The work of Jessica Benjamin represents one of the most comprehensive attempts to analyze gender inequality from the perspective of psychoanalytic object relations theory. Benjamin relies upon Donald Winnicott to develop an account of the vicissitudes of the passions and the constitution of gendered identity. Yet Benjamin ends by marginalizing disagreeable passions in her social theory in ways that are not supported by Winnicott's psychoanalytic theory. This essay analyzes Benjamin's developmental theory from the perspective of an alternative interpretation of Winnicott. I argue that there is less support than Benjamin finds there for her confidence that hatred and rage can be eliminated from psychic and social life through good parenting and benign childhood experience.