictory, it is possible for a man to "hate women and date women" at the same time. I'm not referring to the (largely) mythical "down-low" boogieman either, but instead heterosexual men who harbor nothing but disdain and contempt for women. All women. Even the woman they might be in a relationship with. (Well, all women except for their own mommas. But, as we all know, mommas are mommas, not women, so they don't really count.)

Realizing how difficult it may be to distinguish between "men who date and hate women" and "men who date and don't actually hate women," here are a few signs that a man might be one of the former.

He refers to women as "females"

This may not seem like such a big deal — I mean, women are female humans, so it's not like he's lying — but there always seems to be some Freudian slippage involved when a man consistently does this. Basically, he uses "female" because, well, he doesn't actually see women as anything other than "females." Not humans. Not women. Just some non-male entity whose only earthly purpose is to occasionally provide a warm place for his penis. That she's compromised of parts other than a vagina is inconsequential and inconvenient. 

He's hates all of his exes

I realize this is a point of contention for many people currently in relationships. There seems to be an ongoing "Battle of The Fexes" between "people who think it's cool to be friends with exes" and "people who don't think it's cool for the person they're seeing to be friends with someone they used to be with." I actually used to think that where a person stood on this was largely determined by gender, but there seems to be an equal amount of men and women on each side of the issue. (Personally, I'm on team "friends with exes." Thanks for asking.)

Anyway, I'm bringing this up because, regardless of how you feel about people being friends with their exes, it has to be a definite red flag if a man doesn't at least have a cordial relationship with one of them. I don't care how bad someone's luck happens to be. If every single woman a guy has ever dated is now a "crazy bitch" who he talks about like she just killed his dog and stole all of his remote controls, perhaps the common denominator is him.

He's rude to people "below" him

Regardless of how nice he may currently be towards a woman he's interested in, if he's an a-hole to waiters, secretaries, and cab drivers — basically, anyone he feels is below him socially — he more than likely feels the same way about women. If these people "below" him happen to be men, the correlation between how he treats them and how he feels about women may not be obvious. In this sense, it's not about gender, though, as much as it's about him just not seeing the value in being nice to people who he doesn't have to be nice to, and men who act this way usually also are only nice to women that they're trying to get something from.

Once that mission is accomplished, you can rest assured that he'll start treating her with the same backhanded disdain he uses when scolding an Applebees bartender for putting too much ice in his root beer.

He has an astronomically high "number"

Now, I realize that there are some men who, through some combination of sheer happenstance, experience, serendipity, and occupation (and, well, some genetic assistance), have slept with a hundred or so women and still respect and appreciate them. I don't know if I've ever met any of these men, but I've never seen Bigfoot either, and I won't doubt people who say they have.

Improbable anomalies aside, it's nearly (and by "nearly" I mean "literally and physically") impossible to sleep with that many different women without regarding them as disposable objects — a perpetual array of notches for his never-ending belt.