Laura Bates õ 1 SUMMARY
The first comprehensive undercover look at the terrorist movement no one is talking about.
Men Who Hate Women examines the rise of secretive extremist communities who despise women and traces the roots of misogyny across a complex spider web of groups. It includes eye-opening interviews with former members of these communities, the academics studying this movement, and the men fighting back.
Women's rights activist Laura Bates wrote this book as someone who has been the target of many hate-fueled misogynistic attacks online. At first, the vitriol seemed to be the work of a small handful of individual men... but over time, the volume and consistency of the attacks hinted at something bigger and more ominous. As Bates went undercover into the corners of the internet, she found an unseen, organized movement of thousands of anonymous men wishing violence (and worse) upon women.
In the book, Bates explores:
Extreme communities like incels, pick-up artists, MGTOW, Men's Rights Activists and more
The hateful, toxic rhetoric used by these groups
How this movement connects to other extremist movements like white supremacy
How young boys are targeted and slowly drawn in
Where this ideology shows up in our everyday lives in mainstream media, our playgrounds, and our government
By turns fascinating and horrifying, Men Who Hate Women is a broad, unflinching account of the deep current of loathing toward women and anti-feminism that underpins our society and is a must-read for parents, educators, and anyone who believes in equality for women.
Praise for Men Who Hate Women:
Laura Bates is showing us the path to both intimate and global survival.—Gloria Steinem
Well-researched and meticulously documented, Bates's book on the power and danger of masculinity should be required reading for us all.—Library Journal
Men Who Hate Women has the power to spark social change.—Sunday Times Men Who Hate WomenFrom Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All
Since posting this review, I have noticed a rather alarming increase in one star reviews that are written by men. It is highly evident that the majority of these individuals haven't actually read this book, and are simply using this opportunity to spread their hate that they have for women, and to blacken Bates name. This in itself, is a solid enough reason why this book needed to be written.
I haven't been hiding under a rock all this time, and I realise that people like this do exist, but reading a 350 page book containing hard facts and testimonies made it sometimes difficult for me to digest. Ultimately, this book is certainly not a walk in the park, it's depressing.
The core subject of this book is The Manosphere. This is a vile group of men who get together (mainly on the Internet) and systematically hate on women, feminism and apparently get off on sending women threats/death threats whenever something doesn't go their particular way, or, woe betide, a woman receives some recognition for something positive that they did in this world.
These men believe that women are placed here in order to give men sex on tap, and when they don't comply with this, they believe they should be raped. Shockingly, on these Internet group sites, there are even tips on how to go about doing this.
Bates discusses a group called Incels which are men that are apparently denied sex by women, but not due to their own faults of course, and therefore they are classed as involuntarily celibate. These men rage a personal war on women, that goes much deeper than the odd sexist remark here and there. This is hatred, in it's purest and darkest form.
Another group that Bates discusses in some detail, are trolls.Now, we all know about trolls online, and the problems they cause, but when men get together online and threaten to kill your children while you sleep, I think it's time people wake the hell up. You may think a threat such as that warrants an immediate and swift arrest, but unfortunately, that isn't the case. Apparently, hiding identities and locations online, is easy to do if you know how, and freedom of speech isn't always an arrestable offence. Personally, from the perspective of a feminist, I strongly disagree. If someone is threatening to kill you, in whatever form that is, that person accountable should be punished.
I think what disturbs me more, is that there are men on GR, that appear to be defending The Manosphere or weirdly enough, claiming that it doesn't actually exist.
There are a vast array of examples and excerpts that Bates has included in this book, some that she has personally received, sometimes on a daily basis, but I'm not willing to post them here, so you'll just have to read this for yourself. Nonfiction, Young Adult Why trying to become a better human, fit, smart, and thereby more attractive, when it´s so much easier to participate in murderous anonymous hate troll slutshaming victim blaming mobs.
And it doesn´t end there, dozens of people have died because incels think that alphas and Stacies, even Beckies, have to die for their crime of working hard and improving themselves to be able to live happy lives. What gets less attention in the media, because it´s such an ugly, huge, evil beast, are the reasons that have been implemented in society for a very long time and get avoided because of political correctness gone mad, bigotry, and not wanting to offend the advertisers. It reminded me of
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
and the following concept: Don´t talk about inequality, because it implies so many problems related to dysfunctional democratic and economic systems. Better talk about poverty and how to reduce it by trickling down! Or, in this case, not about gender inequality and underlying sexism as a foundation of many societies, but about everyday discrimination in the workplace or gender pay gap, never something that digs too deep and criticizes the whole system.
Instead of talking about the dozens of hidden, quietly ignored topics such as sexual abuse, discrimination, accepted daily sexism, ridiculed feminism, making big headlines about the maniacs who kill because they can´t get laid because of their own fault is a priority. It even seems as if there is more media attention and coverage about death threats, honor killings, wealthy white people getting stalked and hate trolled, than about the hundreds of millions of women who suffer from accepted downplayed violence, rape, and often finally homicide. Look at the murder statistics, the most dangerous persons probably live in ones´ house, because it are mostly males who kill parts of or their whole family. What an epic, ultimate fail of hegemonic masculinity and men´s rights movements manosphere. If there are real problems, the superior, rational, better, and higher evolved male human does the only intelligent thing. Kill everyone and oneself or run away and hide afterward.
Before, as sick foreplay, death and rape threats for generally any woman who dares to be successful, famous, an activist or whatever, are an often seen hobby in these peer groups. The way until then could probably also be spend in incel movement, because they unite the idea of the alt right and other extremists with creative, good, oldfashioned models of feminity and the terrorist tactics of seeding fear and panic.
I don´t really get it anymore, it´s like the Onion and other satire news websites had become reality (not as if there were still any differences between real, hard news, fake, and satire). White men, who are the most privileged persons on the planet and are king in discriminating everyone else for centuries, are forming groups like MRA Men rights activists, PUA pick up artists, MGTOW Men going their own way, and the already mentioned, infamous INCELS Involuntary celibates. It´s like rich people doing as if they were poor, this whole thing, these movements make absolutely no sense! They are caricaturing real, very important anti racism and anti sexism movement, playing the victim role, spreading hate, abuse, and rape techniques, and are actively promoting terror and murder. Together in bed with white supremacists, because they don´t get laid by anyone else (just the Incels, I couldn´t withstand that pun), they are very close to fascism and antisemitism and reminded me of a Sartre quote:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870...
One of the sad ironies is that the incel movement has a solution to all its problems, even a word for it, looksmaxing, but instead of becoming a self improvement community that would make hate obsolete, they prefer to diss the ones that got it how to escape the vicious cycle. The idea of looksmaxing is even so superficial and nihilistic that they don´t understand that they should work hard and over long periods of time to improve their charisma, wit, career, healthy but not steroid fueled body, etc.
Where are the state and the social media companies with their fancy codes of conduct, public responsibility, and lol, business ethics? Well, it´s too difficult and expensive for any kind of public or private internet security and cyberforensic agency or company to hunt all these people, just because they post some dozen rape and death threats a week, have criminal records for sexual offenses, or whatever. Just peanuts and if something happens, well, as said before, short media outcry, a few days of How could this happen, think of the children until it goes back to the usual Walk on, nothing to see here. Of course some downplaying too, boys are boys, groping is just some fun without real victims, she wanted it too, it was an accident that she died, we just wanted to have some fun with her; completely normal and socially accepted stuff.
The underlying social, media, big history, etc. reasons and very complex connections between very stupid societal models and all kind of evil isms have been overvivisected in other reviews of books dealing with the topics, to find in my feminism equality and social criticism shelves if interested. Enough cheap self promotion, back to the show.
Nature had its reasons to integrate selection, Darwinian evolution, survival of the fittest, and females choosing the best males. Each human is free to learn, exercise, train, do one of the free multi k online video courses on how to be funny, entertaining, an actor, fit, friendly, etc. There is, as said as opening line, no reason or excuse to not invest in ones´ attractiveness, education, and charisma. It´s as if a person with weight problems and no medical issues hasn´t the discipline to change diet, lose weight, and train 3 to 5 times a week, maybe even while watching television, for instance, that´s really possible. And hates slim and fit people because of envy.
It´s as if someone is too lazy and procrastinating (and has the luck of talent, money, or background to be privileged to be able to get an education) to pick a career and hates successful people.
It´s as if someone hasn´t the self discipline to stay sober (without real issues and traumas that kind of legitimize substance abuse to a certain extent) and hates people who can drink moderately.
It´s as if someone who is switching between atheism and religious extremism hates people that are happy, tolerant, and open minded within their religious communities and positive faith.
It´s as sad as it´s mad, but the foundations have been laid in degenerated humanities and ideologies that helped form misogyny, racism, and hatred against anything possible for millennia.
While fragility
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
and
why one can´t talk to white people about race
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
play in here too.
That´s how they roll:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androce...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bro_cul...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-rig...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterop...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookup_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interne...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machismo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manosphere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masculism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Goi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalloc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickup_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_n...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_s...
Check out the sublinks and categories, it gets sicker and deeper into inherent, inbuild social problems linked to dysfunctional political and economic structures. Up and down the hierarchic wiki trees, one inevitably reaches the deep meta area that´s as creepy as the single troll.
Note: Bates is going undercover in online communities and there are explicit and very disturbing descriptions of rape, mutilation, and murder fantasies, threats, and general violence, so these passages might be too extreme for some readers.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogniti...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirm...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberst...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepfake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesti...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancip...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employm...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminiz...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasligh...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intra-h...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickup_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaga...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_cu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slut-sh...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereot...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unpaid_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valuati...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violenc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%2...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workpla...
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique. In the case of feminism and emancipation, there are many stereotypes, cultural conditioning, social norms, subconsciously forming gender rules:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph... Nonfiction, Young Adult This is such a depressing book that I just didn’t want to review it because that would make me have to think about the disgusting creeps that Laura Bates writes about. But life is not always spring sunshine and little lambs gamboling in the fields. Some nasty things have to be done, so, onward.
THE MANOSPHERE
That’s what this book is about – various popular places on the internet where men groove around detesting and hating and being sickened by women, feminism and political correctness gone mad (it’s always gone mad - guys, was it ever sane?) and issue very frequent death and rape threats against any woman who gets in the news for anything at all, such as Dr Katie Bouman who was prominent in developing the algorithm that was used to capture the first image of a black hole in April last year. Seriously, these misogynists can’t stand women getting credit for ANYTHING. She got death and rape threats. Yeah.
TAKE YOUR SEATS PLEASE
So, welcome to your this specially ghastly tour of the manosphere, a place you maybe caught sight of out of the corner of your eye once or twice, and hurried by, shuddering. Your seat will be very uncomfortable. Please use the sick bag provided if you feel queasy during your tour. And you will.
The main places of outstanding natural beauty we will be stopping at are :
the INCELS, which is a word meaning “involuntarily celibate”, a state these men blame on women and not their own unattractiveness, so naturally they hate women
the PUAs, which means pick up artists, which is guys promoting methods of picking up girls for casual sex, so naturally they hate women too
a group called MGTOW – pronounced “mig-tau” (= Men Going Their Own Way) and these are men who have seen that the whole of human society is biased against white men, and this has been a tremendous revelation to them so they are going to fight back, so naturally they hate women. Sample blog post : “How to Choke a Woman”.
the MRAs (=Men’s Rights Activists). Seems they used to be feminists but then there was a breakaway group that got much bigger than the original feminist men and yes, the new group hates women too.
Trolls – you know about these little boys – Laura gives us a deeply unpleasant account (and none of this so far has been a stroll in the park you know) of the vicious trolling of women who have any profile at all online – where the mildest insult is that these annoyed men will kill your children in front of you and then kill you. When asked about this stuff they will titter and say it was all ironic, just for the lolz. Don’t get your knickers in a twist.
And we wouldn’t want to miss out
Actual murderers of women, wife batterers, homicidal stalkers, gang rapists, etc. Quite a few of those.
ONLINE ANONYMITY
You might think that if a guy threatens to rape and kill you dozens of times in a day and says he knows where you live he might get a visit from the cops, but this does not happen, mostly.
The complexity of internet anonymity, the importance of freedom of speech, the international nature of the troll population, and the trolls’ technical skills at masking their locations and identities have all contributed to the fact that the problem is widely considered near-unsolveable.
And later she says :
Some of the world’s biggest social media platforms repeatedly throw up their hands and imply that the problem is too difficult to solve, claiming to take extensive action against harassment, but also refusing to disclose detailed records or procedures for tackling it. They release polished PR platitudes about working hard to keep everybody safe online, even as women reporting rape and death threats or graphic images of sexual violence are receiving automated responses telling them that the content “does not violate our community standards”.
I would quote a few of these messages so you can see what we are talking about but they would violate my standards and I hope Goodreads’ standards too.
CONCLUSION
Laura Bates’ point is that this underworld of women hating is seeping upwards and outwards like a black mould on a wall into mainstream media. I won’t recap all her observations here, but I could see her point for sure. This book is like a jolt of electricity, no fun at all. Nonfiction, Young Adult An important book about a horrifying topic we need to talk about. In Men Who Hate Women, Laura Bates discusses the roots of misogyny and how they manifest in online communities such as incels, pickup artists, trolls, and more. She does a great job of describing the online radicalization process of vulnerable young boys and men into these sexist and violent spaces. I’m gonna describe some of my key takeaways:
1) As a society we (people of all genders, though especially men) need to take the threats of incels and similar populations seriously. They’re not just a “fringe group,” rather, their beliefs have permeated and affected women across multiple domains of contemporary life and have literally led to sexual assault, mass shootings, and other forms of terrifying violence.
2) I think Bates writes well about holding two truths at once, a) that a lot, or at least some of these men on these forums and such feel insecure and defeated in life through circumstances not of their own doing (e.g., the man she writes about who was abused as a child and has physical scarring due to his parents’ mistreatment) and b) misogyny and violence are not appropriate ways to cope with those feelings. It’s important that we as a society think of ways to foster healthy vulnerability and emotional processing in boys and men.
3) The internet is a big yikes?? Bates explores how boys view and gain access to sexist, defamatory, anti-feminist content on platforms such as YouTube without much effort from the boys themselves. I think this issue requires a multifaceted approach though if I had a son I’d be talking about this issue with him ASAP – parents of boys watch out because it’s awful out there.
4) Media outlets may consider putting an end to platforming false equivalency arguments, or the notion that just because someone provides a sexist/misogynist idea that that idea deserves any airtime – or at least airtime that doesn’t rebuke that idea thoroughly. Bates names an interesting tension between not wanting to give misogynists airtime and at the same time not wanting to censor them lest they claim the victim card. At this point I think it’s important to at least call out misogyny and sexism when it happens.
Overall a great book. I think the writing style itself can feel a little repetitive though that doesn’t detract from the important takeaways and real-world implications of these topics. I appreciate Bates’s courage in writing this book especially given the rampant sexism she’s experienced due to her outspokenness. Nonfiction, Young Adult
But I am interested in the men in between. The boys who fall through the cracks. The ‘good’ men who feel scared. The ones who went looking for help, because they felt frightened or sad or lonely, and haven’t been able to disentangle themselves. The ones who just haven’t heard about any of this yet. The ones who look the other way on the bus. Because we can’t change anything without those men.
I find myself feeling like a different title should have been chosen for this book. It's certainly eye-catching, so I do understand why they picked 'Men Who Hate Women', yet that is actually only the title of the first chapter, and doesn't even begin to scrape the surface of everything this book is about. It's also not just about men, but all kinds of misogyny-- even the kind sadly perpetuated by women.
It's actually a book with a lot of compassion and empathy for young men and boys. Particularly those who have grown up on the internet and have turned to its dark corners for comfort when they've felt insecure and alone. Bates refuses to dehumanise any of the men and women she discusses in this book, even when they would be unwilling to return the favour. And I must caution: Bates goes undercover into Incel and MGTOW forums and some of the quotes she shares contain graphic descriptions of rape and abuse.
You watch as people in urgent need of mental health support, who have somehow found themselves sucked into this whirlpool of misogyny, are met with vitriol, ridicule and incitement to self-harm by other men getting their kicks from online hate.
The author looks at Incels, PUAs, MGTOW, MRAs, Gamergate trolls, domestic abusers, Youtube, and terrorists over the course of this book. It's a lot to digest. One of her main areas of focus is on how we downplay misogynistic remarks and violence, viewing men who make sexist jokes as just charming rogues. There's often this eye-rolling attitude toward men that they're just silly, just controlled by their natural instincts, just boys being boys, just making locker room talk. This makes it easy to dismiss rampant misogynists as just a silly harmless little group.
I thought Bates was going off on a bizarre tangent at first when she started talking about terrorism, but she makes a pretty convincing case for why misogynistic killing sprees should be viewed as terrorism (they never are).
Actually, this whole topic was very interesting to me. The way news outlets choose their headlines to sell ideas and agendas is not a new subject, though the reminder of it hits hard. Bates notes how crimes committed by white non-Muslim men are rarely labelled terrorism, and those committed in the name of misogyny never are. A 2017 study showed that terrorist attacks by Muslim perpetrators received 357% more coverage than those by non-Muslims. When James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into protestors, he was not charged as a terrorist, but Donald Trump and other conservatives were all too eager to throw the terrorist label at Black Lives Matter protestors. Because Incel and MGTOW culture are predominantly white movements, they, too, are not taken seriously.
Also: one man who murdered his wife was driven to it by jealousy and another who also murdered his wife was hen-pecked. Bates gives many more examples.
What she's saying, though, is that we shouldn't sit back and let our young boys be seduced by radicals on Youtube and Reddit; that we must not ignore this, must not just belittle these communities and allow them to grow as they are doing. We must take misogyny seriously and acknowledge misogynistic acts of terrorism. We must understand it is not misandrist to do so.
We are too afraid of being labelled ‘misandrists’ or ‘man-haters’, of encountering the traditional cry of ‘not all men’. Yet this is laughably oversimplistic. Of course, it is possible to confront the reality of this threat, and the existence of this movement, without suggesting that it somehow implicates all men. Indeed, as we have already seen, one of the biggest threats it poses is to men themselves.Nonfiction, Young Adult
ONLY READ THIS BOOK IF YOU HAVE NERVES OF STEEL
I struggled with rating this book. Because the subject matter was so... disturbing. So revolting, so upsetting. I had to call my mother after reading this just to get it out my system. I was horrified, angry, and agitated throughout this book. So you can't say that I liked reading it. But this is an IMPORTANT book. It's an important subject matter to look into and spread awareness about. And you cannot fault Bates' professionalism, journalism or commitment. I have the highest respect for her. And I recommend this book to anyone who says Sexism isn't hurting anybody or Don't we already have equality - just make sure you're robust enough to learn the truth.
ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
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Blog Post: 15 Books to Read if You Love Jane Austen Nonfiction, Young Adult This book is not yet available in the US. I had to order a copy from a UK book seller.
When I read this book, I was amazed at the hysteria, misandry and androphobia that drives the author's views.
There is almost nothing in the book that is not based on false information and fiction. For example, Laura Bates (the author) claims she was at a UK men's conference. I checked with three people who were in charge of the conference (all three of them are women) and they informed me that she was never at the conference.
Bates claims in her book that men want to repeal rape laws. This is just silly. Men, and the manosphere do not advocate a repeal of rape laws. The UK, being a backwards and prudish country, has a sexist rape statute in which only men can be charged with rape. Men and the manosphere want the law changed to permit prosecutors to charge women with rape (especially when women rape boys) so that the rape law is gender neutral (as it is in civilized and enlightened nations).
As another example, Bates makes the following claim: “This is a radical, extremist movement, at least tens of thousands of members strong, that deliberately spreads a doctrine of hate-fuelled misogyny and male supremacy, and actively advocates for the violent rape and murder of women. This claim is just as silly as any other claim that Bates makes in the book. She is referring to one incident in Canada in which a man had a car accident and he had posted comments in a group known as INCELS (involuntary celibates).
INCELS are hardly a movement and do not in any way advocate violence against women. INCELS is a definable group of people, including women, who have difficulty finding and sustaining intimate relationships. Almost every single male INCEL shows overt symptoms of having been sexually assaulted by a woman when he was a boy. These men deserve compassion and assistance because the women who raped or molested them when they were boys impaired their neurological and psycho-social development.
In short, Bates' book is nothing more than a diatribe and propaganda. It is hate speech against men and men's efforts to attain gender equality.
The publisher, Simon & Schuster was once a reputable publisher, however, it is now clear that for profits it has sold out its ethics, principles and morals to the feminist hate movement.
John Davis
Nonfiction, Young Adult Germaine Greer once said Women have very little idea of how much men hate them. I've long been sceptical of this assertion since, if the statistics on the number of women who have experienced sexual harassment of some form are correct, the majority have at least some idea. In any case, it's a moot point because the Internet must by now have left women in no doubt about just how widespread misogyny is, at least in the English-speaking world. Laura Bates does a super job here of covering all the bases of the contemporary woman-hating communities, from incels to pick-up artists (as the subtitle says) to men-going-their-own-way. This is a journalistic rather than academic treatment of the subject but I say this not to detract from Bates's in-depth research and hard work; sometimes an academic approach fails to communicate the urgency of the need to confront the problem discussed. Bates makes clear that something has to be done and fast, sympathizing with the principal victims of misogyny while also empathizing with the victims of a patriarchal toxic masculinity that allows emotionally immature and fragile young men to be preyed upon by grifters selling them certainty, security, and a sense of belonging. A book every man should read (and any women who still have their doubts!). Nonfiction, Young Adult Not for the faint of heart, as there is a lot of distressing stuff in here. It's like feeling compelled to stare at a car accident that you're passing. This is a book about a tiny minority of men who are loud and more stealthily influential than they ought to be. It makes me sad for these people who choose to hate others that they perceive as different. They believe that they have to lose status if others gain it, instead of both parties being equal. I think in reality everyone gains from a more inclusive, diverse society. Change is not bad, although it's not easy either.
I have sympathy for men, who often get shoved into an uncomfortable gender role straight jacket. They can be shamed for having feelings other than anger and told that caring about others is weak, when it is actually a strength. Men do have higher suicide rates (and they tend to choose more effective methods) and they seem to perceive more barriers between themselves and mental health services.
The extremists find reinforcement on the internet. When we lived in small communities where we knew a bit about many of our neighbours, we knew who held these kinds of views and they didn't receive much, if any, approval. Now you can live next door to someone who secretly hates you and not be aware of it. The scary part is the high profiles of the haters on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter where they are easily accessed by teens, who get indoctrinated early. Make no mistake, this is radicalization. If brown or black people were the leaders, this would have been labeled as terrorism immediately.
It doesn't help that politicians (still largely men) find misogynistic and xenophobic messaging works for them. The media is reluctant to admit that white supremacy is closely linked to male supremacist ideology. Police are disinclined to label the actions of white perpetrators as terrorism. There are academics and some women who seem to be happy to give extremist views a pseudo reputable aura.
I’ve found myself looking at the news in a different way since I started reading this book. Recently, in London, Ontario, there was a driver who purposefully plowed into a Muslim family who were out for an evening stroll. He killed 4 of them, leaving an injured and orphaned nine year old. I don't know that it will be reported, but I have to wonder if the driver was a reader of all this vitriol on the internet. The authors of this venom seem to hate everyone and encourage this kind of behaviour. I think that's one of the characteristics, actually, that these haters don't even like other men very much, let alone people of other races, genders, or religions.
I was so thankful for the chapter on men who are trying to do something about this issue. Truly, if a man despises women, he's not going to be influenced by female opinions or points of view. Basic media literacy started young is imperative. Young women can benefit from it too. Learning how to evaluate sources for credibility. And, as one educator says, you have to take it where men are, not ask them to come to you. Most importantly, men have to be the source of a new masculinity. They have to give themselves the freedom to combat loneliness, find meaning, and seek friendship & love. Role models are crucial, both celebrities and members of the community. We need to find them and celebrate them.
I’ve been relatively reclusive since I retired but I feel like I need to find a volunteer position to help counteract this trend. I also find myself wanting to find appropriate charities to contribute to—mental health services, suicide prevention, domestic abuse prevention, youth activities, etc. I'd like to be part of the solution, not just a bystander. It's something I feel strongly about because of the many men & boys in my life that I love dearly. Nonfiction, Young Adult This is a depressing but necessary read. As a woman on Twitter I’ve had my experience of men spewing hate at me (once over a pic of a banana cutter?!?) so the contents of this book did not surprise me. But the depth of the hate and the trickle down nature of it into mainstream media and society does make me despair.
I admire Laura for her bravery in writing such a book. I often second guess myself about writing a tweet about something like ‘toxic masculinity’ because I don’t want to deal with the hate that will inevitably come my way (and I’ve only got like 200 followers so I can only imagine how much hate Laura receives daily online.)
I’ve no doubt that this book will receive many one star reviews from men that feel challenged by Laura, but believe me - this is a worthwhile read! Nonfiction, Young Adult