The paradox of hate, I was going to begin, is that the broader its target, the more acceptable it becomes. The misanthrope who hates all humanity is even considered charming, in a crusty, H. L. Mencken-ish way. But to hate only part of humanity is a sin surpassing all. It is Mencken's anti-Semitism, not his universal nastiness, that has undone his reputation.

And to hate an individual is worst of all - well, no, here the theory breaks down: Hating individuals is all right, too. Hatred of particular persons in positions of authority is indeed often orchestrated by the very people who would profess the most concern, were the hatred directed toward a group.

So the only hate that is truly outre is group hate. If I hate you for the color of your hair that is one thing, but if I hate you for the color of your skin then I have sinned not merely or even primarily against you, but against your kind. And I, in my turn, hate only on behalf of mine.

We have now the almost total ideologization of personal relations. The only crime is group crime, the only rights are group rights - and, the underlying assumption, the only identity is group identity. We have lost the ability to think of people as people - as individuals, that is, with all the moral attributes of their common humanity.

I was not going to comment on the Marc Lepine tragedy, but the feminists will not leave it alone - the National Action Committee on the Status of Women demanded a public inquiry at their recent meeting in Montreal; This Magazine spends several pages on the deeper meaning of it all, et cetera, et alia, ad nauseam and beyond.

BROADER SOCIAL WAVE

Through endless repetition, the standard feminist analysis has become the King James Version in the media. The formula never varies. Begin by noting the temptation to conclude Lepine was merely a lunatic, who could as easily have chosen another target for his rage. Warn against this, suggesting Lepine is the crest of a broader social wave.

Hazard a few guesses as to what this might be: a ''culture of violence'' against women, perhaps (though it is a statistical fact that you are far more likely - almost twice as likely, according to a 1985 solicitor general's report - to be a victim of violence if you are a man). Finally, end on an upbeat note: if any good comes of this, it will be to spur an all-out effort to combat violence against women.

But try to pin feminists down on this, and the sloganeering certainty vanishes. It's easier to find out what they don't mean than what they do. One thing they are most definitely not saying, they will tell you without it having been suggested they had, is that all men are potential Marc Lepines.

Is it, then, that society teaches hatred of women, of which Lepine's outburst is an inevitable, if extreme, example? Then why, in all the cases of mass murder on record, is this the first in which women were the target? Does society also teach hatred of McDonald's restaurant patrons (to cite another infamous massacre)? ''Well of course we're not saying that.''

In the end, you're usually left with little more than the vague claim that Lepine is a ''symbol'' of more commonplace violence against women. Well, good. But that's all he is. While women may have felt a special chill at news of the carnage, his choice of women does not in itself make his crime any more terrible, or more significant. It just makes it ideological. Had he shot more indiscriminately, had his hate been less specific, he would have attracted a fraction of the attention. But the hate would have been no less real.

Of course, it doesn't really matter whether his act was of any broader significance objectively. What matters is its significance to the the moribund feminist movement, which has so succeeded in marginalizing itself that even the federal Tories are no longer afraid of them.

In truth, for groups like the NAC, Lepine was a godsend. Even if not directly exploitable, he served to rally the troops, for a time. At the very least, he provided a chance to vent their rage at the movement's declining power.

To reduce those 14 women to icons of oppression, their lives and deaths intelligible only as events in a grand feminist morality play, is more or less to endorse Lepine's own view of the world. They are not individuals, capable of real suffering, but members of a group - ''women'' or ''the feminists'' - nameless casualties in a ceaseless ideological struggle. They are, in Kantian terms, not ends in themselves, but means to an end. In a word, they are used.